Snow Job

God didn't want Mike Huckabee to win after all. Snow in places that have no snow plows may or may not have dampened the Huckster's turnout, but John McCain was able to win in South Carolina. (Count the puns, I don't care.)

This makes McCain the GOPer favorite, especially when (as I predict will happen) Fred Thompson drops out and endorses McCain. Money will start flowing McCain's way, fueled by the disdain for Romney. It sets up an interesting dynamic for November, if two old faces square off in a change election moment. I don't know how McCain expects to sell Iraq to a public deeply set against it, but if Hillary is the nominee it's going to be tense.

On the Dem side, John Edwards ran such a one note campaign that it's hard to see what he does now but remain John "a noun, a verb and a millworker's son" Edwards for the duration. Unfortunately he is unlikely to bow out and swing his supporters to Obama, but if he really cares about change, he will--and the sooner, the better.

The House Wins

Confounding even the modest amount of conventional wisdom, a huge caucus turnout in Nevada--more than 100.000-- went for Hillary by about 5 points. She remained very strong with women and apparently polled better among Latinos. However, the actual delegates--as in New Hampshire--were about even between Hillary and Obama [update: Obama actually got one more delegate in Nevada ]. Hillary had been up by around 25 points for a long while, but the Culinary Union endorsement of Obama was seen to give him the edge in recent weeks.

There's a disquieting account of strong-arm tactics by Hillary's people, and Bill's personal politiking in a caucus room as voters gathered--either a rules violation or very close to it. Along with the Billary politics of distortion and fear, and a last minute Barack Hussein Obama robocall. It seems the Clinton machine learned from Iowa that a caucus can be managed, or bullied. But Hillary's strength among Latinos is itself worrisome (although it's probably more accurate to say Billary's), as is--further along the line--this evidence of a severe black/white racial divide over Obama in the deep South. (In Nevada, Obama got about half the white vote, and 80% of the black vote.)

John Edwards did poorly--due in part to the 15% viability rule, he got about 5% total.

And some of these numbers may yet turn out to be bullshit--the official figures don't reflect the actual popular vote, and I'm not sure what the entrance poll percentages mean, except they are more likely to reflect what people said going in. Who knows what this means? But overall, this is going to look like a Hillary victory, and the sense of her inevitability again will affect future elections. Obama may have to pull off a big win in South Carolina to offset it a bit, and that's now going to be harder. The courage that people need to accept the possibility of transformative change I believe was sorely wounded by not only Obama's loss in New Hampshire, but his loss in the face of universal expectations of a big win. Now the Billary politics of ugliness is chipping away, inciting people to vote from their fears. Actually, my vote for Obama is a vote not only of my hopes but from my fears--that this election is the last chance I'm going to see for positive transformative change.

The last few weeks have made one thing clear: Bill Clinton ain't going to be no roving ambassador in a Hillary administration. And it's not going to be a vice president running things from behind the scenes this time. Jonathan Alter in Newsweek writes of Ted Kennedy and others complaining to Bill Clinton about his attacks on Obama. The article also quotes Greg Craig, who coordinated Clinton's impeachment defense in 1998 and is now a senior Obama adviser, argues that "recent events raise the question: if Hillary's campaign can't control Bill, whether Hillary's White House could." People seem to know and a lot of people see to want a Billary presidency. This kind of takes the bloom off the first woman thing.

Salvation Saturday

Tomorrow Nevada Democrats caucus, South Carolina Republicans vote in their primary. Chastened by their faulty judgments about New Hampshire, and helped by a hard to read caucus system, the media muted their predictions about the Democrats. Hillary leads narrowly in a couple of polls, and according to the reporter you pick, things are either moving her way or they are moving Obama's way in the final hours. The Clinton people are already making excuses for why they lose if they lose, but they did that in New Hampshire, too. Bill has been angry, as he was in the final New Hampshire days. Hillary, instead of tearing up at a lunch counter, appeared on Tyra Banks talk show--which needless to say many men have never heard of--where she talked about getting through Bill's infidelities with prayer and concentration on what was best for her. So their game plan is the same.

One ventured opinion that seems to have some numbers behind it is that if there is a huge turnout, it favors Obama, but not even that is certain. Democratic party officials were variously quoted as expecting 30,000 participants and hoping for 60,000. However, if you hear estimates tomorrow of anything over 40,000 participants, it looks pretty good for Barack. But both the low and high figures quoted add up to many new participants, and nobody knows how that will go.

Conventional wisdom on the meaning of the outcome in Nevada is that a Hillary victory is big for her, but a loss is bigger. Obama figures to go into Tsunami Tuesday with the final victory, in South Carolina. If he can win in Nevada as well, there could be movement in his direction. Nothing like the wave that looked to be building when a double digit victory in New Hampshire seemed likely, but enough to make Bill even madder.

In South Carolina among the Republicans, McCain and Huckabee are virtually tied in the latest polls, and movement is said to be towards Huckabee, but an unusual snowstorm is forecast for a part of the state where a lot of his Evangelical supporters live, so this one may depend on what they used to call an act of God.

CW on this is that McCain gets a huge boost if he wins, a huge blow if he loses, but if Huckabee wins, it's almost as good as if Thompson were to win: in other words, utter chaos. In another state with more Evangelicals than the norm, if Huckabee loses, he's probably finished. (There are GOPer caucuses in Nevada, too, but Mitt Romney is about the only one who campaigned there.)

Stories on final Dem campaign appearances in Nevada were again contradictory--one reporter said Hillary was getting large, enthusiastic crowds, another said her appearances have been lackluster. Obama however was said to be upbeat and joking, though his wit had a sharper edge:

Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night's debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork _ something his opponents have since used to suggest he's not up to managing the country. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.
"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, 'What's your biggest weakness?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. "If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, `Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'"

Rather than dwell on the continuing distortions by the Clinton campaign (Okay, one of them--in a thoughtful answer to a question, Barack Obama said that the GOP was the party of ideas for ten or fifteen years in the 80s, they went against the conventional wisdom, they were bad ideas and now they're stale ideas. But taking the "party of ideas" sentence out of the statement, Hillary and Bill both criticized Obama for saying the GOP was the party of good ideas. Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to believe that? Not that they would say it--because they did, and it's fully in character--but that anyone would believe that Obama, a lifelong Democrat with endorsements from major Democrats, would say that. Meanwhile, Hillary is saying nice things about Joe Lieberman, a former Dem who now supports McCain.), I'll end with a few selected quotes from Obama's interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board.

Asked his reaction to an angry outburst by the former president - who in Oakland Wednesday suggested the at-large system was "rigged" - Obama laughed. "This caucus process was designed by the Democratic Party of Nevada in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee," said Obama. "I, as somebody who's not part of the establishment of the Democratic Party, had no say in the rules ... (but) individuals like Harold Ickes, Clinton's key adviser, were a part of making these rules. And some of the people who filed the lawsuit were a part of making these rules.

"President Clinton now suggests they didn't understand the rules that they designed," Obama said. "This is coming from the campaign of extraordinary detail and thoroughness and experience. "But somehow, they didn't know what these rules were," Obama said. "Six days before the caucus - two days after I received the endorsement of the Culinary Workers (Union), suddenly these rules are grossly unfair and a violation of 'one person, one vote.' And a lawsuit is filed that would disenfranchise mostly Latino maids, dishwashers and bellhops." Obama said that was "an implausible argument before the court rules. I am glad the court bought none of it. I think it took about an hour for the court to decide that this lawsuit had no merit. "And I think at this point we should go out and persuade the caucus-goers of Nevada who the best candidate is," he said.


Here are more Obama answers in the "Quotes Only" part of the Chronicle story:

On whether he has the experience to handle the toughest challenges as president:
"If the question is, do I have the internal fortitude to make tough decisions and take on tough issues, I would say throughout my career I have dealt with very difficult issues. Sen. Clinton keeps touting her experience, but has no management experience that I can see in her resume. It's presumed through osmosis, as a consequence of having been first lady.

But I would point to this campaign, where I went from zero, starting from scratch, to compete with a legendary political organization 20 years in the making built by a former president. That's not an accident. It shows my capacity to put together a team and point it in a direction that I think is important.

"The skill sets that are required to move the country are not different from the skill sets that are required to move somebody across the table. It means listening to them, it means having very clear principles - what you're willing to fight for, where you're willing to compromise. And it means being willing to walk away from the table. "Those skill sets are the ones, I think, I am most confident I can apply ... where I think I have an edge over Sen. Clinton, who I think has a tendency - when confronted with somebody who doesn't agree with her - to demonize them or push them away."


On his foreign policy experience:
"There's going to be a lot of repair work to be done internationally. This is an area where Sen. Clinton and others have suggested they are most concerned about my experience. It's actually the area where I most trust my judgment, because I've lived, traveled, have family overseas. If you look at my track record over the last three or four years on big issues - like opposition to the war in Iraq, the need to engage directly with Iran, our approach toward Pakistan and putting all the eggs in the Musharraf basket - on big strategic issues, I've been right and the conventional thinking in Washington has been wrong."

On how an Obama presidency would change the country:
"The day I'm elected and sworn in, not only does this country look at itself differently, but I think the world looks at itself differently. And that's not just symbolic. When I go to a poor country and talk to them about America's obligations, but also that poor country's obligations to help itself by dealing with corruption or to reduce ethnic tensions, I do with credibility as somebody with a grandmother who lives in a small village in Africa without running water. If I convene a meeting of Muslim leaders ... I do so with the credibility of somebody who lived in the most populous Muslim country on Earth for four years and has a sister who is half-Indonesian. ... That will allow me ... to be an effective spokesperson for a different version of American foreign policy."

It Didn't Last Long

The amity was over quickly, as the Clintons returned to appropriating Rabid Right Rovian tactics against Barack Obama today. Distortions of his health care plan continue, and now this new wrinkle, as described by Obama to a Las Vegas crowd:

"You may be getting some fliers, you may be getting some phone calls from the Hillary Clinton camp saying she will solve the social security crisis through fiscal responsibility while Barack Obama wants a trillion dollar tax hike," the Illinois senator told a jammed crowd Wednesday morning at the convention center in this booming Las Vegas suburb. Obama then explained he would bolster social security by removing the current cap on the very highest of earners and not be a general tax raise as implied by Clinton. "Maybe she thinks the top 3% of earners are average American taxpayers, but I don't."

Calling Repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy a "tax increase" is a Rabid Right standby. They've had a patent on this bullshit since Goldwater at least. And suggesting that middle class taxpayers will pay more social security tax if this plan were enacted is the same cynical dishonesty. Furthermore, should Hillary become President, she's pre-empting an alternative she might well have to consider.

As for the past two days of apparently burying the race hatchet as mutually damaging, columnist Mark Shields has a different opinion. Here is what he said on the PBS News Hour today: "I had six senior Democrats this week, unaligned in this campaign, independently volunteer to me that they thought it was part of the campaign strategy of the Clinton campaign to get this in to make it a black-white race going into February 5th."

The calculus is, Shields said later in the broadcast, that there are simply more white voters than black voters in the Democratic primaries. The Michigan exit polls suggests that black voters may see this for what it is, and if they come to believe what Shields says is the Clinton strategy, and Hillary ends up the nominee, she and the Democratic party are in big trouble. She's got enough enemies without alienating the single most dependable constituency the Democrats have.

A Good Night For Democrats

After the Democratic debate in Nevada and the Republican primary in Michigan with the third winner in three contests, it feels great to be a Democrat. Trapper John liveblogging the debate at Kos said it best: "We've got three potential presidents up there -- they've got Lord of the Flies."

The three Democratic candidates came together to make the Democratic party stronger going into the decisive part of the primary campaigns and especially into the general election against the Republicans. This will help whoever the nominee will be, and also it will help elect a more Democratic and progressive Congress, which each will need to govern effectively.

Individually, I thought each had moments that helped them and hurt them, but on balance they all helped themselves. I feel better, although I don't think I'll soon forget how the Clintons behaved when they felt they were losing, in contrast to how Obama has behaved since his loss in New Hampshire.

As an Obama partisan now, I was glad to hear him focus on the economy in his first few answers. He's matched Hillary with his own economic stimulus plan. And he gave a great answer when asked about that Clinton pollster quote that Latinos don't vote for black leaders: We didn't have that problem between blacks and Latinos in Illinois--they all voted for me."

Michigan gave Romney his first primary victory. It's impossible to predict what it will do to their race but it is likely to shake things up a bit for South Carolina. We're rooting for Fred Thompson there, and then Rudy in Florida. (I'm also rooting for Rudy so I can call my blog entry "Rudy Tuesday.") Let's go for the record--five contests, five different winners! Some of the pundits are wondering where Romney wins again, and others say that in a fractured field he wins because he's got the money to go on, in his personal bank accounts.

There was voting on the Democratic side, but Hillary was the only candidate on the ballot, because Obama and Edwards dropped out when the Democratic Party sanctioned Michigan for violating its rules. So it was Hillary v. Uncommitted, and she avoided disaster by getting more than 50% of the vote, but the exit polls--for what they're worth these days--suggest she ought to be worried. She won a majority among women, older voters and committed Democrats. But she lost young voters, Independents and upper income, was about even among men, and lost black voters by a stunning margin--she got less than 30% of their votes, while Uncommitted got 70%.

The questions in the Nevada debate were not as bad as they usually are, and with just three candidates sitting at a table, the interplay and followup was
good. But while they got asked one Nevada question--the proposed nuclear storage dump at Yucca Mountain, which they all oppose--the NBCers failed to ask about the attempt by Hillary's campaign to change the rules of the caucus voting, to outlaw the "at large" sites. It's assumed these sites will favor casino employees, but no objection was made until Obama got two key union endorsements. I'd like to hear that debate.

Stop the Silliness

Today Barack Obama held a press conference, at which he said:

“I don’t want the campaign at this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this,” Mr. Obama told reporters at a news conference here. “We’ve got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness. I expect that other campaigns feel the same way.”

“If I hear my own supporters engaging in talk that I think is ungenerous or misleading or in some way is unfair, I will speak out forcefully against it,” he said. “I hope the other campaigns take the same approach.”

“I think that I may disagree with Senator Clinton or Senator Edwards on how to get there, but we share the same goals. We’re all Democrats,” Mr. Obama said. “We all believe in civil rights. We all believe in equal rights. We all believe that regardless of race or gender that people should have equal opportunities.”

"I think that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues. I think they care about the African-American community and that they care about all Americans and they want to see equal rights and justice in this country.”

At last some sanity. At last, an adult.

Hillarious

It keeps getting uglier. Now the Clintons are amping up their charges that Obama's been inconsistent in his opposisition to the Iraq war, and Obama's people are calling it swift-boating.

Meanwhile, on the "positive side," Hillary's hired an advertising man for Wal-Mart to re-brand her.

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, and Al Gore doesn't lead a third party ticket, I'll vote for her. I learned my lesson on election night in 1968, watching Nixon eke out a narrow win over Humphrey. I'd had my heart broken when my candidate was assassinated, and my party sent police to beat up my contemporaries. I filled out an absentee ballot and voted for Robert Kennedy anyway, although I'm not sure I even mailed it.

But not voting in that election was a mistake. Hubert was a jerk by then, but Nixon was a liar to even himself. I doubt we would have still been in Vietnam for another 6 years if Humphrey had been President, and that's the most important outcome.

So I'll grit my teeth and cast my ballot to hire her, and then I'll turn my back on the whole thing. I'd have no hope for the future whatsoever, beyond some repair of the immense damage done by eight years of Smirk. Her campaign is already stinking up the joint, and it's putting more distance between me and respect for both Clintons every day.

Her staff is weighted towards arrogant thugs. Her supporters are divisive, attacking others for sexism while defending or engaging in racial politics. Now she's accusing "the Obama campaign" of keeping alive the controversy over her remarks about Martin Luther King and LBJ. Yet it is her own words that haunt her. One of her supporters cries that the New York Times and other media are misquoting her, lifting her remark out of context. That does happen to be a nasty habit of our arrogant, theme-driven, cliche-making media. But here is the full quote as he produces it:

"I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President 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. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished."

So this is supposed to make it better. Actually, I grasped the point she was trying to make the first time--it may take a village but in the end it takes a President, and in a narrow framework, I agree. That's why we need a President who will lead on the Climate Crisis in particular, but also many other issues.

It's a metaphor for a legitimate if insulting point, which is-- Obama (King): poet, dreamer, who can't get things done. Hillary (LBJ): no poetry but ready to execute. There's no real evidence this is so, but it does state an assertion of why she should get the nomination.

People are upset because she disses Dr. King, who did a lot more than make speeches, when and where even making speeches was pretty courageous and important. They are upset by the implication that black people are dreamers who aren't competent executives, and that black people always need white people to do the heavy lifting. Maybe that's unfair, and I'd like to believe she didn't mean it that way. But considering some of the people around her, I can't really be sure.

But what really gets me about this "in context" quote is " when he [LBJ] was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do..." Recall the context of this statement--the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary was accusing Obama of inspiring "false hopes." Hope is great, but you want action. So every time she used the word "hope" it sounds suspiciously like code. And here we have another dreamer apparently, President Kennedy, who--let's straighten out her grammar for her--hoped to pass Civil Rights legislation, but apparently he failed. It took experienced pro LBJ to do it.

Well, it's true that JFK proposed the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act. But I wouldn't exactly call it a failure of leadership. It was more along the lines of somebody killed him.

So for my money, her expanded quote not only insults Martin Luther King, Jr., it insults John F. Kennedy.

Meanwhile her "surrogates" continue the "experience" drone. Gloria Steinem repurposes this as a feminist issue, insisting that a woman with as little experience as Obama would never be considered for President. Only a man.

Which apparently means that this society hates the idea of a woman President so much that it would even rather have an unqualified black man. Think about that for a minute.

Another underlying assumption is that because Hillary has so much experience, not even this male chauvanist power structure can deny her.

Shades of the vitriolic wing of womens lib in the 70s. Steinem ignores the uncomfortable fact that most of Hillary's "experience" is of being what she was so caustic about in the past: a wife. Hillary was the wife of the President of the United States, after being the wife of a Governor. She can claim all she wants to claim about what she did there, but on the face of it, this is the qualification for President of Laura Bush.

Hillary was never elected to anything until the year 2000. Before that, she had accomplishments on various issues, as did Barack Obama. Obama was elected to the state legislature in 1997. Hillary has roughly four more years than he does in the U.S. Senate, while he has roughly three more years as an elected public servant.

On the other side, you have a guy in the White House who failed at everything until he became Governor, and 6 years later ran for President, with no foreign policy experience and a well-earned reputation as a dim bulb. If the inexperienced G.W. Bush hadn't gotten anything done, this country would be a far better place.

Hillary knows about raising false hopes. As the designated Clinton in charge of the plan, she hoped to bring universal health care to the U.S. in 1993 when it was a very popular idea, and she failed. I don't think it was all her fault, but the fact is, the Clintons raised hopes, and those remain failed hopes, and people like me are affected by that failure.

It's not easy being a woman seeking power. They're damned for being too masculine and too feminine. But Hillary has shown the ability to play manipulative gender games when she feels she has to. That New Hampshire debate when she said the charge that she wasn't likeable hurt her feelings--did you see her body language? She was going all girlish. At first it seemed like she was making fun of the question, and clearly Obama thought the question was unworthy when he said, "Hillary, you're likeable enough." Some women took that as insulting. But I watched Hillary's body language--she acted like a high school girl who had just been complimented. And I do mean acted.

What Hillary has the most experience at is being attacked. That's clear from her defensiveness, her scattershot attacks, and from the kind of people she has around her to protect her by attacking and demeaning her opponents. Nixon had that kind of experience as well. It's not in and of itself much of a qualification.

I didn't see Hillary's Meet the Press performance today but I gather from several stories she spent most of the time attacking Obama. I don't doubt that the Obama campaign is guilty of some sub rosa guff, and their adoption of the "Yes, We Can" slogan in Nevada is something close to code for Latinos (In Spanish, it was the chant during the demonstrations against the Bush policies on immigration and illegals.) But I'm ready to endorse this statement by Obama, made in a conference call to reporters responding to Hillary's TV show:

"I have to say that she started this campaign saying that she wanted to make history and lately she has been spending a lot of time rewriting it. I know that in Washington it is acceptable to say or do anything it takes to get elected but I really don’t think that is the kind of politics that is good for our party and I don’t think it is good for our country and I think that the American people will reject it in this election."