With his speech today ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran, it is
becoming increasingly clear that electing McCain will mean a new war
with Iran.



McCain has offered strong hints of this before.



First, there was his "joke" about the Beach Boys singing "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran".



Then there was his warning that there would "other wars". 



Then he made the "mistake" of saying Iran was training Al Qaeda
fighters.  Just like the "mistake" Bush made in saying Iraq was
training Al Qaeda fighters, I guess.



I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been having disturbing flashbacks
to when Bush and McCain were using the same language to tell us how big
a threat Iraq was. 



This election just became a little more personal for me.  It's not
just about electing a Democrat and ending the Bush
administration.  It's now about preventing a war with Iran as well.

In a speech in Oregon, Hillary tried to get away with a fast one by
saying that she criticized the war in Iraq before Obama did if you only
include the time they were both in the Senate in 2005.



This is a bit of a ridiculous measure since it ignores all the time
since 2002 when Obama was opposing the war in the first place and
Clinton was voting for the IWR.



But just to humor her, Jake Tapper decided to look into it and found
out that her claim was false. Obama had criticized the war before
her.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/in-oregon-clint.html

And whereas he was offering substantive critiques on the very idea of
the war and pushing for clarity on an end to the war, she was simply
critizing the way the war had been conducted and simultaneously
offering supportive statements about the war by saying the insurgency
was failing.



This was a bigger lie than the Bosnia one in my opinion. It is so
obviously false and ridiculous that it almost makes me question if
she's really still in it to win it.

After trailing by 7 in the immediate aftermath of the Wright
controversy, Obama has been surging ever since his historic speech on
race and is now leading up 10 points, his largest lead ever in a
national Gallup poll.



http://www.gallup.com/poll/105841/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Now-52-Clintons-42.aspx



The writing is on the wall for Clinton.  Sure, she can still win
Pennsylvannia, but she's so far behind overall that it won't
matter.  She needs to step aside for the good of her legacy.

This might be the beginning of the unraveling for McCain.  It may sound like something out of the Onion, but it's for real.



http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/mccain-stumbles-on-hiv-prevention/

Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”



    Mr. McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The
guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was
just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to
encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where
that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ
contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is
on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”



    (Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a
moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)



    Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let
me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it
before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”



    Q: “What about grants for sex education in the
United States? Should they include instructions about using
contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just
abstinence?”



    Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”



    Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on
contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop
the spread of HIV?”



    Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”



    Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”



    Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? 
I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out.You know, I’m sure I’ve
taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position
was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

There's no doubt that if Obama or Clinton stumbled so badly on a
question like this, they'd be toast.  I've never seen a candidate
actually say that they need to find out what their position was on the
issue before answering a question.  



While people will inevitably point to his age as the culprit, it's more
than that.  McCain has flip-flopped on these issues so much in an
effort to pander to the religious right that he no longer has any
personal opinions on these matters.  It's all just a bunch of
poll-tested positions designed to court the Republican base while
maintaining a moderate image in the minds of those not paying attention.



And when stumped, McCain simply says that he's sure he agrees with President Bush.  That says it all.



Let's hope the media holds McCain accountable on this for once.

There has been quite a bit of hyperventilating lately about Jeremiah
Wright, the former pastor at Obama's church. The media, led by
Fox News, has been searching through all of Wright's past sermons
to find something potentially controversial. They have found a
sermon he made back in
2003 where he pointed out America's poor record on race relations and
then said "God damn America".

Obama was asked about those words and here was his response:

Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it's important to judge me on what I've said in the past and what I believe.

I love this response. It makes clear that he obviously disagrees
with this sentiment from Wright and wants people to judge him based on
what he personally says, not on what his pastor may have said one time
almost 5 years ago.

Wright is just the latest name on a long list of people the media has
used to attack Obama
with, even when he's strongly denounced their actions or comments. It
started with Rezko, but has continued with the likes of Farrakhan and
Ayers. These are simply people he knew during his time in Chicago who
have had no significant role in his 2008 Presidential campaign. Their
controversial comments and actions all happened in the past, but since
the media can't find anything bad that Obama has said or done
personally, it's really the only thing they have.  While
guilt-by-associateion tactics have been a regular staple of politics,
I've never seen them employed to the extent they have been in this
election.  I'm glad Obama's calling them on it.



In the end, this election is about the candidates, not their supporters.

There's quite a bit of talk about how superdelegates should handle their role in the primary process.



MoveOn is currently circulating a petition that reads
"The Democratic Party must be democratic. The superdelegates should let
the voters decide between Clinton and Obama, then support the people's
choice."

http://pol.moveon.org/superdelegates/



I'm sure this petition will be quite popular. No one, no matter
which candidate they support, wants to see someone nominated who didn't
get the most support from Democratic primary voters. And I
suspect the vast majority of superdelegates do not want to be seen as
the ones
making the decision of who will be our nominee and possibily
overturning the will of the American people.



The big question, however, is what the best measure of the "will of the American people" should be.



One suggestion is that superdelegates vote for whoever their state or
district voted for. This won't work because these districts
will probably be about evenly split meaning that the race will come
down to which superdelegates decide to ignore all that and just vote
for who they like. So you're left with just as much of a mess as
before.



Another idea is to vote for whoever wins the popular vote. This
sounds good in theory, but the problem is that we are unlikely to have
an acutal count of the popular vote due to caucuses not reporting their
raw numbers. So there will be no official popular vote total to
look at.



This leaves us with the idea of voting for whoever wins the most
pledged delegates. It's not perfect, but it's certainly the best
approximation of the will of Democratic primary voters.



Therefore, I would like to see superdelegates promise to support
whoever wins the most pledged delegates. This is a simple
way for superdelegates to avoid creating the kind of divisive
conclusion to this race that will make it difficult for us to unite and
win the Presidency. In the end, that's what all of us care about.