Score Another for Obama

Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton 55-27 in the South Carolina primary today. Congratulations to him for the big win. I believe that just leaves Florida before the big Feb. 5 primaries with Obama winning Iowa and South Carolina and Hillary taking New Hampshire and Nevada.

Thankfully, the Democratic primary battle has gotten a lot tougher over the last two weeks. I think it's very fruitful and that the South Carolina primary was especially fruitful.

Ultimately, that's because Hillary Clinton's campaign went in and fought Barack Obama for the black voters who were 50% of the total Democratic vote in South Carolina. It was important for Hillary Clinton's campaign, the Democratic Party, and race relations in America that Hillary did her best to appeal to black voters in South Carolina over the last several months.

The Hillary Clinton campaign had a particularly difficult needle to thread in appealing to black voters. They needed to criticize Barack Obama without sounding "racial" and didn't do a particular good job of balancing the two goals. Hillary's own comment about the need for Lyndon Johnson to get civil rights legislation passed was poorly considered because she didn't guard against the likelihood that any reflection on the limits of MLK would be considered racist. Bill Clinton did even more poorly. His idea that Obama's anti-war stance has been "pure fantasy" was a mis-representation of Obama's position and his comment today about Obama and Jesse Jackson certainly sounds like he's treating Obama as the "black candidate."

Another reporter asked what it said about Obama that it “took two people to beat him.” Clinton again passed. “That’s’ just bait, too. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign. Senator Obama's run a good campaign here, he’s run a good campaign everywhere.”

The reference to Jackson seemed a way to downplay today's result in a state where a majority of voters are African American. Clinton was also asked today about charges of race baiting, and defended himself by citing testimony from John Lewis and Andrew Young, who marched with Martin Luther King. "I don't have to defend myself on civil rights," he said.

In a way, it sounds like Clinton was just returning fire in an "if you bait Hillary about me, I'm going to bait you about Jesse Jackson" kind of way. But it doesn't matter. It's much worse to pin "being black" on Obama's shoulders than it is to pin "married to Bill" on Hillary's. Bill Clinton has emerged as the major attack dog in the Hillary campaign. However, Hillary should find somebody else to do her (necessary) dirty work if Bill doesn't have enough discretion to do the job.

Still, the fact that Hillary Clinton made herself accountable to black voters while running against a black candidate was a big advance in the politics of race and she deserves credit for it.

Dear Hillary: Tell Liberal Whiners to Stick It!

Today is as embarrassing a day as I've ever had being on the liberal-left. All I saw was pathetic whining about Hillary and Bill Clinton being so tough on poor Barack Obama. It was so bad that even Obama got tired of it.

1. E. J. Dionne Hand-Wringing. I'm not sure whether Talking Points Memo or E. J. Dionne is worse. But here's Dionne bleating in the Washington Post about Bill Clinton:

Let's further stipulate that Obama's formulation -- he said Reagan "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not" -- was guaranteed to enrage the former president. In Democratic circles, associating someone with Nixon is akin to a Roman comparing an emperor
with Caligula.

None of it justifies the counterproductive behavior. Does anyone doubt that if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, she will need the votes of the young people and African-Americans who have rallied to Obama -- and that what she's doing now will make it harder to energize them? Doesn't calling in Bill Clinton as the lead attacker merely underscore Obama's central theme, that it's time to "turn the page" on our Bush-Clinton-Bush political past?

What the hell does Dionne want? Obama took a sneaky shot at Bill Clinton's presidency by saying that Ronald Reagan had more significant ideas and that the Clinton administration was more like the Nixon White House in not really changing the conversation.

What was the Clinton campaign supposed to do--just take it? That wouldn't make her look very strong would it? If fact, favorably comparing Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton during the heat of the 2008 Democratic primary was a dumb thing for Obama to do. Bill Clinton is still popular with Democrats while Ronald Reagan looks even worse over time because many of Reagan's excesses are being pursued in an even more determined way by George Bush.

Much like Hillary's awkward MLK comment left her open to lots of criticism, Obama's Reagan comment practically invited an energetic counter-attack from Hillary Clinton and her N0. 1 surrogate. She delivered first, then Bill piled on. Both of them would have been stupid to ignore the opportunity.

Dionne emphasizes that Clinton himself said favorable things about Reagan in 1991 as a way to get beyond the "brain-dead partisanship" of the 80's. But times have changed. Partisan lines have become a lot harder as the Republicans have become the party of endless war, determined waterboarding, privatizing social security, gay bashing, and SwiftBoating. By the time Bill Clinton ended his two terms as president, he understood that the only way to combat Republican hyper-partisanship was for the Democrats to become much more partisan themselves. The fact that Obama doesn't understand this is the main reason why he shouldn't be nominated for the presidency.

Dionne gets the point precisely wrong. Bill Clinton learned the partisan lessons of the 1990's. To the extent that Obama still believes he can transcend partisanship, he is very far behind the times.

In other words, Hillary should tell Dionne to stick it.

2. I usually have a lot of respect for Talking Points Memo, but they've lost their way in relation to Bill Clinton. Last Sunday, editor-in-chief Josh Marshall wrote about how disturbed he was by the aggressiveness of Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama:

Yesterday I wrote that I was troubled by the intensity of Bill Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama. A number of readers thought I meant that I didn't like seeing bare-knuckle politics. But that's not it. What troubles me is seeing the man who is in many
respects still the de facto leader of the Democratic party, certainly its elder statesman, inject himself as an attack dog into a intra-party contest. I think it's damaging to him and more importantly I think it's damaging to his party.

I've been more troubled that Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama have sometimes been undisciplined and ineffective. What exactly does being "the de facto leader of the Democratic party" actually mean in terms of Bill Clinton's role in the party. Precisely nothing. Until the primary season started in earnest, the most important leader of the Democratic Party was Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. To be de facto leader, you have to be in the center of the action, and Bill Clinton stopped being near the center until after Hillary's Iowa defeat.

To go to the deeper political point, why shouldn't Bill Clinton campaign hard for Hillary. She campaigned hard for him when he ran and Michelle Obama is certainly doing everything she can for her spouse. The main difference is that Bill Clinton is a superb politician who can accomplish a lot more politically for his spouse than Michelle Obama can for hers. Far from making the Democratic Party weaker, I'm somewhat reassured that Bill Clinton will be an aggressive surrogate for Hillary during the general election and during a Hillary administration. That's what Democratic presidents need, surrogates who are just as aggressive as the Republicans attacking them.

Hillary should tell Josh Marshall to stick it too.

Approaching the River of Comfort (Food)

Well, Mrs. RSI and I took a trip out to her school to use her "official" Red State Impressions diet scale and I weighed in at 220 3/4 which is a 4 1/2 pound weight loss over the last six days.

Overall, I've lost 22-23 pounds over the last three weeks and I'm approaching the "River of Comfort" where eating enormous amounts of "comfort food" led to my initial big weight gain from 190 to 220.

I thought I would look different with a twenty pound weight loss, but I really don't. My clothes don't fit any differently either.

And none of my friends or colleagues at the office has noticed.

Of course, maybe they'd notice more if I didn't complain all the time about being hungry and irritable.

Just a possibility.

How the Protein Wisdom Gang Blasts Out the Bigotry

Once again, I have to thank the Protein Wisdom gang for showing me the ways of right-wing bigotry. In this case, I owe a debt of gratitude to "B Moe" who's been replying to some of my posts at RSI over the last week.

B Moe picked up on a positive reference I made to Hillary's looks and re-posted it over at PW Pub with an expression of amazement that I would refer to Hillary's looks in a positive way. B Moe and other commenters in the Protein Wisdom community were amazed that I wasn't going along with the Hillary-hating stereotype that Hillary is an "ugly bitch."

When I persevered and replied that Hillary was an attractive woman who was certainly a hell of a lot better looking at 60 than Fred Thompson was at 65, I got this reply from B Moe.

You know, that is some affirmative action I could definitely get behind. Let's get the government to supply all old women with the same plastic surgeons, hair dyers and stylists, and make-up and botox artists Hillary has got. I am tired of fucking ugly, wrinkled, grey-haired old women.

/irony

In a lot of ways, this is a typical bit of misogyny. B Moe is implying Hillary who appears before the cameras might be an attractive woman (without actually conceding the point) but only because she's hiding or making over the really ugly woman under the plastic surgery, hair workers, and face artists who work on her. Of course, B Moe has no evidence of either plastic surgery or botox or that she's doing anything more with her hair than most professional women (and a lot of professional guys). But given that right-wing hatred of Hillary is based on faith rather than evidence, that's hardly surprising.

What makes B Moe's comment on all women of age 60 or so are ugly, decaying, and repulsive. He also puts in a little ambiguity with the word "fucking." In one way, it looks like B Moe is tired of older women who are "fucking ugly" and is using the term "fucking" as a way to heighten and the sexual repulsiveness he attributes to older women. But he could also be interpreted as saying that he is "tired of fucking ugly wrinkled grey-haired old women" in the sense that he's tired of having sex with these kinds of women.

Either way, he's being typically misogynistic in portraying older women as repulsive. Of course, beneath the surface of that repulsion is the suspicion that any woman would be repulsive if they weren't "beautiful" according to his personal criteria. For B Moe, it takes a special kind of woman for her to not be repulsive and therefore hated.

Another interesting aspect of B Moe's comment is that he writes "irony" underneath. I take this to mean that B Moe is claiming that he is being "ironical" here and that the bigotry in his words does not reflect any real bigotry of character. As with a lot of right-wing racists, homophobes, and misogynists, B Moe is trying to give himself a "plausible deniability" that allows him to say bigoted thing while dodging accusations that he means it.

But using the term "irony" in this way seems to have special valence for the bigots at Protein Wisdom. They seem to think that referring to their statements as ironical gives them a license to blast out their bigotry in harder, cruder terms than might otherwise be the case. Their pretensions to pseudo-intellectualistic irony seem to incite them to higher levels of public bigotry.

Maybe that's something Protein Wisdom could contribute to right-wing discourse. People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are always looking for new ways to formulate their own bigotries. Maybe they should look at Protein Wisdom.

Notes on the Democratic Campaign Trail

Robert Novak views Hillary Clinton as having an advantage over Obama leading into the Feb. 5 deluge of 22 or 23 primaries, but also sees that advantage as being unstable. That's about right.

There's some talk today about Barak Obama and affirmative action. Sunday on ABC, Obama stated that his own kids are so incredibly advantaged that he does not believe they need further assistance from affirmative action to get into Harvard. No big issue there. For the record, I'm a strong supporter of affirmative action for African-Americans and would like to see more of it in business and government as well as academics. I'd also like to see more affirmative action for women, Appalachians, and poor people. One of the things I've learned at Morehead State is just how talented people in impoverished areas are. Not being born into privilege like George Bush, they should start getting extra legs up as they begin their college education and professional lives. That would go a long way toward equalizing equal opportunity.

Hillary's Looks. A comment I made on Bill and Hillary's looks drew some sneers at Protein Wisdom. Given the misogynistic weeniness that's so pervasive on the right, it's hard to take anything they say about any woman very seriously. But, Hillary Clinton is a pretty attractive 60 year old woman. She's certainly a hell of a lot better looking as a 60 year old woman than Fred Thompson is as a 65 year old guy.

Hillary Smearing. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, there's going to be lots of smear campaigns. That point was brought home today when legendary Republican smear artist Roger Stone announced a 527 group entitled "Citizens United Not Timid" devoted to attacking Hillary Clinton. I'm sure everybody understands the misogynistic slur intended there by Stone, but my guess is that this kind of bigotry will move a lot of women to support Hillary as a way to stand up for gender. Maybe Stone should crawl back under his rock.

The Sky is (Almost) Falling

U. S. News and World Report has a brief note that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (Yes, Alan Greenspan finally retired from that job) is pretty pessimistic about the prospects for the American economy in 2008.

One of the things that bothers me about the American economy is that corporate officers and investors seem to have little toleration for anything but robber baron profits even though relatively few opportunities for really high profits have emerged since the dot-com bust of 2000.

That's one of the reasons why the sub-prime mortage scam looked promising to companies like Merrill-Lynch and Citicorp. It looked like an easy way to make high margins at a time when opportunities for high margins have been scarce.

Bernanke is gloomy about recovery from the forthcoming recession because he believes that the problems of the housing market will keep cutting into overall consumer spending. But I wonder how well investors are going to be able to adjust to a more difficult investment climate with lower returns all around.

What Happened to Fred?

Well, Fred Thompson's the first of the "name" candidates to bite the dust. Frankly, I'm surprised! I mean, don't an original vision for the country, sparkling resume, boundless energy, ageless charisma, relentless work ethic, and competitive spirit mean anything in this country?

All joking aside, I thought Thompson had a plausible scenario for winning the nomination. He could have kept after Huckabee until the Huckabee's campaign collapsed and then faced off with the winner between McCain and Romney.

He would have stood a decent chance there.

But I don't think Fred was interested unless it was a sure thing.

Good News for Hillary: Obama Goes After Bill

I'm not a big fan of Bill Clinton's involvement in Hillary's campaign. Obviously, the former president is still popular with most Democrats, helps raise the big bucks, and has a lot of oratorical skills. But Bill Clinton's time has passed. Since his heart attack, he looks awful--like a former playboy who's lucky to be married to someone as good-looking as Hillary. Likewise, his undisciplined, shoot from the hip style is all too often a distraction to Hillary's campaign. Frankly, I thought his reference to Obama's anti-war record as a "fairy tale" was an embarrassment.

Along that line, I'm glad to see that Obama is going to call Bill out about his inaccurate statements. From Drudge (via Kos diarist Poblano)

EXCLUSIVE: OBAMA RIPS INTO BILL CLINTON MONDAY DURING ABC INTERVIEW WITH 'GOOD MORNING AMERICA' HOST ROBIN ROBERTS... SAYS HE FEELS LIKE HE RUNNING AGAINST BOTH CLINTONS... Bill 'has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling. He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts. Whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas. This has become a habit and one of the things that we're gonnna have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate'... DEVELOPING....

I don't think confronting Bill Clinton is going to help Obama much. It's too much "insider politics" between the heavyweights for anyone but political junkies to care.

But it might do Hillary some good. Perhaps Bill will start watching what he says before he becomes even less of an advantage to Hillary than he is now.

In general, I don't think that either Hillary or Obama has a clear edge. Hillary does better among older voters, women, whites, Hispanics, and relatively poorer Democrats; Obama among younger voters, men, and the more prosperous. In general (South Carolina being an exception), there are larger numbers of Democrats in the Hillary categories. Hillary is also positioned to do well in big states like Florida, New York, and California.

But none of this is very solid and the picture is actually more clear with the Republicans. It's easy to imagine Hillary's position weakening if she has another debate flub or if Obama finds another compelling line of attack. Hillary's campaign can't rely on their New Hampshire/Iowa strategies to hold the line in Florida and the Feb.5 states. She needs to come up with compelling themes of her own if she wants to cash in on her fragile advantage. One thing she could do is seek to cash in on her baby boomer heritage and emphasize that one of the differences between her and Obama is that she played an active role in the last big effort of young people to change the world while Obama grew up in more cautious and conservative times. Perhaps, she's the better person to push for big change than Obama.

The Benefits of the Hillary/Obama Battle

At the end of the day, either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee for President. My preference is Hillary Clinton. I think she'll make a very good president and I also believe she's going to win the nomination in a tough battle with Obama.
But I've always wanted the battle more than I've wanted a Hillary win. Whoever wins between Hillary and Obama, I've believed that having a tough primary fight would make the winner a stronger candidate against the Republicans.

Now that it looks like Hillary and Obama are going to have two victories apiece after Obama wins South Carolina, it's possible to see the real benefits of having to fight it out.

Most importantly, the Democratic contenders are both forging identities as presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton is becoming much less the "former first lady" and much more "Hillary" the exultant winner in New Hampshire and Nevada and the disappointed loser in Iowa. What is defining Hillary as "the candidate" is the ferocity of the battle with Obama. The fact that Hillary has to compete, and compete hard, against Barack Obama means that she's being measured more by who she is and what she does as a presidential candidate. Of course, Hillary still is the "former first lady," wife of Bill Clinton, senator, mother, lawyer, etc. However, as she goes from primary to primary, her identity as a presidential candidate is being magnified and reinforced. In the process, she's gaining stature and gravitas and making herself more plausible as a future president. As has been the case with her other trials by fire, Hillary Clinton is growing as a result of the pressure.

And she has Barack Obama to thank for that.

The same thing is happening with Obama. Three primaries into the nominating campaign and Obama is looking like a lot more than a good-looking guy and charismatic speaker who was right on Iraq. Obama has turned out to be a long-distance runner who can handle the "vision thing" and fight it out in the state-to-state, day-to-day, and news-cycle to news-cycle of presidential campaigning. The presidency is non-stop trench warfare and months of fighting it out with Hillary has shown that Obama can handle the pressure. I've always thought well of Obama and feel even better about him now that he's shown his chops in the presidential arena.

And he has Hillary to thank for that.

Hopefully, the competition will also give the Hillary and Obama campaigns an idea of what themes work and what don't. Hillary's MLK v LBJ idea was as weak a political jab as you can get and I imagine her people now have a better idea of why it's not good to put that kind of weak stuff out there. The same thing with Obama and Ronald Reagan comment. Given that they're both getting hammered whenever they put out weak ideas, I expect that the Hillary and Obama campaigns will do better in the future.

The competititon for the Democratic nomination is great and both candidates are showing a lot of tenacity. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are pulling each other up as presidential candidates.

Ol' Unreliable

One of the oddities of dieting is my extremely unreliable bathroom scale. It never works when I start it on zero. But I'm not entirely sure when it's initially set between 8 and 14 either. As a result, determining my weight on that scale is more art than science. This morning I weighed a shade over 221 on "Ol Unreliable." That puts my weight loss at about 22 pounds over two weeks. Of course, I could have lost less . . . or more!

Anyway, the dieting is going well. Actually, I've been able to do without the little mid-morning vegetable snacks. So, I'm actually eating somewhat less this week than I did last week. I'm also doing better with my exercise. Where I was struggling to get to one minute on the exercise bike, I'm now doing a comfortable 10 minutes and expect to get up to 20 soon.

I'm also proud to say that I made it through a week of classes without a candy bar.

But I do have a big and dangerous problem. I still haven't figured out how to get to bed before midnight. That means I'm still only getting 6 1/2 hours of sleep at night and I'm very much in danger of falling back into my sweet habit as long as I don't start getting to bed earlier.

Mapping the Republicans

Contrary to John Dickinson of Slate, I think it's easier to make sense of the Republican primaries now that Romney's won in Michigan. Here's a quick take of all the major and formerly major candidates.

At Death's Door--Thompson and Giuliani. The McCain, Romney, and Huckabee campaigns have all been at the revolving death's door at some point in the last year. Now Giuliani and Thompson are taking their turns.

It's an interesting contrast. In my opinion, Giuliani was waging a skilled front-runner campaign before it became public that New York City provided police protection for Judi Nathan while she was his mistress. Now Giuliani looks kind of ridiculous, but that doesn't mean that his candidacy will actually die. Rudy could decide to stay in on the hope that he'll recapture his mojo.

Thompson's at death's door precisely because he himself refused to take himself or his presidential campaign seriously. Thompson had a real chance to emerge as a popular Southern conservative alternative to Rudy McRomney, but he didn't want the presidency badly enough to make a determined effort. Thompson seemed to decide that he didn't want his campaign to have a theatrical element, refused to be anything but what he wanted to be, and revolted at the demands for "acting" that are part of any serious presidential campaign.

Actually, I can sympathize with that on a human level. I don't like "acting" like I'm glad to do what the university bureaucracy wants me to do and that's why I'm not a department-chair type. In the case of Thompson, the political result of his decision-making is that Mike Huckabee has become the popular conservative.

But it's still not clear that Thompson will end up flatlining either. He could hang around hoping for Huckabee's campaign to collapse and then try again to be the popular conservative.

The Fight for Anti-Huckabee No 1--John McCain and Mitt Romney are battling to become the no. 1 candidate of the Republican establishment. Both of them have real weaknesses that already have brought their candidacies to death's door once. McCain is genuinely popular with moderates, independents, and many liberals, but his maverick streak on taxes, lobbying reform, campaign finance, tobacco, and immigration policy makes him anathema to conservative activists and voters. Romney is running as a more orthodox "Reagan" conservative, but he's completely failed to project any of the "honest phony" authenticity of Reagan turns off all kinds of voters. If there is a clear winner between McCain and Romney, that candidate will become the "anti-Huckabee" candidate and will be the favorite for the nomination. I've previously viewed Romney as a slight favorite. I'm now viewing McCain as a favorite because of the big states coming up on Feb. 5 and the increasing numbers of moderate and independent Republicans in those states.

Muddle Scenarios. If there is no clear winner between McCain and Romney, that's when scenarios for a thoroughly muddled nomination process and possible contested convention become plausible. If McCain and Romney are roughly equal, Huckabee will be roughly equal to both of them and nobody will be getting a decided advantage. That kind of stalemate will also encourage Giuliani and Thompson to keep hanging around, perhaps steal a primary here or there, and hope that lightning strikes. That would be five candidates with real hopes. That would be a muddle.

The Huckabee Conundrum. There are two possible Huckabee scenarios. The positive scenario would be that Huckabee becomes the favorite son of the South and monopolizes the evangelical vote. That would give Huckabee a strong enough regional base and enough of a national presence to have a real shot at the nomination if there is no clear leader between McCain and Romney. If a leading establishment candidate emerges, that candidate would be the leader and Huckabee would be candidate 1A. If no establishment emerges, Huckabee has a shot at no. 1.

But it's just as likely that Huckabee's candidacy will fall apart. Huckabee has a lot of skeletons in his closet, commits an even bigger number of gaffes, and apparently has an army of unsavory push-polling supporters. As a result, any number of things could reveal Huckabee's whole candidacy as a house of cards and tip him into the "ridiculous" category currently occupied by Rudy Giuliani.

If Huck does fall apart, I think it will be easier for a real leader to emerge between McCain and Romney. That would make the whole process smoother for the GOP even if it leaves a lot of dissatisfied evangelicals (and Southerners).

The Outlook. The two main questions that need to be resolved for the Republicans are who emerges between McCain and Romney and whether Huckabee remains a viable evangelical/ regional candidate. McCain looks like the strongest Republican right now but not by that much. He's averaging 28% in the polls and I view him as having about that much of a chance for the nomination. Romney would be the second pick because he would emerge as the strongest candidate as soon as McCain weakened. That puts Huckabee in the top 2 but likely to stay number 2 even if he can avoid a meltdown.

Huckabee: Seeking to Become Third Confederate President

Today, a pro-Confederate flag group in South Carolina ran an ad praising Mike Huckabee's positive attitude toward the Confederate flag. South Carolina has a lot of neo-Confederate groups and the ad will probably be marginally helpful to Huckabee in the state.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ad were not marginally helpful to Obama as well. Hey! Denouncing the Confederate flag could be a pandering opportunity for both Obama and Hillary. A noble pandering opportunity if there ever was one.

Let's see, Huckabee's come out against evolution, against gay rights, for a Biblically-based Constitution, and for the Confederate flag. Next, he'll probably be saying that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were mistakes.

Which brings me to my point.

Huckabee's campaign is shaping up in a way that would make him the third Confederate president if he were elected. Of course, the first Confederate president was Jefferson Davis and he presided over the loss of the Civil War and the destuction of Confederate institutions.

But Trent Lott hasn't been the only politician channeling Jefferson Davis and the spirit of the Confederacy into contemporary American political institutions.

The second Confederate president is obviously George Bush, whose juvenile focus on proving his manhood, insistence on favoring his "gut" over evidence and expertise, and crackpot visions of establishing global empire recall many of the worst faults of white Southerners during the Confederate period.

Fortunately, it looks like Bush won't be quite as successful in destroying American political institutions as he was in bankrupting his oil businesses.

But the Confederacy now appears to live on in the person of Mike Huckabee. If Huckabee emerges as the favorite son candidate for the Old Confederacy and the Bible Belt, he'll be conducting another major Confederate campaign for the presidency. If he wins, he'll be the third Confederate president overall and second in the White House.

The Constitution According to Huckabee's God

Today, Mike Huckabee came out in favor of amending the Constitution in the name of God's standards.

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Although I'm not a Christian myself, I think this is an extremely exciting idea. Of course, neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament define any principles or standards in relation to abortion or gay marriage. So, there's no need to change the Constitution in relation to those issues.

But the New Testament god does define a couple of standards that would make it necessary for the United States to dramatically change its Constitution.

Standard 1: Self Defense. "But I say unto you that ye resist not evil" (Matthew 5:39)--What standard in the New Testament is enunciated more clearly than this global imperative AGAINST self-defense? Jesus explains the implications of this imperative in some detail in his examples of "turning the other cheek" and actually giving those who would coerce us more than they ask for. That's why it is obvious that a Constitution that was written according to "God's Standard" would mandate against having any military establishment, any kind of police force, or any kinds of prisons. So what if our foreign enemies and domestic criminals attacked us. Jesus seems to believe that suffering makes human beings closer to God. So he wouldn't mind at all.

Standard 2: Wealth. Jesus also makes several clear statements condemning wealth. Take "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" for example. That's as clear principle that human beings should not engage in the accumulation of wealth and should probably give away any wealth they inherit. Once again, Jesus provides lots of examples lto illustrate the point. There's the rich young man with no more chance to get into heaven than a camel going through the eye of a needle, the wealthy farmer who was killed for reveling in the idea of building a new barn, or the rich man who was condemned to hell while Lazarus was taken up to heaven for no better reason than being exceedingly poor. In case, readers don't get the message from these examples, Jesus exclaims "woe unto you that are rich" in Luke 6: 24.

To bring the American Constitution up to God's Standard on wealth, the Constitution would have to be changed to mandate that wealthy Americans would have to surrender their property to the poor. Just to be safe, the Constitution should go further an have Americans disperse their wealth to poor people all around the world. Perhaps we could cal that the Global Redistribution Amendment. If wealth takes us far from God, then giving away our wealth and making ourself poor would bring us closer to God.

Perhaps we could get a Christian commentator like Ann Coulter to draw up the amendments.

Hillary: The White Woman's Burden

It looks like Barack Obama is declaring an end to the racial sniping between Hillary's campaign and himself.

"I don't think it was in any way a racial comment," Obama told ABC News.
"That's something that has played out in the press. That's not my view."

But, he said, the comment was revealing about her political character.
"I do think it was indicative of the perspective that she brings, which is that
what happens in Washington is more important than what happens outside of
Washington," he said.

He said he believes the quote betrays a belief on her part, "that the
intricacies of the legislative process were somehow more significant than when
ordinary people rise up and march and go to jail and fight for justice."

He called that a "fundamental difference" between them.

Too bad! I wish the sniping had gone on for a couple of more permutations. There's been a lot of worry about the mutual criticism "tearing the Democratic Party" apart or throwing the election to the Republicans.

But I believe that the racial dimension of the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama creates significant opportunities for us to change "the political conversation" in this country.

Where are those opportunities? The first opportunity is created by Barack Obama himself. Conservative commentators like William Bennett and Jim Sleeper view Obama as "transcending race." What country does Bennett really live in? It's much more fruitful that Obama is a specific African-American man and that the media and voters have to deal with him as a particular black person running for president rather than as a symbol of racial transcendence or example of racial stereotypek. Obama does a great job of breaking through the dichotomy of symbol and stereotype that dominates the public representation of African-Americans. That in itself is changing the political conversation about race and politics.

But Hillary Clinton is also moving the conversation forward. The most fruitful thing that Sen. Clinton has done is to decide to fight Obama for black votes. The Clintons have an interesting history with black voters. Bill Clinton tried to show his distance from the black community by publicly criticizing Sister Souljah for remarks of hers. During the impeachment scandal, however, black voters identified strongly with Bill Clinton as someone they felt was persecuted and Bill Clinton has been very popular in the black community ever since. Hillary Clinton started her campaign for black votes from that positive point. However, it's more important that she's not been willing to cede the black vote to Obama in terms of a politics of black identity. Instead, Hillary has been willing to round up black endorsements, visit areas where African-Americans are concentrated, and campaign for black votes in a way that no other white Democrat has been willing to do.

Unable to take African-American votes for granted herself, she's not been willing to let Obama take African-American votes for granted either. As a result, there's a lot of talk about black institutions like beauty parlors, a number of African-American voters being interviewed, and a great deal of discussion about the African-American vote. By acting in a way that got African-Americans more thoroughly integrated into the political conversation, Hillary Clinton advanced the political conversation in this country a great deal.

She's also advanced the political conversation by being willing to attack Barack Obama in the same way that she would attack any other major opponent. And she's been willing to do so by talking about an icon like Martin Luther King.

Hillary's White Woman's Burden. But this is where the conversation could be advanced still further. Hillary's comments about King were pretty inept and the comments of Hillary surrogates Bill Clinton, Billy Shaheen, and Andrew Cuomo have been even more ham-handed and stereotyping. This is where the legacy of whiteness is hurting Hillary Clinton. Having lived in all kinds of communities, Barack Obama has developed such good skills at talking to white people that he's answers the concerns of white constituencies like independents and moderates better than any of the white politicians. Hillary Clinton doesn't have this advantage. Although her political staff is integrated (and that's a good thing), Hillary Clinton has lived her life in overwhelmingly white settings with token black involvement at best. Although Hillary deserves credit for engaging the black community, she can't do so with nearly the skill that Barack Obama engages white communities.

For Hillary Clinton, her "white woman's burden" is that she doesn't have the skills to either represent herself effectively in black communities or criticize Obama in ways that black voters find legitimate or effective. Because such racial isolation is overwhelmingly the case with Hillary's white Democratic surrogates, she finds herself embarrassed by their statements as well. In other words, Hillary's white woman's burden also includes the awkwardness of other white politicians in addressing racial matters or the black community.

In other words, Hillary Clinton's whiteness puts her at a disadvantage with Obama. Where a black veteran of integration like Obama can be comfortable working with both black and white communities, a more racially isolated white woman like Hillary Clinton is relatively awkward in appealing to African-Americans.

It's a disadvantage that Hillary will have to at least partially overcome if she wants to win.

Hillary Wrong-Foots with Bob Johnson

Today, the Hillary Clinton campaign staged an event where Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) defended her comments about Martin Luther King. The problem is that Johnson is rightly reviled by black bloggers and others for his exploitation of black women in the rap videos played by his network.

Here's a summary comment on Johnson from Gina at What About Our Daughters. Bob

Johnson stands for everything Hillary Clinton OUGHT to be against. This man single-handedly set the cause of African Americans back hundreds of years. His exploitation of Black women and girls is particularly morally repugnant. Hillary Clinton is supposed to be a defender of the American worker, yet Bob Johnson made his billions at Black Entertainment Television by notoriously paying his on air talent slave wages.To be sitting up in a the pulpit of a Black church grinning and laughing side by side with this multimedia crack cocaine dealer and pimp is the slap in the face of every Black woman and girl in this country.

Instead of repeating Bob Johnson’s comments on Senator Obama wholesale, reporters should be asking him about the circumstances under which his wife and BET cofounder left the company. They should ask him about his “relations” with the female executives at his company. They should ask him why his own sister allegedly sued him and whether Johnson properly paid his taxes. All of these issues are raised in Johnson’s biography, The Billion-Dollar Bet. Bob Johnson is not an African American leader, he is a bottom feeder.

Hillary Clinton's use of Bob Johnson as a surrogate was a huge substantive mistake even if Johnson's reputation doesn't filter through the mainstream media. I don't know about the "multimedia crack cocaine dealer" part, but disgust with Johnson's exploitation of black women is a standard theme of African-American bloggers like African-American Political Pundit. I don't blame Hillary for hitting Obama and hitting him hard. But the ineptitude of what she's doing looks bad for her campaign.

Going for the "Full Cassius"

Yesterday was the first day I haven't lost weight since I went on my diet. In fact, I've been losing weight rapidly and am down 14 pounds to 228. Perhaps more important than the raw numbers was avoid several of my favorite to put on pounds. At the top of the list is our local Italian restaurant, Melini Cucina. As Italian goes, it's not great. But it's definitely not bad either. I've gorged myself on their Stuffed Shells, Manicotti, and killer cheese bread more times than I wish to admit. But on Friday, I walked in and had a garden salad with no dressing. It was just like Matt Dillon winning that gunfight at the start of every episode of "Gunsmoke." Another triumph of self-denial was not eating any of the cookies that Mary made for Tess and a visiting friend last night. Mary's baking has gone from really good to really outstanding over the last six months. I still feel the pain of denial.

Right now I'm half a Cassius. Given how hungry I am, I imagine that I have a really hungry look. But I'm still a long way from having the lean look to go along with my hunger. Ultimately, what I'm trying for is the "full Cassius" of having both a lean and hungry look. I wouldn't mind killing a couple of Caesars to get that either.

But everything I've done over the last 10 days has been easy. The real test begins when classes start and I get back into being a full-time college professor.

My goal is to get down to 220 over the next two weeks. That will get me to the banks of the River of Comfort that I need to cross in order to reach my ultimate goal of 180.

What About the Corporate Sector?

I'd be surprised if Mitt Romney's campaign goes up in flames. But how important would that be? There was only one moment after the implosion of the Giuliani campaign that Romney got above 50% in the national polls. Most voters don't like him. What's the big deal?

It turns out that Mitt Romney is the last real"business candidate" left among the major contenders for either party's nomination. In relation to the corporate sector, McCain is a good government reformer and Huckabee is a populist who wants to stop the redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle to the top 1/2 percent. It could be argued that both of them would be less friendly to the corporate sector than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Although the corporate sector is the most powerful element in American society, big business could find themselves largely excluded from access to presidential power after the 2008 election.

Finally Dealing from the Race Deck

There are times when I believe that American society is like an enormous warehouse-like room that is stacked from bottom to top and end to end with "race cards," each bearing a single fact about segregation, slavery, lynching, job discrimination, racial stereotypes, white supremacy, and racial profiling. As if that weren't enough, we also live like there is a printing press in the middle of the room running off more "race cards" with new facts about race. Sometimes, it appears the room is so saturated with race cards that all of us will start choking to death if they don't get played.

In other words, I'm glad to see the issue of race start to become more prominent in the nomination fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Before I comment further, I should state my biases. I'm supporting Hillary Clinton and am becoming more of a Hillary partisan over time. But I'm also very impressed by Obama, attended his rally in Lexington, KY and have contributed $150 to his campaign. Contrary to the dominant ethic of "color-blindness" which seeks to stifle racial awareness in American society, I believe that it is extremely important for all Americans to be aware of the legacy of white supremacy and the mostly African-American efforts to overcome white supremacy. Contrary to the traditional national ethic of assimilating other groups into an Anglicized white tradition, I believe that all Americans should orient themselves toward the largely African-American traditions of fighting brutal forms of domination in our own country. I'm not saying that whites haven't been the most prominent actors in resistance movements like the American Revolution, the labor movement, and feminism. But African-American struggles against white supremacy have been the most pervasive and persistent fights against oppression in this country. All Americans need to identify with traditions of African-American resistance if we are to pursue social justice in this country and act with any sense of decency abroad.

Having said that, I'll move forward.

Here's Hillary's controversial comment about Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King:

I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done,” she said, in response to a question about how her dismissive attitude toward Obama’s “false hopes” would have applied to the civil rights movement. “That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it and actually got it accomplished.

This is one of the most inept comments I've ever seen attributed to Hillary Clinton. I suppose she meant that it took someone of Lyndon Johnson's enormous experience and legislative skill to get civil rights legislation passed. But saying that "it took a president to get it done" is a vague and inapt way to make the point. Barack Obama's already acknowledged the importance of the presidency by spending the last year campaigning to be president himself. Besides that, Hillary Clinton doesn't have Lyndon Johnson's long pre-presidential experience or legislative skill any more than Obama does. Even then, Johnson was only able to push through fundamental change because of the wave of grieve and sympathy for the civil rights movement brought about by President Kennedy's assassination. Hillary doesn't really want to say that fundamental change is so hard that a president has to be in extremely fortuitous circumstances to get it accomplished. But what is she saying?

Some African-American observers believe that Hillary is insinuating that it took a white leader like Lyndon Johnson to get civil rights legislation passed. I don't necessarily agree with this. Hillary's comment does not sound at all like the right-wing race warriors Abilgail and Stephen Thernstrom who do argue this point in America in Black and White. But, it's certainly not a wholly unreasonable interpretation, and Hillary should have known better than to make a comment that could be interpreted in this light. She exercises that much caution in relation to the economy, the military, and the war in Iraq. The only reason Hillary didn't do so in relation to race is that she's a white Democratic politician who is not used to running against an African-American candidate, not used to talking about issues that are connected to race, and not used to being held accountable by African-American voters who have a real alternative. She better get used to that accountability quickly or she won't deserve the support of African-Americans during the primaries or the general election if she wins the nomination.

I don't want to attempt to appear even-handed, but I believe there's a lesson for African-American observers here as well. Some of the African-American blogs are referring to Bill Clinton's criticism of Barack Obama's rhetoric of hope as a "fantasy" as a racist, condescending, or at least an unwise or "racially risky" statement. I don't buy that at all. As the first serious African-American contender for the presidency, Barack Obama is an obvious target for the criticism of his opponents. In fact, Obama should, and does, consider Bill Clinton's criticism as evidence of his progress as a candidate. Now that African-American Democrats have become contenders, they should expect the same searching criticism that white contenders like Hillary Clinton get.

At the same time, African-American bloggers make an invaluable contribution to the Democratic primary by treating Hillary Clinton as a "white woman." In fact, she is a white woman. Actually, I'm a white guy myself. People in the United States and whites in particular are tempted to treat race strictly as an issue of black people. That's B.S. Neither contemporary American society nor American history can be understood realistically without thoroughly analyzing the ways in which the "whiteness" of white people is important. In this regard, "thefreeslave" performs a valuable public service when he caricatures Hillary's "tearing up" episode in this way.

The Tears of a White Woman are the greatest weapon this side of a knitted rope. Ask Emmit Till and a thousand other black men rotting on the vine, how strong them beige tears can be.

Heading into political oblivion, my white sister went to the well, literally bathing her face in water from her political makeup kit.

And one mo’ thang (said in my most Obamanesque lingua negra): Polling appears to be used to keep fools on that psychofragilistic-rollercoaster - what’s gonna happen, fuckin’ wit dem expectations and high hopes and then dashing them on the rocks like dem Spanish Conquistadores. They tell you Obama was up by double digits. You believe it, of course; then you are shocked, shocked when it doesn’t come out the way they told you it was ’sposed to. Did they play you, so you’d be surprised/ disappointed? Hmm. They play ya any other night of the year - why would this be different?!

Hell, this is the Oscars of manipulative, missionary mind control: another state, another dog fight, South Carolina here we come, Round 3, a fucking choreographed puppet’s dance - only you are the puppet. Dance muthafucka, dance!

Follow the bouncing ball while they rifle through your cranium, stealing your lint, coin, brain cells, vote.

To be honest, I disagree with "thefreeslave" here. I don't think Hillary's tearing up was pre-planned in the way that "thefreeslave thinks." But it's important for Hillary and all of us white people to recognize that a "white woman's tears" don't just have connotations for her being seen as "strong vs weak" in gender terms or as "contrived vs real" in authenticity terms. White woman's tears have often been used as a weapon in the race war that has characterized so much of American history. For me, the significance of the "thefreeslave's" comment is that he's bringing specifically African-American imagery into the mainstream of debate over the meaning of Hillary's tearing up in New Hampshire. I think that's a great thing even if I don't agree.

William Gray, a former Congressman and head of the NAACP from Philadelphia, argues that everybody connected with the presidential campaigns should stay quiet about race and gender.

“Some of the Obama people are clearly trying to use Hillary’s comments about Martin Luther King and distort them into something she did not say, which is
outrageous . . . It’s a hot issue in South Carolina, and they’re spreading the word all over. I hope that the good senator will make sure that none of his people are doing that. We don’t need to have a debate about race or gender.”

To the contrary, one of the biggest benefits of Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's candidacies is that it gives American society an opportunity to talk about race and gender in more fruitful ways. Both candidates should be playing our cards and developing better skills at doing so.

The Depth of Karl Rove's Contempt for Conservatives

Talking Points Memo flags a Karl Rove piece for baiting Barack Obama with racial stereotypes in referring to Obama as "lazy" and as "trash-talking" while playing "pick-up basketball in Harvard Yard." A lot of conservative commentators are experimenting with ways to tar (as in "tar and feather") Obama with racial stereotypes while making a token effort to appear color-blind. Jonah Goldberg vaguely suggests that "certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged" if Obama loses. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and Michelle Malkin were quick to agree. Of course, everybody in his conservative audience knows that Goldberg means African-Americans. However, Goldberg can still hide behind the fig leaf of his calculated vagueness to deny any racial meaning to his insinuation.

The question for Goldberg and other right-wingers as they think about how to demagogue Obama is which racial insinuation or combination of racial insinuations is going to work to push undecided voters to vote against Obama because he's black. There are some voters (my mom for instance) who would absolutely refuse to vote for Obama because he's black. But there are millions of white voters who might hold Obama's blackness against him but would have concerns about the war, the economy, religion, Bush administration incompetence, and other issues. One of the things that makes undecided voters undecided is that they haven't figured out which of these concerns would have priority when they make their voting decisions in November. In their efforts to "help" undecided independents and weak Republicans come to a Republican vote, conservatives are trying to make Obama's blackness more visible as a factor in voting against Obama.

As a conservative commentator, Karl Rove works at much greater cultural depth than Goldberg's straight-forward appeal to stereotypes of African-Americans as a violent group. Of course, Rove wouldn't mind if his own employment of stereotypes stimulated his readers to think poorly of Obama in a straight-forward way. But it's even more important for Rove to get black activists and white liberals to respond by complaining about his racism, being "outraged," and demanding "apologies." Rove's right-wing and conservative-leaning readers may have a "general" sense of racial hostility toward blacks, but nothing kicks in their identification as conservatives more than watching Al Sharpton or Chuck Shumer criticize racism on television. White liberals generally don't understand the extent to which Karl Rove and Ann Coulter manipulate liberals into helping them lock in their political identification of conservatives. Even if everyday conservatives only have a vague unease about Obama because he's African-American, they'll start being contemptuous if conservative propogandists can effectively associate Obama with the civil rights activists and liberals they really hate.

This is why Rove placed his Obama "trash-talking" in Harvard Yard and why Rove emphasizes that Obama won the college towns and "white wine drinkers" of New Hampshire. Rove wants to associate Obama with the "liberal elites" which the right-wing associates with Harvard, white wine, lattes, and bri. In racial terms, Rove is stereotyping Obama as the kind of ambitious, upwardly mobile, black person who social conservatives have particularly distrusted ever since the end of slavery. But once again, Rove isn't stopping there. He's also associating Obama with his stereotypes of white liberals as a way to reinforce and lock in conservative antipathy to Obama's candidacy.

This is a point where it is interesting to ask whether people like Goldberg, Reynolds, Malkin, and Rove are racist or not. Focusing on Rove for a second, I personally would have more respect for Rove if he were a racist. If Rove were a racist, he would be operating at some level of repugnant honesty in his insinuations concerning Obama and black people in general. In this sense, Rove's comments about Obama's "laziness" and "trash-talking" would be ways to convince conservatives of racial views that Rove himself holds. People like Trent Lott, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh would be "honest racists" in this way.

But, say Rove is not a racist. Then, his target of his contempt would be conservatives rather than black people. Like any swindler or con artist, Rove would be viewing conservatives as "marks"--as stupid, naive people who can be easily manipulated into doing Rove's will if he plays with their cultural stereotypes. If Rove is not a racist, he would be a con artist in racial stereotypes instead, someone working to serve big money interests by manipulating his targets into voting Republican on racial grounds. It's worth repeating that Rove doesn't have to be a racist to practice the politics of racism any more than he has to be homophobic to engage in the politics of homophobia. Instead, he might view "race" as a set of cultural symbols that he can use to manipulate large sets of voters into voting for conservative Republicans. Of course, Rove would be even more of an enemy of racial equality and reconciliation if he treats "race" as a business rather than a belief. But the primary target of Rove's disgust and contempt would not be black people, it would be the conservatives he's manipulating. Obviously, Rove also has a low opinion of the white liberals and civil rights leadership he wants to "enrage." He finds them, or us, easy to manipulate. But he would have a special contempt for the conservatives he's jerking around. He must really hate them and get some sort of sick pleasure out of moving their emotions around like they are pawns on a chess board.

Obviously, I don't have a window into the soul of Karl Rove. Who would really want that? But my sense from his op-ed writing is that Rove is much more of an entrepreneur in the politics of racism than a racist himself. I think this would also be the same with Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds as well. In this way they would be honest when they say they're not racists. To the contrary, the people who really disgust Rove and the right-wing demagogues are the conservatives they're in the business of manipulating.

More on the "Keep the Race Alive Theory"

Lacking any deep insight into the Democratic vote in recent events, I proposed that one of the reasons why Obama won in Iowa and Hillary won in New Hampshire was the desire of Democratic voters to make sure that neither of them locked up the nomination too early. Evidently, that's an idea with some legs. Matthew Yglesias picks up on it today in his blog.

Obama got 38 percent of the vote in Iowa. Not only is Iowa only one small state, but 38 percent of the vote is way less than half. Nevertheless, based on that plurality he was about to march to the nomination. As a result, while Obama continued to hold his own in terms of his baseline level of support, all the uncommitted people -- supporters of minor candidates, undecideds, some soft Edwards people -- voted for Clinton to keep the race going. In Iowa, a similar dynamic probably helped Obama. People knew that a Clinton win might end the competition, so Obama can, so to speak, the benefit of the doubt. Unlike most political bloggers, most voters haven't been following this thing since the first quarter of 2007. A lot of them want to see how the competition plays out.

Actually, I think most of the prominent liberal bloggers are also interested in seeing how the Obama/Hillary contest plays out. Bloggers like Kos (for Obama) and Matt Stoller (Edwards) have stated preferences, but they've largely refrained from openly campaigning for "their" candidates in their blogs. Contrast that to right-wing blogger Hugh Hewitt who has been openly shilling for Mitt Romney or any number of conservative blogs that have been campaigning against Huckabee.

Living the Dream

Let me see is I can get this right. My oldest daughter (age 13) is . . . um, "height challenged" and always has been. Unfortunately for her, Mrs. RSI is 5'2" and so is my mother. In fact, my mother comes from a whole family of very short people. At one point, my daughter was so relatively short that, she didn't even reach 0% on the height charts at the doctor's office. As a result, my dreams of being the faher of the next Venus and Serena Williams died quickly. My main hope for her (other than being a decent person) was that she would reach 5' before she stopped. Well, the day has arrived and all my dreams have been fulfilled. Ms. Kathryn Caric measured out at precisely five feet tall today. I can now diet a happy man.

The Revolving Deaths Door

There's a big distinction between being at death's door as a presidential candidate and being dead. Two months ago, the John McCain campaign was waiting at death's door. Yesterday, it was Hillary Clinton. Today, Robert Novak says that the Mitt Romney presidential express is stopping at the door of doom. After South Carolina, it will be Fred Thompson. Death's door is revolving and revolving quickly. I imagine Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee will be making temporary visits sooner or later.

Clinton Out Front--So Far

With 63% of the vote in, Hillary Clinton has about 5,000 more votes than Barack Obama in New Hampshire and is up 39% to 37%. According to Kos, Hillary is enjoying a "huge" advantage among women voters who might be annoyed over the bad press she's got over tearing up. As someone who's teared up while speaking in public myself, I'm with them.

One angle that interests me is the possibility that caucus voters in Iowa and primary voters in New Hampshire have been voting to make sure the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama moves forward and that no one wins easily. The anti-Hillary wave in Iowa kept her from being inevitable but the apparent pro-Hillary wave in New Hampshire ensures that she won't be crushed and might ensure that she'll move forward on equal footing.

If that's the case, I think people are right. The best thing that can happen to either Hillary or Obama is a strong, testing primary battle. That will make them both better candidates and is the best way to prepare the winner for the general election.

Update: The Associated Press called the primary for Hillary, but CNN is holding back.

The First Temptation

After 5 whole days, my diet is going swimmingly. I've cut down my calorie intake from something like 3,500 calories to something like 1500 calories. No kidding. I was consuming 1600 or more calories of sweets a day.

I also walked four miles yesterday.

As a result, the weight is coming off fast as it often does at the beginning of a diet. I've more than eight pounds. It's like traveling back through time. I've gotten rid of my Christmas weight that got me up to 243 is gone. So is the end of the semester binging to get papers graded weight that brought me up to 240 in the first place. I'm almost back down to my "normal" weight of the last three years--234.

But that brings me to my first temptation. I feel a little bit better. So there's a big temptation is to stop and reward myself, indulge myself, and go back to something like normality. That means ice cream, candy bars, cookies, sweet potato chips, crackers and cheddar cheese, and home-made biscuits--all of which are readily available around the Caric household. That's most of what happened last summer after I got down to 228. I was happy, rewarded myself and gained the weight back.

This time, I can face up to this first temptation pretty well. But the next temptation will be bigger. That will be the impulse to resume eating for comfort and tension release when I get back to the stress of teaching and writing. I'll have to overcome that temptation if I want to travel back to my summer low of 229.

Eventually though, I'll have to recross the Lake of Comfort Food. At some point about three years ago, I went quickly from 190 to 220 and it was mostly because I ate a lakeful of comfort food to give myself some form of release from the stress of fatherhood, teaching, writing, and university politics. Crossing that lake is what originally got me in the 200's. If I want to get back to 180, I have to give up all that food-born reassurance and lose the weight that came from it.

That's my goal--to get back across the Lake of Comfort Food.

Need to Put Money Where My Mouth Is

Last night, Obama called and I donated $25. That makes $150 I've put into the Obama campaign and zero for Hillary.

Need to put my money where my mouth is.

Building a Better Hillary

The Dieting Perspective. After my sophomore year in college, I lost 35 pounds without really intending to. Having bulked up to 190 while shot-putting on my college track team, I quickly dropped the weight after I started working as a carpenter's assistant in Texas.

But it's different now that I'm 53. Instead of food just being "there," I find that I use it as a form of comfort to relieve stress and as a kind of trigger to help me focus on my work. The more I eat, the better I'm focused and the more I get done. As a result, losing weight is frustrating because a lot of reasons besides hunger. I'm unfocused and unproductive as well. Exercise makes the situation worse. I have two disks in my back that have ruptured but didn't need surgery. Thank you, high school football, for those disc problems. As soon as I start even the most minor workouts, the discs become unstable and painful.

None of this means that I won't move forward with dieting and exercise, but it makes the whole enterprise more difficult and problematic.

The Obama Dieting Analogy. In certain ways, Barack Obama is campaigning as though issues could be handled in the thoughtless way I lost weight as a 20 year old. He seems to think that enacting health care reform, bringing the federal budget back into balance, and making judicial appointments is not going to involve a lot of painful conflict. Here's Obama responding to Hillary Clinton's criticism of him raising "false hopes" by saying that she was "depressing."

"Sen. Clinton saying, 'don’t feed the American people false hopes. Get a reality check.' You know? I mean, you can picture JFK saying, 'We can’t go to the moon.
It’s a false hope. Let’s get a reality check.' It’s not, sort of, I think what our tradition has been," he said.

"Going to the moon" was relatively easy because there was a national consensus behind getting it accomplished. But going to the moon was one of the few consensus projects of the sixties and right now there's little consensus about anything. Most Americans support universal health insurance, better schools, withdrawal from Iraq, abortion rights, and general government competence. However, this country also has a powerful right-wing that is dedicated to taking the country back to the Victorian era. That's why accomplishing what people want is going to be as painful and frustrating as dieting is for a fifty-something guy like me.

Building a Better Hillary. Hillary Clinton is the best candidate for the hard slog of getting through the post-Bush era. She's smart, determined, has a comprehensive knowledge of American government, and knows how to play hardball with the right. However, she's falling behind Obama and she had a particularly bad today, tearing up at one question and answer session and trying to scare people about terrorism at another. In many ways, Hillary is beginning to drift into the "tunnel of unlove" (a line from either Joe Biden or Bob Kerrey) that losing presidential candidates have to endure. Perhaps she's already toast. I don't know. But if Hillary is going to recover between now and Feb. 5, she needs to do a better job of engaging America's culture of compulsory optimism and talking critically about Barack Obama.

Here's some suggestions:

1. Be the Happy Warrior. Hillary has the "warrior" part down. Voters view her as competent, tough, and willing to fight the right-wing. But Hillary does not project enough joy to ward off the accusations that she's "joyless." Not that projecting joy in public settings or through a tv camera is that easy. It takes an underappreciated talent for politicians to project optimism and energy in public. But Hillary needs to keep working on projecting love for the battle, an eagerness to reach out to people, and faith in herself as a leader. People will appreciate these qualities more when she's working from behind than when she was the presumed nominee.

2. An Embodiment of Progress and Opportunity. Obviously, Hillary talks about being the first woman contender for the presidency. But I think she could do more to emphasize that her story is one of rising from modest middle-class roots to political prominence as an indication of how far people can come in America. It's hokie and it opens her up to charges of riding on Bill's coattails, but it's also a way to frame herself as a candidate who can continue America's progress during a difficult period. This is the kind of statement that I would like to see Hillary avoid.

"You know, I have so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards," she said, her voice breaking a bit . . . "This is very personal for me, it's not just political, it's [that] I see what's happening, we have to reverse it," she said emotionally, adding that some "just put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds.

To be honest, I view the next administration as being primarily a struggle to keep from falling even farther behind than we've already fallen after eight years of Bush. Therefore, there's a way in which I agree with Hillary here. But Hillary should still be framing what she does in terms of progress. Nobody in the U. S. or anyplace else likes to hear fear or pessimism from a politician running for office. Instead, Hillary should be posing her candidacy in terms of an opportunity to resume progress. Certainly, that's what she'd be trying to do anyway.

3. Put Meat on Her Critique of Obama's Naive Optimism. One thing I've never liked about Hillary's campaign is that she poses her "experience" and Obama's "inexperience" in such an abstract manner. She needs to be able to say what her experience is. For example, she could talk about health care. Her "experience" is that she set forward a good (if flawed) plan but that it was defeated by $100 million in attack ads, scorched earth tactics by the Republicans, and weak and uncertain Congressional Democrats. Since then, she's worked on health care issues with people like Newt Gingrich and is much better prepared for the $500 million plus that that the health insurance industry is going to spend opposing the next legislation.

Another issue she could bring up is race. Obama's rhetoric gestures toward transcending race (so loved by the right) are hopelessly naive. In fact, the right wing is circling him with racial innuendo about being a "secret Muslim," his "black nationalist minister," his "aggressive wife," and the like. Hillary might point out that she is much more realistic about the dangers posed by right-wing smear tactics and that she and her team are far better prepared to deal with those tactics as president.

4. Push the Obama-Bush Analogy. Slate has a mention of Hillary making a comparison between Obama and George Bush today.

"I think it's good to have a likable president and if I remember a lot of people said they voted for George Bush because they wanted to have a beer with him. Maybe they should have left it at that."

She should go further with this. Much of what has been so disastrous about the Bush administration is that the right-wing got to live out it's "dreams" of invading and occupying Iraq with a ridiculously small force and projected themselves as being out in six months. Obama's "hope" is just as unlikely to be realized because he's no more prepared to deal with determined opposition to his proposals than George Bush was prepared to deal with a determined insurgency in Iraq.

The core of Hillary Clinton's argument against Barack Obama is that she is better prepared to deal with the realities that the next president will confront. But she needs to figure out a better way to formulate her mix of realism and optimism.

Is McCain the Guy for Republicans?

John McCain has moved ahead of Romney in New Hampshire and also moved ahead of Giuliani in national polling. There's some chatter from the right about McCain being the only Republican hope for beating Barack Obama. But that doesn't seem plausible. Right now, McCain doesn't look all that plausible to the independent voters that he and Obama would be competing over. McCain has strengths but he wouldn't run the smearkrieg campaign that Republicans need to win. Given the lack of race-baiting, gay-baiting, and religion-baiting that would come from a McCain campaign, conservatives would lose interest. As I've said many times before, nominating McCain would turn the presidential election into an extended Democratic primary.

RSI Down Over Obama Being So Far Up

I'm bummed about the polls having Barack Obama is so far ahead of my favorite Hillary Clinton. He's up by 10 in a CNN poll, 13 in a USA Today/Gallup poll, and 12 in Rasmussen. It's tempting to think that things have been unfair to Hillary. The press hates her even more than they hated Al Gore and it was the intense focus on her one uncertain moment over illegal immigrants that started her slide.

But Matthew Yglesias raises a good point when he states that "getting good press is part of being an effective candidate and part of being an effective president." One of the reasons why the press likes people like John McCain, George Bush, and Karl Rove is that they all put a lot of effort into schmoozing with reporters. It's been clear for a long time that Hillary Clinton doesn't like the press any more than they like her. That was a big mistake. Being hostile or dismissive to the press is almost always a bad idea for a politician because political reporters have long memories and countless opportunities to hit back.

And now she's paying the price for that particular mistake.

My own opinion is that Hillary should retool her campaign around being "positive."

Instead of focusing on attacking Obama, Hillary should emphasize her plans for getting out of Iraq, health care, education, and other issues. She should emphasize the extent to which her proposals are different from the status quo. She should stress the ways in which those plans will move the country forward, and she should also keep a positive "happy warrior" air about her. Instead of going negative on Obama, she should go postive on herself and politics.

Hillary might look at John McCain's campaign as an example of how an emphasis on the joy of campaigning, talking about issues, and reaching out to people allowed him to recover from a steep deficit in the polls. Obama's peaking now, but he's slumped before and he may slump again. Hillary wants to be in position to take advantage of that. She also might turn out to be good at being the fighting underdog.

Hillary might also think about reducing the role of her husband in the campaign. People like Bill Clinton but it looks like they don't particularly want to see him on the campaign trail.

She might also cultivate better relations with the media.

Obama and My Family Racism

It's always been a painful fact of life, but a lot of people in my family are racists. To give one small example, my family was not allowed to watch the ground-breaking show "Julia" because of Diahann Carroll's starring role. I was fourteen at the time and my father was making a determined effort to shove his racism down my throat as a way to "make a man out of me." He also let me know how disgusted he was with rock n roll as "nigger music" and how disturbed he was when I invited a black friend over to swim in the family pool. The main impact of my father's racism was to increase my disgust with him. But it really hurt that my much-loved grandfather "Pop" never talked with one of my cousins again after she married a black guy. I think a couple of my brothers and sisters became racists and anti-Semites as well.

The racism in my family has already cost the Democrats one vote if Barack Obama gets the Democratic nomination for the presidency. My mother told me last night that she wouldn't vote for Obama because she didn't want to see "a black" become president. I'm writing this because I imagine that there are going to be a fair number of these painful conversations around the country as Obama's campaign develops further momentum. But the pain is particularly sharp when the racism comes from someone you know and care about as much as I care about my mother.

My reaction. I think I told her that she was being prejudiced and then kind of let it go when she got fired up to affirm that she is a racist. I was too sad and depressed to do anything else. I'm supporting Hillary at this point for reasons I've explained many times in this blog. But if Obama wins the nomination, I'll do more for his campaign than I'd do otherwise. It's important that people like my mom actually see a black person in the White House just like it was important for her to see black people on television.

How to Become a Grumpy Old Man Through Dieting

My mom (72) still thinks of herself as middle-aged and me as young, but I'm almost old enough at the age of 53 to be a grandparent to my students. That makes me old in their books. Mine too.

Most of the time, I stay in a chattering, laughing, good-spirits kind of mood--even when I'm under a lot of stress like I was last semester. After years of therapy, it turned out that the thing I wanted most of all was to be happy. So I became the kind of happy, laughing person Jesus warns against when he says: "Woe unto you that laugh now for ye shall mourn and weep." (Luke 6: 25)

Ah! Christianity.

Anyway, I have a feeling that those happy days are going to be over for awhile. After all the stress of last semester, I now weigh 240, need to lose 60 pounds, and know that the only way that I can accomplish that is to stop eating like I've been eating almost my whole life.

I may be the hungriest person I know. I love food, crave food, and want to have food almost all the time. Outside the period when my food allergies hit, I've always eaten an enormous amount of just about everything. Even then I ate 1 1/2 pounds of meet and six pounds of vegetables a day and I only weighed about 150 or 160.

Given my food allergies, the only way I'm going to lose weight is to go on something like my allergy elimination diet. That means I'm back to sweet potatoes, squash, meat, and rice and doing my best to like it. That means no more ice cream, no more Hershey's bars, no more Italian cuisine at Melini's, and no more of Mary's cupcakes, cookies, and biscuits. In other words, lots of craving and no satisfaction.

It also means a lot more exercise than I'm either used to or like.

It means I'm going to be a grumpy old man.

Catching Another Break

The Good News! Following up on hearing about my upcoming sabbatical and a great trip to Florida, one of my government colleagues told me yesterday that he's staying at Morehead State next year rather than accepting an offer from Eastern Kentucky. That was really good news. With Greg Goldey's death and Noelle N'Diaye's arrest, we had already lost two out of the six people in our group. Losing another person would have been tough.

My Reaction. Mostly I just relaxed and went to sleep. Despite the two week break, I'm still operating at a heavy sleep deficit and the prospect of losing another colleague weighed heavily on me. I was like one of the murderers that the cop talked about in The Usual Suspects. Hearing the good news allowed me to calm down, realize how much I needed some extra sleep, and go to bed. Finally, I got some good rest.

Giuliani Likes 9-11 Better Than Iowa

Today, Rudy Giuliani isn't worried about his presidential campaign despite his no-show in Iowa.

"None of this worries me - Sept. 11, there were times I was worried,"

Needless to say, that reference to 9-11 was completely incidental. 9-11 is such a painful topic for Giuliani that he rarely mentions it.

Back to the real world--Giuliani has every right to feel good about the Iowa caucuses. By not campaigning in Iowa, Giuliani was able to get out of the headlines for awhile and hope that everyone would forget his "shag fund" scandals.

But people's memories may not be quite that short.

Iowa: Third Not as Bad As Second

Ouch! Hillary in Third. I'm disappointed that my candidate Hillary Clinton finished in third behind Barack Obama and John Edwards. Not that I have any objection to spin (spinning is as much a part of politics as money). But there isn't much room for positive Hillary spin. Obama beat her by 7 points. That's a big margin in what was a close race. As Kos points out, however, there is plenty of room for Democratic Party spin. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards ran strong campaigns in Iowa. They all became better candidates over the last year and there's a good chance that any of them could beat the relatively weak Republican they're likely to face. The Democratic Party and progressive politics in general are stronger for the Iowa campaign.

She's Got To Win It to Win. I find myself becoming more strongly pro-Hillary and more critical of Obama and Edwards as the campaign moves along. Despite the fact that I'm impressed by Obama, I'm like many progressive bloggers in becoming annoyed with his "I can work with anybody," "above partisanship," "against polarization" stance. Hasn't he noticed who has been driving the polarization--the right!. But the hard fact is that Obama's "we can change by bringing everybody together" rhetoric is popular with moderates and young people. And he's also going to get a lot of votes from African-Americans who normally wouldn't fall for this line. Hillary Clinton was up by more than 20 points in national polling in today's RealClearPolitics average. If she wants to keep that lead and win the nomination, Hillary and her people are going to have to figure out a way to defeat Obama's particularly attractively progressive version of the moderate message. Neither Hillary nor Obama are going to be the nominee by default. They have to WIN the nomination and that's the way it should be.

The Romney Problem. Hillary's third-place finish is not as damaging to her as Romney's second-place was to his Republican candidacy. Unless he mounts an impressive comeback in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney's strategy of riding the momentum from big early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire is down the toilet. It looks like Romney, McCain, Huckabee, and the gang are going to be slugging it out state by state with nobody having a clear road to the nomination for at least a little while. It's difficult to see how the Republicans are going to put up a strong candidate. Taking off on Michael Tomasky, the battle for the Republican nomination is looking like a brawl between the evangelical wing represented by Huckabee, the economic royalists and Washington elite embodied by Romney, and neo-cons now represented by McCain. Given the mutual contempt of the Republican factions, how can this be anything but ugly and dispiriting for GOP voters?

It's hard for me to imagine Huckabee as the Republican nominee, but I have to admit that Huckabee has the advantage of an evangelical "base" of support. Neither McCain nor Romney have a comparable core of voting support. Huckabee might be able to nickle and dime his way to the nomination by winning primaries in rural states like Iowa and Nebraska while staying competitive in a fractured field by pulling down 20% in other states. At the end of the day, exhausted Republican leaders might say "why not?"

For my money, Mike Huckabee is God's gift to the Democrats and progressive politics. Gaffe-prone, ignorant, and at least as unethical as Giuliani, Huckabee would be easy pickings in a general election.

Altogether, a good night to be a Democrat!

Notes on the Better Brownstein Trilogy

Part of what makes Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times an interesting journalist is his inconsistency. Pretty much the smartest of the mainstream journalists, Brownstein is capable of trenchant analysis. But he also puts out more than his share of blandly Broder-esque conventional wisdom.

Today's Brownstein piece in the National Journal is more on the trenchant side because he gives a sharply drawn version of the conventional wisdom concerning the governing styles being projected by the leading Democratic candidates.

Here is Brownstein's analysis of each candidate with my response.

According to Brownstein, John Edwards is adapting a confrontational populism rooted in his experience as a trial lawyer in North Carolina. Campaigning in Iowa, Edwards is now viewing himself as preparing his own life for the "epic fight" with corporate interests that would occur if he were president.

What Edwards doesn't recognize is that the American corporate sector is stronger than the presidency and that his presidency would be wrecked by any confrontation with entrenched corporate interests. If Edwards were elected president, he would find himself opposed by the business lobbies, think tanks, all of the mainstream media, the Republican Party, and much of the Democratic Party. Given his slim chances of succeeding, Edwards would be deserted by most of his friends as well.

Edwards believes that his experience in suing corporations and doctors as a trial lawyer shows that he can defeat the corporate interests as president. But courtroom success is not a good indicator of political success. In courtrooms, the money and prestige of the corporate sector has relatively few outlets other than the quality of their lawyers and sympathy from judges. Those are odds that a talented guy like Edwards can beat on his own. To the contrary, the political sphere provides a full range of opportunities for the corporate sector to employ their tremendous wealth to pursue their interests. The money they pay to lobbyists and think tank personnel; the money they contribute to politicl campaigns, and the money they pay for advertising campaigns all creates a tremendous amount of support for corporate interests in the political process. The presidency alone isn't enough to counter that money and an Edwards presidency would be like the Carter administration in setting progressive interests back for 30 years.

Barack Obama views himself in diametrically opposed terms. Born in Hawaii, initially raised in Indonesia, and forced to straddle racial and cultural boundaries all his life, Barack Obama poses himself as a conciliator who can rise above the bitter partisanship of the last fifteen years.

Obama is running as though he's never heard of the right-wing. He doesn't seem to recognize the extent to which Republicans in Congress don't want to compromise with Democrats like him and can't afford to compromise even if they want to. Congressional Republicans adapted confrontation as a strategy in 1994 with the Contract with American, ramped up their confrontationalism with the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, and responded to their defeats in 2006 by adopting threats to shut down the federal government as their primary political strategy. The more Obama wants to compromise and conciliate the more Congressional Republicans are going to play dirty with him. It's their only chance to win and the only game they know how to play anymore.

The last part of the Brownstein trilogy is Hillary Clinton who is posing herself as someone who has enough moxie to be both a conciliator and a fighter when necessary.

I have a lot of doubts that Hillary's approach is going to work either. The Republicans are that committed to ensuring that the federal government flounders when they're not in control. But I do believe that she will prove most adept at running the federal government in the context of nasty partisanship, perpetual Republican obstructionism, and continually rising pessimism. It's not a matter of what governing style will succeed, it's a matter of who can deal with the overall unworkability of the governing system at this time. In my opinion, Hillary's that person because she can play both offense and defense, because she's adept at working the angles, and because she's got a strong team.

Obama: The Democratic McCain?

According to the Washington Post, the Obama campaign is focused on getting independents and moderate Republicans to turn out for them at the Iowa caucuses tomorrow. Assumes that about 45% of Democratic caucusers would be independents, the DeMoines Register poll shows Obama ahead of Hillary by seven points.

This might bring the Obama campaign into a little bit of focus as the John McCain campaign of 2008, appealing more to independents and moderates from the other party than to regular Democrats. Perhaps Obama should call his bus "The Straight-Talk Express."

That would create an interesting "sub-primary" in New Hampshire between Obama and McCain himself as they both fight for the independent vote.

But that model didn't work for McCain in 2000. Why would it work for Obama in 2008? Sure, McCain cleaned up in New Hampshire, but he bottomed out in South Carolina. That wouldn't happen to Obama because of the strong black vote in South Carolina. But what about states like Florida, Michigan, and California? If Obama can't appeal to regular Democratic voters in those kinds of states, he'll basically be running to be vice-president.

Big Changes at RSI for New Year

Who's Going to Win in Iowa. That was the biggest question asked at the New Year's Eve Party of the Morehead gliterati last night. My answer: I have no idea. Will it be snowing in Iowa on Thursday? How many first-time caucusers are going to show up? Who's got the real momentum. Hillary's still the strongest candidate on the Democratic side and I'm sticking with my Hillary endorsement. Hillary is very smart, energetic, and determined. She's been involved in policy-making at the highest levels. She's been through the white heat and come out stronger and she knows the lay of the land in Washington. I like Obama a lot, but I believe that Hillary will make a better president for the next four years. Edwards would be a disaster as as Democratic candidate and a disaster as president if he were lucky enough to win.

It's too close to call on the Republican side as well. It's safe to say that Mitt Romney has replaced Rudy Giuliani as the favorite to win the Republican nomination. Giuliani's "shag fund" for his mistress was the last straw. But Romney's only a slight favorite and the race is extremely volatile. If Romney wins in Iowa, it could boil down fairly quickly after New Hampshire to Romney vs McCain with Huckabee, Giuliani, and Thompson stalking as strong second tier candidates. If Romney loses in Iowa, it would be wide open but Romney would still be a slight favorite because of his strong support from the Republican establishment. In the final analysis, it's tough to see any of these guys landing a knockout punch. As a result, there's a real chance that the Republican battle could go to the convention.

Changes at RSI. This blog has a lot more readers at the end of 2007 than it did at the end of 2006. But I'm going to be making some changes. Because of Greg Goldey's death and the upcoming Morehead State University reorganization, I'm going to be much more heavily involved in university politics this year than last. I also want to refocus on my research. As a result, I'm going to try to write more on university politics and my research and less on national politics over the next year.

Mergers in the Air. Speaking of university politics, the upcoming university reorganization (or "academic audit) got off to a bad start when new governor Steve Beshear forced a 3% reduction in the university budget. Reorganization goes down a lot harder when the pie's shrinking. My home program--Government (I'm government "program coordinator")--is a likely candidate for merger or amalgamation. There's a chance that my whole department of Geography, Government, and History will be merged with the Sociology, Social Work, and Criminology Department to form a monster academic unit. But that's not something I particularly mind. It's even more likely that the GGH Government program will be merged with the IRAPP (Institute for Regional Analysis and Public Policy) Government program. That's more dicey because the IRAPP Government program is home to two or three right-wingers who are very paranoid about people like me. Perhaps they can read my blog to see how friendly I actually am toward the right.

Academic Writing. An article I wrote on delirium tremens in ante-bellum Philadelphia came out last fall in Pennsylvania History. I was also approved for a sabbatical beginning next fall. My big task for the spring is to revise one of my articles on Philadelphia popular culture so it can serve as a sample chapter for my book--"Displays of Degradation: Cultural Transformations in Philadelphia, 1785-1850." I got a little bit of a start on that while I was in Florida for Xmas.