Working class; Reagan Democrats; the Racist Vote. I’m sorry, but who, in the history of the United States, has ever claimed electability because they were ahead in the polls in West Fucking Virginia? Unless, of course, they were running against a black man?
Hillary! Please. Stop.
Timothy Noah has written a great piece on Slate.com explaining that, look, it’s pretty much impossible for Hillary to win the nomination under any circumstances, so why does the media keep pretending she’s in the race?
He counts up the delegates and points out that, first, Obama is all but certain to win both the popular vote and the non-super-delegate count, and second, that it would therefore take a massively unprecedented shift by a couple hundred super-delegates to vote against the popular will. And it’s not bloody likely:
Should they vote their conscience, or should they follow the popular will? We could debate that one all day. The more relevant question is: How do superdelegates choose the nominee? Answer: They tend to follow the popular will. That’s why superdelegates gravitated to Clinton when polls showed she looked like a sure thing, and then to Obama when he started outpolling her. That’s why more than one-third of the superdelegates remain uncommitted now. Believe me, it isn’t because they haven’t been paying attention, and (except for a few head cases) it isn’t because, after 23 Democratic debates, they still don’t know which candidate tickles their fancy. It’s because they’re reluctant to be out of step with the popular will as expressed through all the primaries and caucuses. The longer any given superdelegate waits to make his or her endorsement, the likelier he or she is to choose whoever ends up with a plurality of delegates. Why else wait?
I guess there’s a possibility that Hillary is loitering around just in case Obama mysteriously self-destructs. Seems like an expensive bet.
Meanwhile she keeps proposing things that make her seem either stupid or conniving. Please pack it up, Hillary. This has gone on long enough.
Does anybody else find it weird that Hillary Clinton is running as the Rudy Guilianni of the Democratic Party? I mean, 3 a.m. phone calls, can’t-stand-the-heat, “totally obliterate” Iran: I thought trying to scare the shit out of the electorate was a Republican gambit.
Plus, the pundit wisdom seems to be that Obama didn’t win Pennsylvania/Ohio/Texas because he doesn’t get the un-educated, white, clinging-to-guns-and-religion vote. Like, darn, the Democrats better nominate someone who can snake the idiot vote from Republicans.
The only thing sillier than that argument is this idea that Hillary Clinton, of all people - Hillary Clinton! - would somehow fare better than Obama in a jaw-clenching contest with John McCain. Except that while McCain was being tortured, Hillary was in Moscow. She’d have to explain that one again. Promise.
I mean, Hillary? More electable? Wait till the right dusts off Vince Foster’s skeleton, and God knows what else. The main curiosity, though, is that one would think that this year, of all years for as long as I can remember, would be a good year to run as a Democrat, on Democrat issues.
Instead, Hillary flashes Osama bid Laden’s face in campaign ads. Focus group must have liked that one.
And the award for cringe-inducing investigative journalism piece of the week goes to the New York Times, for a fascinating piece revealing that the “military analysts” regularly trotted out for public consumption by TV news programs are, on one level or another, Pentagon shills:
Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.
…
Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”
Three thoughts come to mind. First, TV “news” appears to be as trustworthy as I always thought it was. Second, I’m a little annoyed that the Pentagon can use tax dollars to coordinate such expensive and creepy efforts at propaganda. Isn’t that illegal on some level?
And third, I’m really going to miss this sort of thing once the New York Times goes out of business.
Hillary Clinton, from the debate tonight, via the New York Times:
“On a couple of occasions in the last weeks, I just said some things that were not in keeping with what I knew to be the case.”
If I had a vote (which I’m pretty sure I don’t, as our electoral system makes use of an ingenious system of winches, pulleys, “electoral college” contraptions, and obscure paperwork to disenfranchise expatriates) I would vote for Barack Obama.
Or John McCain.
I mean, why not John McCain? As much as I’m not really a fan of some of his crazier war-like policies and spousal recipe theft, he wouldn’t be able to do much damage if an overwhelmingly-Democratic Congress hiked up its knickers and started checking and balancing things.
On the other hand, if Barack decided to do something crazy - say, the Democratic equivalent of the Iraq War, whatever that might be - Congress would pass it on through in about five minutes.
It’s something to think about, this idea that political head-knocking is important for good governance, since, as the delectable Jack Shafer pointed out, “Writing slavery into the Constitution was perhaps the greatest triumph of nonpartisan compromise in U.S. history.”
And as George W. Bush roundly demonstrated, having one party in charge of everything is not so healthy either.
Anyway, I imagine I would still vote for Barack Obama, if I could find the U.S. embassy and register to vote in the state of San José. Although after paying $1,950 to the U.S. government on my meager income of $12,500 (self employed! I’m fucked!), I’m wondering if I can still write in Steve Forbes.
It’s not so often the editor of The Nation and I agree on something, so mark your calendar. Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in Newsweek (yes, Newsweek still exists) that the recently-deceased William F. Buckley was a damn fine representative of conservatism, even if, in the end, his ideas were kind of repugnant. (For the record, I sort of beat Katrina to the punch on that chestnut by a couple weeks.)
Money ‘graph:
Despite his uncompromising conservative beliefs, Buckley reveled in transpartisan friendships, most notably with the late John Kenneth Galbraith. (One of Galbraith’s favorite phrases—”Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue”—may well have been coined to describe his skiing partner Buckley.) While he could deploy a sometimes vicious wit—which could descend into cruelty—Buckley disdained the kind of partisan shoutfests that too often pass for political debate on our TVs today.
Perhaps the best lesson to be drawn from Buckley’s many “transpartisan” friendships is that the left, like everyone else, has always remained more status-conscious than principled.
Jack Shafer on the media’s odd obsession with bipartisanship:
When we devote ourselves to working together in the name of national unity rather than obsessing on our differences, injustice loves to strike. Writing slavery into the Constitution was perhaps the greatest triumph of nonpartisan compromise in U.S. history. The denial of suffrage to non-property owners and women ranks up there, as do prohibition, the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and the so-called war on drugs, declared by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s and waged bipartisanly by every president—Republican and Democrat—since.
Can someone explain to me why Chuck Norris has endorsed Mike Huckabee for president? In these troubled, post-9/11 times, it’s so hard to tell what’s The Onion and what’s not. Also, Rudy Giuliani (God, I hate spelling Giuliani) promises to resolve all this “War on Terror” business in one hour, either that or destroy the entire Muslim world.
From the New York Times:
‘‘If you aren’t for some reason elected president, what cabinet position would you be suited for?’’ I asked. Huckabee paused, considering. ‘‘Secretary of health and human services would be one,’’ he said. ‘‘Secretary of transportation, or the interior.’’ Perhaps aware that this wasn’t a Mount Rushmore self-evaluation, he quickly added that he doesn’t really want a cabinet position or any other government job. ‘‘I’d be just as happy to go back to Arkansas and open a bait shop on a lake,’’ he said.