Maliki the Bold Adventurer?

The Bush administration is reporting that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the offensive against the al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia without consulting them.

Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that "we can't quite decipher" what is going on. It's a question, he said, of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki decided to act now.

Really? The Iraqi Army had U. S. air support pretty quickly in their operations. It seems unlikely that they would have begun their attack without arranging things with the American military.

More importantly, Dick Cheney was in Iraq just nine days ago. If one accepts that al-Maliki launched his assault on the Mahdi Army without consulting the Bush administration, that means that Maliki didn't breathe a word to Cheney about their plans while he was in Baghdad?

But why wouldn't he? It's not as though either Dick Cheney or George Bush would have rejected an aggressive approach to al-Sadr or an attempt to take over Baghdad. In fact, Cheney would have been a lot more enthusiastic about this kind of idea than most people in the Iraqi government.

Perhaps Cheney suggested the idea to Maliki himself.

In fact, it seems likely to me that the Bush administration pushed the Iraqis to make a big move now in order to help John McCain win in November. Likewise, I think that the Bush administration fully expected that American forces would quickly move in to confront Sadr after the Iraqi Army initially wilted.

And that's what's happened.

In this sense, the Bush administration would have goaded the Iraqi government into precipitating a showdown with al-Sadr to create a pretext for the American military to confront and hopefully destroy the Mahdi Army as a way to help McCain. If the assault succeeds, McCain could build his campaign around a real structural accomplishment in Iraq. If the assault fails, there's still almost eight months for McCain to dissassociate himself from the mess.

Of course, it may turn out that the American public really doesn't want to be reminded of the Iraq War. But the Bush administration has always had a "go for broke" mentality. It's not hard to see them taking one last shot at destroying Sadr and subduing Shiite resistance to the American idea of a "non-sectarian Iraq."

RSI:A Neglected Milestone

A couple of weeks ago, Red State Impressions had its one thousandth post in 21 months of existence. It turns out that blogging is my favorite writing medium by far. I wish I had time to post twice as much as I do now.

John McCain's Media Mommy

The McCain "Post-Modern" B.S. Yesterday, Neal Gabler of the New York Times found a new way to sanctify John McCain by treating him as the zen master of post-modern media relations.

Seeming to view himself and the whole political process with a mix of amusement and bemusement, Mr. McCain is an ironist wooing a group of individuals who regard ironic detachment more highly than sincerity or seriousness. He may be the first real postmodernist candidate for the presidency — the first to turn his press relations into the basis of his candidacy.

What nonsense! Paraphrasing a line Lloyd Bentsen originally stole from me, "I knew Jean-Francois Lyotard, the author of The Post-Modern Condition. Jean-Francois Lyotard and I served in the Foreign Legion together in Algeria. Or was it Vietnam? Anyway, Jean-Francois Lyotard was a friend of mine. John McCain is no Jean-Francois Lyotard and John McCain is no post-modernist."

And neither are the reporters on the McCain bus. In fact, there's a better word for the reporters--hacks who like to throw around words like "post-modern" even though they have no idea what they're talking about.

An Alternative Hypothesis. So what was McCain doing when he was spending hour after hour "wooing" the gathered reporters with all his criticism of his own weaknesses and discussion of how he was manipulating the press. John McCain has to be the biggest media schmoozer who's ever walked the halls of Congress. He's always been willing to appear on any news program, be a discussant for any interview show, or participate in any debate. I think Michael Kinsley once referred to McCain and Joe Lieberman as "fifteen minute men"--the kind of politicians who would get an emergency call on a Friday night from "Crossfire" and be at the studio, made up, and ready to ponticate in fifteen minutes. Talking all day with the reporters on the campaign bus is just an extension of his long career of determined catering to the media. Maybe the press should stop referring to McCain simply as a "war hero" and start referencing him as "the war hero and legendary media schmoozer" Sen. John McCain.

But why does he do it. My hypothesis is that John McCain looks to the media to be a combination of friend, confidante, protector, and nurturer. As William Greider mentioned, McCain wanted reporters to protect him from himself.

In 1999, William Greider wrote in Rolling Stone that, “While McCain continues examining his flaws, the reporters on the bus are getting a bit edgy. Will somebody tell this guy to shut up before he self-destructs?” Imagine, reporters protecting a candidate from himself!

"Reporters protecting a candidate from himself--that's what McCain wanted. But it's also what every kid wants from their mom as well. They want someone to be their friend, confidante, and protector, someone who will clean up their messes and make their clothes look all shiny and new, and someone who will be proud when they succeed and encouraging when they fail. "Mommy's" as limited to biological mothers. Lots of traditional guys get the mommy treatment from their wives and I'd bet my bottom dollar that Cindy McCain gives her "studmuffin" the full mommy treatment when he's home.

But when John McCain is working as a politician, he wants the media to be his mommy, works relentlessly to get reporters to see him as their own special child, and has largely succeeded.

Borrowing a line from Chris Matthews, McCain refers to the media as his "base." It would be accurate if he thought of him self as the media's "favorite son."

Needed: A Hillary/Wright Do-Over

Today, Hillary Clinton read out a fairly involved comment on how she wouldn't have had Rev. Jeremiah Wright as her pastor as he was blaming the government for the AIDS epidemic or damning America.

Here Hillary was being a politician and not in the worst sense either. She was trying to convince undecided Democrats to support her candidacy by raising "doubts" about Obama's judgment i sticking with Wright.

I would not have had Rev. Wright as my pastor either. Then again, I'm an atheist. I'm not going to have anyone as my pastor.

But if I were a nice Methodist girl like Hillary Clinton, I would have responded to Obama's speech by defending his relationship to Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the hilt. I would have said something to the effect that the primary issue in going to a church is highly personal. What Hillary should have said was that people have to ask themselves whether a church brings you closer to God, helps you understand Jesus, and leads you to follow the Golden Rule. And Hillary should have been emphatic. If Jeremiah Wright's church did these things for Barack Obama, Obama should have remained a member of that church whatever Wright said about the secular matters that paled into insignificance.

By the way, it was dumb of Obama to stick with Wright's church once he set his sights on the U. S. Senate.

But Hillary would have increased her stature with Democrats if she had transcended her battle with Obama and defended the integrity of his Christianity. Being that "big" and "daring" would have shown the depth of her own commitment to Christianity, the depth of her belief in the multi-cultural ethic of the Democratic Party, and gotten her away from accusations of being "calculating" all the time. Supporting Obama at this point would helped Hillary with lots of undecided voters and weak Obama supporters by making her look better rather than making Obama look worse. It might even have caused strong Obama supporters to rethink their negative opinions about her.

In other words, it would have been a great political calculation.

To the contrary, what Hillary ended up with was the same old "tit for tat" daily political manuevering. And maybe Hillary gained something at the margins with that.

But Hillary lost a real opportunity here.

Surge Moves to Its Real Target--The Mahdi Army

Over the last two days, the Iraqi Army has launched an assault on the Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army Shiite militia in Basra. The Iraqi Army troops have American air cover but seem to have been carrying out the operation on their own.

Basra is the second largest city in Iraq and has been largely under the control of the Mahdi Army since the British withdrew to their bases.

But the Iraqi government did not launch the attack so they could control Basra.

Instead, the main objective is to destroy the Mahdi Army and that's been the main objective of the surge all along. The American military got the gift of Sunni defections from al-Qaeda and a couple of stand downs from al-Sadr.

However, what the U. S. and Nouri al-Maliki want is the destruction of the Mahdi Army as an independent power base for Iraqi Shiites.

Here I think they're going to fail however the military attack on al-Sadr plays out. If the Iraqi Army destroys the Mahdi Army, the al-Maliki government will lose its own base of support among the Shiite population and they will be a tremendously weak government in a hostile environment. It will be the mother of all Pyrrhic victories.

Of course, if the attacks fail, the Maliki government will lose face and perhaps be even weaker.

Anyway, attacking the Mahdi Army in Basra looks like another bad idea whose time has come. Too bad the Bush administration has had so many ideas like that.

Bill Clinton and the Idiot Democrats

The Bill Clinton Rally. My family and friends saw the Bill Clinton rally for Hillary Clinton in Morehead this afternoon. I got in line at 4:00pm and it was a long, long, line--more than a quarter mile. I'm a bad judge of crowd size but I'd say that only half the people in line got into the auditorium. At least three of the sociology and social work professors I know were working as volunteers for the Hillary campaign. So were a couple of students. Morehead State University seems to be much more of a Hillary campus than an Obama campus. Perhaps the downscale demographic here militates against Obama's rhetoric of unity.

The Three Idiots. I've had occasion to discuss the stupidity, laziness, and ineptitude of Kentucky Democrats before. Today's performance by local state representatives John Will Stacy, Rocky Adkins, and Walter Blevins was particularly embarrassing. All three of them talked about "when the Clintons were in the White House" over and over again as if Bill and Hillary had been co-presidents between 1992 and 2000. Out of the three local politicians to introduce Bill Clinton, only one of them used Hillary's name and only used it once. Maybe, the local guys haven't noticed but Hillary Clinton has been working for the last eight years and especially for the last 15 months to define her own political identity. Perhaps they haven't noticed that the idea of a Clinton dynasty is one of the major objections to Hillary's candidacy. Or maybe they were afraid they would forgot her name.

Part of the blame for the introduction fiasco lies at the feet of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Where the Obama campaign engages in spontaneous organization and does their homework concerning local talent of various kinds, the Hillary Campaign has relied on the organizations of state and local politicians. Part of the outcome of that reliance was the spectacle of people promoting the Hillary campaign without using her name hardly at all.

And couldn't there have been a woman speaking for the Hillary campaign to introduce Bill?

As the first major female candidate for the presidency, Hillary should have at least one woman speaking up for her.

That was another embarrassment.

But by now, Kentucky Democratic voters have grown immune to the failures of Kentucky Democratic politicians. So, the idiot warm-up acts probably didn't do Hillary any harm.

The Bill Speech. The Bill Clinton speech was a lot better and did his wife's candidacy some good. After starting off with some weak stuff that I forgot, Bill Clinton settled into a point by point argument for Hillary Clinton's candidacy on the issues of energy independence, health care reform, withdrawing from Iraq, and caring for Iraq veterans. Having taken his medicine for his racial comments in South Carolina, Bill Clinton stuck to the specifics of Hillary's policy ideas, how her plans would improve people's lives, and her relevant experience in those areas. The Hillary Campaign should have been doing this all along. Hillary's policy knowledge and plans are a major strength of her candidacy and a major reason she'd make a good president. But Mark Penn and Hillary's staff decided not to build Hillary's campaign on her policy expertise. So her most important strength is being wasted.

Still, I felt better about supporting Hillary's candidacy after Bill's speech than before. In that sense, the Bill gambit worked well.

Bill Clinton in Morehead, the $100 Dollar Rumor, and Other Easter Notes

The Hillary Clinton campaign is kicking off in Kentucky next week. Bill Clinton will be holding a rally at the Morehead Conference Center on Tuesday, March 25 at 5pm. It will be his last stop on a three-city tour. Hillary is slated to come into the state later.

That's fact.

The rumor is that it's going to take a $100 dollar contribution to either get into the rally or get within shouting distance of the former president.

I don't particularly mind and I rather welcome the opportunity to nudge my Hillary contributions ahead of my Obama contributions.

But I'm a university professor rather than a student, a convenience store worker, or a retail associate. So, making that kind of contribution is not going to be the burden for me that it is to many others.

The other significance of the Bill Clinton events is that they are a strong sign that the Hillary campaign plans on carrying on until the convention.

Liberal bloggers like Josh Marshall and Matthew Yglesias have been arguing that Hillary should pull out.

But I'd be surprised if she did. There's a lot of ways to win and Hillary wouldn't be a top flite politician if she didn't play the game through to the very end.

Reminds Me of Hillary's Health Care Plan

It's 2:00am. I've finished a draft of my SWOT analysis for the University Audit and I've finally gotten to watch a little bit of Beowulf. Right now, it looks like Beowulf has cut off Grendel's hand.

Go Beowulf.

I've been thinking a lot about the Hillary/ Obama know today.

My impression is that Obama's campaign is permanently damaged by the Jeremiah Wright incident and that he won't be able to get beyond it. That doesn't mean that I don't think Obama can win. But he's now looking a lot more "controversial" and a lot less transcendent.

In other words, Obama looks more like Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Actually, Barack Obama's speech is beginning to look a lot like Hillary Clinton's health care plan. Weighing in at over 1,000 pages, Hillary Clinton's plan provided an enormous amount of fodder for conservative critics even though it was a great plan that would have made the American health care system a lot more rational. Obama has the same problem with his speech. Having spoken for more than 35 minutes Obama provided an enormous amount of material for the right-wing to chew on. And they've already started to do the nit-picking and micro-analysis. Charles Krauthammer, Patrick Buchanan, and Ann Coulter have already weighed in with articles like Buchanan's "A Brief for Whitey" which complains that it's white people who have really suffered as a result of race.

And that brings me back to Hillary Clinton.

The premise of Hillary's campaign is that any Democratic candidate or president would have to engage in a full-time battle with the right-wing. That's a premise that Obama has always rejected.

But I believe that the dispute over Obama's speech is going to prove Hillary right.

Jason Whitlock on March Mediocrity

Jason Whitlock of Fox Sports has an interesting article on the NCAA basketball tournament which boils down to the fact that college basketball isn't any good now that the best players are going to the NBA as soon as possible.

The Kevin Garnetts of the world can't go directly from high school to the pros anymore, but the "one and done" crowd of O. J. Mayo, Michael Beasley, and Kevin Durant only dominate because the best upperclassmen are already in the NBA.

NCAA basketball has declined in recent years because the talent level has fallen off. Sooner or later, fan interest is going to go the way of the talent.

I know mine has.

Obama's Knowledge/ McCain's Ignorance

Because I've been so immersed in my audit analysis for the GGH Government Program, I haven't been able to write the "post to end all posts" on Obama's speech that I wanted to write.

But I have a brief comment on Obama in relation to John McCain.

Much of what I liked about Obama's speech was that he pressed all his knowledge of the reality of race relations into the service of a larger, more generous humanity. Obama was able to sketch out the roots of racial resentments on both the black and white sides in a manner that carried the expectation that both sides would be able to gain an understanding of the other and be more generous in thinking about and judging the other group. Obama's knowledge made him a bigger person. To the extent that his speech had an impact on American thinking about race, it made us all bigger.

Then there's John McCain.

The liberal blogs have been abuzz about John McCain's mistaken claim that the Iranians were training al-Qaeda fighters to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

To bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall, the main point is that McCain doesn't know that al-Qaeda members are militant Sunnis who view themselves as being just as much at war with Shiite Iran as they are with the U. S.

But I disagree.

The point for McCain and other neo-conservatives is that making claims that there are connections between al-Qaeda and Iran is a matter of moral principle instead of an issue of knowledge vs ignorance.

Foreign policy neo-cons have made all kinds of claims about the Middle East--about Iraq, Iran, Saddam Hussein, Hezbollah, and other parties.

But what comes first to neo-conservatives is their policy objectives of maintaining an indefinite occupation of Iraq, forcing a regime change in Iran, and supporting Israel against populist Arab opponents like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Instead of orienting their policy objectives around an empirical understanding of the Middle East, conservatives prefer to make provocative claims concerning American opponents as a political tactic to justify aggressive American policies. Dick Cheney was a master of this kind of provocation in the run-up to the Iraq War, mixing up assertions that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11 with claims about the threats from Iraq's WMD's and innuendoes about Hussein being another Hitler. None of these claims were true and Cheney could have cared less whether they were true or not. The point was that making such claims tended to tilt public opinion toward supporting the invasion Cheney wanted. Cheney and other neo-cons were sure to attack those who found contrary evidence as naive, unpatriotic, or treasonable. But the neo-cons did so because they believed in the political value of their claims and their own manhood and moxy in advancing these claims rather than their truth-value.

Contrary to Obama, neo-conservatives routinely advance their cause by making unwarranted, provocative claims and then acting as though such claims were true. In other words, the neo-cons use ignorance as one of their favorite tools for pursuing their agenda.

And that's what McCain was doing. He was advancing a provocative claim about al-Qaida and Iran as a way to make the war in Iraq seem necessary. In fact, he could care less whether Iran is training al-Qaeda fighters or not.

The point is to promote the war.

And Joe Lieberman wouldn't have corrected McCain if he didn't think that McCain's mistake wasn't going to make McCain and the war look bad.

The systematic deployment of this kind of dishonesty as a propoganda took in American politics is one of the many ways in which conservatives make themselves small in order to pursue their political aims. To the extent that they have an impact on American politics, they make the rest of us small as well.

Obama's principles knowledge enlarges himself and us while McCain's determined ignorance reduces himself and us.

If Obama is the Democratic nominee, that's going to be a lot of what's involved in choosing between them.

Spring Break--Auditing--SWOTING

Well, I've spent the last two days working on the SWOT --"Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats--analysis for the Government Program's audit submission. Here's an example of my sterling bureaucratic prose:

Offering a variety of empirical political science classes, public law, and political theory, Morehead State is the only political science program in the state that can claim to fully embrace the possibilities of political science education.

Maybe I did something in a past life to deserve this, but I can't imagine what.

Sketching the Obama Crisis

I guess we're now going to find out how Barack Obama reacts when he gets calls at 3:00 in the morning. That's because he'll probably be getting some of those calls tonight. With the broadcasting of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons on YouTube, my tube, and everybody's tube, Obama has a crisis on his hands. Wright's sermons are inflammatory to the nth degree and wide open to accusations of reverse racism and America-hating. The YouTube videos of Wright's sermons not only tar Obama with guilt by association, they locate Obama in the cultural place of African-American resentment over white oppression and that's a place Obama has been trying his best to avoid.

There's also the problem of truth-telling. The videos also make it hard to believe that Obama never heard one of Wright's aggressive sermons or heard of him making one of these sermons. It was pretty clear from the crowd reaction that the congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ expected this kind of sermonizing from Wright and reveled in it. I'm pretty sympathetic to Obama for a Hillary supporter, but I can't see how the "Barack Didn't Know" story can stand up for long and it will be interesting to see Obama try to re-spin another cover story after this one falls apart. But "re-spinning" is associated with sleazy politicians like Hillary Clinton. Obama wasn't supposed to do these kinds of things.

That's why Obama has a bit of an Eliot Spitzer difficulty here as well. Much as Spitzer had been particularly sanctimonious in his moralizing while he was also patronizing prostitutes, Obama has been calling for racial unity while being an enthusiastic member of a church of racial division. That certainly raises the question of whether Obama is a hypocrite or a phony.

Whether the answer is "yes" is another issue.

StudMuffin McCain--Always a Boy Toy

A few days ago, I wrote that it was very likely that John McCain's wife owned the Arizona cabin where McCain entertained reporters with some manly barbecuing.

I definitely called that one right. According to Jamison Forser of Media Matters:

Well, guess who owns John McCain's "rustic cabin" -- the one with the guest house and the pool? Cindy McCain, the wealthy and politically connected Arizona beer heiress McCain married shortly after leaving his first wife, and just in time to move to Arizona to run for Congress.

But this is where liberal journalists like Forser and bloggers like Digby go wrong. For liberals, the only point about McCain is the media's "hypocrisy" in ignoring McCain's finances while they obsess about the finances and lifestyle of Democrats like John Kerry and John Edwards. Why not focus more on the media's romance novel-like swooning over McCain, their determined efforts to nurture his campaign, and make everything comfortable for him. John McCain is the media's "StudMuffin" just as much as he's Cindy McCain's StudMuffin and he leads the coddled life of someone who expects everyone to love him the same way his wife and the media love him.

And if people treat McCain any other kind of way, he'll throw a fit.

Nancy Pelosi's Gut and Mine

Nancy Pelosi is definite that there's going to be no "dream ticket" with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton together.

Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have been floating the "dream ticket" idea lately, but Pelosi is emphatic about the combined ticket not happening because the Clinton camp had been claiming that "Senator McCain would be a better Commander in Chief than Obama."

When pressed by reporters on Thursday to explain why she felt so strongly about the matter, Pelosi replied: “Do you want me to go through a lifetime of political gut? Take it from me. That won’t be the ticket.”

Needless to say, my political gut is a lot less highly developed than Nancy Pelosi's--maybe because my father was a garbageman rather than mayor of Baltimore.

But Pelosi might be off the mark here. It might be the case that a Clinton/ Obama ticket might become more likely as things get tougher between Clinton and Obama.

A joint ticket might be the only way to mollify the supporters of the loser.

It also might be the best way to produce some positive news for the Democrats after a long, contentious primary battle.

That's what my gut says anyway.

Who Actually Got the Call at 3am?

Hush!

--Cue somber music--

Last night, there WAS a call at 3am.

The call was about whether American financial markets would fall into a tailspin--possibly sparking a global economic collapse.

The "venerable" Wall Street brokerage company Bear Stearns was unable to make payments on its loans and there was a strong concern that the failure of a company like Bear Stearns would lead to a crisis of confidence in financial markets.

The Fed used a little-known power it last exercised in the 1960s to stem a run on Bear Stearns that could have sent multibillion-dollar losses cascading across the world financial system, causing more failures on Wall Street and threatening to choke off global economic growth.

Decisions had to be made. Was the federal government going to be a party to the bailout? If so, what kind of bailout? Who would be involved? What would be the conditions?

If something was going to be done, it had to be done right away.

So, who got the call?

Was it President George Bush?

No, as far as I can tell from the Washington Post article, George Bush slept peacefully.

Instead, the call went to Ben Bernanke, the chair of the Federal Reserve Board.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn, New York Fed President Timothy F. Geithner, and Fed Governor Kevin M. Warsh conferred in those early-morning hours on calls, which also included Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Undersecretary Robert K. Steel. The Treasury Department had no formal role in the plan, but Fed leaders consulted Paulson and Steel for their financial markets expertise and to get their support.

Frankly, I'm reassured that Bush, Cheney, and the people in the White House were still sleeping while these decisions were being made. Maybe we'll get through the next ten months after all.

Bring on the Blood

My humble opinion is that the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is more like the legendarily pathetic brawl between Julius Erving and Larry Bird in 1984 than a real championship fight.

Or even a hockey brawl

But serious and important journalists are starting to get antsy about the Democratic bloodbath. So, I'm going to take a second or two to be worried about the whole thing.

. . . . . .

Well, I'm glad that's over.

My point is that people like myself have been urging the Democrats to be tougher for a long time now. Why should we recoil now that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are finally starting to bloody each other up after "only" 15 months of campaigning?

So bring on the blood.

Personally, I'm glad that Clinton and Obama are learning how to dish out the pain. Given that Democrats have been taking it for so long, watching Hillary and Barack be aggressive is a refreshing change.

Everybody connected with the Democratic Party needs to toughen. The candidates need to develop thicker skins and longer claws. Democratic and independent voters should get used to seeing a little political gore on their computer and tv screens. And liberal op-ed writers and reporters need to stop being such all-consuming wimps.

Tough times are ahead. If Clinton or Obama wins, they're going to be facing the mess in Iraq, a recession, and a heavy load of financial and abuse of power scandals left over from the Bush administration.

No doubt, some right-wing twit will be talking about "treason in the White House" even before the winner moves in.

Any Democratic president is going to get an extremely rough ride. So, they might as well prepare for it now.

And I'm still supporting Hillary.

Raising the Racial Sludge

Josh Marshall (of TPM fame) has an interesting take on the relation between Geraldine Ferraro's comments and the Hillary Clinton campaign in an article for The Hill.

But the simple fact is that we wouldn’t be seeing this stuff now if it weren’t for the fact that this is the kind of campaign Hillary Clinton’s staff has decided to wage — often directly and at other times indirectly by not reining it in among her supporters when it crops up on its own. Wright is news today because Ferraro was news in the days just previous. Are her comments racist? That’s a loaded word. And there have been cases where the Clinton team has gotten a bum rap on these matters. What I do know, however, is that Clinton’s campaign and her surrogates have injected the subject of Obama’s race into this campaign too many times now for it to be credible to believe that it is anything but a conscious strategy.

In other words, Marshall isn't sure that Ferraro's comments were racist but does believe that the Hillary is injecting race into the campaign in a way that constantly reminds voters that Obama is "the black candidate."

My view is the polar opposite. Sure racism is a loaded word, but it applies well to Ferraro's comments about Obama being ahead because he's black and she herself being attacked because she's white. When Ferraro said that Obama is ahead because he's black, she was (knowingly I believe) dredging up the racist idea that blacks have become a "favored group" in American society or that blacks can only be successful because of affirmative action. My mother, a Democrat who's even more disgusted with Obama's success than Ferraro, expresses an allied racist idea when she claims that "blacks are taking over everything."

If either Hillary or Obama had gotten farther out ahead, this kind of racist sludge wouldn't have been dredged up from the depths of the segregationist past. However, the white racism was always there and the hard-fought character of the primary battle is bring it up.

But is the Hillary Clinton campaign specifically seeking to dredge up these kinds of white supremacist sentiments by continually reminding voters that Obama is black?

If they were, they would be worse than bigots because they would be trying to stimulate bigotry for political advantage. That would put the Hillary people disgusting in a Karl Rove kind of way.

But I don't think that's the case.

If Hillary Clinton herself or the Hillary campaign were seeking to "inject" racial poison into the campaign, they would have arranged for Bill Clinton to keep making racial remarks after his analogy between Obama and Jesse Jackson served to stereotype Obama as the "black candidate."

In fact, the opposite happened. Bill Clinton was given a new set of talking points, sent off on a Dan Quayle type tour of small towns, and became generally less prominent in Hillary's campaign.

That's a sign that Hillary didn't like the fact that Bill's comments and didn't like the fact that his comments drove African-American voters into the Obama camp.

I've argued several times that much of the Clinton campaign's maladroitness on race comes from their general lack of skill in dealing with African-American audiences and issues. That's because Hillary's staff is largely white and the general clumsiness of whites in dealing with non-whites rather than beinga specific strategy.

The Hillary campaign's problem with race is their whiteness rather than their white racism.

More Ranting About Spitzer

Three reasons I'm so ticked off about Eliot Spitzer:

1. Justice Denied Again. Spitzer made his reputation by going after financial abuses and outrageous salaries on Wall Street. Needless to say the abuses are still going to be there whether Spitzer is governor of New York or not. But Spitzer's diddling around with prostitutes is going to delegitimize the efforts of other people to rein in the abuses.

2. Sympathy for New York Democrats. I've lived in two of the super Republican rural counties in Upstate New York (Tioga and St. Lawrence). I know how hard it is for Democrats to make any headway. Spitzer's morally bankrupt behavior with prostitutes betrayed years of hard work by local Democrats to prepare the way for a popular Democratic candidate like Spitzer was in 2006.

3. Doing a John Bolton Within. Amanda Marcotte writes:

I propose that the problem with prostitution is unique not because sex as a service is unique exactly. I think that the problem with legalization schemes is that prostitution is more, for the majority of the customers, about buying the opportunity to treat a woman like utter trash. In order for prostitution to be legal and yet still viable, the scheme either has to preserve the customer’s right to treat the prostitute like trash (which is why it works in Nevada, though it does the actual prostitutes little good), or an illegal side market of prostitution will flourish next to the legal one.

Just a "kiss up/kick down" guy like John Bolton was always looking for opportunities to abuse those below him, prostitution is about "buying the opportunity to treat a woman like utter trash." In other words, guys like Eliott Spitzer are seeking the opportunity to be assholes without paying any consequences for their degrading behavior toware women.

Too Embarrassed to Gloat

Because of that *&%# asshole Eliot Spitzer, I don't have either the heart or the moral standing to gloat over the embezzlement scandal at the Republican National Campaign Committee. Damn him.

Does McCain Know Any Non-Bigoted People on the Religious Right?

It doesn't seem like it. TPM has a story today on McCain referring to an Ohio megachurch minister by the name of Rod Parsley as a "spiritual adviser." In itself, that's fine. As the case of Eliot Spitzer demonstrates, prominent male politicians need all the spiritual advice they can get to keep it in their pants. But Rev. Parsley also claims that the U. S. has a historical mission to destroy Islam.

I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.

I don't know why. The hundreds of millions of wealthy Europeans who live just fine without religion in their lives are much more of a threat to American Christianity than Islam. Because we view Islam as the enemy, fighting Islam is something that invigorates Christianity. But the Europeans are killing Christianity through lack of interest in religion altogether.

But then again, perhaps Rev. Parsley is trying to "guide" Sen. McCain into a major military assault on Switzerland and other countries with low rates of church attendance.

Drifting Towards Obama or Putting My Mouth Where My Money Is!

I recognize that Geraldine Ferraro no longer has an official connection with the Hillary campaign, but I think the Ferraro episode has led me to drift over the line toward supporting Obama more than Hillary. It bothered me that Ferraro thought she was helping Hillary Clinton with her garbage about Obama only being ahead because he's black and it bothered me even more that Hillary Clinton didn't disown Ferraro imediately.

I'm not overly excited by the idea of switching to Obama and dislike a lot of Obama's facile rhetoric about overcoming race, class, and gender divisions. Likewise, I don't accept Obama's assumption that the war with the right is going to disappear if Obama wins the election. I'm sure I would vote for Hillary if the Kentucky primary were held today.

However, I also sense that my support for Hillary is based more on reluctance to give up my previous support than anything else. One could say that I'm torn about who to support, but it would be more accurate to see me as gradually drifting toward the Obama side. Perhaps I've been doing so ever since the South Carolina primary.

Or maybe I'm just putting my mouth where my money is. I've contributed twice as much to Obama as I have to Hillary.

Eliot Spitzer's Inner John Bolton

I have some advice for Eliot Spitzer. Hey Eliot! Your lame apology is not enough. Now that it's been revealed that you've used prostitutes, you need to grab your sword and fall on it. If you're not satisfied with euphemism, then just run yourself through. No, I don't mean you should kill yourself. You should commit political suicide and resign. If you want to do something really appropriate, you should politically disembowel yourself as well.

Geraldine Ferraro Blows It for Hillary, Updated

A lot of Hillary surrogates have made stupid comments about Barack Obama and race. Bill Clinton, Robert Johnson, and Ed Rendell are probably the most prominent.

So, I should have done this week ago.

But it should now be obvious that there are a lot of Hillary surrogates who have no clue about how to talk about race under political pressure without sounding racist.

Today's Geraldine Ferraro's turn (from Kos).

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

What a load of garbage!!! Obama's not leading the race for the Democratic nomination because he's black. Obama's winning because he's an extremely likable figure, who's a bright guy and a super-talented politician. Like anybody else born in the United States, Obama has to play the race cards he's been dealt. But he's played those cards extremely well. Obama has been able to be progressive on the issues without being either a ferocious partisan or heavily identified with minority politics. He has a cool androgyny that plays well with white independents, moderates, and young people while he's also become effective at appealing for black votes.

Barack Obama isn't ahead because the country is "caught up in the concept" of a "black man being president." Obama and Hillary Clinton are pretty much tied in the polls. To the contrary, Obama is ahead in the delegate count because he's made better campaign decisions than Hillary and because his campaign staff has outplanned, outhustled, and outfought Hillary's staff. I still think Hillary would make a better president, but Obama has shown that he's just as much a heavyweight as she is.

That's something that Hillary's surrogates need to catch up on.

Update--Today, Ferraro is claiming that she's being attacked because she's white. It sounds like 75 years of racial resentments are catching up with her. In some ways, she reminds me of my 73 year old mom who is reacting to Obama's success with a lot of racist garbage. It's both sad and disgusting.

McCain and the "Look at Me Express"

One of the themes of those who disdain the Obama campaign is the idea that Barack Obama is "self-centered." That's especially the case in relation to the various patriotism slips by Barack and Michelle Obama. Here's an item from Blogs for Bush:

Even if he "forgot" to show the proper respect, his "forgetfulness" is illustrative of his priorities; and is likewise illustrative of his contempt toward those who before him have made the ultimate sacrifice so that he and other ungrateful, smug, self-centered adolescent rubes can ramble on about how love of and respect for one's country mean nothing. After all--he didn't have to pay for his freedoms.

Of course, it takes a lot of self-centeredness for anybody to launch a major campaign for the presidency--including Barack Obama. But self-centeredness is not nearly as important to Obama's campaign as it's going to be to John McCain's. Here's Stephen Hayes discussing how McCain's going to campaign after he takes a trip overseas to "look presidential" and gives a "significant national security address."

After that, McCain will begin a cross-country tour emphasizing his life story. His advisers believe that while most Americans have a vague sense that McCain served his country in the military and in political life, they don't actually know his story. This trip--the "Service to America" tour--is intended to fill out that narrative. It will feature stops in cities and towns that have somehow shaped his life. Among them: McCain Field in Mississippi; the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class; Pensacola, Florida, where he trained at the Pensacola Naval Air Station; and Jacksonville, Florida, where he lived upon returning from his time as a POW in Vietnam. At each stop, the campaign will emphasize one aspect of McCain's character and talk about why it will be important in the White House.

In other words, the main justification for electing John McCain president is going to be his "character" and McCain is going to go from place to place displaying "one aspect" of his character after another. Issues like the war, foreign policy, the economy, and the environment are going to get short shrift as McCain focuses attention on himself, his character, and what it means to be as great as John McCain. Obama and Clinton use personal anecdotes to bring attention to their policy prescriptions. Stuck with unpopular policy prescriptions, John McCain is going to focus on himself. He might as well call his campaign plane the "Look at Me Express."

I'd Pay For Do-Over in Florida and Michigan

I can get behind the Democratic Party doing the Florida and Michigan primaries over. It's the only way to be fair to the Michigan and Florida Democrats whose votes are currently being shut out from the process.

Even more importantly, the do-over would continue the tremendous excitement and enthusiasm that's the Democrats into June. It would raise a lot of cash as well. According to James Carville, it would cost $30 mill to hold the do-over primaries. My bet is that the Hillary and Obama campaigns would be able to raise double that for Florida and Michigan campaigns. I know I'd kick in $50 dollars a so.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Hillary would have an advantage in both states going in. Holding a do-over in Michigan and Florida would also give Hillary a chance to show that she can go hermana a hermano with Obama in a couple of important swing states and win.

Let's get it done.

Apres Denny Hastert?

Democrat Bill Foster won today's election to replace recently resigned former Republican leader Denny Hastert in the House of Representatives. Foster pulled down 53% of the vote over the Republican candidate Jim Oberweiss.

Unlike Kos and dday at Digby, I don't think winning this election is a sign that Democratic utopia had arrived. Oberweiss wasn't a strong enough candidate to make the election a true test of a Democratic Party surge.

But I do think that an Obama or Hillary victory in November will result in a dramatic shift away from the Republicans in particular and conservative ideology in general. If either Obama or Hillary become president, there's a good chance that the Democrats will be working with big majorities for the next 10 or 12 years.

Ironically, conservative Republicans are counting on John McCain to hold the fort for them until the Conservative Brand recovers from the Bush administration.

Apres Denny--the Democratic deluge? Probably after Barack instead.

McCain Bad Decision Watch #1

One of my personal hypotheses about John McCain is that he's not a good manager or decision-maker. In fact, he's basically a one-man band kind of guy. McCain's most comfortable in situations where it's just him on the spot--off-the-cuff speaking, television interviews, town hall meetings, and debates. His presidential campaigns work best when it's just McCain, a few of his close allies, and a bus rolling across the countryside. McCain especially likes to be coddled in as everybody's "studmuffin" and is at his best when he's being coddled, nurtured, and buttered-up by the mainstream media.

Otherwise, he gets angry and has the kind of temper tantrums he threw at Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times.

At the same time, McCain doesn't "do" organization very well at all. McCain's never been good at building campaign organizations himself, never been good at hiring people to build campaign organizations, and never been good at fundraising. Perhaps McCain just isn't effective when it isn't "all John all the time."

Now that McCain is the Republican nominee, however, he's going to be the head of a large campaign organization, he gets to choose the top leadership of the Republican National Committee, and he has to be coordinated with various Republican elites.

My bet is that McCain botches up the whole thing and makes his general election campaign even tougher than it was going to be.

The first evidence of McCain's poor decision-making was the idea to seek out the endorsement of a megachurch superstar and general all-round bigot like Rev. James Hagee. That led to three straight days of uncomfortable backtracking. Following the NYT story on Vicki Iseman, McCain now has had two straight weeks of bad press in the wake of sewing up the Republican nomination.

Not a great start.

Today, Robert Novak complains about McCain choosing Carly Fiorina as the finance chair for his presidential campaign.

Conservatives and party regulars were not happy about the selection of Carly Fiorina to head the Republican National Committee's "Victory 2008" campaign raising funds for the presidential election . . . .

Federal Election Commission records show Fiorina contributed nothing to the Republican Party the last eight years. Her only political giving was to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign -- $2,100 in 2006 and $2,300 in 2007. Fiorina was at McCain's side when he campaigned in the critical Michigan and Florida races.

Fiorina has no standing in the conservative movement and has taken no position on the abortion question.

Given her status as a celebrity ex-ceo of Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina is going to serve mostly as a celebrity spokesperson for McCain's poorly formulated and ad hoc economic policies. If she's really in charge of campaign fund-raising as well, it's most likely another bad decision on McCain's part.

McCain Frays His Lifeline

My initial read of the John McCain campaign is that McCain has a lot better chance of flopping his way to a landslide defeat than he has of giving Obama or Hillary a serious fight. Sure, McCain looks like a serious contender and he has a serious contender's poll numbers (6 behind Obama in today's RCP average). But John McCain also looks a lot like Rudy Giuliani late last year. Giuliani was still on top of the polls but he was also on the verge of looking ridiculous as the media started documenting his two divorces, estrangement from his children, fights with NYC firemen, and his bachelor pad in the terrorist command post. Giuliani sank like a stone after yet more revelations.

McCain's in an analogous situation. Certainly, his candidacy has strengths. The Republican Party will support McCain, the media worships him, and he's generally well-liked by moderate and independent voters. But McCain's in several kinds of binds. Worst of all, McCain has no natural base outside the media that he's been cultivating for decades. McCain used to have a base among moderate and independent voters but that was seriously weakened by his full-throated support for President Bush's surge. In fact, McCain's situation with moderates and independents is now extremel fluid. Centrist voters are still willing to give McCain a chance, but they're also open to criticism of McCain for his support of Bush's surge, his flip-flopping on immigration and torture, his position on social security, his temper, and his history of adultery back in the 70's. McCain's standing among moderates and independents also depends on the continued enthusiasm of the mainstream media for the McCain campaign. In fact, the media serves as a kind of lifeline for McCain these days. If the establishment media either gave up on him or started to treat him like he was ridiculous, McCain would lose his line to the moderate and independent voters he would need to have any chance in the general election.

This is why McCain's angry exchange with Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times was such a risky gambit. I'm sure McCain precipitated the exchange partly as a way to show right-wing talk show hosts and conservative bloggers he was eager to stick it to the Times. But it backfired because it made McCain look like a stupid bully. Bumiller asked a challenging but innocent question about McCain's switching from the Republican Party to independent status in 2001 and flirting with accepting a vice-presidential nomination from John Kerry in 2004. McCain could have just denied the stories, but he decided to badger Bumiller about asking the questions in the first place. McCain's attack on Bumiller in front of a group of reporters was stupid because the stories about the incident are going to remind conservatives of how little loyalty McCain has to the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Even more dangerous for McCain is the fact that the mainstream media now sees that McCain can blow up at them as well as Republican senators, military officials, and homestate Arizona politicians. In other words, McCain was putting his media lifeline to moderate and independent voters at risk and increasing the danger of looking ridiculous and implausible to voters at large.

Of course, it's going to take more than one incident to undo the good will McCain's built up with the media over the last fifteen years. But it is safe to say that McCain frayed his lifeline today.

Supporting Hillary, Respecting Obama

A commenter asks how I can be supporting Hillary if I'm so critical of the Hillary campaign and ready to recognize the virtues of Barack Obama and his campaign.

That's a fair question.

My answer is this. I believe that Hillary Clinton would make a better president than Obama and that she's right in viewing the United States as a fiercely divided country. However, I'm also very critical of the Hillary campaign because they've done a poor job of making her case and because the candidate herself sometimes seems stuck in the "New Democrat" politics of opposing the left as much as she opposes the right.

Concerning Obama, I believe that his vision of transcending the politics of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation is a fantasy. At the same time, I'm more than willing to acknowledge the effectiveness of his campaign and am beginning to see ways in which the "fantasy of unity" can become a "dominant fact" of American politics.

In other words, I support Hillary but am more than willing to acknowledge the power of the Obama campaign.

How Obama Would Unite

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer asks how Barack Obama can be a "uniter" if he hadn't supported "bi-partisan" legislation like warrantless wiretapping, immigration reform, and the "gang of 14" deal to end Democratic filibusters on Bush judicial appointments.

The answer is simple.

Obama's premise is that an Obama victory would mean that the Republican right-wing would no longer exist as a meaningful force in American politics. It's not that Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, Ann Coulter, Tom Coburn and the rest of the right-wing would disappear, or be disappeared. It's just that so few people would be listening to them that they wouldn't matter anymore.

Divisions of race, gender, sexual orientation, rich and poor, and young and old can be transcended only if the right-wing politics of hate no longer has the ability to exploit those divisions. For Obama, the politics of the future is one in which the Gingrich/Limbaugh right is magicked back to its pre-Ronald Reagan irrelevance and people on the left no longer have to be so aggressive in fighting them.

In this sense, the decline of the activist right means that the left can get back to the business of governing for the common good and working out the compromises with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans needed to get things done.

In Obama's world, the decline of the right liberates the left from the politics of opposition as well. No Limbaugh means that MoveOn.org and Kos aren't needed either.

Hillary's idea is that the next Democratic president is going to have to fight with right-wing figures like Charles Krauthamer from Day One. Obama's idea is that people like Krauthammer are slated to disappear from the political scene as surely as last of the big dinosaurs were going to disappear after the giant meteor hit in the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm more in agreement with Hillary. But I'd worry a lot about Obama if I were Charles Krauthammer. That's because an Obama victory might mean that millions of people are getting ready to tune out the Charles Krauthammers of the world.

The Threshold Ploy: I Kind of Like It

I generally like Daily Kos even if I think their posting is a pretty vanilla version of the left-wing views I hold as well. Contrary to Kos top-poster devilstower though, I thought today's Hillary gambit on national security was pretty well done. It was a two-part rhetorical manuever. First, Hillary defined the "commander-in-chief threshold" as a kind of magic criteria for evaluating presidential candidates. The idea is that people shouldn't vote for anyone for president who they can't imagine as crossing the threshold of being credible in wielding the imperial power of the United States. In retrospect, the American public was mistaken in thinking that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had ever crossed that threshold and we now realize the gravity of our collective error.

Then, she claimed that both she and John McCain had crossed that threshold and challenged voters to determine whether they thought the same of Barack Obama.

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

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

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

I don't agree that John McCain has crossed any kind of threshold about being commander-in-chief. McCain's basically another Dick Cheney, somebody who's developed the ability to sound rational and informed in relation to defense policy at the same time he's a completely unhinged warmonger.

But Hillary's running against Obama right now rather than McCain. So there's no harm in implying that she would be seen more as McCain's equal on foreign policy than Barack Obama and I'm sure that Hillary herself believes that. Despite his many weaknesses as a candidate, John McCain does have a lot of political capital as a "straight-shooter" on national security and other issues. As a result, there is a real question about whether Obama would be taken seriously on national security issues during a general election campaign and Hillary is right to try to figure out a way to push the question to her advantage.

Another thing I like about the idea of a "commander-in-chief threshold is that she introduced the concept while forwarding her own proposals on the war effort in Afghanistan. But did The Chicago Tribune's "The Swamp" report what those proposals actually were?

Not on your life.

Point Coulter

This blog doesn't often find itself in agreement with Ann Coulter. But yesterday's Coulter column does make a good point about liberals.

Liberals believe, often accurately, that if they say the same thing over and over again 1 billion times, people will believe it: "Bush lied, kids died," "We've lost in Iraq," "Reagan is stupid," "Bush is stupid," "Republicans are stupid," "Global warming is destroying the planet," "Gloria Steinem is good-looking" and -- their most provably false assertion -- "Bill Clinton is the most talented politician of his generation."

For some reason, Democratic politicians and consultants believe that saying the same thing "over and over again 1 billion times" is the route to political success. During the 2006 campaign, Nancy Pelosi said "Republican culture of corruption" so many times I got blue in the face. Likewise, Obama has two words--"change" and "hope"--that he and his supporters repeat over and over again zillions of times. But Hillary Clinton's campaign has to be the worst. Her senior campaign staff spent more than $100 million dollars while debating between "strength" and "warmth" before finally stumbling last week into a combination of strength, warmth, media criticism, and taking on Obama. Stunned by her new versatility, Ohio voters gave her a ten-point victory.

In the days leading up to the Ohio and Texas contests, Clinton presented herself as the victim of media bias and displayed a sense of humor on "Saturday Night Live" at the same time her staff was holding daily conference calls attacking Obama on his trade record and for his ties to an indicted real estate developer. The yin-yang approach -- going positive and negative at the same time -- may not have been deliberate, but it seemed to work.

"There has been a long-term disagreement on strategy over whether to focus on character . . . or raising questions about Senator Obama," said one top Clinton aide who was at the core of the fight. "What's happened over the last two weeks is we've done both."

The main reason for the endless repetition of catch phrases is the assumption by Democratic candidates and consultants that their constituencies are an electoral minority. Paralyzed by fear that the Republicans will be able to mobilize their "natural majority," Democratic candidates ride any kind of Democratic-favorable catch-phrase or slogan into the ground. But voters take this kind of rigidity as a sign of weakness in the same way that they view the Democratic leadership as weak because of its endless surrenders on Iraq war funding, warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, and other issues. Democrats are now a majority by almost every measure. The Democratic leadership should start feeling their strength and hitting the Republicans from several angles at the same time.

How Stupid Can the Hillary People Get?

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign complains about their lousy media coverage.

And rightfully so!

But they shouldn't be surprised about media hostility if they're sticking reporters in a men's room to do their work.

How stupid can they get?

John McCain, the StudMuffin Candidate for President

Sen. StudMuffin wins. At the bottom of a Newsweek story about a media barbeque given by John McCain, Holly Bailey notes the welcome mat at the door of the "master cabin" at McCain's ranch.

Reporters were given surprisingly free rein on the McCain property. As the senator grilled, and his wife Cindy and other aides talked to reporters, members of the press were allowed to roam around, availing themselves of the opportunity to take rides on the tire swing and exploring his house, which features a mat outside the door that says, "Geezer (formerly known as Stud Muffin) Lives Here."

I don't know why Bailey made StudMuffin into two words. Everybody who's anybody knows that "StudMuffin" is just one word. But "StudMuffin" well captures the world of John McCain has made for himself. Cindy McCain fell in love with John McCain the handsome, glib, tough-as-nails, navy guy. But John McCain's not just a stud who is plagued by foul-mouthed bad temper. He also projects a kind of self-deprecating, little boyish vulnerability that also makes people want to protect him. Perhaps because of his prisoner of war experience, perhaps for other reasons, John McCain seems to have an outsized need for warmth, nurturing, protection, and embrace. That's what makes him a "StudMuffin" rather than just a stud.

And Cindy McCain was so happy to nurture McCain that she financed McCain's political career with her family's money. I wouldn't be surprised if McCain's "Hidden Valley Ranch" wasn't purchased with her money as well.

Nothing was too good for her StudMuffin.

Now that McCain's the officially annointed Republican candidate for President, mainstream media figures have come out of the closet about the doe-eyed way they look on McCain as their StudMuffin as well.

McCain is definitely Holly Bailey's StudMuffin. Her prose in her piece on McCain's barbecue is the political version of a romance novel. Here's a fawning little bit:

On Sunday McCain pointed out a black hawk's nest high in one of the old sycamore trees, marveling at the time he watched a mother hawk teach her baby how to fly. "It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen," he gushed. A few feet away McCain motioned up toward a dead branch frequented by a certain woodpecker and noted that there are 67 different kinds of bird on his property. He motioned toward barren bushes and talked of the roses and spring flowers that will soon bloom. Reporters nodded and scribbled in their notebooks. "What kind of tree did he say that was?" one whispered.

Give McCain credit for not being stupid enough to stick the reporters into a bathroom like Hillary Clinton. But the gush enthusiasm is all Holly Bailey.

Of course, Chris Matthews and NBC are much more in contact with their swooning inner heroine than Bailey. Here's Brian Williams and Matthews competing to see who can sigh more dramatically over McCain as he's being endorsed by disgraced President George Bush.

Brian Williams: You know what I thought was unsaid ---they took their position Chris, we're seeing the replay --- they end up in this spot and the sun is coming is just from the side and there in the shadow is John McCain's buckled, concave shoulder. It's a part of his body the suit doesn't fill out because of his war injuries. Again you wouldn't spot it unless you knew to look for it. He doesn't give the same full chested profile as the president standing next to him. Talk about a warrior...

Chris Matthews: You know, when he was a prisoner all those years, as you know, in isolation from his fellows, I do believe, uhm, and machiavelli had this right --- it's not sentimental, it's factual --- the more you give to something, the more you become committed to it. That's true of marriage and children and everything we've committed to in our lives. He committed to his country over there. He made an investment in America, alone in that cell, when he was being tortured and afraid of being put to death at any moment -- and turning down a chance to come home.

Needless to say, Matthews has been in awe of Republican manliness for a long time. Like Cindy McCain, Matthews is not just admiring McCain's macho, he's nurturing McCain's vulnerabilities and protecting him from Matthews knows is a tough political enironment. Matthews knows that McCain's candidacy is going to need constant stroking from the media if McCain is to have any chance of winning.

Much like Cindy McCain, Matthews is more than willing to help and protect the strong but damaged and vulnerable man he sees in John McCain.

I don't see why Matthews just doesn't call McCain "his little StudMuffin" as well.

Hillary Takes Ohio, Leads Texas

OHIO! It's 11:40 right now and Ohio has been called for Hillary Clinton. That's not a big surprise. Ohio has been trending toward Hillary over the last couple of days. The big surprise is that she's leading by 14 at 56-42. The biggest lead I saw for Hillary in the polls was 10 points which means that she was at the edge of the margin of error for the most Hillary optimistic polls.

She also has a 2 point lead in Texas with 65% of the vote in. Of course, that's subject to a lot of change.

BUT WHY? Last week, Ohio looked even. So the question then is why did Hillary move anywhere from 10-14 points over the last week. One of the anonymous critics of this blog (and their criticisms really hurt my feelings) believes that the Drudge item from a Hillary campaign e-mail on Obama's Muslim dress and the Hillary "3am" ad were the things that tilted things toward Hillary.

But I don't buy that.

If anything the Obama Muslim story and the "3am" ad were damaging to Hillary herself. She certainly got a lot of negative press over the Drudge item. Likewise, I heard the ad while listening to Laura Ingraham and Ingraham wasn't far off the mark when she said it was the "worst ad" she ever heard. It was so bad that I almost switched my support from Hillary to Obama right then.

I thought it was a combination of things that pushed Hillary out to a big lead in Ohio. The most important damage came from the report on an Obama representative telling a Canadian official that Obama wasn't serious about his criticisms of NAFTA. That not only made Obama look like a "typical politician," but it made him look like a hypocrite on an issues that's particularly important in Ohio.

Obama was also getting a barrage of media criticism on the patriotism issue of a flag lapel pin, a lot of scrutiny over his connections with Tony Rezko, and attacks by McCain for his opposition to a 100 year occupation of Iraq.

Finally, Democrats like Mrs. RSI were tired of seeing the media dance on Hillary Clinton's grave. Hillary may not prove to be as popular as Barack Obama, but she is a popular politician and a lot of Democrats don't want to see her humiliated even if they are willing to see her lose.

Hillary herself doesn't have a lot to do with any of these factors. The most that can be said for her is that she didn't make any egregious mistakes. That put her in position to take advantage of the fact that Barack Obama is the leading candidate means that the media focus is shifting toward him and the search for warts, failures, and contradictions is really beginning. Facing the white-hot heat for the first time, Obama looks less attractive. Having been pushed out of the glare, Hillary looks better--about 14 points better.

A Hillary Mini-Surge

Today's Bump for Hillary. Talking Points Memo reports a couple of polls that show Hillary widening her lead in Ohio and closing on Obama in Texas. Good for her. But I don't think it's anything she's doing. Instead, it looks like the right-wing's and mainstream media's attacks on Obama's patriotism are having an impact.

Mrs. RSI Approves. Although Mrs. RSI has been a steady Obama supporter, she was glad to see that Hillary is doing better in the polls. She doesn't want Hillary to be "humiliated" in the sense of seeing the media dance on her grave. Of course, the only way for the loser between Hillary or Obama to emerge relatively "un-humiliated" is to be nominated for the Veep slot.

What Awaits the Next Democratic President. I haven't seen anybody put it in these terms yet, but one of the big headaches awaiting the next Democratic president is the lawlessness of the Bush administration. Of course, the real migraines are going to come from dealing with the Bush administration's illegal data mining, wiretapping, waterboarding and other torture techniques, and kidnapping (or extraordinary rendition) policies. It was all either a violation of American criminal law or a crime against humanity. I imagine that Hillary and Obama are both somewhat hopeful that the seemingly imminent passing of telecom immunity legislation will sweep the whole problem under the rug.

But they won't be so lucky with the DOJ scandals though. Paul Craig Roberts makes a compelling case that former Alabama governor Don Siegelman was railroaded into prison by the machinations of Karl Rove, DOJ attorneys, and an Alabama federal judge. It looks there's going to be a long investigation of the misconduct of federal prosecutors and their Washington bosses on that one. Meanwhile the judge in the case is withholding the trial transcripts as a way to block Siegelman's attorney's from filing an appeal. Disgusting!

Something Useful from Harold Ickes

This thought from Harold Ickes about superdelegates also applies to the question of whether Hillary should drop out if she loses Texas.

Here’s the case [Ickes] has been been making: “Mr. Obama has just become the frontrunner. He has not been subjected to any real degree of scrutiny by the press.”

Then, he says, he tells superdelegates that “we have an obligation” to wait and pick the best candidate for the Democratic Party. “We can’t nominate a candidate who can’t withstand the withering attacks of the Republicans.”

In other words, Hillary should stay in the race until Obama shows he can take the heat as a Democratic front-runner.

Bloody Politics II: Dicing McCain

My original prediction for the 2008 presidential election more than 15 months ago was 57-43 for the Democrat.

There's a decent chance that will stand up because John McCain is such a weak candidate.

This week's blow-up over Vicki Iseman underlines McCain's essential vulnerability.

The Candidate from Default, Arizona. Fundamentally, McCain is a default candidate of the Republican Party. First McCain, then Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and finally Mitt Romney were tried on by Republican voters before being discarded like cheap shirts. Of all the Republican candidates, McCain was not as unlikeable as Romney and not as ridiculous as "Rudy's Next Mistress" Giuliani or "Hard-Working" Fred Thompson.

Republican voters didn't really want him, but they ultimately decided to pick "Good-Old John" McCain off the floor and make him their nominee--by default.

The Democrats have a much better default candidate in Hillary Clinton. But it looks like the Dems are finding Barack Obama so electrifying that we're going to reach beyond the known in nominating our presidential candidate.

If there's one thing the nation knows about John McCain: he's no Barack Obama.

Sleeping with Lobbyists. In 2000, Vicki Iseman was a 32 year-old lobbyist who did not look like she had had her first plastic surgery yet. She might have had a face-lift or two since then though. There seems to be broad agreement among the MSM, right-wing blogs, and liberal bloggers that McCain probably did not have an affair with Iseman and that it might not have mattered if he did because McCain's connections with lobbyists or lying is the real issue.

I beg to differ.

McCain was in deep enough with Ms. Iseman that his staffers talked with him several times about the impropriety of their relationship and finally confronted her. The left blogs are saying that the problem was that McCain's connection with Iseman as a lobbyist wasn't consistent with his image as a reformer. But McCain is someone who is clearly comfortable with lobbyists. His main campaign guy for 2000 and 2008, Rick Davis, is a lobbyist. Longtime GOP lobbying bigshot Charlie Black is running his lobbying business from the back of McCain's bus this year. For his campaign people to confront him about the relationship with Iseman, they had to think Iseman was doing something besides lobbying McCain.

Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

I'll admit there's a chance that there was no sexual fire behind the smoke between McCain and Iseman. But not much of a chance.

My opinion is that the sexual innuendo involved in l'affaire Iseman has really damaged John McCain's candidacy. The idea of McCain having sex with a lobbyist resonates in a lot of ways. If the Obama campaign means anything, it means that Democrats, moderates, and independent voters want a clean break from the last generation of politics. McCain's involvement with Iseman is so damaging because it illustrates just how deeply McCain is tied to "the politics of the past."

First, there's the fact that McCain's an old-looking 71. The media always prints pictures of McCain that make him look younger and more vigorous than he really is. But it isn't working. One of the main knocks I hear about McCain is that he's "so" old and stories of him sleeping with a "40 year old lobbyist" reminds people of his age in a visceral and creepy kind of way.

Perhaps worse, the idea of an affair with Vicki Iseman reminds voters of the influence of big money over the last generation of office-holders in Washington. It reminds voters of the "old politics" of influence and corruption during Bill Clinton's and George W. Bush's presidencies. By raising his money primarily from the internet, Obama represents a break from "the politics of the past." In being seen as "sleeping with a lobbyist," McCain becomes a powerful embodiment of things about the past that voters want to think they're getting away from.

The other area where his involvement with Vicki Iseman hurts McCain is that it reminds voters of their disdain for Republican hypocrisy. The idea that McCain's in bed with a lobbyist who's young enough to be his daughter reminds voters of all the affairs that moralistic Republicans ranging from Newt Gingrich to Bob Livingston to Rudy Giuliani have had. People don't like adultery, but they especially dislike adultery from the party of evangelical sanctimony. McCain's never been an evangelical and he hasn't made much of an effort to fake it, but Iseman reminds many voters of their contempt for the influence of the religious right in the Republican Party.

The Monster Under McCain's Bed. The worst thing about the whole Iseman affair for McCain is that he has a lot of enemies and they look like they could be dishing dirt on McCain throughout the fall campaign. One of the amazing things about George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign was that Bush had never had enough of a falling out with his fraternity brothers, drinking buddies, or business associates that any of them talked to the media about Bush's days as a hard-drinking, coke-sniffing, party guy.

Not so with John McCain. As David Brooks points out, the person who went to the Times with this story had to have been in McCain's inner circle. Brooks speculates that the problem is the long-standing rivalry between mainstream McCain loyalists like campaign manager Rick Davis and reformist loyalists like John Weaver, but what matters here is that people who have grudges against John McCain have proven that they're willing to take their anger out by reporting embarrassing stories to the media.

This could be the real monster under McCain's bed. Given McCain's self-righteous tilting against the politics of money, his sucking up to the media, his volcanic temper, and the fact that he's been a Senator for 24 years, there must be a lot of people out there who with axes to grind against him. Seen from this perspective, the New York Times story on McCain's involvement with Vicki Iseman might be the first in a long series of juicy revelations about John McCain from the people who have scores to settle.

It could be a long nine months to the election for John McCain.

Bloody Politics 1: Slicing Obama

Notes from Blood Week in American Politics

1. Blooding Barack Obama. It's probably too late for Hillary to come back on delegates, but this is the first week in a long time that Barack Obama has really been bloodied by bad news.

The first two things that nicked Obama were his and his wife's doing. Obama plagiarized Duval Patrick for a passage in one of his speeches.

Borrowing three or four sentences of a distinct kind of formulation was morally wrong even if Patrick is a great friend of Obama's. But even if one accepts the excuses and justifications from the Obama camp, the idea that Obama has been lifting material for his speeches just doesn't sit right. Politicians might steal from each other all the time, but Obama is supposed to be smarter, slicker, and generally better than other politicians. It shouldn't have happened.

But the plagiarism wasn't a big deal by itself. In fact, Obama would have escaped damage altogether but for the fact that his wife Michelle foolishly made a reference to not being "proud" of America in one of her speeches. Part of the magic of the Obama candidacy is that he might end up moving political opinion to the left in the same way Reagan moved it to the right. But this kind of gaffe makes Obama look like the kind of elite, critical leftist that the right's been complaining about for years. I imagine Republican ad people were running various attack ads through their minds as soon as they heard about Michelle Obama's comments. After all, she was pretty much writing the ads for them.

Finally, Barack Obama stated last night that an army captain had told him that his unit had been forced to use captured Taliban weapons because they couldn't get replacements for their own weapons. After Obama was portrayed as very much mistaken about this, Jake Tapper of ABC called the army captain and got a confirmation on the lack of replacements and spare parts. But I don't think that ends the problem for Obama. The fact that Obama was the subject of "controversy" could end up damaging him the same way that Whitewater damaged Hillary Clinton even though there never was any evidence that he had done nothing well. As HRC has learned to her chagrin, just the fact that you're being attacked makes you look guilty.

Obama did the right thing with the information from Iraq. But it still might hurt him anyway.

A Shrinking McCain Cuts Down No Obamas

These days when I think of John McCain, I find myself humming the Jimmy Dean song "Big Bad John."

"Big Joh-n-n, Big Bad John"

McCain has to be big and bad--a larger than life soldier, patriot, reformer, and embodiment of everything American--if he's going to beat the apparent Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

But today, John McCain shrunk dramatically in stature yesterday as a result of New York Times and Washington Post revelations about his "relationship" with a 40 year old lobbyist named Vicki Iseman back in 2000.

Pictures of Ms. Iseman actually make her look much more like a Rudy Giuliani mistress than a "McCain Girl." Unfortunately for Ms. Iseman, Rudy was already involved with mistress Judy Nathan who became Mrs. Rudy no. 3 in 2000. It looks like Iseman settled for John McCain instead and that she was on her way to becoming Mrs. Big Bad John no.3 before she was derailed by McCain's staff.

That's what separates "patriotic and honorable" Republicans like Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and John McCain from "despicable" men like Bill Clinton--they marry their mistresses instead of abandoning them.

Notes from Underground argues that McCain's campaign planted the leak to get the story out of the way during a dead spot in the Republican campaign.

That may be true, but I don't think the story is going away. I believe McCain's "stature" has been diminished enough that it will take a lot of work for him to recover.

To have a chance in the fall election, McCain has to look so good to voters that they'll ignore his support for the war, opposition to abortion rights, his heavy reliance on lobbyists for his campaign,. and a bunch of other problems. But he won't stand a chance of doing that if his stature is being constantly undercut by these revelations.

And my bet right now is that McCain is going to have a rough ride. He's made a lot of enemies over his last 10-15 years as a reform-oriented media hound and there's a good chance those enemies might start feeding the media with juicy McCain stories.

If that's the case, McCain won't have enough stature to even give Obama or Hillary a good fight.

Obama Wins Wisconsin--Plus a Side of Flies

Barack Obama won a big victory in Wisconsin tonight with a 58-41 margin.

If Obama also wins in one of his home states of Hawaii and Washington State's nonbinding primary, that will substantially narrow the chances for any Hillary comeback.

She pretty much has to win Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania and run the table on all the straggly primaries like my state of Kentucky to have a chance. I don't think super-delegates are going to put her over the top and also think it would be a disaster if they did. Think Hubert Humphrey backroom nomination in 1968 as an example of what being a less than fully legitimate Democratic nominee can get you.

Given that I've been supporting Hillary, all of this is a big disappointment.

That's partly because Hillary's running out of excuses for losing.

She could say that the Wisconsin's primary set up well for Obama because it was an open primary where independents and Republicans could vote on the Democratic side. Moreover, independents broke at least 2-1 for Obama.

But Wisconsin is a swing state and the fact that independents broke for Obama implies that they would be more likely to vote Democratic with Obama heading the ticket.

That's a good argument for Obama being the more electable Democrat against Republican middleweight John McCain.

But there are a couple of flies in the Obama ointment.

The plagiarism issue of Obama lifting passages from the speeches of Duval Patrick rankles. As someone who has evaluated a lot of plagiarism cases, Obama's use of the Patrick speech strikes me as dishonest. I've heard a lot of excuses about politicians stealing lines from each other and Patrick making excuses, but I still think it's wrong and that the issue could chip away at Obama's teflon coating.

Right-wing bloggers have also picked up on Michelle Obama saying that

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction. And just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment I've seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic, common issues and it's made me proud.

It's poor form for any political figure to defy the norms of conventional patriotism in the U. S. It looks like this one might slide by in the glow of the Wisconsin victory, but Michelle Obama seems to be just as much a loose cannon as Hillary Clinton's husband.

That could blow up in Barack's face just like it blew up in Hillary's.

A Plagiarism Problem for Obama?

Hmm. I picked up an item by John Nichols in a blog for The Nation about Barack Obama lifting passages from speeches by Masssachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Nichols emphasizes that the story has been shopped around by people like Howard Wolfson from the Clinton campaign. As a result, I'll need some independent confirmation before I believe it.

However, Nichols does produce an interesting comparison between Obama and Patrick.

Here's Patrick in 2006 on the campaign trail in Massachusetts responding to a
foe's suggestion that he was long on rhetoric and short on substance:
"Her dismissive point, and I hear it a lot from her staff, is all I have to offer is words. Just words. 'We holds these truths to be self-evident -- that all men are created equal' -- just words. Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' -- just words.'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country -- just words. 'I have a dream' -- just words."

Here's Obama speaking Saturday night to Wisconsin Democrats:
"Don't tell me words don't matter. 'I have a dream' -- just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' -- just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' - just words. Just speeches."

I deal with plagiarism issues as a college professor who gives a lot of writing assignments. If a student had turned in something like this as a writing assignment, I would view them as doubly guilty of plagiarism. First, there is the use of Deval Patrick's formulations as though they were Obama's own thought or writing. This includes both the fragments from famous speeches like King's "I have a Dream" speech and the repetition of the phrase "just words" as a way to make Obama's main point about the importance of words. Obama is clearly using Patrick's words here. The second point of guilt is that Obama's speech adjusts Patrick's formulations in small ways that don't change the meaning of the words but make the speech appear to be his own.

I'm not sure about the ethics of plagiarism in speech-making. I know Joe Biden got ripped for lifting stuff out of a Neil Kinnock speech during his previous try for the presidency in 1988. But the issue is complicated here by the fact that speeches by presidential candidates are often fully or partially written by speech-writers. If Obama plagiarized the formulations from Patrick's speech himself, there's a problem. If an Obama speech-writer or intern lifted the stuff from Patrick, the problem is with Obama's staff and not so much with the candidate himself.

It will be interesting to see if the story has legs.

McCain Wants Bush to Be Quayle

During the 2006 Congressional campaigns, I wrote about the way the Republicans used the unpopular and disgraced current president, George Bush, as a Dan Quayle look-alike, scheduling him to rally the troops in the smallest, most out-of-the-way Republican strongholds.

It appears that the McCain Campaign wants to do the same thing. According to the New York Times:

. . . look for Mr. Bush to make solo appearances on behalf of Mr. McCain before evangelicals and in Republican pockets across the country, and to campaign in places where there are important races for the House and Senate, like Idaho and Kansas, which will not be critical destinations for the Republican nominee.

Maybe McCain will have a rule about W not making appearances in towns larger than five hundred. That way, Bush won't embarrass him so much.

The Master Mentality and Obama

After Barack Obama's victory in South Carolina, the crowd in Columbia chanted "Race doesn't matter!" and the candidate himself expanded on the theme, arguing that

"his victory disproved those who argue that people "think, act and even vote within the categories that supposedly define us . . . I did not travel around this state and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina," he said. The election, he said, "is not about rich versus poor or young versus old, and it's not about black versus white. This election is about the past versus the future."

Unfortunately, the past seems to be reasserting itself even as Obama edges into the lead for the Democratic nomination. There's a set of Obama jokes that reiterate the master mentality among whites by posing Obama in the role of omniscient servant.

For example, there is a web site at http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/ that has Barack Obama widgets like "Barack Obama thought you could use some chocolate," "Barack Obama warmed up your car for you," or "Barack Obama offered you his seat." On this site, Obama is represented as a kind of super-cool, androgynously handsome version of the butler played by Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day. There's something typically but still disconcertingly white in all of this. The implicit expectation is that Barack Obama would be doing favors and service for white people and that white people are people who can normally expect to be served by black people even if those black people are super-hot presidential candidates. If you're white, Obama will warm up your car, get you some coffee, and find out the weather for you before you even know you need these things done.

I'm surprised they didn't say Obama would shine their shoes.

The link for the widget site came from an article by Slate's John Dickerson on Obama. For Dickerson, this is a matter of whether Obama can become "too cool."

But how could Obama bringing me hot chocolate be too cool?

Dickerson has a couple other examples of the Barack Obama "super-servant":

And on the New York subway Friday morning, one of our copy editors, Ellen Tarlin, heard one woman joke to another: "Obama, will you pick me up after my noninvasive minor surgical procedure?" To which the other replied: "Obama, will you hold my hair back when I puke?"

I'm not sure what to make of this yet. One thing I'm interested in is whether these kinds of people are going to vote for Obama. In a way, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't. But if that's the case, it's a sign of how far we're getting away from the faux macho of the Bush era. It's also an indication of how deeply entrenched the white master mentality is even in those who'll be voting for a black president.