I sincerely hope that John McCain lives a very long life, but like the rest of us, he is subject to the odds associated with a man his age.  According to Vol. 54, No. 14 of the National Vital Statistics Reports available from the CDC at

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_14.pdf

the odds of a 72 year old white male American diying in the next four years are a bit over 16%.  You can calculate this using the table on Page 17.  Just add 1 to each of the probabilities for men from 72-73 through 75-76, take the product of those four numbers, and subtract 1 to get 16.1%.  Invert that percentage and you will see the the odds of VP Palin becoming POTUS Palin are only 1 out of 6.2.

Feeling lucky America?  No worries.  It turns out that the VP is sort of an internship or undergraduate program for one very lucky older student.  Perhaps we should let people compete for it on an American Idol-like program.

Earlier today, I heard Charles Black say that she did not need to know much about foreign affairs initially because she would spend the next four years learning at the feet of the master.  We should probably get a copy of the syllabus so we will all know exactly where she will be in her course of study if he dies before she earns her degree.

For those of you too young to remember the state of relations between Jews and Christians before Pope John explained that it was not Kosher.  Specifically, in the fall of 1965, in the fourth session of Vatican II, the Synod of Bishops finally approved "Nostra Aetate" which absolved living Jews of complicity in any role in Christ's passion.  From the following page in Wikipedia 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council

"True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."[19]

Jews, Catholics and many Protestants born before JFK became President will remember well how this act changed interfaith relations every bit as much as the Civil Rights Act changed racial relations in the US.  People born too late to have experienced that directly may not be familiar with a term well known prior to Vatican II: "Jew Baiting." 

The term may be obsolete, but the action is not, at least in Sarah Palin's Alaska.  On October 23, 2006, while she was running for Governor, the Anchorage Daily News reported that just after her election as Mayor of Wasilla a supportive cable TV broadcast had pronounced her Wasilla's first Christian mayor.  The man she had replaced, John Stein, was not Jewish but as we all know too well from this year's campaign a little guilt by association never hurts in Republican politics.  Here is the link.
http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/story/8334949p-8231037c.html

McCain should be ashamed and the old Jews in Florida who were adults in 1965 should take note.

With McCain getting a bounce from his quick if ill-conceived response to the Russia-Georgie conflict, it is clearer than ever that Obama must pick someone with unquestionable foreign policy credibility.  The reality that the military adventurism of Bush-Cheney-McCain has left us weaker than before 9/11 will not dissuade many independent voters from a knee-jerk conviction that we "need to be tough" on all potential adversaries, especially Russia.  The older voters whose economic circumstances will attract them to the Democrats - the disillusioned Reagan Dems - remember the Soviet Union well and will still feel more comfortable with breast-beating than with negotiation.  To counter that, Obama needs someone who can point out the flaws of McCain's positions with unassailable credibility.  That should defintely disqualify Kaine.  Biden has the credibility but his primary performance raises serious questions about his vote-getting ability.  Bayh may have the intellect, but ... I am falling asleep just thinking about him.  Wes Clark and HRC still seem like better choices that the three whose faces are all over the papers this morning. 

Bayh may be a good fit for a number of reasons, but he is a terrible one for a very important one - the Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, is a Republican and I suspect that the Indiana state legislature is at least partially controlled by the GOP.  If Bayh were elected, I suspect that the GOP would pick up that Senate seat.  With the Supreme Court in the balance, giving up a single Senate seat is a bad idea. 

I have been all over on this.  I have been for Hillary, Jim Webb, and Katherine Sebelius; but I am back to Hillary.  My opposition to Hillary has been based on two issues, widely discussed by many.  First, she is not new.  Second, she has this appendage who used to be President and who does not have a lot of self control.  Well, she is a battle axe.  She is up for the fight.  She is ready to bring it to the other side.  She has her own army to bring to the fight.  Neither Webb nor Sebelius nor any other Democrat has any of that.  She also has a boat anchor for a spouse.  So?  If Barack is going to be POTUS, he needs to be tough enough to handle whatever comes his way. Putin/Medvedev.  Ahmadinejad.  Chavez.  Mugabe,  Kim Jong Il, etc.  I think he can handle Bill.  Better to show it up front.  Bill will be there no matter what if Barack wins.  Bite the bulet now, and reap the benefits of a powerful ally.  Obama-Clinton 2008!  Yes We Can! 

I have gone back and forth for the last few weeks over the best choice Obama can make for VP.  I have gone from Richardson to Clark to Webb to Clinton and back to Webb.  After spending two days on the ground in South Dakota I have concluded that none of those is right.  We need a woman on the ticket and not one whom half the country despises.  First, why not one of the others and then why a woman.
John McCain has made it clear that his campaign will be about the primary importance of maintaining our unilateral military approach to all issues connected in any way Moslems who do not like us.  He would like nothing better than to see Obama select a candidate with strong military credentials.  That would allow him to set the agenda for the campaign.  We will not win on a Republican-lite platform.  So skip Webb, Clark, Biden, etc.
Richardson alone will not solve the Hispanic problem.  The GOP position on immigration should be enough to do that anyway.
So why a woman.  Woman vote Democratic by better than 55-45.    WOMEN ARE THE BASE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!  Americans want to solve our problems at home.  A competent woman serves two purposes.  Ascending to the Vice Presidency does break a major glass ceiling, albeit not the ultimate one.  She also reminds everyone that our priorities are the ones that improve life for all Americans.  McCaskill, Sebelius, Napolitano, Feinstein, Murray, Gregoire, Klobuchar could all work.  He should choose whichever one shows best.    

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire (now Congo) in the 1970s, I noticed that kids picked mangos before they ripened.  Mangos do not ripen well off the branch so this amounted to wasting them.  When I asked the kids why they did this, they said, that "if they didn't, someone else would."

I heard a similar story on XM Radio channel 130's Beyond the Beltway show on Sunday night.  A Hispanic American woman from Texas who had just returned from a long trip to PA and IN where she worked for Hillary, said that she could not possibly support Obama and that she would launch a Latinas for McCain group if Obama became the Democratic nominee.  When asked why, she did not hesitate to say that "If he won, then Hispanics would be on the bottom".  Prodded on by the panel that included a supporter of each candidate including McCain, she added that "they don't want to work".

Obviously this is just one ignorant voice, but in looking at the likely outcome in West Virginia today and Kentucky next week, it is pretty demoralizing.  Republicans have little to worry about as long as they can rely on working class Americans to value ethnicity over economics.

I post this not to demoralize any Obama supporters - I am one - but to remind everyone that we have an even steeper mountain to climb in the general election than we have had in these primaries.  We still have a lot of hearts and minds to reach before November.  We must waste no time in doing so.

(I am reentering this by typing it because my previous cut and paste jobs from Word appeard to have failed)

The subliminal message of Hillary Clinton's rearguard effort to claim the Democratic nomination is clearly that America is not ready to elect a black President, especially not one with such a funny name.  It would be naive to reject her point, however foul-smelling it may be, without examining it objectively.

First, she may be right.  To win, Democrats do need to carry all of the northeastern states in November.  It is in precisely these states that Obama has struggled to capture the votes of non-college educated white working class voters.  Without them, he could lose some of these states, especially if McCain selects a moderate running mate.  Some percentage of voters everywhere will vote for McCain over Obama simply because of race but it will matter most in the Democratic heartland.  Losing in this of all years would be a tragedy, but much more so if it occurs because of an inability to bridge our racial divide.  Because of this, I am sure that some folks in the Clinton camp feel like those of us willing to bet on Obama anyway are shooting the messenger when we reject her argument.

More optimistically, she may be wrong - not because we have achieved a level of racial harmony that makes this a non-issue, but because we may still be able to gather up enough votes despite the race issue to win this thing.  Since we will only know the truth in November, when it is too late to fix it, what is the right thing to do now?  I imagine that this is the question tormenting many of the still undecided superdelegates.

The essence of this question is whether the white Democratic voters for whom Obama's race is an issue will vote their economic interests or their prejudices.  While this is not the first time that voters have faced this choice, there is an almost biblical irony in this iteration.  The image of an African-American President leading the restoration of respect for the Constitution, and signing healthcare and other socio-economic legislation that revives opportunity for American workers staggers the imagination.

How each delegate decides to vote says more about whether each of them is naturally optimistic or pessimistic about human nature than it does about any objective analysis one can make.  Pessimists will lean toward Hillary, optimist for Obama.  For anyone stil incapable of making a decision, I recommend looking for clarity in the one true American religion - BASEBALL!

Take out a DVD of Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams and reverse the racial roles of Costner and James Earl Jones.  Jones' character, Terrence Mann, is an angry black writer (think Jeremiah Wright) whose anger almost keeps him from following Costner's character Ray from his (Mann's) gritty black neighborhood in Boston to pristine Iowa where he obtains the redemption he seeks and needs.  The irony of finding it in the home of a white farmer in Iowa is the mirror image of the opportunity before the voters whom Hillary fears will never vote for Obama no matter how great their economic pain may be.  As the voice from the cornfield says to Ray (in Ray's case it is about his father) throughout the film, "ease his pain, go the distance".  Working class Americans of all races whose lives have been shattered by GOP economics are looking to the next administration to ease some of their pain.  The white ones troubled by Obama's ethnicity must decide if they can follow an African-American from the South Side of Chicago to ease their own pain.  If enough of them can, we will go the distance.

 

The subliminal message of Hillary Clinton's rearguard effort to claim the Democratic nomination is clearly that

The subliminal message of Hillary Clinton's rearguard effort to claim the Democratic nomination is clearly that