NYT:

Democratic Party lawyers have determined that no more than half the delegates from Florida and Michigan can be seated at the party's August convention, dealing a blow to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's efforts to seat the full delegations from those states.

The rules committee of the Democratic National Committee meets on Saturday to determine whether to seat the delegates from these states, which were penalized for holding early primaries.

Half? Yes, at most. (See a background post on what to do about Florida and Michigan here.)

Why? Let's remind ourselves of the facts:

1) This wasn't Obama's doing, and, contrary to Hillary's not-too-subtle allegations, he isn't to blame.

2) The DNC set the rules (way back in August 2006), Florida and Michigan broke the rules, the DNC penalized Florida and Michigan. (It's that simple.)

3) With the exception of Mike Gravel, the candidates agreed not to campaign in Florida prior to the primary there on January 29. Hillary held three fundraisers two days before the vote, however, and then went there to declare victory, but it was in no way a meaningful victory because it was in no way a meaningful contest.

4) While Hillary decided to remain on the ballot in Michigan, along with Dodd and Gravel, Obama and several other candidates (including Edwards, Richardson, and Biden) withdrew from the primary in October 2007 and had their names taken off the ballot for the January 15 primary. (Kucinich tried but failed to get his name removed.) As with Florida, Hillary and her campaign and her surrogates have declared victory, but, again, it was in no way a meaningful victory. In second and third place, respectively, were "Uncommitted" and "Undecided."

And now Hillary wants those results to count? Well, of course. She wants both the delegates and the popular vote totals, both of which would count in her favour.

Here's how I put it the night of the Florida primary (before I had endorsed Obama): "So Hillary played along with the ruling, avoiding Florida, until it was in her self-interest, after her bad loss to Obama in South Carolina, not to. And, in declaring victory in what was a non-competitive race, she now wants the vote to count, for Florida to get its allocation of delegates after all? What do you think she'd be saying -- what do you think her husband would be saying -- if Obama were trying to pull a stunt like this? Or what if Obama had simply won and was respecting the ruling? There wouldn't be a peep out of the Clintons. And so she's declaring victory and her supporters are lapping it up. It's all quite despicable. She wants the delegates, but she also wants the momentum heading into next week's Super Tuesday. And apparently she'll stop at nothing to get it."

But, you see, this is Clintonian ethics at work: When you're losing, change the rules... and go back on your word and do what you said you wouldn't do... and smear your opponents... and play fast and loose with the truth... and claim to be the victim of a massive conspiracy.

If nothing else, this long and sometimes bitter race has shown us what makes the Clintons tick.

Justin blogs at The Reaction

08:27 AM | Permalink

 

After the administration threw Scott McClellan under the bus in the Plame affair, you knew this had to be coming. But most revealing is his inside info about the Iraq war.

Politico details some of his assertions:

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in the State of the Union address of 2003: "Signing off on these facts is my responsibility. ... And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign." The offer "was rejected almost out of hand by others present," McClellan writes.

• Bush was "clearly irritated, ... steamed," when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: "'It's unacceptable,' Bush continued, his voice rising. 'He shouldn't be talking about that.'"

• "History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

McClellan also offers a cautionary tale about the Bush administration's legendary take-no-prisoners partisanship...

Decrying the Bush administration's "excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance," McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a "deputy chief of staff for governing" who "would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity.

Some will call McClellan a traitor. Others will praise him as a patriot. But as is the case with so many ex-White House insiders, the answer is much more complicated. See, I think a lot of people believed in Bush, but his stubborn partisanship and blind resolve failed them all miserably. That's why we're seeing exposés like this...because Bush is a woefully flawed leader.

And in this case, at least, history isn't waiting to be unkind.

Justin blogs at Donklephant.com

08:29 AM | Permalink

Bob Somerby flags some absurd mind-reading by Time's Joe Klein, who claims to know that Hillary Clinton's two innocuous references to RFK's 1968 assassination mean "that Obama's vulnerability to racist nutjobs has been in her mind for months now":

I take all of Karen's points below--and the fact that Hillary Clinton mentioned Bobby Kennedy's assassination in conversation with Rick Stengel in March shows that Obama's vulnerability to racist nutjobs has been in her mind for months now--but still, I have a certain amount of sympathy for her. The woman is clearly exhausted.

Even elite journalists like Klein (who probably gets paid $5/word for his Time columns) do not understand logic or epistemology. They do understand what sells, however -- cartoon-style psychodramas that can only be constructed by pretending to know the innermost thoughts of the candidates.

PS If you go to Klein's house, he'll read your palm too. Brendan blogs regularly at Brendan-Nyhan.com

07:49 AM | Permalink

That was a fine speech Barack Obama gave at the Wesleyan commencement Sunday. In fitting tribute to Sen. Ted Kennedy's long tenure in the Senate, Obama chose service to country as his topic. He cited the social and political activists of the 1960s - singling out Peace Corps volunteers and civil rights demonstrators - as early role models. And he told the graduates of the two stories that will command their attention as adults:

"The first is the story of our everyday cares and concerns - the responsibilities we have to our jobs and our families - the bustle and busyness of what happens in our own life. And the second is the story of what happens in the life of our country - of what happens in the wider world. It's the story you see when you catch a glimpse of the day's headlines or turn on the news at night - a story of big challenges like war and recession; hunger and climate change; injustice and inequality. It's a story that can sometimes seem distant and separate from our own - a destiny to be shaped by forces beyond our control.

And yet, the history of this nation tells us this isn't so. It tells us that we are a people whose destiny has never been written for us, but by us - by generations of men and women, young and old, who have always believed that their story and the American story are not separate, but shared. And for more than two centuries, they have served this country in ways that have forever enriched both."

Obama then told the inspirational tale of his own journey from indifferent middle-class teenager to socially-aware college student to community organizer (a considerable sacrifice: "My friends were applying to jobs on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this organization offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car) to state senator, US senator, next stop, the White House. Do the same, he urged the grads, "because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you'll play in writing the next great chapter in America's story."

And there are so many ways to serve your country, Obama noted:

"You don't have to be a community organizer or do something crazy like run for President. Right here at Wesleyan, many of you have already volunteered at local schools, contributed to United Way, and even started a program that brings fresh produce to needy families in the area. One hundred and sixty-four graduates of this school have joined the Peace Corps since 2001, and I'm especially proud that two of you are about to leave for my father's homeland of Kenya to bring alternative sources of energy to impoverished areas.

I ask you to seek these opportunities when you leave here, because the future of this country - your future - depends on it. At a time when our security and moral standing depend on winning hearts and minds in the forgotten corners of this world, we need more of you to serve abroad. As President, I intend to grow the Foreign Service, double the Peace Corps over the next few years, and engage the young people of other nations in similar programs, so that we work side by side to take on the common challenges that confront all humanity.

At a time when our ice caps are melting and our oceans are rising, we need you to help lead a green revolution. We still have time to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change if we get serious about investing in renewable sources of energy, and if we get a generation of volunteers to work on renewable energy projects, and teach folks about conservation, and help clean up polluted areas; if we send talented engineers and scientists abroad to help developing countries promote clean energy.

At a time when a child in Boston must compete with children in Beijing and Bangalore, we need an army of you to become teachers and principals in schools that this nation cannot afford to give up on. I will pay our educators what they deserve, and give them more support, but I will also ask more of them to be mentors to other teachers, and serve in high-need schools and high-need subject areas like math and science.

At a time when there are children in the city of New Orleans who still spend each night in a lonely trailer, we need more of you to take a weekend or a week off from work, and head down South, and help rebuild. If you can't get the time, volunteer at the local homeless shelter or soup kitchen in your own community. Find an organization that's fighting poverty, or a candidate who promotes policies you believe in, and find a way to help them."

By all accounts, the speech was a hit. "I was shaking, I was so moved by what he said," one young women told the Globe.

So I guess it's just me wondering -- how on earth do you give a speech on that topic and not mention our country's most widespread and important form of public service and sacrifice, military service?

Maybe Obama didn't want to go there because of the unfortunate political contrast between himself and John McCain when it comes to military service and knowledge, an unflattering comparison that left Obama on the short end of a recent political exchange over veterans' benefits. Or maybe the senator - for reasons I can't fathom - didn't think of Wesleyan students as the type who might consider serving their country this way. Or maybe military service simply doesn't spring to mind for Obama or his handlers when they think of laudable sacrifice and contribution to the public good. And maybe that's what a justifiably war-weary electorate wants come November, a commander-in-chief who doesn't have the military on his cultural radar. Or maybe they're not quite so moved by such self-indulgent narcissism, and are shaking over Obama's speech for different reasons.

Jon Keller blogs regularly for WBZ-TV Boston at Keller @ Large

12:47 PM | Permalink

The usually savvy Matthew Yglesias gets things a bit wrong in this post on the utility of state-level polling:

It's really too bad that the folks behind Five Thirty Eight.com have gone and created such a compelling website based around state-by-state general election polling. It's all really well done and, as such, I can't really bring myself to look away. But this stuff is all really and truly meaningless. Six months ago, no polling showed Barack Obama winning the Democratic race, and no polling showed John McCain winning the Republican race and the general election is about six months away.

The comparison in the last sentence isn't valid, however. Presidential primaries are inherently unpredictable for reasons including the lack of clear ideological differences and the greater importance of perceived viability. General elections, by contrast, can be forecast with a high degree of accuracy.

That doesn't mean that state-by-state polling is the right way to predict outcomes -- previous research has shown that macro-level variables like the state of the economy, job approval of the president, war deaths, and/or the length of the incumbent party's time in office explain most of the variance in the national two-party vote. Yglesias and others should focus on those predictors instead. But UW-Milwaukee's Tom Holbrook did find that spring 2004 polls were reasonably predictive of the eventual outcome. For instance, here's his plot of May polls against state popular vote totals in November:

And here are Holbrook's conclusions about the predictive validity of the data:

[W]hen the polling margin was fairly narrow the outcome was truly up in the air. In fact, across all four months [March-June] the poll result called the wrong winner in 17 of the 36 cases in which Kerry's share of the two-party vote in trial-heat polls was between 47% and 53% (this excludes two cases in which the poll result was tied). These results suggest that we should take the term "toss-up" very seriously. At the same time, the poll result was wrong in only 3 of the 44 cases in which Kerry's poll margin was outside this range.

As for me, I think Douglas Hibbs's forecast that the Democrats will get 53-54% of the two-party vote is a reasonable baseline, though I fear that an anti-Obama backlash will reduce that total by 2-3 points. (The Intrade futures market puts the odds of a Democratic win in November at 62%.) Brendan blogs at Brendan-Nyhan.com

09:44 AM | Permalink

We've detailed the seemingly politically motivated prosecution and conviction of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman's in February and March of this year, and now it appears that the House Judiciary Committee wants to put Rove in the hot seat to answer questions about whether he had a hand in it.

Here's the scoop...

Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the committee chairman, said the subpoena was necessary because Mr. Rove had explicitly declined an invitation to appear voluntarily. Mr. Conyers and fellow committee Democrats say they want to question Mr. Rove about the dismissals of several federal prosecutors and ask whether he knows anything about the decision to prosecute former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat.

Mr. Siegelman, who was convicted on a bribery charge, was released from prison in March pending an appeal after an appeals court ruled that he had raised "substantial questions" about his case.

Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, in a letter to Mr. Conyers this week, said the chairman was "provoking a gratuitous confrontation." Mr. Luskin asserted that Mr. Rove would not appear because he had been directed not to do so by the White House. Although Mr. Rove has left the White House and is now a political commentator, Mr. Luskin said that Mr. Rove "in these matters is not a free agent" and must comply with instructions from the White House not to testify.

So will he agree to testify? Well, his lawyer is signaling that the White House will try and make the "executive privilege" case, but the problem with that is Rove's on the record as saying he never had any conversations with anybody in the White House about this case. So he shouldn't be able to claim "executive privilege", right?

And to the point about being on the record...

On April 7, MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams reported that Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said Rove would agree to testify if Congress issues a subpoena to him as part of an investigation into the Siegelman case.

Ten days later, committee members invited Rove to appear, citing among other things Rove's interview with GQ magazine. In that interview, Rove hurled insults at CBS News for airing a 60 Minutes segment on the Siegelman case, called his chief accuser a "lunatic" -- but didn't specifically deny any of the accusations.

This doesn't look good for Karl. Justin blogs regularly at Donklephant

09:24 AM | Permalink

As you may have heard:

A Texas appeals court ruled Thursday that state authorities and a lower court judge abused their authority by illegally seizing up to 468 children from their homes at a polygamist ranch in West Texas last month.



*****



According to the court, the state did not establish proper grounds to remove the children from their families, who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S.



*****



The unanimous ruling by three judges of the Third Court of Appeals in Austin revoked the state's custody over a large group of the children and by extension almost certainly the rest, for what it called a lack of evidence that they were in immediate danger of sexual or physical abuse.



The appeals court said the record "does not reflect any reasonable effort on the part of the department to ascertain if some measure short of removal and/or separation would have eliminated the risk." It also said the evidence of danger to the children "was legally and factually insufficient" to justify their removal and it said the lower court "abused its discretion" in failing to return seized children to their families.

It could very well be that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services could have done better in making its case. And, for all I know, there may not have been any "immediate" risk according to the law. Perhaps the evidence was "legally and factually insufficient" according to the law, and perhaps the department did "[abuse] its discretion" according to the law. But, then, the problem is with the law -- or, at least, the law is part of the problem, and, in this case, it seems that the law is at odds with justice.



On this, I agree with Echidne: "I disagree with the way abuse is defined as only physical one, and with the idea that it's perfectly acceptable to groom young girls to accept abuse until the moment of the abuse comes. I also wonder whether it really is true that the sect appeared to have an unusually small number of teenage boys, and if it is true, what happened to the missing boys. I would think abandoning them somewhere would constitute abuse... In general, I'm worried about any children who are brought up in isolation from the rest of the society. They may 'stay safe' that way or 'stay religious' or whatever, but their isolation also means that they cannot learn alternative ways of living and cannot get help if they indeed are abused."



If "immediate" and "abuse" are defined narrowly, as they were by the court, then, yes, the ruling may be the correct one -- the correct legal one, that is.



But from a liberal perspective, one that recognizes the preeminence of the individual, of his or her sovereign and inalienable rights, how is such a ruling in any way correct? Yes, liberalism is related to the rule of law, and, indeed, is inseparable from it. But when the law is wrong? Or when it defines, say, abuse too narrowly?



And we all know -- do we not? -- that this sort of lifestyle, the polygamy of a totalitarian religious cult, is inherently abusive. Indeed, it would not exist without abuse. Abuse is what keeps it going, what enables and supports it.



The women -- that is, the wives -- may defend it, and may say that they are there freely, that it is a choice, but there is a little something called false consciousness. How are these women in any way free? How are they in a position to choose freely? They have lived lives of totalitarian abuse. Their minds have been shaped by that abuse. Everything they say is a reflection of that abuse. They may think they are free and that what they are saying is a reflection of free will, but there is nothing free about them or their lives.



Similarly, the men -- that is, the husbands, including the totalitarian leaders of the cult -- may defend it along lines of religious freedom, but should one or a community ever be free to abuse? Is that what our "liberalism" has become?



Now, I admit, it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish the line between free will and false consciousness. And, obviously, questions persist: Is is possible to enter freely into an abusive relationship? From a legal perspective, should it be allowed to give up one's freedom? In a liberal society, how much liberty is permissible? What "alternative" lifestyles are permitted? What of "alternative" lifestyles or communities that are, in essence, illiberal?



To me, liberalism has lost much of its ability to stand up for itself. It has decayed into libertarianism, into permissiveness of the sort that leads to the inability to combat the forces of illiberalism both internal and external.



But let me be clear: This is not to say that liberalism requires a narrow moral code, a narrow definition of liberty. Rather, it is to say that liberalism must be able to stand up to and against those forces of illiberalism in the name of liberty itself. If it is unable to do so, it is no longer liberalism.



Just as there is illiberalism abroad, so is there illiberalism at home. And much of the illiberalism at home -- and, in this case, I'm talking about the United States -- is religious in nature. The christian fascists of the evangelical right are illiberal, for example -- the most obvious and pernicious example. And so is the totalitarian cult known as the FLDS, an isolated community of abuse.



Texas's Third Court of Appeals may have issued a ruling based on its interpretation of the law, but the law, in this case, allows for the perpetuation of abuse and for the persistence of noxious illiberalism.



Toleration of difference is one of the key aspects of a liberal society, including the United States, but no liberal society worth its name should tolerate the FLDS or anything like it.

Michael blogs regularly at The Reaction

09:02 AM | Permalink

He apparently thinks diplomacy with Iran is the best option, and as the following suggests, he's right in line with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

From Wash Post:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, President Bush's nominee to lead U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, supports continued U.S. engagement with international and regional partners to find the right mix of diplomatic, economic and military leverage to address the challenges posed by Iran.

In written answers to questions posed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he will testify today, Petraeus said the possibility of military action against Iran should be retained as a "last resort." But he said the United States "should make every effort to engage by use of the whole of government, developing further leverage rather than simply targeting discrete threats."

Petraeus's views echoed those expressed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who this month said that talks with Iran could be useful if the right combination of incentives and pressures could be developed.

So what to make of this given Bush's recent statements? Are we supposed to just ignore him and focus on what the real policy seems to be?

Justin blogs regularly at Donklephant.com

09:38 AM | Permalink

Obama has been citing Kennedy's meeting with Khrushchev as an argument why he believes that his proposal to meet without preconditions, but with preparation, with the leaders of Iran is the right policy. Yes, Kennedy did meet with Khrushchev, but not quite as Obama described it. Obama seemed to be placing the meeting of the two leaders during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

When Kennedy met with Khrushchev, we were on the brink of nuclear war."

The Cuban Missile Crisis took place in October of 1962. The two leaders did not meet during that crisis. But they had met over a year earlier, in the Spring of Kennedy's first year in office in June, 1961 in Vienna. And the results were not pretty as Nathan Thrall and Jesse James Wilkins write today in the The New York Times.

But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting "old, moribund, reactionary regimes" and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood "against other peoples following its suit." Khrushchev used the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to warn Kennedy that his country could not be intimidated and that it was "very unwise" for the United States to surround the Soviet Union with military bases.



Kennedy's aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was "just a disaster." Khrushchev's aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed "very inexperienced, even immature." Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was "too intelligent and too weak." The Soviet leader left Vienna elated -- and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.



Kennedy's assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit meeting had been the "roughest thing in my life." Kennedy went on: "He just beat the hell out of me. I've got a terrible problem if he thinks I'm inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won't get anywhere with him."



A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that "a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war." The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to "throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam's pants": nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna -- of Kennedy as ineffective -- was among them.
So, Obama is correct that Kennedy advocating negotiations with our opponents, but the actual history doesn't provide the sort of historical evidence that supports Obama's argument about the efficacy of such a meeting.



Meanwhile, Karl Rove casts some doubts on Obama's glib citations of Nixon going to China has a predicate for his visits with today's leaders of hostile nations.

 

I recommend that he read Henry Kissinger's book, "The White House Years." Mr. Obama would learn it took 134 private meetings between U.S. and Chinese diplomats before a breakthrough at a Jan. 20, 1970 meeting in Warsaw. It took 18 months of behind-the-scenes discussions before Mr. Kissinger secretly visited Beijing. And it took seven more months of hard work before Nixon went to China. The result was a new relationship, announced in a communiqué worked out over months of careful diplomacy.



The Chinese didn't change because of a presidential visit. In another book, "Diplomacy," Mr. Kissinger writes that "China was induced to rejoin the community of nations less by the prospect of dialogue with the United States than by fear of being attacked by its ostensible ally, the Soviet Union." Change came because the U.S. convinced Beijing it was in its interest to change. Then the president visited.

Perhaps what Obama needs is a few history courses.

Betsy blogs daily at Betsy's Page

09:09 AM | Permalink

Another lopsided win in Appalachia, and the chatter resumes about how bad off Obama is among the all important white vote.  Marc Ambinder, at least, posts up some exits from both states that voted tonight, though his focus, like many others, are on those dreadful numbers from Kentucky.  Yahoo's headline reads, "Exit poll: Whites back Clinton strongly in KY," and even Chris Cillizza is in on the act.

Now, I was doing what I'm sure few others will be doing, that is, reading the exits from Oregon, when it hit me, everything that is wrong with the white working class argument.

You see, a curious thing became clear when I read the exits provided by CNN; Obama won white people.  He won young white people and middle aged white people.  College educated white people, and non college educated white people.  He won female white people and male white people, and a lot of the church going white people.  About the only white people Obama didn't win were the over sixty crowd.

But, wait, I thought the conventional wisdom was that Obama couldn't win white people.  Why did he just about sweep the board on white people when it came to Oregon?

Well, for one thing, all these "questions" about Obama's appeal to the white working class voter are being raised by his performance in West Virginia and Kentucky.

The more time you stare at polling data, the more obvious the problem should become.  Let's show some examples.

With 83% reporting in Oregon, Obama has a 16 point lead over Hillary Clinton.  Now, if you had been following all of the polling data that has emerged from Oregon recently, this will not come as much of a surprise. Pollster's aggregation in the Beaver state showed Obama up in the mid teens.

But, if you were to run off of the most recent poll reported by Suffolk, Oregon all of a sudden becomes some sort of miraculous ascension for Obama given that Suffolk only had him up by four points.  Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, if you heeded only the final ARG poll put in the field before voting, you would be shocked to see that Clinton failed to win by sixteen points.

Responsible journalists, pundits, political anylists, and bloggers ignored these polls, however, because they were outliers.  They were data points, true, and carried with them the possibility of being correct, but in the face of quite a bit of data to the contrary, there just wasn't that much reason to put a lot of trust in them.

This didn't, nor will it ever, stop some from engaging in overly reactionary analysis that treats every outlier bit of data as though it were gospel, which is slowly beginning to bring us back to our point with West Virginia and Kentucky.

Now, as Gallup reported yesterday, what they are seeing nation wide runs contradictory to what we saw happen in West Virginia and Kentucky.  Namely, on a national scale, virtually every core demographic that used to be firmly in the Clinton camp has shifted to Obama's favor.  This national poll would seem to be backed up by Oregon's exits which show Obama beating Clinton in many of the demographics she has been touting that only she could win.

In other words, West Virginia and Kentucky are the electoral (or delegatorial if I wanted to make up a word) equivalent of outliers.  They don't mesh with what's going on in the rest of the country.

Sure, Ohio and Pennsylvania don't paint rosy pictures for Obama, nor are they outliers.  But in those states, based on the margin of victory for Clinton alone, there should be no reason that Obama can't be effective there with some vigorous campaigning, a wise allocation of resources, and a unified party.  Those states weren't outliers, and show true challenges that the Obama campaign.

But to treat West Virginia and Kentucky as though they were indicative of the country as a whole is downright ludicrous.  It's the equivalent of saying that a forty point poll on the eve of an election spells assured doom when dozens of other polls show a close race.

All this talk about Obama's problem with working class white with West Virginia and Kentucky as the banner data points is nothing more than reactionary analysis based upon outlier data, and nothing more.  Does Obama have challenges ahead with working class white voters?  Yeah, he does in some regions, but it's nowhere near as bad as these two states indicate, and he has plenty of time to fix or circumnavigate the problem.

Thus, the leading purpose for promoting these memes based upon this data is to undermine Obama's electability status in an intellectually dishonest, or at least ignorant, manner.  There are two more states left that are almost homogenously white, and they are likely to go for Obama, and I wonder if then perhaps there will be a slightly more honest approach to Obama's problems with working class white voters.

After all, it was the white vote in Iowa that propelled Obama's candidacy from the long shot to the frontrunner.  The only way to discount that would be if there was mass buyer's remorse regarding the likely Democratic nominee, and unfortunately for those trying to make the case that Obama somehow doesn't have the support, there's just no evidence that that kind of buyer's remorse exists.

I now return you to the breathless and excitable musings of everyone else.

Kyle blogs daily at Comments From Left Field

09:26 AM | Permalink

(numbers via Real Clear Politics)

That's right. If you count Florida and Michigan, but don't count any votes from those 4 caucus states, she leads by just over 26K votes. That's her argument.

And do note that Obama gets ZERO votes out of Michigan because his name wasn't on the ballot. But if you count half the "Uncommitted" votes from Michigan for Obama (and he probably got more than that), he's ahead of Clinton by nearly 100K votes.

What Hillary and her campaign are taking part in right now represents one THE most dishonest and disingenuous strategies they've employed yet.

How very shameful...

Justin blogs daily at Donklephant.com

09:18 AM | Permalink

Ed Morrissey sees a trend in how Democrats are denigrating John McCain's military service as his being someone who got into the Navy riding on his family's prestige and then didn't serve very long in combat before he was shot down and didn't do any fighting on the ground so his air combat just doesn't matter as much as if he'd been in the infantry.

Now we have at least three Democrats and Obama supporters on the record as attacking McCain's 24 years of service in the Navy: Gillespie, Jay Rockefeller, and Tom Harkin, as well as unnamed "colleagues" in the Matt Bai hit piece in the New York Times. The criticisms sound remarkably similar; all of them question the quality of his service, claiming that he grew up as a child of privilege and had his career handed to him, in a role where he didn't know what combat was really like. He had a "silver spoon", was "Navy royalty", and so on.

This sounds like someone wants to fight the elitist stink that has attached itself to the Barack Obama campaign through the intrepidity of the candidate himself. Obama scorned middle-America voters as bitterly clinging to guns and God because of a lack of wealth redistribution in America, while his wife told audiences that she only starting taking pride in America when people supported Obama's bid for the presidency, and his pastor and friend talked about the US government's creation of the HIV virus as a genocidal tool against people of color. Team Obama has argued ever since that McCain is the real elitist, and not the Harvard-educated man who sat on boards with William Ayers and never knew he had befriended an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

Remember how upset Democrats got about the Swivt Boat Veterans for Truth for questioning John Kerry's short service in Vietnam. So some of these Obama supporters are now in the position of saying that it was despicable to criticize anything about Kerry's service, yet McCain's is fair game. I doubt whether they're going to get anywhere dissing McCain's military background. Sure, lefty blogs and their mouthpieces in the press will take up the cry, but they just aren't going to get much traction with these sorts of attacks.

The question is why experienced politicians would try this tactic. Perhaps they really fear the aura of hero that McCain has due to the courage he showed as a POW. Or maybe they just don't get the military and deep down dislike the military. John Hawkins has compiled quite a list of comments that liberals have made about the military. For people who think that way, McCain's record of service is not a plus, but a negative that can be exploited.

I'm not saying that Obama feels this way or is dumb enough to make such accusations in public, but Morrissey is correct about the emerging trend of Obama supporters going on the attack against McCain's service.

Betsy blogs daily at Betsy's Page

08:56 AM | Permalink

I've been saying this for a while now; attack Obama personally at your own peril. The Democratic primary has shown that, for all of his flaws, Obama is both resilient, and knows how to redirect attacks against him back onto his opponent.

And, remember, for the Democratic primary, the gloves were on.

Obama is not the kind of guy to initiate offensives. When he does do so, he's often clumsy, and appears to not really have the heart or nerve for it. But when someone comes after him, it's almost as though there were two Obamas; the Dr. Jekyl Obama that is better known and suited to his soaring rhetoric, and the Mr. Hyde Obama that launches counter offensives with rapidity and precision.

As has been detailed several times in the past by me, the Obama mechanism is simple enough to understand. You attack Obama, he denounces you for playing politics, and then he hits you back with impunity. This is the more pragmatic and battle focused aspect of the "change" messaging of his candidacy.

So while many within the GOP are content to try and smear Obama, it's nice to see that at least one Republican Senator has it right. Tennessee Senator Bob Corker has found himself on criticizing his own party, asking that they refrain from the personal negative attacks and focusing on the issues.

Indeed, 2008 is shaping up to be a landmark year where the politics of personal destruction destroys the people employing it, and not the targets. One way or another, Obama is going to force the issues on the table and hold Republicans to account for how they have governed over the past seven years.

The choice is simple, either stand and have a debate on the issues and take the chance of losing on those merits (this, might I add, is an honorable way to lose), or continue with a nasty campaign, allow Obama to use that campaign to pummel McCain, still have to face the issues, and look like cowards for trying to run from them.

I know which one I would choose.

Kyle blogs at Comments From Left Field

10:14 AM | Permalink

Well, it's finally upon us. Super Tuesday 5... or 8... or 17... or whatever it is. I've lost count.



But it's the day we've been waiting for all primary season, the day we knew was coming, the day of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries.



I'll be live-blogging the results as they come in, keeping an ear or two out for American Idol -- it's Dave vs. Dave! (I'm rooting for Cook) -- but here, as we kick off the day, are some interesting tidbits for your amusement and/or edification:


1) Hillary is still insisting that the race is "nowhere near over," bubbling over with her now-characteristic faux populism, and playing fast and loose with popular-vote totals. Obama may or may not declare victory tonight, but he will likely reach a key milestone once today's results are in: a majority of the pledged delegates. He doesn't yet have enough superdelebates to put him over the top, but he's been trouncing Hillary in superdelegate pick-ups since the first Super Tuesday on February 5.



2) Speaking of superdelegates, Obama has picked up the endorsement of one of the party's long-time leaders, West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd: "Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support."



3) At least Obama doesn't need to bribe superdelegates. It is being reported (and, of course, denied) that Hillary financier Haim Saban offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America in return for two superdelegate endorsements. Another example of trying to win at any cost, it would seem. (And yet, in this case, the cost was clear.)

4) While Obama continues to pick up superdelegates, including Iowa Democratic Chairman Scott Brennan, Hillary continues to embrace, and be embraced by, the vast right-wing conspiracy. Her latest "friend" -- following the likes of Dick Scaife and Rush Limbaugh (whose turn-out-the-vote efforts have no doubt helped her, including in Indiana) -- is none other than Turd Blossom himself, Karl Rove, whose consulting firm has put together electoral maps showing her beating McCain and McCain beating Obama in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups (with many states too close to call). Needless to say, there are problems with such prognosticating. First, the way things are now is not how they will be during the general election campaign, let alone in November. Obama hasn't yet even secured the nomination yet, after all, and he has been subject to attacks from both Hillary and McCain. Let's see how he does once he has the nomination and can focus his attention on McCain. I suspect that he will run an impressive campaign. Second, the states that are too close to call all look good for Obama (with the exception of North Dakota). Third, we Rove may have an ulterior motive here. Like most Republicans, I assume, he would much rather run against Hillary than against Obama. In the end, the maps don't really tell us anything, and yet Hillary has referred to Rove directly in defending her ongoing candidacy.



5) Losing candidacy, that is. The Gallup daily tracking poll has her down to Obama by 16 points, his largest lead yet. (And have I mentioned that he leads Hillary in both pledged delegates and superdelegates, as well as in the popular vote (when you don't play fast and loose with the math)?



6) Warren Buffett must also think the race is over. He had indicated that he would support either Obama or Hillary for president, remaining neutral between them, but he has finally come out for Obama: "I will be very happy if he is elected president. He is my choice."



7) And maybe Patti Solis Doyle does, too. Hillary's close friend and former campaign manager has had talks with David Axelrod, one of Obama's chief strategists, about working for Obama during the general election campaign.



Michael blogs regularly at The Reaction

08:41 AM | Permalink

Obama offered up this proposal last night in Montana.

Americans need real relief, Obama said, saying he will pass a law to give each family $1,000 a year to help them pay for higher gas prices and other rising costs.

Shades of McGovern's 1972 proposal to give every family $1000 except that Obama has neglected to adjust for inflation.



Why not just cut taxes instead of granting out money to everyone?



McCain's idea of suspending the federal gas tax is equally futile. The prices we're facing today are a result of demand exceeding supply. Giving out money whether through a $1000 grant or through lower federal taxes will just increase demand and keep prices high.



What I don't get is the disconnect between the calls for Americans to use less energy and the efforts to lower gas prices. What could be better suited than high gas prices to get every American to limit his or her gas usage?

Could it be that it just isn't popular for a politician not to have a policy proposal to deal with gas prices when it's the issue that most people are ticked off about. There is nothing Obama or McCain can do about increased demand in India or China and they're not going to support increased drilling here in the United States. So they come up with these band aid proposals that maybe sound good on the campaign trail but would do little to reduce the price of gas or the demand for more gas. So Obama adds to his proposal by saying that the federal government will fund research into alternative forms of energy.

Obama pledged to spend $150 billion over 10 years on alternative energy such as wind, solar and biodiesel, a move to rid this country's dependence on foreign oil and one he said would put millions of Americans to work.

As James Pethokoukis recently pointed out in a comment targeted at Hillary Clinton's idea that fighting global warming would benefit the economy, this is a replay of Frederic Bastiat's "Broken Window Fallacy."

And with that, Clinton seemingly stumbled into the classic economic trap known as the Broken Window Fallacy. As described by the French economist Fredric Bastiat, the fallacy imagines some punk kid chucking a rock through a store window. A bad thing, right? Yet a contrarian onlooker offers that the troublemaker may have actually helped the economy because now the storeowner will have to hire a glazier, who will make money replacing the window. Then the glazier will use that money to buy bread from a baker, who then might buy shoes from a cobbler. And the "multiplier effect" goes on and on, creating a more prosperous economy.



But Bastiat points out that such reasoning ignores the hidden costs to the shopkeeper, who was forced to spend money on windows instead of something else that may have had higher value to him or society, like a new suit or investing in a start-up tech firm. As the great economics writer Henry Hazlitt once put it:

The glazier's gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor's loss of business. No new "employment" has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.

It is certainly unlikely that spending money on climate change will be the "win-win" free lunch Clinton describes, anymore than natural disasters or wars are economic free lunches, even though they seem to spur economic activity. (Indeed, dealing with climate change is often called the "moral equivalent of war.")



Last year, the British government released a review on the economics of climate change, authored by economist Nicholas Stern. It concluded that we should spend 1 percent of the global economy every year to avoid the worse effects of climate change. Now even if you take Stern's numbers as correct--and many think he overestimates the economic risks of doing nothing--he still advocates spending $700 billion a year on a supposed problem, dough that might have a better return on investment if spent elsewhere.



If climate change "creates" 10 million new jobs over the next decade, who is to say those jobs would not have been created anyway, in the nanotechnology industry or healthcare or business consulting or some industry we have yet to imagine? We may need to spend money to deal with global warming, but to think of it as an actual independent economic gain is a stretch.

Betsy blogs at Betsy's Page

08:31 AM | Permalink

Barack Obama has some creative explanations for why he's going to lose in Kentucky.

"What it says is that I'm not very well known in that part of the country," Obama said. "Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle."



Obama has been trying to introduce himself to Kentuckians using a series of biographical TV ads, as well as fliers, including one that shows him at a pulpit in front of a church's cross and pipe organ.



He acknowledged that he's trying to "reverse a lot of misconceptions" about his background. He is a Christian, although some e-mail chains have said he is a Muslim.



"Part of it is because there have been these e-mails that have been sent out very systematically, presumably by various political opponents, although I don't know who," he said. "And there are a lot of voters who get their news from Fox News. Fox has been pumping up rumors about my religious beliefs or my patriotism or what have you since the beginning of the campaign."

He had the same excuse for his loss in West Virginia.

Greg Pollowitz helpfully supplies a map of the United States. In case the senator from Illinois needs a review - Kentucky and Illinois actually border each other. Historically a lot of Kentuckians helped settle Illinois. Think of Abraham Lincoln's family. Arkansas just isn't so close.Last week, Obama attributed his 41-point loss in the West Virginia primary, in part, to his short tenure on the national stage.

"I'm not well-known there," Obama said. "You know, some of these e-mails and rumors that have been talked about penetrated in West Virginia [more] than they have in some other states."

According to Obama, West Virginians and Kentuckians are so behind the times that they haven't heard enough about Obama to get to know him. Maybe they don't get TV or the Internet there in Kentucky and can't find out about the probable nominee of the Democratic Party? Maybe they've missed the six times he or his wife have been on the cover of Newsweek in the past year. Maybe they've missed Oprah's announcement of her support of Obama. It must be that they just don't get any TV or newspapers there.

Oh, wait. They must get TV and the Internet because they're getting Fox News and the Internet. Obama has access to some secret Nielsen numbers to tell him that Kentucky Democrats are more likely to watch Fox News. And that they're more likely to receive and believe those emails than residents of other states. Ah, it must be because they're just dumb Kentuckians who haven't yet seen the light about the Obamatopia. That's why they need those fliers with pictures of Obama speaking in a church with a large, lighted cross in the background. Remember the fuss when Huckabee had an ad wishing voters a Merry Christmas and people said that the bookcase in the background served as a floating cross? That became a storyline for several days. But there seems to be barely a whisper when Obama puts out fliers talking about being a "committed Christian." I guess that is what he needs to do to appeal to those stupid Kentuckians who don't know that he's Christian. (Maybe the Obama campaign needs to send one of those fliers to the editors of the New York Times who gave space to Edward Luttwak who wrote about the possibility that Muslims would regard Obama as an apostate from Islam.)


I suspect that Obama's religion problem is not that Kentuckians believe an email they got several months ago saying that Obama was secretly a Muslim but that they listened to Jeremiah Wright and wondered how Obama could stay so long in Wright's church and not have glommed on to the tone of Wright's black liberationist theology, just as Stanley Kurtz concluded from reading the Trumpet, the magazine put out by Obama's church.

To the question of the moment--What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?--I answer, Obama knew everything, and he's known it for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah Wright's disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack Obama must have long been aware of his pastor's political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year's worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine, Wright's glossy national "lifestyle magazine for the socially conscious," makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise.

...I obtained the 2006 run of Trumpet, from the first nationally distributed issue in March to the November/December double issue. To read it is to come away impressed by Wright's thoroughgoing political radicalism. There are plenty of arresting sound bites, of course, but the larger context is more illuminating--and more disturbing--than any single shock-quotation. Trumpet provides a rounded picture of Wright's views, and what it shows unmistakably is that the now-infamous YouTube snippets from Wright's sermons are authentic reflections of his core political and theological beliefs. It leaves no doubt that his religion is political, his attitude toward America is bitterly hostile, and he has fundamental problems wit