Scotsman:  It's Obama, stupid: Carter and Gore to end Clinton bid

So far this is the only source I've seen carrying the story and it seems pretty thin. More as this develops, or fails to as the case may be...

I work in an industy selling and servicing industrial manufacturing machinery.  Been doing it for 15 years.  In the early, mid 90s, boom times, we put a lot of machines in American plants.  In late 90s, following passage of NAFLA (the North American Free Labor Agreement) we saw many of these companies move these machines just over the Mexican border.  The US managers down there live in the US, make US wages, commute daily over the border.  The workers in Mexico make pennies on the dollar to what the now unemployed US worker made.  Now, the machines are moving to China because the Mexicans cost too much.

How does the politician in rural PA or any other Rust Belt dying town rally votes?  Guns, God, and gays.  That's what Obama is saying.  Washington has abandoned the middle-class, the blue collar worker.  All that Washington offers economically to the middle class is the occasional drip from the trickle down tax cuts that make the fantastically weathly another 20 percent more fantastically weathly.  Politicians drum up votes by concentrating on these sideline, phony "issues" and unfortunately many Workin' Joes buy into these arguments and cast their votes on this basis, even against their own economic self interests.  I know guys like this.  Apparently, Obama recognizes this behavior. 

Obama's statements aren't a slam against the working poor but an expressed realization about the f*$*ing Washington is giving to the working poor and the middle class.  Why mention to the proletariat that the world's richest man, Warren Buffet, has a lower tax rate than his secretary or that the Columbian "Free Trade" Agreement will reward a country that has seen 2500 union activists assasinated during the last 10 years when we can instead argue about whether two loving, consenting adults of the same sex can be married?

Obama takes the conversation to a depth the two other candidates won't dare to dive to (Hillary) or don't have the intellect (McCain) to discern.  This level of thinking and expression is what we need for the next eight years.

 

One more thought on the Bitterness Imbroglio. A rich white lady who went to Wellesley and Yale and a rich white Republican guy, both long term fixtures of the Beltway power structure, are accusing a black guy raised by a single parent and his struggling to stay middle class grandparents of being an elitist, and no one's laughing. Many are nodding their heads in agreement, some are worrying themselves into a tizzy over whether it will stick, but no one is saying "damn, did I just walk into an episode of 'Green Acres,' or has the world always been this surreal and I just didn't notice?"
 
I mean, I guess, in a weird way, its a kind of progress . . .

When Hillary pounces on Obama to call him elitist in a political move to change the way  things are going in her campaign, I am just pissed off.  I'm not pissed off THAT she’ doing it. It’s so obviously a political strategy.  But she does it with such adroitness. And she’s playing it to the hilt.  

Look, he chose his words poorly. He was trying to make a point, a larger point that was not done very well, I might add.

But  why don't we give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was tired.

Perhaps he came under sniper fire on the way to the event. 

Perhaps he stayed up all night practicing his bowling or spent an all-nighter learning the lyrics to Bomb, Bomb Iran for an upcoming appearance on American Idol.  

Or maybe he really is a big fake, a bamboozler and we’ve all be scammed! And this slip up has totally exposed him to all of us who think he is a man of character.

Will Americans be incapable of sifting through this kind of political hog wash.  

Who knows? I only know it makes want to smack something. I’m going to take a Lorazepam and take a bath.

Good night!

 

When Hillary pounces on Obama to call him elitist in a political move to change the way  things are going in her campaign, I am just pissed off.  I'm not pissed off THAT she’ doing it. It’s so obviously a political strategy.  But she does it with such adroitness. And she’s playing it to the hilt.  

Look, he chose his words poorly. He was trying to make a point, a larger point that was not done very well, I might add.

But  why don't we give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was tired.

Perhaps he came under sniper fire on the way to the event. 

Perhaps he stayed up all night practicing his bowling or spent an all-nighter learning the lyrics to Bomb, Bomb Iran for an upcoming appearance on American Idol.  

Or maybe he really is a big fake, a bamboozler and we’ve all be scammed! And this slip up has totally exposed him to all of us who think he is a man of character.

Will Americans be incapable of sifting through this kind of political hog wash.  

Who knows? I only know it makes want to smack something. I’m going to take a Lorazepam and take a bath.

Good night!

 

Because, while speaking to California donors about how some people vote in PA after 25 years of dissilusionment, Sen. Obama said "cling to guns and religion", instead of "cling to issues like guns and religion", which was obvious given the context that he was talking about voting patterns, Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain are trying to paint him into a corner based on a mis-speak.

Set aside the comparison with the Tuzla mis-speak.

His record and oppinions are clear.  He was clearly not being condescending.  Yet his words snuck out of a private fundraiser get clipped and truncated and twisted into a ridiculous attack.

See the 2004 interview here, he talks about votting on hot-button issues starting at minute 11:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJut4-dHuV8

His book, "The Audacity of Hope", has a whole chapter on Values.

I'm sure Sen. Clinton is aware of all of that, yet she's bent on the personal destruction of Sen. Obama as a way to get the nomination.  Any
other fellow democrat, in any other primary, would have defended his competitor against the acusation of the opposing party.  But Sen.
Clinton is instead circulating right-wing talking points.

Of course, hopefully we won't hear anything from former Pres. Clinton on this, because he pretty much said the same thing as Sen. Obama, arguably in a more artful way.

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/04/december-2007-b.html

And painting Sen. Obama as the 'less american candidate' is not helping either.

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/04/hillary-clint-5.html

If Sen. Clinton is trying to win the Dem nomination as the candidate of the gun-toting church-going hot-button-issue voters, she might have another thing coming.  She might need another drink.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/clinton-takes-a.html

Senator Obama, do you cling to your religion because you're bitter?

As fantasy football politicos, let's take a crack at it.  If you were his chief strategist, how would you advise Obama to answer that question?

Here's your chance to really show your stuff, and maybe help the Obama campaign!

 

If you enjoy this game, please recommend this post.

If Obama's comment is not offensive to those people in small town, I don't know what is going to offend them.  It is my believe that most white people are supporting Obama, because they don't want to be labeled that they are racist. Secondly, they don't consider Obama as a real Black man from this country.  Most blacks are supporting him because they don't have a candidate who will be acceptable to the white people.

No one really knows much about this guy except he is a good speaker and has received good education.  Waht major initiatives has he taken while he is in the Senate?  He avoided or voted with his party in most if not on all votes.  He is no different than any other politician. 

Why he fails to pay proper respect to the Flag.  Is this some sort of protest? 

Please don't select him at this time.  Let him prove himself before select him for the highest office in the world. Don't be fooled by his fancy talk.

My father was employed at a small airplane manufacturing facility. It went under  and left behind a questionable environmental legacy. It is now a prison boot camp. ( good jobs!)  My father then went on to work an average of 80 hour weeks for the next 30+ years to provide for me and my brother. My mother has always had to maintain 2 jobs.  Due to there being no future for me other than alcoholism and prison, I left for SF and now make more than both of my parents. Do you detect any bitterness here?

A startlingly large number of people I knew are now dead due to DUI's and overdoses. The county jail in my home town, is usually populated with DUI offenders and those who defaulted on their child support. I know people who have to hunt to provide for their families. Throughout most of central PA there is a Heroin/Oxycontin epidemic. My best friend, at 30 is exhibiting signs of liver cirrhosis and pancreatitis, I have seen him hallucinate from DT's, and he works hard and doesn't have access to healthcare. Do you detect any bitterness here?

My family is culturally conservative, and religious, all members own guns, including me. That is all that the powers that be have let us keep, and we vote for who has and will at least protect that. 

We elected a Democratic governor (after having to put up with banana alert, shit your pants scary Tom Ridge), and he immediately attacked the already weak worker protections in the state. We get left behind and lied to by every single politician since the 70's. People do rally around what little we have left, and for good reason. It is a desperate, dying culture and what Obama said was correct, plain and simple. If you want to speculate that it will hurt him fair enough, time will tell. But please,please,please refrain from the insane parsing of words, the faux outrage.

When I first read Obama's remarks from the San Francisco fundraiser I thought he'd just shoved his foot halfway down his throat. Lumping religion with guns and anti-immigrant feelings; saying people "cling" to religion as if it's something they would shed if they knew better. I knew what he meant to say and knew it was true, but I also knew why Christian (and gun-owning) voters would feel profoundly insulted.

As a San Franciscan I understand completely how that wording would come out of his mouth. He's talking to a roomful of rich, educated left-wingers who pride themselves on being cosmopolitan, anti-gun and too enlightened to identify with a single religion, people who are predisposed to hate a deer-hunting churchgoer who wants illegal immigrants deported. A genuine, humane effort to articulate blue-collar frustrations to that crowd could so easily come out like that: of course they cling to religion and guns in their well-deserved bitterness.

Unfortunately he seemed to be thinking entirely about the audience he was facing, not how it would play in Uniontown, PA.

But then he responded, and once again his response has not only dealt effectively with the problem but even raised his message to a new level and opened a national conversation that will probably help his campaign—and the country as a whole—far more than it will hurt.

Tactically it was brilliant. He substituted "turn to their faith" for "cling to religion" as if it was what he'd said in the first place; if he just keeps saying that, the clumsy first version will be subsumed. And he made it sound as if Clinton and McCain's objection was to the very idea that Americans are bitter and frustrated; which isn't quite true, at least in Clinton's case, but it puts them on the defensive and forces them to prove that they get it.

But beyond the tactics it's true. And that continues to be what thrills me most about Obama and his candidacy. He leads us to take about the truth while his opponents just keep rolling out the same old cheerleader chants.

This could also be calculated by Obama to elicit the division his comment made. He's been losing in small towns. He'll be glad to capture a few to add to his overwhelming advantage in heavily African-American areas. Remember, he tried to lasso some gun right advocates by telling them his belief in the 2nd Amendment but without revealing his voting records to them.

Obama was successful in using race to not only solidify his support among blacks but also to interject a subtext, which African-Amaerican WashingtonPost columnist Robinson advocated as well. The subtext is that you're racist if you don't vote for Obama.

And whatever happened to our democracy and freedom to choose our candidate regardless of race, religion, gender, etc.?

In this macaca moment, Obama's subtext is you're bitter, religious fanatic and gun-toting loser if you don't vote for him. Who wants to be thought of that way?

This time Obama miscalculated and slipped into a macaca moment.

If you're looking for anything original, please skip the rest of this post...

Whatever in deity's name possessed Josh and company to inflict this terrible website software on the TPM readers and especially contributors? Not only is it not very good, it is in many ways much worse than the old software. If it was at least bad enough to get rid of the trolls, that would be something, but noooo...

The lack of both preview and edit functionality was specifically designed to make posters' lives difficult, and this was neatly combined with the lengthy trip through purgatory that all posts need to endure before appearing for all to see. The effects are devastating, but I must admit that seeing posts with only the first three words getting on top of the recommended list is absolute comic gold.

It is also considerably harder (or, to be more accurate, pretty damn near impossible) to have a meaningful discussion now because there is no way to see which posts in a thread are new. No notification of replies to one's own posts is a predictable consequence of this, but just a trifling niggle in comparison. On the upside, once a thread gets 100+ comments I just give up on it, thus saving valuable time, with the resulting inevitable increase in productivity which might just save the ailing economy. If that's not EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!, I don't know what is.

Then there is the "now you're logged in, now you're not" game. Until I started playing it, I considered myself to be a fairly sophisticated and experienced computer user... but this one always keeps me guessing. The AI is very good! It has been artfully tuned to frustrate users at every turn, but not enough to force them to leave. A true masterstroke.

I really hope major improvements to the site software are in the works. Please? Pretty please with sugar on top?

The Scotsman ([in]famous for printing Samantha Power's "monster" comment) has just reported that

DEMOCRAT grandees Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are being lined-up to deliver the coup de grâce to Hillary Clinton and end her campaign to become president.Falling poll numbers and a string of high-profile blunders have convinced party elders that she must now bow out of the primary race.

Former president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand down for the good of the Democrats.

"They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told Scotland on Sunday. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence."

So what do you guys think--are they on the mark here, or totally off?

Bitter? 
Mrs. clinton thinks the voters are "optimistic"!  John McCain thinks Americans would be happy to stay in Iraq for 100 years.
The pundits think we all live in Bushville and dine at Morton's

81% of Americans think Clinton/Bush governance has the country on the wrong track.

"Optimistic" Mrs. Clinton?

Tell that to Donna Shore and tell that audience on Tuesday night.


Consumer Confidence Sinks to 26 Year Low

"I think we're almost in a depression," said Rohnert Park resident Donna Shore, 72. "Like the man in the movie said, 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking it anymore.' "

Shore, who rents an apartment in a senior facility, lives on Social Security of $846 per month plus the $10 per hour she earns working 22 hours a week at a storage facility. There's no slack in her budget. As prices of food and fuel have risen, she's had to cut back.

"I'm worried about the cost of everything. Peanut oil used to be $2 or $3 for a small bottle. Now it's escalated to $5."

If the Democrats lose this upcoming election to the virtually unelectable John McCain, it's hard for me to imagine that Hillary Clinton wouldn't receive the blame for it.  I believe the anger, hatred even, that Ralph Nader received in the wake of the 2000 election (which he continues to receive) would pale in comparison to what would be directed at Hillary Clinton.

It was bound to happen, given the time, Obama was going to show his true color. Thus far, the media has given him a pass every time he had a gaffe. Little is known about him and being new on the block, the media or the GOP hasn't quite branded him and the media is at a lost of a story line his gaffes will fit in.

If only the media would take a closer look, there's enough data out there on Obama that make a pattern, and thus, a story line obviously presents itself. For example, he has many times lied about his bio, lied about having heard Wright anti-american rants, claimed legislative credit that belonged to others, initially covered up his meeting with the Canadians on NAFTA by lying it took place, blamed his staff for his own misguided actions, etc. It's a definite pattern of lies and obfuscation. So media, what are you waiting for?

Another pattern is his beliefs and values he shares with his wife about how mean and bad this country is. Up to now, the media hasn't pressed Obama that part of Wright's speech he disagree with, thereby, which ones he agree with.

Obama can only be a party liability in the general election and Democrats need to think this through. There's more we don't know about Obama that could hurt the party in November.

 http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Misunderstood-Presidency-Bill-Clinton/dp/0767914120/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208041234&sr=1-3


I would like to slip quickly in between the spate of Obama
apologia to recommend this book by Joe Klein. It is an excellent short examination of the Clinton presidency, 200 pages double-spaced, an easy 1-day read from the well-placed author of "Primary Colors".

I have noticed in reading various posts and comments in here recently that there is a tendency to talk a lot about Bill Clinton and his presidency, without much  depth of understanding as to what that event was actually about.

By "about", I mean not only the cartoons and soap-operas familiar to all, but the actual serious policy warfare that made its determined way forward against entrenched opposition on every side.

By "about", I mean the state of the nation for better or worse that the Clinton Administration found in 1992 and left in 2000, and what has become of that state  since then. 

I bring this up, because it is impossible in my opinion to have a truly realistic perspective on the 2008 election (and the implications of a choice between Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton) without a canny, balanced appraisal of the former Clinton Administration firmly fixed in your mind. You can get that in this book 

I'm in no way interested in changing hearts or minds, but if you find yourself wondering,  and unable to sort thru the half-truths and mis-information, this is a very good place to start.

There are some Hillary Clinton supporters are out on the Internet attacking Donna Brazile for what they see as her support for Obama in an her op-ed calling on Hillary to stop throwing elbows.
 
Bloggers from Politico.com, MyDD.com and Hillaryis44.com, Taylor Marsh have been brutal in their attacks.  If you read some of their comments you would think that Donna was a supporter of terrorism or something similar.  They weren't even reporting all the facts with their attacks, just cutting and pasting what 'they' felt needed to be printed.

I would like to take the time to remind Americans just who Donna is and what’s she’s done for American voters and the Democratic Party during her young life.  To make it easier for myself, I’m going to repeat the ‘About’ section of Donna’s own website. 

She is the Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute (VRI) and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, is a senior political strategist and former Campaign Manager for Gore-Lieberman 2000 - the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign.

Prior to joining the Gore campaign, Brazile was Chief of Staff and Press Secretary to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia where she helped guide the District's budget and local legislation on Capitol Hill.

Brazile is a weekly contributor and political commentator on CNN’s Inside Politics and American Morning. In addition, she is a columnist for Roll Call Newspaper and a contributing writer for Ms. Magazine.
 
A veteran of numerous national and statewide campaigns, Brazile has worked on several presidential campaigns for Democratic candidates, including Carter-Mondale in 1976 and 1980, Rev. Jesse Jackson's first historic bid for the presidency in 1984, Mondale-Ferraro in 1984, U.S. Representative Dick Gephardt in 1988, Dukakis-Bentsen in 1988, and Clinton-Gore in 1992 and 1996.
 
In addition to working on political campaigns, Brazile has served as a senior lecturer and adjunct professor at the University of Maryland and a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.
 
Brazile is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including Washingtonian Magazine's 100 Most Powerful Women in Washington, D.C. and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Award for Political Achievement.

That is just a short resume.  Read her book, Cooking With Grease, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear the things she’s done throughout her life.

Now, let me return to the issue at hand.  Hillary supporters seem to think that Donna is supporting Barack Obama and is trying to hurt Hillary’s campaign with some comments that she’s made.

If folks would evaluate ‘all’ of Donna’s interviews on CNN and ABC’s 'This Week',  I’m sure they would find she’s given equal time to both Democratic candidates. 

I’m an Obama supporter.  I’ve found myself disagreeing with Donna on many occasions over the past few months about something she’s said about the Obama campaign, only to later hear her something about Hillary's camp that I agreed with.  Donna's what I call, “Fair and balanced”.

Over the past months and years I’ve emailed Donna about issues of the day.  In 2006, Bill Clinton had an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox.  Here’s Donna’s response to me, to what he said/did during that interview, “Yes indeed.  Clinton made me so proud yesterday.  I am so glad he stood up, pointed his finger and fought back.”

On January 8, 2008, I attacked Hillary’s tearing up as a political ploy, Donna didn’t take my bait, she defended Hillary’s choking up before the New Hampshire primary.  After Hillary won there, Donna said, “Notice I never wrote her off”.

On January 19th during Nevada's caucuses and South Carolina’s primary I was bragging about Obama’s chances, Donna said, “Women are supporting HRC.  She’s whipping ass in Clark County as well.  She has strong institutional support.”

These are just a few comments she’s made in support of Hillary directly to me in emails.  I don’t have access to CNN or ABC’s show logs or I am sure I could come up with a well documented list of supporting arguments Donna has made for Hillary Clinton.

Yes, of course Donna will say good things about Obama’s campaign; but she also says bad things, believe me, I know.  All political pundits and strategists do that.

For example, I once wrote to ask Donna that if she had direct contact with Obama, whether she would pass him something I said, her response was, “I am not interested in passing along comments to Obama.  They have to learn from their mistakes. Have a good evening.”

That doesn’t sound like a ‘I support Obama’ statement to me.

None of us have a clue what it's like to be in Donna's shoes.  To attack her so 'bitterly' after what she's done for her Party and her nation, is not only wrong, it's plain stupid.  We need more people like Donna that are willing to go above and beyond for the rest of us.

As Hillary once said, "Shame On You, Bloggers" for taking you frustrations out on Donna Brazile.

Anyone care to fill in the blank?  

Earlier today I surfaced to get some news after having been too busy for the past day or two. Now I learn that another 'bombshell' has exploded, the news media is swarming over a candidate's off the cuff remarks, the blogosphere is roiling, the talking heads are busy chattering away, the spin doctors are spinning like turbines, the faux outrage is so thick that you can almost touch it. All in all, much ado about nothing, but it's oh so dramatic!

At the same time, it's not like important things aren't happening. The credit crunch is very real, the economy is headed for a tailspin, and at the same time blood and treasure are being pissed away in Iraq with nothing to show for it. But that's not much fun to talk or think about, not half as much as watching the riveting horse race.

This is the time when leadership is needed. Instead, US politics is on hold, and this is just the primary campaign. The next President of the United States will be sworn into office about nine months from now! We are looking at a period of approximately one year total when everything in politics happens just for politics' sake.

President Bush is a lame duck. Now don't get me wrong, with this administration that is undoubtedly the best one can hope for, but it's not exactly good. The protracted campaign seems to be mostly a big waste of time, only it's very easy to get sucked into it and lose all perspective. In a way it's addictive - and that can't be a good thing.

Is this really the best approach to governance? Or even just the least bad? There ought to be a better way... but I hold very little hope that it will be found, let alone taken.

    Here we are in the looking glass folks, where up is down.
   Now the candidate of hope is defending bitterness while the candidate who says words don't matter is parsing every syllable seeking advantage.
 Hillary is immersed in the Audacity of Grope, (Bill was too, as you all remember, but that's another story.) What she's groping for is a way to create a wedge between Obama and the working class, all in the name of "unifying" the democrats by which she means unifying them behind her.
 Judging from her behavior these last 24 hours, she thinks she's found it.
   Today, on the overly trod campaign trail, she tore up her stump speech in favor of going after her "opponent" (voicing the name "Obama" is a no-no)
What's she going after him for? For saying what is essentially the truth (the original no-no in American politics!).
Because the truth is, though I wish he'd stated it better - and apparently he wishes that too - that after 25 years of no-change-no-help-in-sight, people are justifiably bitter.
  This has Hillary sensing blood in the water.  All day, she's been knocking Obama for condescending to voters while she herself addresses the crowd in her bobble-head, ruler-on-the-knuckles way that defines condescension.
   Meanwhile, the Lanny Davis's of this world - those say-anything-it-takes surrogates breathlessly awaiting a Clinton restoration,-- - have been given their orders: Go For It.
   So it's Rev. Wright Redux conducted by an HRC mob hoping that the stuff they throw on the wall will stick. The last time, the people of this country surprised a lot of folks by favoring nuance over sound bite. That was then, this is now.
Keep your seat belt fastened.

In this never ending political season, there is yet another attempt being made by Hillary Clinton and John McCain to marginalize Barack Obama in order to weaken his presidential candidacy.  Obama's comments, "When you're bitter, you turn to what you can count on," made in reference to some small town voters, were true.  But of course we can't have frank discussions in this country without parts of the conversation being taken out of context and showing up in a political sound byte. 

Well leave it to good old Hillary to try to turn a flicker into a flame to try and sway super delegates to overturn the will of the people.  Hillary insists that this latest controversy will hurt Obama in the general election and her surrogates are just getting warmed up.  Add this latest one to all the other none issues that will weakened Obama in November.  Right now goal number one is to get the news media to pick the story up and run with it.  Their strategy appears to be working at least in the short term on CNN and XM Radio P.O.T.U.S. 08. Now if we can just get these media types to report the news instead of trying to influence what ultimately is newsworthy.

Of course I hope that super delegates have discerned that no matter what trickery that Hillary employs to cast dispersion on Obama, that she will never be accepted as the nominee if she benefits from her deceptive political tactics.  That scenario is more certain to guarantee a Republican victory in November than any comments by Obama taken out of context.  The Republicans will also have a hard time convincing anybody that they are more concerned about everyday citizens.  The Republicans are the party of the real elitists as evidenced by their well known policies.  Given Hillary's propensity to embrace what used to uniquely be Republican strategies and McCain's decades of experience as a Republican, I think that would have the most trouble looking out for the interests of middle America.

Obama is not a career politician and has skillfully adjusted to his political hiccups well.  You can bet that Hillary and McCain no longer underestimate him.  However, Obama has learned one more lesson.  That lesson is, beware of "sleeper" donors who can go live at any moment.

I see a lot of puzzlement expressed as to why Hillary Clinton  is still attacking Obama even though his nomination is virtually assured. No mystery to me: in 2012 she'll be 64 years old, still primetime for a presidential candidate. Now that she can't be nominated her game plan has to switch to doing what she can to helping McCain win this year so that she can come surging back with a triumphant "I told you so" and win the next election.

She can't be so overt about it that she hardens the mass of Democrats against her, but under the guise of being a fighter who still thinks she can win she's free to plant many thoughts in voters' minds that will hurt Obama in November. Hence the new theme of her criticisms: he's an elitist who can't beat McCain. Sometimes things come true if you predict them enough.

There's nothing wild-eyed or implausible about this. It's very well documented that a lot Democratic insiders, in collaboration with some big labor unions, actively undermined McGovern's campaign in 1972. They felt that four more years of Nixon, and a chance to "reform" the nominating process, would be better for their branch of the party in the long run. And the Clintons are widely felt to have put their own interests over those of the party from the day Bill was elected in 1992.

The good news for Obama is that he has a lot more clout with the leadership of the party than McGovern did. Still, watch for Hillary Clinton and her loyalists to find many passive-aggressive ways over the next seven months to encourage her supporters to stay home or switch to McCain in November. It's the only thing that makes sense for career plans.

Many people seem to assume that Clinton is trying to score cynical political points by describing her experiences walking around Pennsylvania meeting optimistic, positive and resilient people. This is not true. For weeks, she's been desperately trying to tell these fools: Stop being so goddamn optimistic! The Economy really IS tanking!
Look at what she said in Philadelphia on March 24th:

When I talk about the home foreclosure crisis, sometimes people, I can tell, look at me a little skeptically because they, I can tell, they're thinking to themselves, I didn't buy one of those mortgages, I don't have an ARM, I’m not at risk. But, in fact, that is just not the case. 

When will these incessant sleeve-rolling optimists of Pennsylvania wake up and smell the meltdown??

Given that it seems increasingly likely that Barack Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party, now might be an appropriate time to raise some doubts about his viability as a candidate in the fall.  A popular claim for some years on sites such as DailyKos, MyDD, and sometimes TPM, is that votes for Ralph Nader were responsible for putting (and keeping) George W. Bush in the White House.  Is the Obama candidacy primed to repeat this situation?

Marcy Winograd is an Executive Board member of the California Democratic Party.  She initiated a story that has played on MyDD, Huffington Post, etc., that Obama operatives have been involved in a purge of possible delegates from California to the Democratic Convention to be held this summer.  Winograd suggested that the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists. 

 I am reminded of the situation at the Democratic Convention in Boston four years ago when Kerry was nominated.  Anti-war demonstrators were shunted to obscure locations in pens surrounded by police and security so that they would not be seen or heard.  People carrying an anti-war message inside the convention floor, including delegates, on signs or on clothing or pins, were confronted by convention security and forced to remove the messages.  Of course, Kerry campaigned on what was essentially a pro-war position, which would have marginalized the anti-war people anyway.  I guess the thought on the part of the Kerry people was that with Bush as the Republican candidate, the anti-war vote would go to Kerry even though Kerry, too, was a pro-war candidate.  Even so, it seemed at the time to be foolish to thoroughly antagonize anti-war Democrats by marginalizing them physically as well as in terms of policy.

Now, the appearance is raised of similar Obama attitudes, with anti-war activists being purged from the roles of possible delegates.  Granted, some more recent reports have held that the purge is being undone, but the damage has been done to the extent that a basic tendency similar to Kerry’s of four years ago exists in the Obama campaign.  Whether this indicates that Barack is less anti-war than his posture has suggested is unknown to me, but it certainly raises that fear.  This fear is compounded by reports that Obama’s Iraq advisor, Colin Kahl, is saying that Obama will keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq for years to come. 

Quite independently from the question of how one should read the tea leaves in all of this in terms of what they portend for the policies of an Obama Presidency, there is the short-term question of what this means in terms of votes leaking from Obama to the very real candidacy of Nader, and the possible Green Party candidacy of Cynthia McKinney.  When Democrats complain about “Naderites” costing Gore and Kerry the past two elections, my thoughts go to the ways in which their candidacies encourages such votes.  I know several people who tried to vote for Kerry last time (because Bush/Cheney are so completely terrible), but ultimately couldn’t get themselves to vote for “the other pro-war candidate, Kerry.”  Don’t count out the possibility in a 2008 Obama race that many won’t be similarly tempted if Obama equivocates his positions.  I, for one, already am alarmed at his argument that the war in Iraq is distracting the US from “the real war in Afghanistan.”  So far as I can tell, Osama Bin Laden is long gone from Afghanistan and the poor folk who are dying there at US, British, and other NATO hands aren’t responsible to much of anything that merits what is being done to them. 

There are other signs that Obama is willing to give up many votes to Nader and/or McKinney.  His consistent pro-Israel tilt, of course, seems calculated on the perception that his candidacy cannot afford a vigorous anti-Obama attack from the pro-Israel lobby.  For me, however, some of the good of his famous “more perfect union” speech was undone when he referred to Israel as a stalwart ally and placed the blame for the problems of the middle East as “emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”  There are plenty of legitimate reasons for people the middle East to resent both Israel and the US that don’t follow simply from some perverse Islamic ideology.  The seeming dismissal of all responsibility for Israel and the US (and other Western powers) by Obama is appalling and it too will bleed votes from the Democratic nominee to Nader/McKinney. 

Obama repeatedly has stated a willingness to meet with foreign leaders who have been banished from diplomatic contact for years, including the leaders of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, but he has resisted the possibility of meeting with the Hamas leadership of Palestine.  "They're not heads of state. They don't recognize Israel," Obama said. "You can't negotiate with somebody who doesn't recognize the right of a country to exist."  Yet, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in an election that outside observers, including the pro-American politician, Jimmy Carter, as legitimate. 

So, even as Obama campaigns as the candidate for change, he is inviting many to view him as the same old same old.  He’s for talking, so long as the pro-Israel lobby won’t be prompted into attack mode against him.  Apparently the anti-North Korean and anti-Castro lobbies are perceived as less powerful, so he’s enthusiastic about change that they won’t like.  He’s anti-war in that he talked against the war when Hillary voted for it, but he has consistently voted to continue funding it since he entered the Senate.  Now, by all appearances, he has no enthusiasm to permit a visible and audible anti-war presence at the Democratic Convention.  If the election in November is as close as the current polls suggest that it will be (and as close as the last two Presidential elections were), should we be surprised if Obama’s losing margin is less than the votes that go to Nader and McKinney?  And if this happens, will the Democrats again be blaming the “Naderites” or will they blaming the failure of the Democrats to provide a clear alternative to the pro-war policies of the other pro-war party? 

I may yet find myself able to vote for Obama in November (although I cannot imagine being able to vote for Hillary, even against McCain; she hasn’t distinguished herself from the Republicans sufficiently for my vote).  Obama’s recent behavior, however, is lessening that possibility.  

Hey, this is Nadia. I work for SEIU and I've been following this Ohio organizing stuff pretty closely. Wanted to try to give the debate some context for folks:


By now you may feel like you’ve heard quite enough of the back-and-forth between SEIU and the CNA over union representation of nurses and healthcare workers in Ohio. You may have also heard that the dispute runs deep and wide and goes back years and across state lines into Nevada, California, Texas and several others, and that the encounters have become more extreme.

And perhaps you’re wondering—why should I care?

If this were just about CNA and SEIU, or even just about a dispute at an isolated hospital in one state, you could move on. The thing is, these struggles are not taking place in a vacuum—and what becomes of them has far-reaching impact that touches us all. At a time when the economy is bad and getting worse, and the number of workers represented by a union in this country is an anemic 12%, labor unions face a choice…and workers everywhere face the consequences.

Unions can fight for turf within the ever-shrinking pool of unionized workers, or we can get back on the offensive by reaching out to help more workers join unions to strengthen the hand of more working families.

SEIU has been at the forefront of unions doing exactly this since 1996. And the results speak for themselves.  Since 1996, more than 1 million new members have united to join SEIU.  Today SEIU represents 1.9 million workers. These new members range from child care workers to city employees in nonunion right to work states like Texas and Arizona to, significantly, hospital workers.
 
By contrast, CNA, harking back to old-school craft unionism, has pursued an elitist agenda that not only excludes hospital workers who aren’t registered nurses, it prevents registered nurses who want to join a union other than CNA from doing so simply because it’s not the CNA.

Six days before union elections at nine hospitals in Ohio—one with unprecedented ground rules that resulted from three-plus years of hard work by hospital workers, their community allies, and SEIU to hammer out fair election guidelines with the state’s largest health care system—CNA dropped into the state. CAN organizers ran a fiercely anti-union campaign encouraging workers to “vote no.” Their tactics so poisoned the environment that the elections were cancelled. I won’t go into detail here—it's all detailed in this timeline: http://www.shameoncna.com/include/timeline.asp.

By disrupting this process, CNA sent an unmistakable message to the hospital industry: if a hospital agrees to a fair organizing process, it will be subjected to outlandish accusations of “company unionism” and “backroom deals.”

The CNA’s actions in Ohio represent a major setback in the labor movement’s efforts to raise the standard of employer conduct in organizing campaigns. And it's not the first time CAN has used such divisive tactics to poach members from an existing union or otherwise divide workers who are in the process of forming a union. It's happening in California, Nevada, Texas, and elsewhere.

But why might it matter to you? It should if you (you being a working person, a progressive, a consumer in the American economy, or all 3) because this approach undermines the future of the labor movement. At this time of historic inequality and utter insecurity in the American economy, workers need more than ever the strength in community that comes from being organized at work.

In the healthcare sector alone, there are nine million workers out there who don’t have a union. As boomers age, our healthcare needs grow, and the industry’s identity crisis drags on, healthcare workers united in unions have a crucial role to play.

The same is true for the other industries that employ hundreds of millions of American workers—88% of whom don’t have a voice on the job.

But our ability as workers, progressives, and consumers to sit at the big kids’ table depends on our ability to grow and our ability to work together. On a national scale, we’re living the reality of what happens when a smaller and smaller percentage of workers stand together: corporations get to have a bigger and bigger say in the way things work and who gets what.

But at SEIU, we’re living the reality of what happens when workers—with tremendous courage and at great odds—stand together for the interests of all working people: lives, neighborhoods, cities, and whole industries are transformed for the better.

Experience has taught us the hard lesson that circling the wagons simply doesn’t work. And our progressive sensibilities—our concern for the common good—confirm it.

This struggle matters because it’s not just about CNA or SEIU, or Rose Ann DeMoro or Andy Stern. It’s about the future direction and vitality of the American labor movement—a movement that has the ability to blaze a path to an economy and a society that works for everyone—not just the lucky 12%...or 11…or 10…or 9%...

The right wing of the Dems represented by the Clintons has always based its politics on the fear that Bayh reveals here. They're simply scared of the far right and of saying anything that might offend it. Now they might be right, but this election is a chnace to test that strategy.   John Whitesides, Political Correspondent, Reuters
reports from Indianapolis April 12, 2008. full story at http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2007/12/22/NEWS-USA-POLITICS-DC/: 
.   Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a Clinton supporter, said the controversy [over whether people in depressed areas are angry] could hurt Obama's effort to win over superdelegates.   "It's a real potential political problem and it's something for superdelegates and voters to think about," Bayh said.   "We have to win the election in November and the far right wing has a real good track record of using things like this against our candidates," he said.  
visit my website www.michaelmunk.com

I think it is, but I do waver from time to time. This country needs great presidents. However, the state of politics in the US is disheartening. As long as I have been following politics, it usually seems as if the presidential candidates with the best intentions for our nation are usually treated the worst. Indeed, this is because, in my opinion, the worst elements of our nation hold the most economic power and sway over shaping public perception.

For all of the great things America is, smart does not seem to be among them, or if it is, it gets lost in the shuffle between outrage, knee-jerk reactions, and sheer stupidity.

I guess some will say it is worth it no matter what. Look at Bill Clinton. He was able to cash in on the presidency unlike anyone before him.

All in all, I do not really know how I feel about presidential politics at the moment. I have long dreamed of getting involved but I am not so sure anymore. My confidence in the direction of this country has been shaken but it is the only country I know. It is also the only country that knows me.

 I know that I am simply rambling on and I apologize. It is stream of consciousness time in my house. Sometimes certain things bother me to my core and it is hard for me to let go of them.

In the Washington Post today, the Admin plants the latest reason for never leaving Iraq.

Here's the very telling money quote,

With "al-Qaeda in retreat and disarray" in Iraq, said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, "we see other obstacles that were under the waterline more clearly. . . . The Iranian-armed militias are now the biggest threat to internal order."

Partly in response to advice from Petraeus and Crocker, the administration has initiated an interagency assessment of what is known about Iranian activities and intentions, how to combat them and how to capitalize on them. The review stems from an internal conclusion, following last week's fighting, that the administration lacked a comprehensive understanding and a sophisticated approach.

It appears that Karen DeYoung, who wrote the piece, is oblivious to the possibility that she and her paper are being used, exactly as they and the NYTs were both used in the run up to the war.

The bottom line is that there will always be an enemy, and never a good reason to go, and anyone who wants to go is a coward and a traitor.  

Does that pretty much sum it up?

Excuse my denseness, but my parents visited me for a week and then my boyfriend just moved to Chicago, so I've been distracted. But today I was listening to NPR and I heard Senator Clinton call Senator Obama an elitist, and I thought, is she really still doing that kitchen sink thing? Is she really still tearing down the eventual Democratic Nominee?  Is she really still putting herself ahead of the party? I mean, I love a fighter, and I'm sure her supporters are getting some thrills from the fact she's doing her Don Quixote imitation, but as a Democractic Party loyalist, I find her willingness to attack at this late date in the nomination process to be nothing short of disgusting. You may quote me: Hillary Clinton's quixotic run for the Democratic nomination has moved from being sad to willfully disgusting. It is the Democratic Party, not the Hillacratic Party.

The pounce on Obama's comments about rural voters -- in which the gist of what Obama was saying is ignored and Obama's made out to be an elitist, notwithstanding Hillary's vulnerabilities in this area -- seems not a lot different from anything Mark Penn might do.

But is it the same? Am I missing some way in which this might work that Penn's similar tactics did not?

And if it's the same, what is it that's different about Garin? Does it have less to do with campaign tactics and more to do with just working better with other members of the campaign than Penn did?

I've gotten curious now that we're seeing him in action for the first (I think) time!

 

The Female of the Species
Rudyard Kipling

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale –
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations – worm and savage otherwise, –
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger – Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue – to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity – must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions – not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions – in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! –
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges – even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons – even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish – like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice – which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern – shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

 

Thomas Frank's great book "What's the Matter with Kansas" basically asked why people in many states of our great country, and particularly small town America, continually vote against their own self interests when electing representation.

This is essentially what Barack Obama was saying - and he was right.

Why do people continually vote for elected officials who do not help them? Who add to their bitterness and frustration?

And one very believable answer is that their is a block of the electorate who allow social issues and religious belief to trump good common sense on occasion.

Believing in God is not mutally exclusive to voting for someone who can improve our lives.

Last time we looked; this country did have a separation of church and state. The blurring of this started long ago but after 9/11 we were all looking for reasons "why" and church and synagogie attendence rose to record levels.

It is fact that in hard times people turn to their spiritual lives to help understand/explain why/how life is as it is.

The fact that sometimes there just is no reason for unfortunate events, is just not good enough for some people.

What Sen Obama did was tell the truth. And after all the lies we have been told by our elected officials; we can only hope that people voting in Pennsylvania and the other nine remaining primary states look in the mirror and truly understand they should vote in the best interest of their lives, the lives of their children and the lives of their fellow citizens.

While Sen Clinton's campaign left a litany of much more disturbing issues this week that truly cast doubt on her ability to run a campaign much less a country, than Sen Obama's words could ever infer, the Obama campaign chose the high road. No one in the Obama campaign is talking about Bill Clinton's truly insane speeches this week (if my husband ever said I was old and should be excused for forgeting things - that would be it!), Bill Clinton's being paid over $800,000 by an orgaization supporting the Columbian Free Trade Agreement, Mark Penn and so much more --

The Obama campaign lets voters make up their own minds.
Bill and Hillary Clinton think they can tell YOU what to think.

So now, under the tutelage of Sen. Clinton and McCain, the MSM is trying their best to portray Sen Barack Obama - a man raised by a single white woman in the early 60's, an absentee black father, without means who rose through his own sheer brillance to where he is today - as an elitist.

The contrast to this "elitism"?

On the left we have: "the "middle class" champion who went to Wellesley and Yale Law, lived in a Governor's Mansion since the early 80's and then the White House in the 90's and has been in a Georgetown townhouse and a manison in Chappaqua NY since becoming a US Senator and filed income tax for $109 million dollars for the past seven years.

On the right we have: the "my friends" champion who is the son and grandson of Admirals. Who is married to one of the wealthiest women in the Southwest United States, who supports making the Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent and who has yet to make public either his tax returns for the past few years, or his health records.

If this is the prism on the left and right - who frame Sen Obama as an "elitist" - we run the risk of getting what we deserve next November.

I think the following comment by Collegekid merits a replay:

I just had what was for me the Eureka moment. Here's the difference between the Old Politics and the New Politics, as personified in the first case by Hillary and in the second by Barack:

The old politics is all about the sham of oh-so-showy pretending that you do not understand and could not in a million years agree with any part of what your opponent is saying, that it's harmful, evil, ridiculous, reprehensible. This style is excerptable for sound-bite gotcha attacks. Perfect for Fox News news cycles.

The new politics is taking the chance to try to understand your opponent's discourse and responding with reason, clarification, and even admission that you can say your point better the second and third time you address the issue. Needs the long form, such as extensive re-viewing on YouTube, elsewhere.

The question is, do we want to walk around pretending we don't want to and do not have to try to understand what other people are saying, or can we move to new ways of discussing issues in news cycles?

Posted by Collegekid
April 12, 2008 12:05 PM
Originally at http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/hillary_hits_obamas_small_town.php#comments

(my apologies if this is double-posted; I couldn't find it)

I've been mulling over what truly annoys me most about last night's overspun "Obama called midwest Americans bitter!" pseudo-scandal, and I think I've pegged it.

The fact that Clinton and McCain don't realize Americans ARE bitter, and think it's an insult to say so? No, that's not it.

The way they're tag-teaming Obama, as if Clinton & McCain were on the same ticket (which, increasingly, it seems they are?) Old news. That's not it either.

A multi-millionaire daughter of privilege and the son and grandson of admirals, calling Obama elitist? Blah blah hypocrisy blah.

The ignorance of implying Obama's "clinging to guns" statement is anti-gun control, when Obama is actually fairly relaxed about supporting the 2nd amendment, or anti-religion, when anyone in the country is kind of aware he's so religious, he refused to turn on his own reverend? Not even that, but we're getting warm.

It's how they leapt on his word choice--the same way people leapt on "typical" a couple of weeks back. It's as if they think, and are encouraging us to believe, that anyone's soul can be revealed through the single use of a PERHAPS mischosen word. And I'm referring to the verb "clinging" as the questionable word, not "bitter," which was perfect.

I may be no huge Dr. Laura fan--though I recommend her first book about 10 STUPID THINGS, written before she really got famous and IMHO extremist, to many young women. But one thing I love is her differentiation between an incident and a pattern. An incident of something isn't particularly significant (unless it's something huge like drunk driving or adultery). When someone does something perhaps questionable, just once, wise people don't focus heavily on it because we all slip up, being human. But if there's a PATTERN of questionable behavior, then there's a problem.

Maybe you can argue that Obama's words were ill chosen. I will argue with you about "bitter" but, again, can grant you that "clinging to guns and religion" may have played better if he'd said "focusing on," because "clinging" has a negative connotation. Let's say "clinging" WAS ill-chosen for the sake of argument.

He said it once. Speaking extemporaneously instead of from a script. Once.

He did NOT repeat it four times like, oh, confusing Shia and Sunnis. He did NOT state it from prepared notes--like someone turning little girls with poems into snipers and Bosnian adventure (which was also repeated).

I'm a community college instructor, and let me assure you this: When you're regularly standing in front of a group of people TALKING WITH THEM--not just reciting AT them but talking WITH THEM--you're going to trip over your own words now and then. I'm even a GOOD teacher, but I've said things that came out stupid or even possibly insulting at least once a week out of my 15+ hours of weekly presentation. I once tried counting down instead of up with one hand and accidentally flipped my class the bird (oops!). I apologized, we laughed, and I drove on. I once said something a student felt was insulting, and I didn't even notice my ill-chosen words until she asked me about it after class. We discussed it, I apologized and learned, and we moved on. I've said something at which students took umbrage, and I've had to respectfully disagree with them. I am not, thank heavens, being videotaped during every moment.

Probably.

I cannot imagine the HELL my life would become if I were to be held accountable for a single phrase, spoken or mispoken only once, aimed back at me by someone trying to shift the attention off themselves. You may say "Yes, but you are not running for president, and Obama is." To which I reply--this post is not in fact about Obama. He handled himself just fine. Upon seeing that his words did not do their job, he is IMMEDIATELY responding to that outcry to clarify himself, as he has in the past and hopefully will as our president. Nope, this isn't about Obama.

Check out the subject line.

This post is about Hillary Clinton and John McCain attacking Obama for a fairly benign statement, merely because it has connotations--not so much meanings, but simple emotional resonance--they think can be exploited. Not attacking him on his voting record or actions. Not attacking him on his plans to improve our economy, environment, and international reputation--ie, substance. No, they seem to be spending far too much effort combing over every word he speaks, trying to find anything with even a little negativity to it, so that they can wave it high in the air and shout, "Look, look, what do you think of him NOW?"

What I think is that Obama is out there talking to candidates--wealthy and poor, urban and rural. Even when he's in a new environment, like a bowling alley, he doesn't shy from it. He's doing the job a president-to-be should be doing--traveling the country not to show off his own history, but to better understand ours. He is saying, "I hear you, and this is what I think you're saying," and IF he gets it a little wrong, it's our job as adults to say, "Almost, except for this," as in any good conversation, not to leap on every word as if it had been written, revised, printed, and delivered from on-high. It hasn't.

I think Clinton uses the term "conversation" as a selling point without fully recognizing that people asking you questions, and you responding with what your focus groups say they want to hear off of an over-prepared script, is not a conversation. Obama is, yet again, using the response to his words to further our nation's conversation, while Clinton is still playing "gotcha!"

And I think Clinton and McCain are wasting Obama's time, and wasting OUR time, and perhaps worst, wasting their own. Because while they could be out there trying to do something CONSTRUCTIVE, they are satisfied using their resources to attack a fellow senator, because of a phrase which could contain negative connotations, used once.

No wonder they're going to lose.

Maybe there aren't Bubbas driving around in pickup trucks with the classic bumpersticker "God, Guns and Guts Made America Free"  where Obama's detractors live, but here in rural Pennsylvania that line may as well replace "e pluribus unum" as the motto on the national currency.

I live in western Pennsylvania, and I can tell you, people here are bitter and angry. Poverty is prevalent. People hunt squirrels and eat them, along with racoon stew. People also hunt deer here, not for sport, but so they can put meat in their freezer so they can feed their families. They cut wood in the forests and heat their homes with wood stoves because they can't afford to pay the gas bill. I know a guy who goes to old landfills to dig up old milk and beer bottles to sell on eBay. He uses the proceeds to buy clothes for his family at the Salvation Army (and to pay for his dial-up connection).

Racism and prejudice are ever-present here. A friend of mine is part-owner of bar in a small rural town south of where I live. I meet up with him there occasionally and watch as down-and-out people come in with their disability and welfare check money and drink it away. It's a pretty depressing place, but it does serve as the social center for a town that has seen its few industries shut down and the local people's jobs eliminated or shipped off elsewhere.

I hear the usual rants there, that it's all the fault of gays and minorities and immigrants (although those aren't the terms used, but rather the usual, virulent slurs). A black man walked in the last time I was there, and a guy near me at the bar muttered in a not-so-quiet way, "What's he think he's doing in here?" When I brought up the presidential race and Obama with another man at the bar, his response was, "there ain't no way America is ever going to vote for a black guy." Later on my bar-owner friend told me about his experience talking about Obama with another woman at the bar, and her angry response was that "it's because of half-breed n*****s like him that America is in such bad shape today."

Prejudice, racism and fear do run rampant in areas like this. People are poor. They are in bad health, overweight from a deep-fried diet, and toothless from the lack of dental care. They are unemployed. They are uneducated. They do cling to their hunting rifles and to their religious beliefs. For many, it is about all that they have. The towns around here are full of decaying, boarded up buildings. People live in rundown old trailers with abandoned cars in the front yard. I have seen people using an old car as a stable, with their goat tied to and living in it. I could drive you by a least three old houses that have Conderate flags in the windows.

So go ahead and discount Obama's talk of how bitter and angry that some of the people of rural Pennsylvania are. Call him elitist for taking the time to pass through areas such as this to listen to what the people have to say, and to then relate what he has heard to people in more prosperous parts of the country when he is asked about it. I have lived in San Francisco, and let me tell you, there is a marked difference between the general attitude there and the attitude here in the "rust belt". Go ahead and dismiss everything that Obama said as political posturing. Let Hillary and McCain "pick him apart" and parse his words. But please keep in mind that when Obama said:

"it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

that he is 100% accurate in his assessment.

I know, because I live here, my family and my friends' families have lived here for generations, and we see it every day, all around this region. There is a very fine line between poverty and prosperity here, where making above $20,000 a year puts you in the realm of the "haves", but also knowing that you're one contract termination away from joining the ranks of the "have-nots".

I come from a family of dairy farmers. I know what it's like to spend up to 12-16 hours a day sitting on a tractor for three dollars an hour, which I did through high school and every summer until I was fortunate enough to head off to college. Many of my friends were also fortunate and went to school, and then relocated to other parts of the country. Some of us were able to come back under better circumstances, but the large majority of people here are not as fortunate.

Thirty years worth of the right wing dismantling our public education system has taken its toll. Thirty years worth of mismanagement of the economy, of shutting down factories and shipping jobs out of the country, of subsidizing corporate farms and taxing family farms out of business, has taken its toll.

Yes, people are angry, and bitter, but Obama never said that they aren't resilient, opitmistic or hard-working. Those are Hillary and McCain's twisted words, and for them to stand up and suggest that rural Pennsylvanians aren't fed up with the way things are, only reveals how out of touch they really are with at least this part of the country.

Of course, all McCain has to do is suggest to poor rural folk that the party of gun-control, gay marriage, and NAFTA is going to take away what little they have left, and rural conservatives will vote for him, just as they did for Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. As for Hillary, the more she "takes apart" Obama's message, the more she does the GOP's work for free. If Hillary can't see that the people of rural Pennsylvania are bitter, and angry, and mad as hell about the way things are, then she needs to step down from that one hundred million dollar platform of hers and take a real look around.

In western Pennsylvania I hear two things: the "God, Guns and Guts" crowd see John McCain as the heir-apparent to the mantle of rural conservative values; and the people who hope for some kind of change see Barack Obama as the person who understands the situation that we are in, and maybe is the one who can lead us in a new direction. What I don't hear is anyone talking about whatever and whomever it is that Hillary claims to stand for.

Regardless of whether Obama's recent comments in San Francisco were accurate or not, this flap will, without a doubt, hurt him among the pro-gun bloc in the GE. I don't see this will have an effect big enough in PA so as to hurt him against Clinton, but McCain was just granted a gift.
Let's not remember that McCain is backed by the mainstream media, which is traditionally pro-Republican and detroys the Democratic candidate during the summer and fall.
Obama essentially said that he's not winning in PA because people without jobs cling to guns. The message he's sending voters is that Obama is an anti-gun candidate. This was a bad move, IMO, since as I said, the pro-gun vote is significant and necessary to reach the White House.

 "I can't wait for someone to say that they were the son of mill worker." (just a little post for genghis)

I'm sitting here reading tpm and eating a nice venison steak. Road kill I picked up a month or so ago. Its hard to poach where I live now in Florida. I haven't been able to poach a deer since I left Bethlehem PA. My father worked at the Bethlehem Steel mill. Fortunately he retired with a nice pension at the first downsizing, several years before they closed down the plant.

I reach for my Rugar (22 cal automatic pistol) thinking about the uncountable squirrels I've killed and fried up. Not in a corn popper like Huck, I use a cast iron skillet.  A person's home is their castle its said and even though I live in a 27 foot Winnebego RV, well, its a castle to me. So I do keep a gun loaded and near by at all times.

There was a time when I thought I liked to hunt. I thought I liked wild free high quality meat. I thought I held the second amendment to the constitution as sacrosanct as the first. I thought an armed populace was a necessary check on authoritarian government. I know, "It can't happen here." But now I'm beginning to wonder if it all comes back to the closing of the steel mills in my home town. It's not surprising I got bitter, I cling to guns  as a way to explain my frustrations.

I'm guessing I'm just a bit different than most of the posters here. I'm guessing many will find this post hard to relate to. Spin Obama's little gaffe anyway you want but there's a lot of people in my home town who grew up like me. This was more than a bad choice of words by Obama. Its not going to play well with folks like me. It does seem like obama just doesn't get it and it does seem condescending.

You can take the son of a mill worker out of the mill town but you can't take the mill town up bringing out of the man.

Ah well, it probably won't lose him the election but it surely will move some undecided people into the Hillary or McCain column.

And in case you're wondering, While this was somewhat tongue in cheek none of it is made up. Bon appetit

I  think they do.  
The Clinton machine can take any topic, spin it, and feed it to the world at large.  
And the world at large swallows it hook, line and sinker. We are what we talk about.  But we don't decide the topic.
The most recent example is the topic of Obama the "elitist".  
Agree, disagree, honestly, I don't care.  It's not what I wanted to discuss all weekend.  
I'd rather talk about ways to prevent the Pentagon from attacking Iran. 
Or what about the admission that George Bush knew about the torture meetings?   Should we forget about it?
And last weekend, I would have rather we all spent our time building a coalition of bloggers to force the Pentagon to release the NIE on Iraq.  Why didn't congress make that a requirement?  Why not force congress into stating that there will be no hearings until everyone is provided with the same information?    

What about demanding that the candidates hold press conferences to present us with comprehensive energy plans?  Not generic rhetoric about renewable sources.
Energy IS the economy.  
So what about you?  Got anything original to talk about?Can you raise your own questions on your own timetable on your own terms?  
Because right now, our intelligence is mere chatter.
We're talking about  what  FOX or the CLINTONS want us to talk about.   
And we're more than happy to cooperate.  
We all have the freedom of speech.   But when was the last time you talked about what was on your own mind, not on someone else's?

Thanks to news reports and to our fellow TPM blogger, observer2, we are able to see and listen to Obama's response to Clinton/McCain about his so-called "small town elitist" remarks.   And what a powerful response it is!

If he put together an ad based on this clip and ran it all over PA this week, he'd turn this issue on its head!   I loved it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc9PepjyDow

Obama said some true things but said them in a very clumsy fashion, and it's hurting him.   In the end I think he'll probably pull out of it, but it will probably cost him a bit.  The Hillary supporters have little else to cling to, so they're whooping it up, of course.

But when was the last time you heard a Hillary supporter suggest a scenario in which Hillary could win?  Other than some sort of huge scandal and total meltdown of the Obama campaign, I mean.  Obviously that's a scenario, however unlikely, in which Hillary (or perhaps even someone like Gore chosen to try to unify the party) could win.

When was the last time you heard a Hillary supporter suggest any other scenario, and back it up with numbers?

The numbers are the catch.  Here's some analysis to get them started:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/04/11/the-deal-with-add-ons.aspx

 if the two candidates hypothetically split the remaining pledged delegates 50-50, then, given the likely allocation of add-ons, Clinton would need to win a whopping 90 percent of the remaining 230 or so superdelegates to get the nomination.

The "add-ons" haven't gotten much attention, but that's part of the math.  

Hand-waving about the popular vote won't get her the nomination.  Ultimately, like it or not, it's a race for delegates.  So let's see the math, Hillary fans.  State-by-state, pledged delegates and superdelegates and add-ons.  

Does she get 90% of the remaining 230 superdelegates?  Is that your scenario?  Keep in mind that since Feb 5 Hillary has had a net loss of superdelegates, while Obama has gained more than 70.  

If not that, then what?  With numbers, please, showing a scenario (other than a major Obama meltdown) in which she comes up with enough delegates.

On the other hand, if you realize that the remaining primaries and the add-ons and so on don't add up to a Hillary victory UNLESS Obama has a major setback far worse than the Wright thing, then fine.  Just say so.  

There is a key idea in the heart of Obama’s response to using the term "bitter" that is being ignored but it should not be as it is the heart of what the Democratic message needs to be but has failed to be for years. 

Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage.

For years many working class Americans have voted against their economic interests because Republicans were able to distract them and focus their anger and frustration—and yes bitterness—on social issues like guns, abortion, and gay marriage. They convinced them that “government is the problem” and therefore it is unable to rectify their economic woes. They also made sure government did not help its citizens when they were in power under Reagan and both Bushes.

  Free market economic theory has dominated our government policy for decades now—even under Clinton. If workers well-being suffers as the market “balances” itself that is just the way the system works as far as they have been concerned. In other words the well-being of workers has not been  a priority, the well-being of the market has.

Many Americans have felt helpless in the face of an system that worked against them.

Obama wants to return to a more Keynesian view of economic policy that stresses a certain level of government regulation is essential for keeping the market more fair and balanced.  To him workers’ well-being IS part of the equation.  If he can convince Americans that government can work for them that he will  promote THEIR interests and then as president reforms the government to do so, Obama will indeed improve the outlook for many American.

Those hearing him speak gave him a standing ovation for his “bitter” remarks because they see someone who is willing to acknowledge their pain and frustration and is offering to do something about it.

I've never blogged before. But I wanted to share an opinion.

When I first heard the snippet, I was stunned. But when I listened to the whole recording from San Francisco. I went from stunned to concerned.
His choice of wording was way off (read: cling). I could see people being offended. When I saw the response from Obama it took another context.

In my humble opinion he was trying to say that people do not trust Washington to change their economic situation. So, instead of voting on economic promises and issues, they vote (cling) to the issues they think they can trust Washington to do something about: gun control, trade, immigration, and issues based on their religious beliefs.

Now everyone can see it differently. That's what great about America. I'll probably be referred to as a "blind" Obama supporter. But if Hillary Clinton can "mis-speak" and her supporters can overlook it, then why can't Obama have put something wrong and her supporters can't do the same?

Why is it wrong to say people are bitter about being made promises during a campaign that get forgotten as soon as that politician is voted into office? If you can't trust Washington to address economics, why is it wrong to say you turn to other issues to base your vote on?

He wasn't saying people pick up a gun, or get religion, or are against the American dream for immigrants because they're bitter. He's saying people turn to the issues they feel Washington can do something about. He is saying that because we *already are* religious, *believe* in the second amendment, *believe* in the American dream and the right of all it's citizens to prosper; that we turn to those issues because we are comfortable with them, because they speak to the values so many of us hold dear.

It seems a little early for reruns.  Must be because of the writer's strike. 

Ever since last fall, we've seen this same cycle repeat itself, with minor variations, over and over again. Some event happens that the Clintonistas fixate on as the THE BIG ONE: the Big Bolt From the Blue (or from Howard Wolfson's Blackberry—same thing as far as the MSM is concerned) that will finally end Obama's upstart attempt to usurp the office to which Hillary is rightfully entitled.

Her surrogates squeal in feigned outrage on the cable shows while Hillary sorrowfully relates Obama's error to her slowly dwindling crowds in her most unctuous tone. And, in the most recent variation, Hillary and McCain will say the exact same things for a few days.

Bill and Harold Ickes will unleash a flood of phone calls and emails to the uncommitted superdelegates warning them of the Terrible Scary Commercials the Republicans will run against Obama in the fall as a result of this Big Awful Thing that happened. (“See? See? Here's some actual Republican scumbag consultants who say they'll destroy him with this one, see? You believe them, right? They have supernatural powers, you know. Only a Clinton can resist them. Oooohhh, scary, scary, be very afraid!”)

The MSM leaps like trained seals to tossed fish at Hillary's emails, breathlessly reporting that Obama's campaign faces THE crisis of his campaign, a potential game changer that could deliver the nomination to Hillary, regardless of that pesky math stuff that silly who don't understand good TV keep trying to talk about. Politico hyperventilates, Fox foams and raves, At ABC, Tapper sneers and Sunlen Miller circles in the sky, waiting for a meal.  Halpirin transcribes and engages in vapid pontification and CNN alternates between substance, sensationalism and superficiality in a dizzying cycle.

Across the Intertubes, Hillary's trolls and sockpuppets rub their hands and cackle with glee. “At last! This time we finally have him! He is dooooomed, doooomed, I say! Buahahahahahaha!” In the Hillarite alternate e-universe of Taylormarsh.com, MyDD.com and Hillis44.org, the victory celebration begins with the obligatory bile spitting. In the real blogs, dispirited supporters of Hillry who haven't been seen in days or weeks reappear to express their confident predictions that, at last, all these deluded Obama voters will finally WAKE UP! (TM) and see what a [pick one or more of the following: (fraud) (sexist) (elitist) (empty suit) (racist) (inexperienced naïve incompetent) (snake charmer) (snake oils salesman) (muslim sleeper agent) (bad evil person misogynist of the male gender who is trying to stop America from electing the Only Woman in America Who Will Ever Have a Chance to Become President)] Obama is.

And, most depressingly of all, some of Obama's supporters will do what Democrats are always prone to do when faced with the least adversity in a campaign: they'll run around in little circles, hands in the air, crying out their anguished frightened advice to his campaign: “Ohno ohno ohno! In our heart of hearts we secretly agree with Hillary and the Republicans that the voters are dumber than we enlightened activist Democrats are. We're afraid they won't understand! He needs to make a major speech! He must recant! No, he must must stand firm! Is there somebody we can throw under a bus? Commercials! He must run many, many commercials! Maybe he should abandon state X and concentrate on state Y where they won't care about The Big Terrible Thing!  And the Republicans, oh Dear God, here come the Republicans with their supernatural powers!”
And then, as always, Obama will calmly do that Akido thing he does with all these nontroversies. He'll stand his ground, talk about the Thing Which Must Never be Said that he did say, doing so again and again, as many times as it takes to make the MSM realize that he was actually making a point rather than gaffing. And he'll use the point to pivot back onto McHillary, exposing their attacks as yet another example of the petty game playing and point scoring Washington nonsense that has got to change.

The MSM will then feel foolish and some will turn on McHillary for having made them feel foolish. The scandal will die everywhere but on Fox News and the wingnutosphere, where they'll keep ranting and raving about it for weeks on end until the next thing comes along, but no one who'd ever vote for a Democrat will be listening.

Then Hillary and her supporters will sullenly try to keep the thing going long past the point where it does harm to anyone but themselves, in complete denial that, once again, their plan to take back that which is rightfully Hers have failed. Finally, Bill will throw one of his patented tantrums in public which will announce the formal end of the nontroversy cycle.

And all the wavering Obama supporters will find themselves, once again, saying “damn, yeah, that's the reason I'm for him, hey never doubted you for a moment” and calm back down.

So, to those among the Obama contingent in the comments here who are talkin' all jittery, have a little faith in Obama's repeatedly demonstrated ability to turn these things back around on the other side and come out stronger and stop all the moaning. Sheesh, we've still got a ways to go on this trip and getting all panicky every time we hit some turbulence is not productive.

As to the Clintonistas and Republitrolls, hey, keep doing what you're doing. I love watching you get yourselves worked up into the these celebratory frenzies, only to have your hopes (heh!) cruelly dashed once again. It fills me with that same sense of impending comic pathos I feel as Wyle E. Coyote, snickering nastily, opens up yet another shipment of fine Acme Company products and begins implementing his next brilliant plan.

I agree that when I first heard the snippet, I was stunned. But when I listened to the whole recording from San Francisco. I went from stunned to concerned.
His choice of wording was way off (read: cling). I could see people being offended. When I saw the response from Obama it took another context.

In my humble opinion he was trying to say that people do not trust Washington to change their economic situation. So, instead of voting on economic promises and issues, they vote (cling) to the issues they think they can trust Washington to do something about: gun control, trade, immigration, and issues based on their religious beliefs.

Now everyone can see it differently. That's what great about America. I'll probably be referred to as a "blind" Obama supporter. But if Hillary Clinton can "mis-speak" and her supporters can overlook it, then why can't Obama have put something wrong and her supporters can't do the same?

Why is it wrong to say people are bitter about being made promises during a campaign that get forgotten as soon as that politician is voted into office? If you can't trust Washington to address economics, why is it wrong to say you turn to other issues to base your vote on?

He wasn't saying people pick up a gun, or get religion, or are against the American dream for immigrants because they're bitter. He's saying people turn to the issues they feel Washington can do something about. He is saying that because we already *ARE* religious, *believe* in the second amendment, *believe* in the American dream and the right of all it's citizens to prosper; that we turn to those issues because we are comfortable with them, because they speak to the values so many of us hold dear.

Yesterday the blogosphere erupted in another skirmish manufactured by a few of people on a few outlets. (Ben Smith of Politico, Mayhill Fowler of Huffington Post, Matt Drudge of DrudgeReport, and the boys and girls at First Read at MSNBC).

All about words. Just words. And the truth.

And once again, as has been the case time after time in this campaign cycle, "truth" is an early victim. She (the truth) gets wounded, yet rises again and again. And it will once again when we get to the end of this latest dust-up. 

This time, it's a battle over "class." And in the U.S., "classism" includes racism. (To those of you ready pounce, let me suggest you read first, and fly into your rage at the end.)

We live in a country that thrives on separating, dividing, excluding, categorizing, pigeonholing, marginalizing, labeling and ignoring. (Mark Penn makes millions off of doing just that.) We have red and blue states, rich and poor, black and white, white collar and blue collar, upscale and downscale, evangelical and "heathens", urban and rural, old and young, gay and straight, patriotic and anti-American, elite snobs and common folk, educated and "dumb", native-born and immigrant, legal and illegal, anti-abortion and pro-choice, gun control and NRA members. The divisions go on and on.

We choose up sides: Native-born? You need to "hate" the immigrants, because they take your blue-collar jobs. Immigrants can only come in two flavors: the "legal" kind, who climbed on ships from Europe a few generations ago and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps to "seize the 'American' Dream." The"other kind" in this current iteration are brown-skinned, speak Spanish and are shorthanded as "Mexicans." To properly "hate" the "Mexicans," you must be in favor of shipping them all home, building a big high fence to keep them out, and enforcing English-only policies.

Don't have a job? Blame the "Mexicans." If blaming them isn't enough, blame the "blacks" with their job-stealing, college education-stealing Affirmative Action plans. After all, they get jobs they don't deserve because they're underqualified and get special breaks. If jobs didn't go to the "blacks" and the "Mexicans" there would be plenty of work for you. Nevermind that most of the jobs in small towns across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and other "Rust Belt" states were overwhelming held by "white" people. When the steel mills and rubber factories and television manufacturers packed up and moved, remember these were companies owned by "white" people taking jobs away from other "white" people.  But the "villains" here are non-"whites," so we are told to believe.

Your child wants to go to college. Her heart is set on the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. It's a "top-tier," "elite," school for the best of the best. But the university doesn't choose her. So, of course, the dashed dreams of your daughter were caused by the undeserving, underskilled, unqualified black kid from Detroit, right? If only he hadn't been selected, your child would have gotten in. It's that "reverse racisim." (Is it not amazing how we can pinpoint the one student out of  student body of 50,000 that prevented your child from being admitted? And is it not amazing how that student is always a minority?  Who, despite being "vetted" up and down by trained admissions professionals always gets in?)

When your roads are filled with potholes, bridges falling into rivers, gas prices skyrocketing, food prices spiraling upward, your paycheck dwindling, mortgage payments ballooning, blame the "gays" and their demands to get married, blame those "abortion-on-demand" demanding "feminists," blame those gun-control advocates who want to take away your right to bear arms. Don't blame politicians who can build bridges to nowhere in the middle of Alaska. Don't blame a government, an administration way to cozy with the oil industry subsidizing their multi-billion dollar profitmaking.

Are you bitter, angry and resentful? Absolutely. The only problem is that much of your anger is misdirected. You should be angry at polticians who promise you jobs while making sweetheart trade deals, who spout protectionist rhetoric, and "God Bless America, my friends" while leaving you in an endless war that drains all of our resources. You should be angy at politicians who insult your intelligence, who think you'll be swayed by dramatic stories of heart-stopping landings in war torn countries told with "Midnight Express" derring do. You should be angry politicians who will promise to deliver on promises they didn't keep the first time around. And you should be angry at politicians who call people arrogant and elitist. Because when they do, by extension, they're calling you names as well.

Let me digress one moment to say this: In the context in which it has been delivered, calling Barack Obama "arrogant" and "elitist" is akin to calling him an "uppity Negro" who doesn't know his place. It is not about his education. How can a multi-millionairess Wellesley and Yale Law grad be any less elite? How is the son and grandson of naval admirals, a graduate of Annapolis husband to wife with a multi-million dollar fortune be any less elite? They are not. They are, however, white. And that is the difference.

Barack Obama cut through the "Penn-isms" of slice and dice, wedge and divide politics to say he understands that there is a segment of white America that has been carefully taught and trained and groomed to distrust -- even hate -- the other segments that are not identical to them. And that he understands what fuels their resentments and anger and bitterness has forced them to embrace a politics of division. By facing that division, acknowledging their feelings are real, and showing them the root cause of anger, he can also provide the leadership needed to stop the endless cycle of promises made but never kept.

(Disclaimer: Irritable blog syndrome)

I know it's a slow period, but there are now four recommended posts (pro-Obama of course) about the "bitter" brouhaha, and countless readers posts and comments expressing self-righteous indignation on the subject.

Reality check. What we have here are a bunch of mostly educated, middle-to-upper class bloggers heatedly debating about which educated, upper class candidate most authentically connects with working class people based on soundbites that have been prepared by their campaigns. It's nonsense from every direction.

Anatomy of a brouhaha:

1. Obama, presenting to fundraisers in CA, spins the challenges he faces getting votes from (a.k.a. "connecting with") working class voters. In the process, he makes an ill-considered generalization, which is picked up by HuffPo

2. Clinton & McCain smell blood. Polls show that Obama is perceived as "elitist". Their campaigns simultaneously leap into action, stridently, righteously arguing that Obama is elitist and out of touch with the working class (particularly hypocritical in the case of McCain but disingenuous in both cases).

3. Obama strategists see a problem. Obama stridently, righteously defends his point and argues that the other candidates, particularly McCain, are the out of touch ones.

4. Clinton brings up her wholesome churchgoing, midwestern roots to prove, beyond shadow of a doubt, that she's the one with a true connection to the working class. (Obama, of course, goes to the "wrong" church.) McCain will surely weigh in soon. I can't wait for someone to say that they were the son of mill worker.

5. The blogosphere mobilizes. He's elitist. No he courageously speaks the truth. No he's full of shit. No she's full of shit. No you're full of shit.

I say: You're all full of shit. And so are Obama, Clinton, and McCain. "Connecting with working class" is a political game in Washington. Basically you say whatever you and your pollsters think that working class voters most want to hear (as long as it doesn't obviously contradict your policies). You champion 2 or 3 issues that polls say the working class care about, e.g. mortgages, immigration, NAFTA. You highlight the parts of your biography that pollsters say the working class will most identify with. And then you pretend that the statements, policies, biographical data selected by your pollsters demonstrate that you are the one with the true working class creds.

Every candidate has to play this game to be elected, so let them play. But anyone who jumps up and down excitedly about what these campaign stratagems say about the true natures of their preferred candidates has been played. I urge everyone at TPM to try to contain their enthusiasm.

I hope I don't get kicked out of the echo chamber for admitting this, but Obama made a mistake.
The word "bitter" may be accurate, but it was a poor choice of words.  When you say someone is "bitter" you're criticizing their character.  There may be justifiable reasons to be angry, but "bitter" implies that someone is nursing a grudge, etc.  
Yes, many people are angry, but "angry" doesn't have the same connotations as "bitter."  The way he put it just sounds bad.  Hillary's response of praising the people's resilience is simply taking advantage of his mistake.  People would rather be praised than insulted, even if the insult is more accurate than the praise.
"Cling" was also a poor choice of words.  And to top it off, who uses the word "antipathy" outside of grad school?   When trying to connect with lower-middle-class voters, using words that most people would have to look up in a dictionary isn't a smooth move.  
In any case, Obama has now said that his choice of words was poor, and he's made the same point in a better fashion.  It's a minor mistake, but a mistake nonetheless and saying that it was a brilliant maneuver to trip up the Hillary and McCain show is just daft.
Will a mistake like this ultimately matter?  It may cost him a few points in PA, or he may recover just fine.  He's got time.  But keep the big picture in mind:href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/04/11/the-deal-with-add-ons.aspx

... if the two candidates hypothetically split the remaining pledged delegates 50-50, then, given the likely allocation of add-ons, Clinton would need to win a whopping 90 percent of the remaining 230 or so superdelegates to get the nomination.

Reggae fans only!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tw8tesd5EA

I was hoping for some video, but it's a great tribute track that will stick in your head. Be forewarned, you may like this.

The White House has been implicated in allged improper FBI agent contact with jurors assigned to the Wecht case.

This comment outlines the basis for these allegations, and recommends a detailed lines of questions to determine how FBI agents were give access to files within a separate branch of government; and explanations for White House direction to the US Attorneys Office and FBI director.

Bush has decided to pass off his responsibilities to Petraeus and Crocker. Only Bush can give a clear vision of his policy in Iraq. Neither Petraeus or Crocker can answer these question. Petraeus can only say what is happening militarily and Crocker can only give an update on Iraqi and US relations. The frustration with many is Bush has never said what he wants to accomplish other than in such abstract words such as victory. He seems to be convinced that Iraqi can only be content with US presence without ever becoming clear what this presence means. Could it be possible that Iraqis could work out their own problems? Even Maliki stated yesterday the Iraqi security forces would be able to function on their own. The only way the US can get victory in Iraq is to start running the government then the Americans will know who their enemies are. They will be all Iraqis. Right now the "enemy is us".

 

Obama's Quote from an April 6 San Francisco fundraiser:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

I am from a pretty small town in Massachusetts, and I am the first to acknowledge that there is a modicum of truth to SOME of Obama's point, but there is SO MUCH wrong with that last paragraph. Here are five levels:

CONDESCENDING: Obama describes small town people as "bitter".

BELITTLING: Obama describes them as if they were using pacifiers: "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

HYPOCRITICAL: Obama lectured America last month about the importance of understanding each other, but he doesn't understand small town people.

ELITIST: Obama saying all of this at a fundraiser in an attempt to get rich people to open their pockets.

ARROGANT: Then, today, Obama tried to brush it off by saying he "could've said it better" but had a valid point.


MOVING FORWARD: Whether or not you back Clinton or Obama right now, you can agree with me that we Democrats need to win the White House. That means we need Obama to recover from this mess. We need him to admit that he did more than just use the wrong words. We need him to show that he can learn from his mistakes.

ABC should let him make a statement at the beginning of the debate on Wednesday and then just move on from the topic into the debate.

Hillary is taking Obama apart today.

"I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith  in America and and its policies," she said. "Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment  believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith.

"I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.

"Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe."

"People don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them."

Elitism, his values, his attitude toward America, the culture of his church, his judgment are all suddenly back on the table.

Luckily, whichever of our candidates doesn't make the last mistake will just have to run against McCain.

 

Mr. McCain must be having quite a holiday now. Sit back and relax. No need to campaign. Totally chillin'.

Oh wait a second! Obama's just made a small town America comment! I need to attack him a bit on that one!

Oh no! He's responded beautifully! What to do, what to do?

Sit back and relax.

Why? Because Hillary's just done a good counter-response. No, actually because Hillary is basically doing all the dirty work for McCain. He doesn't need to make thorough attacks against Obama: Hillary's doing them for him. He doesn't need to campaign: Hillary's doing it for him:

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold.”

and

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy.”

and

“I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Sen. John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he’d bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

Hillary, just stop it. I think it's better for the democrats if you are the one sitting back and relaxing, while McCain is the one doing his flimsy Republican attacks.

    Here's a fun post for you Obama fans who can't get enough of your guy by a local photojournalist. I don't know if this is the same SF fundraiser where he made the "Bitter" comments. He did several that day.

There is a totally Hot! picture of Obama from the rear I think it is in the "seven things about Obama I never knew before" link for more photos near the bottom of the page. Chris Matthews might get a woody looking at it.

http://www.zombietime.com/obama_visits_billionaires_row/
   

 

I think this may have been a set-up, and I mean that as a tremendous compliment to Obama. 

He said something that was true, but also ripe for cherry-picking.  He knew Hillary would take the bait.  he knew Drudge would too, and McCain.  And that each of them would jump so fast after it, that they wouldn't even realize they were all standing together until they were, and then...well, with friends like those...

So here he is, with a response ready, that cements him as the guy who understands that regular people are sick of this crap and ready to make big change. 

In attacking him, there is no way to escape Hillary's argument:  You people have it bad, but you always deal with it fine.  No matter how much we screw you, you stay happy and strong.  You can deal with the status-quo better than anyone.

In other words, Obama managed to be both political and honest simultaneously.  It's masterful.  And sure, Hillary supporters will rally around her, but the undecided Penn voter is gonna have a hard time swallowing an incredibly wealthy D.C. insider telling them how happy and satisfied they are with the world falling apart around them.

Do you think this picture is racist--Yes or No?
http://www.ocweekly.com/columns/ask-a-mexican/ask-a-mexican/19246/

They've already labeled Obama's 'bitter' comments a gaffe and a stumble, even though Obama is sticking by his comments. One of their 'journalists' stated that Obama was taking a 'swipe' at rural voters. This was no gaffe. This was no stumble. This was certainly not a swipe. Politico wants nothing more than to extend this race so that they can generate more clicks and thus more ad revenue. They can continue to misread, distort, and tell outright lies all they want. But I would submit that it's Politico and other news outlets (e.g. Jake Tapper) that are out of touch with America, more so than Clinton and McCain. Being from rural America, I can confirm that people are, in fact, bitter when it comes to the economy and the failed promises of past Presidents. And they do turn to other places for comfort such as other political issues and to social ideas. I don't need Politico, a D.C. based outfit, to tell me that what Obama said is not true. They are wrong, and Obama is right.

Clinton Aide’s Databank Venture Breaks Ground in Politicking By LESLIE WAYNE

When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton needed help rounding up superdelegates, she turned to Harold M. Ickes, the ultimate Democratic fixer, who is now working round-the-clock for her, drawing on his vast energy and decades of political connections.

But, at the same time, Mr. Ickes is also wearing another hat. He is president of Catalist, a for-profit databank that has sold its voter files to the Obama and the Clinton presidential campaigns for their get-out-the-vote efforts. With his equity stake in the firm, Mr. Ickes stands to benefit financially no matter which candidate becomes the Democratic nominee.

In creating Catalist, Mr. Ickes, who was deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House, has formed a rare entity on the political scene, a for-profit limited-liability corporation that allows wealthy Democratic donors to help progressive organizations and candidates by investing in the company. And if Catalist, which has data on 230 million Americans, is successful as a business, these donors-turned-investors stand to reap financial returns from using their money to help elect Democrats.

But some campaign finance watchdogs say they wonder whether Catalist was established not so much to make money but to find a creative way to allow big-money liberal donors to influence the election without disclosing the degree of their involvement or being subjected to other rules that would govern spending by an explicitly political organization.

Catalist has raised over $11 million in venture capital, including more than $1 million from the billionaire financier George Soros, according to his aides. It also counts on such large unions as the Service Employees International Union and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., to buy its products and create revenues. And it plans to be the go-to source for voter data for a broad swath of groups often aligned with Democrats — like the Sierra Club, Emily’s List and Clean Water Action — as they embark on ambitious get-out-the vote efforts this fall.

These liberal clients will buy lists of likely voters based on information that Catalist has gleaned from voter registration files and commercial data providers. For instance, Catalist computers will take voter registration information along with data from appliance warranties, hunting and fishing licenses, charitable memberships and other data points to draw models of potentially sympathetic voters that these clients can approach.

Catalist grew out of the embers of two groups that Mr. Ickes headed in the 2004 election, Americans Coming Together and the Media Fund, which, in part, conducted strong get-out-the-vote efforts. But when the Democrats failed to take the White House in 2004, wealthy donors believed that one reason they had failed was that Democrats lacked the sophisticated voter databanks of the Republican Party, its celebrated “voter vault” that can pinpoint likely supporters.

Out of that analysis came a decision to set up a Democratic voter databank outside the formal party apparatus and structured as a business, with investors and customers drawn from the same pool of those who had worked closely together in 2004.

“We wanted to come at this differently,” said Laura Quinn, chief executive of Catalist. “We needed people with a business background and a political background. Putting together a business model was critical to our effort, but we also needed someone who understood the political space, and that was Harold.”

Mr. Ickes, though a spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed for this article, and the company declined to discuss any details relating to his financial stake or how much he stands to make from it.

The company itself operates in a Washington office building, where rooms of young computer engineers hunch over laptops and personal computers, giving it the air of a Silicon Valley start-up.

Some campaign finance watchdogs, however, say one concern about Catalist is that its precursors — America Coming Together and Media Fund — were found by the Federal Election Commission to have illegally spent $150 million on federal campaign activities without registering as political committees. The two groups were fined a combined $1.35 million.

The political world is filled with polling firms, consultants and others that operate for profit. But Catalist’s business structure — and the political motives of its backers — have raised questions about whether the company is using its status as a for-profit company to shield its investors from disclosure and spending rules that would apply to more traditional political organizations.

Catalist’s backers, along with Mr. Ickes, are some of the same people involved in America Coming Together and the Media Fund, which have since disbanded. As a private company, Catalist does not have to disclose its investors or the amounts they put up, which have run well into the six-figures.

The company has said it will not turn a profit until 2010, making it difficult to determine whether its backers are business investors or political donors, as well as whether or not it is helping to subsidize the liberal groups that are its clients.

“It is something to be concerned about,” said Steve Weissman, associate policy director at the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonprofit in Washington. “Wealthy people and unions are having a greater influence on the political process than the average small donor or the person who doesn’t donate. It skews the political process toward those who have money.”

Catalist is actually just one piece in a larger, and interlocking, network of independent liberal organizations that are acting almost as a shadow Democratic National Committee, now that the party itself can no longer accept unlimited large soft money donations. While these independent groups cannot communicate with the Democratic Party on strategy, they provide yet another way of getting the party’s message out, even if not in the words of the party.

Its clients include groups like MoveOn.Org, the N.A.A.C.P., the Sierra Club, Emily’s List, Naral Pro-Choice America and the National Education Association, along with the service employees union and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. All those groups were involved with Americans Coming Together in 2004 and are planning even bigger get-out-the-vote campaigns this year. Catalist does not do business with Republican-aligned groups.

Helping these groups coordinate their efforts — and to prevent them from bumping into one another — is a group called America Votes, which maintains close ties with Catalist. Until recently, America Votes, which has raised $18 million, shared office space with Catalist. Not only is it a Catalist client, but its mission is to help Catalist clients use the data they have bought to develop on-the-ground strategies in 19 crucial states.

And, standing in the background, but still linked to this effort, is a new group called Fund for America, which is solely a money-raising vehicle, somewhat like a foundation. Fund for America got off the ground late last year with donations of $2.5 million each from Mr. Soros and the service employees union. Since then, Fund for America has given America Votes $1 million for its work in helping Catalist clients. Both groups are tax-exempt organizations that can take nearly unlimited contributions and have limited oversight.

“These groups are trying to inject the same kind of huge amounts of money into the 2008 election that were found to be illegal in 2004, but with the new scheme,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, one of several nonprofit groups that filed the complaint at the election commission regarding Americans Coming Together and the Media Fund. “There are a series of important legal issues involved in these activities that we will be carefully monitoring.”

In setting up Catalist, Mr. Ickes is also setting up a rival databank to one that the Democratic National Committee has spent millions developing to help candidates and party committees in 2008. While there have been reports that Mr. Ickes, who had been critical of the management of the national committee under Howard Dean, began Catalist as a vote of no confidence in the committee’s effort, Ms. Quinn, the Catalist chief executive, insists that is not the case.

“We never felt that the two databases were incompatible,” Ms. Quinn said. “There was a lack of capacity, and the two databases will fill that need.”

Stacie Paxton, a spokeswoman for the national committee, said the committee’s effort was being made available free to Democratic candidates and party committees. It will also be made available to the party’s presidential nominee, Ms. Paxton said, but it is not open to Democrats contesting each other in primary races.

In fact, Catalist’s ability to deliver voter lists during the nominating process is a big draw for the presidential candidates. The Clinton campaign would not say whether it would continue to use Catalist’s services if Mrs. Clinton got the nomination and it gets access to the free national committee voter files. The campaign added that it did not see any conflict between Mr. Ickes’s roles as a campaign adviser and as a supplier of voter data to both the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

“We see no conflict,” said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign. “Harold recused himself from any negotiations the company had with the campaign.”

Catalist has issued a prospectus to investors that it has not made public and has said investors would get a fixed rate of return.

One crucial question, several legal experts say, is whether Catalist is selling its data at fair market value or at a discount, another factor in determining whether it could be deemed a political committee and subject to federal campaign regulations. Even though Catalist’s own marketing literature calls it a “low cost” data source, Ms. Quinn said the company charged market rates.

Equally sticky is that there are conflicts within Catalist’s own client lists. The Clinton campaign, for instance, has paid Catalist $125,000 for its data, while the Obama campaign has paid $50,000, even though Mr. Ickes works for Mrs. Clinton and has been raising concerns about Mr. Obama’s electability as he courts superdelegates on her behalf.

“We just hope that Harold’s data is better than his delegate math,” Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said of the payments to Catalist.

When Bill Clinton got into trouble in South Carolina for comparing Barack Obama's win there to Jesse Jackson's, he did so with a comment that started, "That's bait too". He then proceeded to take the bait, hook, line and sinker. Bill Clinton was the great communicator of his day. He knew that a great way to make headlines and dominate the news cycle was to say something controversial, let your opponents seize on it as a misstep, and then proceed to slice and dice them once they take the bait.

 

Senator Obama, when he gets his campaign into its natural swing, is the new, great communicator. He showed his naturals strengths in dominating the news cycle during January when he baited the Clintons with the comments on the Republicans being the party of ideas and Reagan being a transformational figure in a way that Clinton was not. He showed that he was able to respond to attacks and turn them around to illustrate his own strengths and abilities to cross party lines, attracting independent voters.

 

What is amazing about Senators Clinton and McCain is that, for all their years in politics, they can't see the bait when its laid. They are so eager to jump on their opponent and so fearful of him that they jumped on his most recent statement in California, once again giving him the opportunity to lay bait and switch. 

 

This news cycle that has just started is going to earn Obama votes. It may take a few days to sort itself out, but Senator Obama's comments about bitter folks in places like small town Pennsylvania is a comment that perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the moment and shows how we are at a turning point in America's national conversation about issues such as religion and race. It also shows how Senator Obama is a potentially transformational figure, something the people are desperate for. 

 

Americans are desperate to move their national political conversation beyond such stalemate issues as abortion, guns, and morality issues that have nothing to do with the way the country is governed and whether peoples lives are improved. They have nothing to do with them because they are polarizing issues that divide people regardless, often, of race, creed, class, and religion. They enable a punditry and political class that exploits these issues to the detriment of progress on anything else.

 

For those who do not want the country to make real progress, guns and religious issues are perfect. Some politicians would love to have elections always decided on disagreements over guns and religion. And Senator Obama is calling them on it. Events such as the Iraq war, problems like the deficit, and the decline of America's standing in the world are alerting the public to the fact that there are much more pressing problems that they'd like to talk about, if only a politician could circumnavigate the shoals of the usual political bogeymen.

 

Senator Obama's speech in Terre Haute, Indiana in response to the brouhaha over his remarks in San Francisco to fundraisers about small town bitterness shows that he is person for the job. Thanks to the cooperation of Senators Clinton and McCain, he is able to do so while simultaneously making them look like prisoners of the political past. He laid the bait in San Francisco. In Terre Haute, he reeled the fish in by saying the following: 

 

People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them. So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington.

To appreciate the crowd’s response and to understand the nature of the political abilities being flexed here, it’s helpful to watch the entire part of this speech. People are nodding their heads while Obama speaks. They’re agreeing that this is what politicians do – make rabble rousing speeches while the chickens are being raided by the wolves. When he makes his final point, they give him a standing ovation.

People are bitter. They see no progress on the most important political issues of the day. Deficits are going up. The war in Iraq is never ending. Politicians are doing the bidding of lobbyists. Corporate welfare is subsidizing companies like Haliburton and Blackwater, which make millions off a war that was started on false pretences. No healthcare for millions. Low paying wages. The natural response is to seek refuge in religion, the right to bear arms, issues that can restore some sense of control for a person living in an out of control world. Senator Obama is speaking the truth. He can thank Senators Clinton and McCain for helping him sharpen the focus, taking the bait and showing the public a real difference between him and his opponents.

This is not about his saying people in little town are bitter. It is about the part of "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." .  this goes a step too far. It is saying people are bitter so they are doing stupid things. He's saying people have gun or religion because they are bitter. Otherwise, they would have given up on guns or practicing less religion. If this is not condescending, I don't know what it is!

Of course to you Obamabots, your savior can do no wrong. If he says the Sun rises from the West, you will say yes he's right - the West - East is so foolishly defined!

Hillary's not bitter. John McCaveman is not  bitter. Why should they be? They're both fat cat multimillionaires.  They both play the game of Washington insiders. They both gobble down goo gobs of lobbyist money. They both 'love' their spouses.

They're both spin meisters par excellence. They're both proven patriots. Both dodged bullets. Both need more money.  AND both are sleep deprived/or have senior moments.

OPPS, and  they're both scared to death of Barack Obama.

And finally, they're both bosom buddies!

Is it any wonder why they're in alignment here?

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from an Obama supporter with a link to video that I'd been desperately searching for: that moment in February, 2007 when Hillary Clinton not only refused to admit making a mistake on Iraq, but told people they ought to consider Obama or Edwards if hearing such an admission was very important to them.

I've taken that clip and integrated it into a new video, Hillary Clinton: War, Lies, and Misjudgment.

For those without YouTube, here's a transcript of Clinton's quote:

If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from.

I still believe it was at that moment that Hillary Clinton lost the campaign. As kos wrote at the time:

The closer we get to the primaries, the more Hillary will realize that she can't escape her Iraq dilemma. I don't want her to apologize. I want her to say, "I made a mistake." Edwards did it. Just about every other Democrat who idiotically trusted this president and supported the war has done it. Had Hillary done this last year, the issue would be moot.

Part of my goal in making this video is to try to express why Hillary Clinton is losing (or has lost, take your pick) this campaign, and also to express why Barack Obama is winning. It ends with these words from Obama:

It's important for us to stand our ground and take our licks, rather than what sometimes is our habit, which is to cave and whine about it afterwards, which makes us not only look weak, but petty.

Standing your ground isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. Obama is showed us that again yesterday. He's not perfect -- he's still a politician, after all. But he is showing Democrats how to be better, not just as politicians, but as leaders.

::

I also blog at The Jed Report.

That shining beacon of integrity has a new take on Obama's Racist White Grandmother.  It was actually because his grandfather threw her under the bus first.  Those bus drivers have been incredibly busy.
A few highlights:

As recounted in Obama's autobiography, the only evidence that his grandmother feared black men comes from Obama's good-for-nothing, chronically unemployed white grandfather, who accuses Grandma of racism as his third excuse not to get dressed and drive her to work. 

Even Obama's shiftless grandfather didn't play the race card until pretty far into the argument over whether he would drive Grandma to work. First, the good-for-nothing grandfather told Obama that Grandma was just trying to guilt him into driving her, saying, "(S)he just wants me to feel bad." 

Only after Obama had offered to drive his grandmother to work himself and it was becoming increasingly clear what a selfish lout the grandfather was, did Grandpa produce his trump card. The reason he wouldn't get his lazy butt dressed and drive Grandma to work was ... she was a racist! 

How deranged would you have to be to cite this incident as evidence that your grandmother thought like a "typical white person" -- as opposed to your grandfather being worthless and lazy?

Someone remind me again...she gets paid for these insights?

I realized something tonight while watching Barack Obama's populist response to the cynical noise and distortion being promulgated by the Clinton and McCain camps over Obama's "bitter" remarks.  In a politics where we've become so accustomed and maybe even resigned to candidates' utter failure to deliver on promises made during the course of a campaign, a very simple and obvious observation had somehow eluded me (or at least my conscious mind) until this very moment. 

Barack Obama is already delivering in spades. 

I guess I shouldn't say I had no idea about this until now.  The grassroots renaissance unearthed by Obama's candidacy, the remarkable primary voter turnout elicited by his run, the unpredecented fundraising numbers drawn from well over a million individual donors.  All of these things have registered clearly in my mind as precedent-shattering.

But in a way these have all felt like procedural accomplishments, positive arithmetical gains from which a possibility of future good could hopefully be extrapolated. 

But tonight, watching Barack Obama draw out and distill with remarkable facility and in the simplest of terms the electoral roots of our nation's economic inequalities of opportunity, the obvious electoral-economic disconnect that for all the years of my adult life dared not speak its name (in mainstream political discourse, at least), I realized that substantive change, and not just procedural potential, is already taking place in our country as a result of Obama's leadership.

Already we've seen the conversation on race in this country turn a corner because of the work Barack Obama is doing, and the challenges he's meeting, and the status quo he's confronting, on the campaign trail.  But it was the recognition by Obama that the root causes of our racial tensions in this country are economic that gave his contribution (so far) to discussions on race its transformative power. 

And tonight we saw the first result of the groundwork he put down in that speech just a few weeks ago.  Because while it's true the fundamental recognition of the root cause--a silenced voice on the issue at the ballot box-- of economic hardship experienced by the vast majority of folks in this country might have been laid out on this occasion for small-town, mostly white, Pennsylvanians, the same diagnosis, in varying degrees of severity I suppose, could be made for so many others.  Across states.    Across genders.  Across religions.  And across races.

Do most presidents truly accomplish even this much change during their terms in office? 

And Obama's not even out of the primary season yet.

Did Barack just become the candidate of the little guy in a dizzying, death-defying way?  We'll find out in the next few days.  As long as he keeps saying that he's IN FAVOR of Gun Rights, I think he'll come out stronger.  The next 2 days will be crucial if he's not going to be labeled more of an elitist...  He can win this, but he needs to get loud and biting in his criticism.  After all, he's the only one of the 3 who isn't worth over $100 Million Dollars and has a subscription to The Robb Report.

He's done well so far in

Hillary and McCain are stupid, stupid stupid.

How do you walk into this trap?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc9PepjyDow&eurl=http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Because Obama's not "finished," as much as Hillary and McCain wish he was.

The minute Hillary started parroting Sean Hannity, I knew it was over.

Seriously.

You're going to argue that Obama is out of touch?

That people in this country aren't bitter?


Let me spell it out in case you didn't get it the first fucking time:

We're mad as Hell at Politic as usual, and we aren't going to take it any more.

Not from the Clintons.  Not from McCain.

That's why Obama is winning, and that's why we will have a real Democratic revolution that will be remembered for years to come.

So, all you stragglers who cynically post against populist values:  Either get on the train, or get out of the way.

Dick Cheney, thrill seeker.  There is no way a man with multiple heart surgeries should be taking these types of chances.  It seems that Cheney saw something interesting while fly fishing.  No word on whether he caught anything while on the fishing trip.  Hopefully, he left his gun at home.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=7363634&ch=4226716&src=news

Surely you've heard of the latest create-a-scandal brewed up by Hillary Clinton. This is a science metaphor, BTW, not a witch metaphor; I have many pagan friends and would not insult witches like that. The same create-a-scandal jumped on by John McCain, because really, when's the last time HE had an original thought? 

I'm not saying he never has. But it hasn't happened since he started cuddling up with the religious right and the Bush administration.

But I digress. The create-a-scandal is this:  Barack Obama referred to the rural Pennsylvanians "bitterness" about the state of our country as one reason why they might be wary of his campaign.

OMG--can you believe it? He called them bitter! How condescending, said Clinton and McCain. How racist!

But I agree with Obama's usual quick-and-concise comeback by saying: How undeniably true.
 
Clinton and McCain claim this is an example of Obama's being "out of touch" with the American voter, whom they apparently see as living some kind of idyllic, Leave-it-to-Beaver life... when they aren't imagining some kind of Waltons-during-the-depression happy through it all idealism.

But, to quote an earlier McCain gaffe? "I've got news" for them.

AMERICANS ARE BITTER. And not just in rural, central American states. We've been increasingly bitter for a long time. I was a kid during the Vietnam and Watergate years, and since then I've known very few people who believed politicians could do or change anything, myself included. The Reagan years seemed cool, until we started learning about the stuff that had gone on in the background (Iran Contra, huge deficit). The Bill Clinton years weren't bad--I mean, the scandals were a horrible distraction, but the blame for those lies with the witch hunters as well as President Clinton (notice I did not call him blameless). Did it really matter whom we voted in, some of us wondered? It's not like it mattered.

And then we have the W years.  And it mattered.

Veterans used, as commented on Countdown, like disposable plastic gloves. The USA occupying another country despite their stated wishes to have us gone and the fact that we've displaced millions of their civilians and haven't even taken in 5 thousand of those refugees (you want to talk "break it, bought it?")  American servicemen who joined to fight in Afghanistan deliberately sent instead to Iraq, which had NOT attacked us. Trillions of dollars in deficit. Our constitution spat upon by our own leaders.

Damn right, we're bitter. We should all be bitter. But bitter need not mean petulant and lethargic. Bitter can mean righteous anger and ACTION... and that's a large chunk of what Obama has tapped into. Not for all Democrats, certainly--I'm not arguing that. But for record numbers of formerly inactive, disillusioned people, absolutely this is what Obama rouses within us. The hope to create change, because we know things MUST change, because we are bitter.

Bitter. Not helpless.

Tonight, I am bitter that instead of focusing on real issues, Clinton and McCain tried to create some sort of "Oh my god, did you hear what he called you???" schoolyard scandal.

But I am hopeful that enough Americans will resonate to the truth of Obama's words to see through their petty, old-school politics and give up on them.

It's long past their time.

After less than two weeks of <a href="http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/american-future-fund-iowa-futu.php">intense scrutiny</a> from the blogosphere, Iowa Republicans abandoned the Iowa Future Fund and created the Iowa Progress Project.

From the 4/10/08 Iowa Progress Project <a href="http://iowaprogressproject.com/">press release</a>:

Des Moines, IA -- Iowa Progress Project announced today its formal organization and outlined its goals and objectives in the near and long-term.

President David Kochel said, "Iowa Progress Project is the direct result of the response thousands of Iowans have had to ads and issues highlighted by the Iowa Future Fund. While the Iowa Future Fund has been very effective at highlighting important issues in our state, what was also abundantly clear is that a grassroots-centered conservative issues organization is also needed in this state. IPP will provide citizens from all corners of Iowa a voice in their community and state."

<...>

IPP announced the following Board of Directors for the organization:

President: David Kochel
Director: Kathy Pearson
Director: Gary Grant

Be sure to to check the comments here for more on the Iowa Progress Project!

I would never have thought it would happen in a million years, but here is a CNN panel defending Obama's comments about small town Pennsylvania today.

Especially interesting is Jack Cafferty's (a man I admire very much) response.

Watch.

Still hoping this is not as bad for Obama as my gut tells me it will be.

Any candidate that claims we're all just happy campers that whistle while we work needs to stay as far away from the White House as possible.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc9PepjyDow

1. Obama's response seems to turn this attack around to boomerang back on Clinton and McCain. Interestingly, this might just endear him to the working class which has been losing ground steadily for decades. The country is being bled dry and these workers are getting nowhere. And they are angry! Did Obama just "feel their pain"?  His counterpunch is formidable.

2. McCain / Hillary double-team = shame on her! She's not a Democrat anymore.

1. When did you first hear that your preferred candidate was definitely running for president?

1.a.  I didn’t have a preferred candidate (see 2.)
1.b.  After February 2007
1.c.  Prior to February 2007
1.m.c.  Prior to 2000

2. What were your primary concerns, if you didn’t have a preferred candidate? (see 4.W. through 5. and check all that apply).

4.W.: Iraq
Y.naught(0): Peace
Two(2)w.m.n.:  Pro-Choice
O.1-10K.: Economy
F.U.(2).:  Ethics & Reform
5. Other: (Please explain on a separate form)

6.  Are you still willing to give your vote to the same candidate you started out with?

6.a.  Yes
6.b.  No

If affirmative to 6.b., why?

DE.e(P).6. Because my candidate dropped out
7.c. Because I changed my mind

(If you selected 7.c., go to 1.a.)

 

I think that the Pennsylvania bitterness story is heavent sent for Obama. Seriously. It sounds really bad when you hear the snippet, but upon hearing or reading the entire statement, there isn't much really wrong with what he said.

I think that he can use this event to his advantage by calling a press conference to respond to the firestorm. In this press conference he can finally take Hillary to task for her Nafta lies and her Cafta lobbying husband.

In the statement he points the finger G.W.B. and at Bill Clinton. He is blaming both of them for the suffering of the people of Pennsylvania. However, his enemy right now is Hillary, so I think he is going to lay this at her doorstep. This is Barack taking government to task. She claimed 35 years of experience, well she'll have to share her story. Because it was released to the public like it was an expose, the statement sets him up perfectly to attack Hillary without looking like he is doing it because the primary is around the corner. He can attack her by simply explaining why the people of Pennsylvania are bitter, and why they have been that was for two decades. He is going to say that Nafta gutted them and Cafta will finish them off. It is inevitable with Bill taking the money and lobbying from within the walls of the White House. Additionally, he will be able to use Mark Penn to buttress his "explanation."

Perhaps I am a nutjob but I think he can steal pennsylvania if he plays this right. He could do it either in a press conference or during the debate. I think this is the winning strategy for PA.

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Sc9PepjyDow&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Sc9PepjyDow&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc9PepjyDow

Greg Sargent put up a short post about the latest "outrage" over an Obama speech. The McCain campaign was quick with a response.

Asked to respond, McCain adviser Steve Schmidt called it a "remarkable statement and extremely revealing."

"It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," Schmidt said. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

But wait, wait my friends. Wasn't John McCain just quoted saying something very similar in the New Yorker back in December 2007? Why ...

Anti-immigrant passion also owes much to the disproportionate influence of a few small states in the nominating process. National polls show that, as an issue, immigration is far behind the Iraq war, terrorism, the economy, and health care as a concern to most Americans; a recent Pew poll shows that, nationally, only six per cent of voters offer immigration as the most important issue facing the country. But in Iowa and South Carolina, two of the three most important early states, it is a top concern for the Republicans who are most likely to vote. “It’s the influx of illegals into places where they’ve never seen a Hispanic influence before,” McCain told me. “You probably see more emotion in Iowa than you do in Arizona on this issue. I was in a town in Iowa, and twenty years ago there were no Hispanics in the town. Then a meatpacking facility was opened up. Now twenty per cent of their population is Hispanic. There were senior citizens there who were—‘concerned’ is not the word. They see this as an assault on their culture, what they view as an impact on what have been their traditions in Iowa, in the small towns in Iowa. So you get questions like ‘Why do I have to punch 1 for English?’ ‘Why can’t they speak English?’ It’s become larger than just the fact that we need to enforce our borders.”

Whoa! Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. I realize they didn't have the intertubes during the Civil War, but talk to your grandchildren more and they'll get you up to speed. Oh, and Google is your friend.

Obama made these remarks in Indiana today:

"When I go around and I talk to people there is frustration and there is anger and there is bitterness. And what's worse is when people are expressing their anger then politicians try to say what are you angry about? This just happened - I want to make a point here today.

"I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how're you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What's going on there? We hear that's its hard for some working class people to get behind you're campaign. I said, "Well look, they're frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they've seen jobs shipped overseas. They've seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.

"And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we're going to make your community better. We're going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they're bitter. Of course they're frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody's going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement-- so, here's what rich. Senator Clinton says 'No, I don't think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack's being condescending.' John McCain says, 'Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he's obviously out of touch with people.'

"Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain--it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he's saying I'm out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I'm out of touch? No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania. I know what's going on in Indiana. I know what's going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that's why I'm running for President of the United States of America."

Jared Bernstein writes:

"Let me be, I hope, totally clear: for Brad, Alan, and any other economist, merit=marginal product. Thus, principle one is very simply arguing that while a central tenet of economics is that your income is equal to the marginal value you add to the economy, reality is otherwise. Your bargaining power—your ability to claim more than your marginal product or get stuck with less—is an ever-increasing determinant of economic outcomes."

But I am not a real economist! I am an interdisciplinary social science major who thought being a professor would be fun, and figured out that the history and political science job markets were totally cr----- out and that economics was booming! (And there was the fact that my freshman roommate Andrei had found this young charismatic MIT professor Larry--think of the MIT professor in "21" with hair, with youth, and without the evil.)
I don't want to identify "marginal product" with "merit" because once you do that all arguments about distribution are reduced to the elimination of wedges between factor rewards and marginal products. And marginal products themselves are overwhelmingly shaped by political and sociological power--politics and sociology determines factor supplies, and who gets what pieces of income substantially affects demand.
Perhaps what Jared wants to say is that a society in which income was distributed according to marginal product would be a better society than we have now, and one step at a time. But I would prefer to talk about the institutions of social democracy as insurance policies we all buy through our participation in the implicit social contract--about social insurance. And I would invoke Edmund Burke on the social contract as a great one between the dead, the living, and the unborn in which our shares are not simply determined by our usefulness of the moment in augmenting GDP.
After all, in the Bengal famine of 1942 the marginal product of several million landless farm laborers became effectively zero--the war that had cut off trade and so the market for the export crops they grew for the landlords. I don't think we should say that they then happened to "merit" their zero incomes, and mass death by famine...

Thought I'd open this little thread so we'd have a place to post the names of people who don't conform to the thought of the Obama echo chamber.

There are still a couple of non-conformists here, and I think we need to keep close tabs on them.

Once we get the list together we can go see Josh and see if there is some way to get these dissenting voices squelched.

(apologies to Robert Smigel for the title ripoff)

In the previous episode, The Fmr Presidents decided to create chaos in the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Clinton:  Hey, you guys.  I've already been busy.  You're slackin'.  Here, let me show you one more time.  Y'know that Bosnia thing has died down.  Watch what I'm gonna do!

Carter:  Well, ahm puttin' my plan into place now.  Y'heard me practically drool over Barack yesterday?  Tomorruh, I'm announcing my trip to Syria to meet with Hamas!  After that, ah've got one more ace up my sleeve - I just sent a goat-mail to Osama!

Clinton:  Well done, Jimmy, well done!

(HW) Bush:  OK, OK, you've both done great jobs!  I've been urging my son to keep up the troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I got Maliki to take that rash Basra action.

Carter:  Well, I thought that would actually produce some positive results, but you were right, George - it was a bad week for George and John.

Bush:  The piece of resistance, though, is set for next week.  Jimmy, you're scheduled to be on Stephanopoulas this Sunday, I've already told Blitzer's people that I'm available for later in the day.  I'm going to let them know that McCain and I met in Texas this week.

Clinton:  And???

Bush:  We were talking about the economy, I told John my hearing hasn't been good since my last skydive, and John looked at me and said, "READ MY LIPS, GEORGE.  NO NEW TAXES."
****
NEXT EPISODE:  The Fmr Presidents announce their joint candidacy on the Unity'08 ticket.  (Bill has two black eyes and a high-pitched voice.)

    David go to your room, read Juan Cole every day, and write 1,000 times, "I will not be snookered."


Real Change 04.10.08 -- 1:05PM By David Kurtz

Charlie Rose kept me up late last night against my will, but his interview of the NYT's John Burns and Dexter Filkins about Iraq was fascinating, largely because it shed new light, for me at least, on how much things have actually improved on the ground there.

Whether the reduction in violence changes the strategic equation remains to be seen -- and Burns and Filkins agree that the odds remain long. But coming from two men who were in Iraq during the worst of times, their astonishment at the turnaround there within a relatively short time is notable:

I certainly knew violence was down. But since the pronouncements of improvement in Iraq have come from such an unreliable messenger, the Bush Administration, they have been easy to discount. Perhaps too easy.

Dear Dean Edley:

Thank you for publishing your explanation regarding the "Torture Memos" written by Professor Yoo and the decision not to take any action against him. Your assumption that your explanation would not be totally satisfying to everyone was very accurate, and I include myself among the dissatisfied for the following reasons.

Your memo seems to offer the memos produced by Professor Yoo the umbrella of "academic freedom." Since he was on leave from the university and an employee of the federal government at the time that he wrote them I don't believe his work can be defended as an academic exercise. He was working as and being paid as a legal counselor, and his memos were not destined for publication in a dusty, little read, legal publication. They were meant for the top echelons of our government and as such should have represented the highest and most accurate understanding and interpretation of our nation's and international laws.

For a moment let's give Professor Yoo the benefit of assuming that he really believed his own reasoning and conclusions; let's assume that the memos were not written simply to support the aims of his employers (clients?). Wouldn't a prudent lawyer have presented both sides of the argument so that his clients would have the benefit of making a truly informed decision? I would think that with such grave matters he would want his presentation to be fully informative. Why didn't he do that?

In part your memo states: "no argument about what he did or didn't facilitate, or about his special obligations as an attorney, makes his conduct morally equivalent to that of his nominal clients, Secretary Rumsfeld, et al., or comparable to the conduct of interrogators distant in time, rank and place." The Model Rules of Professional Conduct of the ABA, Client-Lawyer Relationship, Rule 1.2: Scope of Representation and Allocation of Authority Between Client and Lawyer, Section (d) states: "A lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent, but a lawyer may discuss the legal consequences of any proposed course of conduct with a client and may counsel or assist a client to make a good faith effort to determine the validity, scope, meaning or application of the law." What of Professor Yoo's responsibility under this rule? It is clear to me, at least, that the legal advice he presented in these memos was woefully inadequate under this rule. As to the moral equivalence of his role in justifying the actions that Rumsfeld, Cheney, etal, were clearly championing I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that Professor Yoo's culpability is less than that of the "deciders" or the "perpetrators" of these crimes. It is not credible that John Yoo wrote these memos without full knowledge that his conclusions were at the least debatable, and that the results of his tortured justifications would result in the use of torture by his masters. At Nuremberg didn't civilized society determine that the actions of Germany's government officials were as culpable as the prison guards who carried out the bruatality at Auschwitz? How is John Yoo not culpable?

I understand the complexity of academic tenure and know that you cannot easily dismiss Professor Yoo for his actions while he was employed by the federal government, but I also understand the culture and dynamics of universities and law schools. To wring your hands and hide behind the Academic Personnel Manual of the University of California  and claim that  the matter is really out of your hands is not very admirable.

Sincerely,

I have come to the conclusion that Bill secretly doesn’t want Hillary to become President.  I’ve actually thought this for a while.  I’m not saying it’s rationale or that I can provide a good reason for his wanting this outcome. I just think he has no control.

 Bill has been totally reckless in his behavior as surrogate for Hillary throughout this campaign.

 This latest stirring up of the “Bosnia” issue is the latest in a series of misfires from him--

Fairytale, Jesse Jackson, and much more.

 He’s been undisciplined, a lose canon and no one can or is controlling him. I don’t think Hillary can control Bill.

He has been reckless with her campaign in ways that he would never have been with his own.

Why is he being so reckless and undermining her ?

Well here’s the ugly elephant in the room.

He just can't help it. This is the same man who was arrogant, ill, crazy enough to jeopardize his marriage and the Presidency to prey on women. This is not someone who is in control.  He is going around talking about the double standard Hillary is being held to.  I imagine he agrees with those who claim mysogony is the reason why people don’t like her.   This is all quite ironic to me since his humiliation of his own wife was the ultimate act of mysogony. 

All the hub bub over Randi's comments were brought on by Air America themselves, according to Randi.

Randi appeared as a call in guest on the Mike Malloy show last night. (Marc Maron sitting in for the vacationing Malloy.)

< a href=http://premium.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1208949_a0uuq/lloyShow10.04.08_Randi_Maron.mp3>Listen to the story from the horses mouth here.</a>

Over the last few days, Barack Obama has made comments that indicate he is wavering on whether he will accept public financing for his campaign. This is an issue primarily because of a pledge he signed sometime last year, agreeing that he would accept public financing if he became the democratic nominee for president.

Part of me thinks that he should honor his commitment to accept public financing. John McCain has indicated that he is going to accept public financing. I do not think that he is driven by the pledge. Honestly, I think that McCain is being driven by the fact that Barack would raise more cash than him over the duration of the campaign.

Another part of me thinks that he should respectfully decline public financing. He is about to engage in the fight of his life against the republican attack machine and will need every dollar he can muster to keep himself viable. The republican 527s are going to throw everything they can find at Barack (think fake muslim smear, antipatriotic sentiments, etc.).

Truth be told, I think that he should probably skip public finance and let the public fund him directly. I know that he will be in violation of the pledge, but I think it is more important for him to be able to mount a proper defense than to be handcuffed by the pledge.

I would like to see the pledge. Perhaps there is some wiggle room that will allow Barack to take a relatively small hit in public opinion. Even if there is no narrow escape from the pledge, does anyone really think that it will harm him in the long run?

Given the latest revelations of  the obvious culpability of the administration in war crimes, we will have trouble bringing cases in the future if we let this one go. But I expect it will slowly evaporate, as the campaign heats up, and we will wear the mantle of a huge but crumbling, corrupt and venal, clueless and spineless former democracy.

Let's remember that, thanks to Bush and cronies, we are the butt of jokes around the world, the target of terrorists, seeing our monetary system failing, and our safety regulators colluding with their "clients", the enablers of prima-facie war crimes such as torture and wars of aggression, and the folks left holding the bag of snarling cats that is Iraq.

And we aren't hauling the idiots that brought us to this state into court? It is true that we will have to publicly acknowledge the crimes we have allowed to happen, but denial, while an alternate spelling for that North African waterway, is not sufficient to make the rest of the world forget that we were more stupid than the Soviets in their Afghan invasion, more incompetent than the captain of the Exxon Valdez, and so easily swayed by propaganda that it's damned lucky for us that there were no serious Hitlers around.

Let's start hammering the House leadership on this.

David Sirota has put together an excellent piece on Huffington today regarding what he calls The Ludlow Legacy, a reference to Rockefeller and the US Government murdering union reps in Colorado 94 years ago. He brings up the Ludlow Massacre because unions in Colombia are experiencing the same type of horror show today. This same Colombian Govt that has bought off Bill Clinton and Mark Penn, and now it appears even Nancy Pelosi. It turns out Pelosi did her dramatic CAFTA block yesterday only to make sure the deal could actually pass later on since it was sure to be voted down yesterday.

This is just another reason why we need to jettison the old school political hacks like the Clintons and Pelosi. This is truly disgusting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp

"Look, I know that many progressives have their hearts set on seeing Barack Obama get the Democratic nomination. But politics is supposed to be about more than cheering your team and jeering the other side. It’s supposed to be about changing the country for the better."

Yes, Paul, we should definitely all take lessons from the Clinton campaign about how to change the country for the better. Gimme a break! How many times is he going to write this exact same column and make the exact same points? Three times, apparently:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/opinion/04krugman.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html

After years of stonewalling on Al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater and Sen. Joe Biden pressing Ambassador Ryan Crocker to finally admit this region poses the greater threat to U.S. security interests, NATO support for continued presence starts to crumble.

Canada rescinded its very recent threat to pull its 2,500 troops out only after France pledged about 1,000 reinforcements. Korea politely informed the alliance that "We've just pulled our troops out of Afghanistan. I think it will be impossible to send them again." Despite a United Nations-inclusive declaration, in which 40 nations of the NATO-led peacekeeping effort affirmed "firm and shared long-term commitment" to Afghanistan, that commitment is lean judged by peacekeepers on the ground.

The problem in Afghanistan mirrors Iraq's: training and maintaining a domestic military force without having to bribe warlords in the process. In early 2002, Kabul officials announced the Afghan National Army would number 70,000 combat-ready soldiers by 2004. Instead, NATO-supplied coalition forces have grown to 70,000 and until this year, the Afghan Army's desertion rate was so high it could barely man less than half that number.

The good news? The Afghan Army reports it's built itself up to almost 70,000 soldiers.

The bad news? Now that domestic troop strengths are nearing the six-year-old estimates, the number needed to effectively fight an envigorated Taliban force, in face of a promised "Spring Offensive," now exceeds 175,000.

"The Afghan army is effective at times now when it is deployed together with international forces. It is not capable of doing standalone combat operations," Barnett Rubin, Afghan specialist at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, said.

"There is no long-term plan in place for building, sustaining and equipping it [...]. At the moment it is entirely dependent on second-level appropriations from the US Congress, which is not exactly a long-term plan."

Taliban spokesman Qari Yusef Ahmadi last month said, "[The Afghan National Army] can't do anything. They have been claiming for years that they are going to have 70,000 soldiers, but our view is that these are only paid soldiers who are temporary workers. These people aren't able to fight against our mujahedin, who are fighting jihad on the basis of their faith."

On the other side of the equation, there are currently, about 70,000 coalition forces from 40 nations conducting military operations in Afghanistan under the command of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), according to reports. This number is up from the approximately 40,000 there in 2006, a significantly overlooked five-year anniversary.

The United States boasts 32,000 troops in Afghansitan-Pakistan region, with President George Bush promising even more US forces in 2009. While not disclosing a specific number, Defense Secretary Robert Gates verified the promise of a "significant number" calling it a "safe bet" regardless who wins the presidency.

With 40 countries signing onto the NATO-UN declaration of support, only 13 currently have levels force of more than 500 in the region. Britain's 7,800 troop contribution is the second largest force in country and perhaps the most immutable. Germany follows with 3,200 and Canada and Italy both over 2,000.The level of support by countries such as Luxembourg, Ireland, Austria, Singapore, Switzerland and Georgia is single-digit underwhelming. To be fair, Georgia has recently offered, but not promised, to up its contribution of a single doctor to 500 peacekeepers.

If this all sounds a little familiar, it probably should.

This seems like such an obvious topic that I find it hard to believe that no one has blogged on it yet, but I do not find any such post in my (rather brief) search of the archives, so I thought that I would write a post myself.  One way or another, there is going to be an empty senate seat in Jan 2009.  Whether McCain, Clinton or Obama wins, somebody who is in the senate now will not be in the senate then.  As such, a new senator will have to be chosen to fill that slot.  We are fortunate in that all three states in question (NY, IL and AZ) have democratic governors, so that seat will almost certainly be filled by a democrat.

With that in mind, who would you like to see fill that seat?  More to the point, whom do you <i>expect</i> to be selected?  Here is your chance to make a prediction and enjoy the glory of bragging rights if you get it right next Jan.

My picks:

1) AZ - I predict that Gov Napolitano will pick Rep Gabrielle Giffords (this is a complete guess; I know nothing about AZ, and while I would like for Gov Napolitano to appoint herself, that seems unlikely, so I just reached for the name of the only other AZ democrat in my memory).
2) IL - I predict that Gov Blajoejvich will appoint Atty Gen Lisa Madigan because she is 1) very popular statewide and 2) a possible primary rival to himself next go around.  Also, I rather like Lisa Madigan myself and think that she has proven a rather capable and intelligent public servant.
3) NY - I predict that Gov Paterson will appoint Andrew Cuomo (this, like my AZ pick, is mostly an uninformed guess).

This past week, Sen. John McCain repented for his decision in 1983 to oppose a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King.

Speaking on the anniversary of King's death, and from the site of his assassination, the Arizona Republican declared that he was "wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona... We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans."

But while McCain is seeking amends for his King Day vote, he has refused to back down on another controversial decision he made that put him at sharp odds with the civil rights movement.

In 1990, McCain was one of the deciding votes in helping then-President George H.W. Bush sustain a veto against the relatively benign Civil Rights Act of 1990.

In doing so, the senator found himself at odds with majorities in both chambers of Congress, most senior African Americans within the Bush administration, and the Republican-led U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He also helped Bush became the first president ever to successfully veto a civil rights measure -- Andrew Johnson in 1866 and Ronald Reagan in 1988 both had vetoes overridden.

The act was a response to a series of controversial Supreme Court decisions made the year before. In those decisions, the court overturned a 1971 ruling that required employers to prove a "business necessity" for screening out minorities and women in its hiring practices. That burden of proof, the 1989 court said, should instead be placed on the plaintiff who alleged that his or her client had been unlawfully screened.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate, deeming this unjust, passed bills that would restore the old law. But the Bush administration objected, insisting that a reversion to the old way would amount to forcing employers to have hiring quotas. It was a controversial and somewhat dubious claim, one that the New York Times editorial page called "an unjustified charge." After all, the system had worked fine from 1971 through 1989. Nevertheless, the president vetoed the legislation.

When a motion to override the veto came to the Senate floor, there was question as to whether it would receive the 67 votes needed to pass. The environment was so charged that white supremacist David Duke watched from one section of the Senate gallery while civil rights leader Jesse Jackson stood briefly at the chamber's other end.

Ultimately, the vote fell one short: 66 to 34. Prominent Republican Senators like John H Chaffe, John Danforth, Pete Domenici, and Arlen Specter, all chose to override the veto. McCain - who had earlier voted for a watered down version of the bill, one that didn't reverse the court's decision - backed the president.

Nearly two decades later, and on the verge of the 40th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's landmark 1968 Civil Rights Act, McCain stood by his vote. Asked about the decision this past Sunday, he again repeated that the law amounted to a quota system that he historically has opposed.

"The issue in the early '90s was a little more complicated," he told Fox News Sunday. "I've never believed in quotas, and I don't. There's no doubt about my view on that issue. And that was the implication, at least, of that other vote."

It is, critics say, a shaky defense; one that only a third of the Senate felt comfortable holding on to.

As noted by the Times at the time of the bill's debate, opponents could not produce any evidence that the original ruling in 1971 had led to a rash of quotas. And indeed, as Thomas Homburger of the Anti-Defamation League said at the time: his group historically opposes quotas and the Civil Rights Act of 1990 was "simply not a quota bill."

There are over 300 million people in the United States, and over 150 million registered voters. Your vote isn't going to change anything. One vote out of 150 million never matters. Who you vote for is irrelevant. That is, until you realize that those 150 million registered voters are each individuals and that the collective behavior of the voting populace is determined by individual choices.

Similarly, what you post on a site like TPM doesn't matter. Only a relatively small percentage of the voting populace will read what you have to say, and only a relatively small percentage of the people who <em>do</em> read what you say will have their behavior influenced by it. Except that the collective behavior of all of us, here at TPM and elsewhere at other sites, <em>can</em> have a significant impact on the election. Therefore, we should be careful in what we write and how we write it. Obviously, I'm not going to argue against the use of snark, but I will argue against rudeness. You're much more likely to change someone's mind if you don't insult their mind first.

We've all heard (some) Clinton supporters say they'll vote for McCain if Obama wins the nomination, and we've all heard (some) Obama supporters say they'll vote for McCain if Clinton wins the nomination. Many of those supporters will change their minds once the nomination gets wrapped up and the internecine bitterness has worn off. However, if we're not careful, the best we can hope for is lukewarm support. If we're not careful, we'll lose the benefits that come from excited supporters telling their friends and family why they absolutely <em>need</em> to get out and vote in November. We'll reduce the number of people willing to donate their time and energy to educating the voters and getting out the vote on election day. We need to start treating each other with respect now, so that it'll be easier to get everyone not just behind a single candidate, but <em>eagerly</em> behind a single candidate.

First it was the "typical White person" now its the "small town person". 

Memories of Obama's recent racial stereotype of the 'typical White person' are still fresh.  Add to this now his view of the 'typical small town person.'  Obama is quoted as disparaging residents of small towns in Pennsylvania as being "like a lot of small towns in the Midwest" where "it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

So, how should one interpret this latest disrepecting remark?  Is this intended to gain votes in Pennsylvania?  I doubt it will win him any votes.

Obama is unapologetic in his racism and hate.  Recalling his earlier dissing of voters in Florida and Michigan one has to wonder what groups of Americans he really respects?

Matthew
http://www.TheProblemWithObama.com

They pull you back in...

The Continuing Trials and Travails of Sen. Tuzla

WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago.

Recycling some trash can be hazardous to your health!

   I previously blogged that Senator Clinton's Bosnia tale was a tragic mistake on many levels-- most importantly because of the attempt to cover up the story she had told  at least three times in public as early as Iowa and as recent as in prepared remarks in a St  Patricks day speech--even after reporters and individuals ( ie,Sin bad who was on the trip with Senator Clinton) called into question Senator Clinton's story.  After all , it was not just any story , it was a story designed specifically to show her foreign policy mettle and bonafides.   

Unfortunately, Senator Clinton diminished the recollection of others and tried to obfuscate the truth hoping it would just be one of those-- oh well its to confusing to get your arms around and who's going to believe Sin bad the Obama supporter anyway . This tactic backfired ( although  because it has worked so many other times ie, NAFTA, the campaign must have figured why change now) .

This issue and this time was different. The truth and the often repeated tale told a starkly different story and there was clearly only one truth and it was not Senator Clinton's. The issue was also critical and central to the campaign-- foreign policy experience.

Only after being faced with the undeniable and irrefutable truth did Senator Clinton back off the story, but she did it in a duplicitous manner claiming she was tired an simply misspoke. This was another tale much more damaging than the initial one as the cover up was false. As referenced above and now widely  reported , Senator Clinton had repeated the same story at least three times over several months and failed to retract it despite numerous off the beat media stories and personal challenges to the story.   

President Clinton is a brilliant Politician, he realizes how monumental  a blunder the Bosnia tale story is and yesterday tried to recast it with such a distorted and untruthful manner that it only magnified the sad history of the Bosnia tale. His belief he can talk his or his wifes way out of anything and apparent disdain for the facts probably made him think he could make the tremendously harmful Bosnia debacle a little more muddled and a little better.

It didn't work, what it did was once again show the Clinton's tag team show will say and do anything and won't let facts or others get in the way. 

      

When facing a war hero in a general election who lingered as a prisoner of war for  years in horrid conditions , even if you naively buy the Clinton spin of the story, the fact that Senator Clinton somehow thought she remembered bullets flying at her in Bosnia and mistakenly used the story as a basis to support her foreign policy credentials should be extremely worrisome-- even to the Senators most loyal supporters . This most favorable, albeit unbelievable version of the story, will  in and of itself bury her if she somehow managed to get the nomination. Even the little girl Senator Clinton greeted at the Airport remembers that day and is troubled by the tale.

However, anyone following the story objectively knows the real story is much more harmful and cannot be explained away, not even by the great communicator, President Clinton.    

Only one word can  describe the Clintons and their sad campaign which has badly tarnished Senator Clinton, President Clinton and the Democratic party---- DUPLICITOUS !
    
( As an aside-- I  have voted Democratic my entire life, including 2 times for  President Clinton ( I am 46 ) and write this blog with a heavy heart and concern for the next 8 years)
            

My very first blog post here at TPM was about keeping my eyes on the prize. Namely, I had to come to grips with the fact that, even though my preferred candidate of choice was ahead in every metric, there was still a chance that Hillary Clinton could gain the nomination by convincing the super delegates to endorse her. I stand by my original statement, that even though I find her campaign tactics completely distasteful, I would still vote for her in November, because a  Clinton presidency is still better than a McCain presidency.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are actually incredibly close as far as policy is concerned. Their environmental policies are almost identical, and they both earned a 100% score from Planned Parenthood for their pro-choice voting records (John McCain, on the other hand, received a 0%). While there are some differences, they are still extremely similar on health care, the economy, education, and pretty much every other category.

Which is why it is absolutely confusing to me that Democrats across the nation are now saying they would rather vote for John McCain if their preferred candidate does not get the nomination.

Really? Really?

This tactic of temper tantrum-based revenge voting will only hurt all of us in the long run. Can we afford another Bush-esque presidency because of some disappointment and hurt feelings? Is the person behind the message more important than the message itself?

Would you really want to make a career working behind the counter at McDonald's if you didn't get into your college of choice, instead of choosing another school that is just as good, but different?

Because that's what voting for McCain would entail: at least another four years of crappy work for crappy wages, instead of opportunities to move forward and become better as a nation.

I believe either of the Democratic candidates would give us those opportunities. McCain would just make us stink and wallow in self-loathing.

In a move that's sure to be seen as controversial, Hillary has contacted the NCAA Board of Directors to argue that Memphis is actually better qualified to be National Champion.

Ms. Clinton stated that Memphis, while losing the game, had actually shown more ability to act like a National Champion on Day One. She argued that Memphis had passed every test during the game, including scoring more points than Kansas for 38 minutes. For 38 minutes they had shown the experience necessary to be National Champion. "Just because some team comes along in the last minute and scores more points than the other guy doesn't mean they're necessarily able to be National Champion on Day One."

Ms. Clinton further stated that Memphis should've won the game had Derrick Rose's second half three pointer been allowed to count. Instead, it was ruled a two after review by the officials. His foot was clearly inside the line. Memphis coach John Calipari said he would ask that the rule allowing monitor review of shots be changed after this season. Hillary said she seconded that, and pointed out had Memphis been allowed to count a three that wasn't really a three they would've won. "It doesn't matter what the rules of the game are before it starts. What matters is how we change the rules after the game so we can have the winner we want."

Kansas, for its part, had this to say to Hillary: "Barack Chalk Jayhawk!"

The New York Times has a good article up today about the two prominent camps in conservative foreign policy, the pragmatists and the neocons, and their efforts to exude influence on the Republican nominee.  It sounds like the neocons are winning (who would've guessed?):

But now one component of the fractious Republican party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

The concerns have emerged in the weeks since Mr. McCain became his party’s presumptive nominee and began more formally assembling a list of foreign policy advisers. Among those on the list are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan, an author who helped write much of the foreign policy speech that Mr. McCain delivered in Los Angeles on March 26, in which he described himself as “a realistic idealist.” Others include the security analyst Max Boot and a former United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton.

Bolton was infamous for his complete disdain for the U.N. as an organization; Kagan, of course, was a leading member of the Project for a New American Century, which was basically the incubator for the Iraq mess; and Max Boot has advocated for the use of "American might to promote American ideals," which I'm sure sounds very heroic to him, but which in practice is effectively arguing for imperialism.  So, yeah, I'm hoping there isn't anybody left out there who believes McCain would do anything other than continue the disastrous foreign policy of George W. Bush.  Not just in Iraq, but around the world.

The Times piece also pushes this bit of information out into the larger world:

One of the chief concerns of the pragmatists is that Mr. McCain is susceptible to influence from the neoconservatives because he is not as fully formed on foreign policy as his campaign advisers say he is, and that while he speaks authoritatively, he operates too much off the cuff and has not done the deeper homework required of a presidential candidate.

Despite the media's adoration of John McCain's national security experience, it turns out that he's ill-informed (we all saw the Iran-Al Qaeda clip), and moreover, doesn't even bother to do his homework on the issues of national security.  Hmm... an ill-informed candidate who's overseen by a wide array of neoconservative foreign policy advisers.  This sounds a bit familiar.

--Cross-posted from The Left Anchor

<p>Let me join Alan Viard in beating up on Jared Bernstein for the undefined term "merit" in his first basic principle:</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/07/lets_talk_crunch/#more">TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | Let's Talk "Crunch"</a>: Economic outcomes are generally thought to be fair, in the sense that market forces dole out rewards to those who merit them. But that&rsquo;s not always the case. Power, whether it&rsquo;s based on political clout, wealth, class, race, or gender, is also a key determinant of who gets what.</p></blockquote>
<p>"Merit" can, I think, mean three things:</p>
<ol><li>Marginal productivity--the amount by which, given who you are where you are with the resources you happen to own, total collective product would be reduced if you and your resources were to suddenly vanish from the scene.</li><li>Optimal incentives--because we want people to take local actions that advance our global goals, we have set up a system that provides people in the right place at the right time with the right skills with incentives that give them a better life--or at least more stuff--if they take actions that we regard as adding to the total pie.</li><li>From each according to his or her ability--what each would be able to add to the collective pie if he or she had and is the resources to fully realize his or her potential to the extent that that freedom for the one is compatible with that freedom for others.</li><li>To each according to his or her need--what each of us needs, understanding "need" to include not just bare necessities but also conveniences and luxuries, to the extent that provision of what we need to one is compatible with the provision of what they need to others.</li></ol>
<p>These four definitions of "merit" are very different and have very different implications. By definition #4, an individual with Down syndrome merits a great deal of support and resources. By definitions #1, #2, and #3, such an individual merits zero.</p>
<p>Jared doesn't hold with definition #1 or definition #2--that's the work that the "clout, wealth, class, race, or gender" phrase is doing in the latter part of his definition, to shift us down at least to definition #3. Alan, by contrast, wants to use "merit" as meaning what it means in definition #2--in large part, I think, because the world is not as rich as we would like it to be, and getting incentives right to make the pie bigger seems to him a way more conducive to enhancing social welfare and hence more meritorious than highlighting the gaps between what we each can do and thus get and what we each would get if we had been allowed to develop our ability or get others to recognize our need.</p>
<p>Jared wants to take the word "merit" and use it for definition #3 or #4; Alan wants to take the word "merit" and use it for definition #2 (or #1?). American history and culture is, I think, on Alan's side--though I wish it were otherwise.</p>

I'm a moderate Republican who supports Barack Obama and who has enjoyed reading TPM for the past several months (though this is my first substantive post).

I support Senator Obama for President in large part because I believe that he will be an effective, principled leader. A big factor in my decision has been the consistency and generosity of his message during this campaign. Whether he's up or down in the polls, whether he's being treated fairly or unfairly himself, he has always done his best to stay on his message of hope and reconciliation, and to treat others fairly and with respect.

In my mind, this strategy credibly signals that he wants to win the Presidency to serve America rather than for himself. If he were to attack Senator Clinton more aggressively, or if he were to revise policies that turned out not to be popular, he might increase his chance of winning. However, if he wins HIS way, without attacking a fellow Democrat and without compromising his policy goals, he will be better placed to govern and to push that agenda forward. By contrast, Senator Clinton's strategy shows that she is primarily "in it to win it". And, quite to the contrary of what she claims, I expect her to abandon her policy goals should it turn out that pursuing them might endanger her re-election chances. After all, this is someone who supported Bush's war in part because she felt that the American people would demand that any President be sufficiently hawkish in the war on terror.

In the same way that I appreciate Obama's campaign style, I have enjoyed TPM because, by and large, the bloggers who frequent this site try to be respectful of others' views. This is also a wise approach, if you want to lend credibility to your own views and/or have an impact on this election by influencing voters in the middle like me.

However, as this primary season has dragged on, I have been disappointed to see more and more "repug"nant posts that are dismissive or just hateful of others' views. You should understand that TPM becomes irrelevant as soon as it grows too insular. This morning I read through some of the blog postings on Senator Clinton's campaign site. Self-congratulatory but dismissive of others and their opinions -- with special venom for fellow Democrats who have chosen to support Obama, one woman even speaking poorly about her two sons who had chosen to back Obama -- that website will never convince a single soul to support Hillary Clinton.

TPM has the potential to be different, actually to influence the thinking of swing voters and help the Democratic Party win this Fall. I encourage you to return to the sort of self-monitoring that I saw earlier this year, when Obama's supporters urged each other to attempt to emulate their candidate's grace under fire. Before you post, ask yourself,: WWOW ("What would Obama write?"). He might slam a "repug troll", but he would do so in a way that kept his own dignity intact.