John McCain. The guy I backed in 2000 is a wounded shadow of his former self. His speech was dull, plodding, uninspired, intellectually dishonest, and defensive. And whoever picked the green background should be fired. He talks of our progress in Iraq, where Sunnis are working with us to fight insurgency - Sunnis to whom we reached out in a diplomatic manner, realizing that there is something each side needs from the other. In the next breath he criticizes Obama for wanting to negotiate with mean dictators. McCain paints Obama with the big-spending, big-government program brush - a brush that’s 25 years out-of-date. The Republican Party is now the big-spending, big-government party. The Republican Party is now the party of government intrusion into public life, into mismanagement of the economy and energy policy, of turning the US into a torturing, aggressive, clumsy fool who spies on its own citizens. That’s not change we can believe in. McCain as a change agent? Co-opting Obama’s tag line as “A Leader We Can Believe In”? Nothing new, nothing original, and the whole notion of “change” isn’t exactly going to fire up the conservatives, who aren’t all that thrilled about McCain to begin with.

Hillary Clinton. The Senator from New York was feisty, defiant, conciliatory to the race Obama “has run” versus the race he has won. She gave out her web address and asked her supporters to tell her what to do next because she’s not making any decisions “tonight”. (The crowd at times chanted, “Denver, Denver!” and at one point I heard one voice cry, “don’t vote for Obama!”) It was Clinton’s opportunity to concede gracefully and acknowledge that Obama was over the top. She didn’t . It was Clinton’s opportunity to throw her support his way wholeheartedly to unify the party - an opportunity to do so to a live, nationwide audience. She didn’t. That’s a shame. Go to her site and tell her what you think? It begins, by default, “I’m with you, Hillary, and I’m proud of everything we are fighting for.” When you hit submit, it goes to her contributions page. What does she want? Not “respect” for the 18 million who voted for her. What she wants is help paying off her campaign debt. I thought her speech was an opportunity blown; it might have been the right speech for Hillary Clinton, but it wasn’t the right speech for the Democratic Party going into the general election. Ultimately, Clinton’s speech was all about her. She didn’t coalesce her supporters against McCain. She helped perpetuate the Hillary-as-victim myth. CNN pundits were getting angry emails about how this night was supposed to be “all about Hillary”. Jeffrey Toobin expressed disbelief at that sentiment, and chalked it up to “deranged narcissism”:

Barack Obama’s speech. Compared to McCain’s rhetorical bunt, Obama hit it out of the park. He extended a hand to Clinton and her supporters. But what I really loved - especially after the lackluster, wonky campaign Al Gore waged in 2000 and the milquetoast, defensive campaign John Kerry waged in 2004 - was that Obama got right in McCain’s face. He held the speech at the arena in St Paul where the Republicans will hold their nominating convention later this year. Right in his face. He praised McCain for his service to the country and his accomplishments, “even as he chooses to ignore [Obama’s]”. He went right at McCain as “embracing” Bush’s policies in Iraq and with domestic issues. While McCain criticized Obama for not visiting Iraq, Obama suggested McCain go and visit places in America that are facing tough times. It was patriotic. It outlined that, as far as Obama is concerned, the race won’t use religion as a “wedge”, and won’t demonize and turn opponents into the enemy. What a great speech. What a great night.

Bring it.

I thought this Kos Diarist’s account of a town hall meeting that Congressman (and Obama superdelegate) Robert Wexler held with his constituents in Clinton-friendly Palm Beach County.

When he’d finished, he took questions. The first lady immediately and concisely asked “how could you represent your constituents when you don’t endorse the candidate they prefer?” Many people cheered at this comment. Congressman Wexler answered that he tries to represent his constituents, but that he also exercises his own judgment, and that when he goes to Washington he shouldn’t leave his brain in Florida. Many people cheered at this.

The next lady said “I was ashamed to see your disgraceful performance on Saturday.” Lots of groans. “How could you represent your constituency, while voting to take away 50% of its votes?” He answered that no one had fought harder against Howard Dean when the DNC originally tried to take away Florida’s delegates, but they’d voted, and the primary campaign began in earnest, and the candidates signed a pledge, and it was unfair to bait and switch, by changing the rules halfway through. More applause.

There were other policy-related questions, until nearly the last questioner revisited Obama. “Could you please tell us more specifically why you chose Obama over Hillary?” Lots of “Yeahs!”

Congressman Wexler hit this one out of the park: “I support Barack Obama because he showed better judgment on the Iraq War, because he has remained more forcefully against it. I support him because of his stand on ethics reform, and commitment to engaging our enemies. I support him because he speaks truth to power. He spoke in front of a largely Cuban-American organization in Miami. Everyone has told this organization the same thing for 40 years. ‘We’re going to continue the embargo against Cuba, no monetary remittances there, no anything.’ Whether or not it works, that’s all any politician dares to say. Obama suggested to them we engage with Raul Castro, and take steps towards ending the embargo. Obama told a crowd in Detroit that we should increase fuel efficiency standards, and he told members of Martin Luther King’s church in Atlanta that we all share some of the blame for some of the race problems in America today.”

And it occurred to me, this is exactly what Congressman Wexler was doing, and did on Saturday. He was speaking forcefully and with conviction in the face of hostility.

Must be nice to be represented by a Congressman who isn’t afraid to speak with angry constituents.

This post tracked back to this one here, and it insinuates that I, as an Obama supporter, am somehow going against Obama’s call to hope, etc. because I have mocked some of Hillary’s supporters.

Barack Obama will have won this primary battle by the end of the week. He will have won it fair & square. He will have won through hard work and a novel grassroots campaign/funding strategy. He will have won despite the fact that Clinton had lined up institutional Democratic support for her campaign throughout the country. He will have won despite the fact that the Clinton camp played junior Karl Rove since about South Carolina in an effort first to derail him, and later to try and render him damaged goods so that, should he lose, they can say, “We told you so.” She was inevitable. Then came Iowa.

As an Obama supporter, Clinton’s behavior, and the behavior of many of her supporters, has grown more and more disturbing to me over the past few months. I think that what she’s doing is harmful to the party and the nominee the party selected over her.

Your post reads:

Ah…the audacity of hope…yes we can…a vision that all will share in the American Dream…along the way…it is okay to mock people…a true message of hope…we can bring people together and recognize that what unites us is greater than what divides us…yes we can.

Far be it from me to tell you what to write on your own site, but can we Fisk it? Yes, we can.

Setting aside the overuse of ellipses and the incomplete sentences, it’s intellectually dishonest and hypocritical. It’s not OK to mock the likes of this woman? On top of that, in the next line of your post you say, “but the things I have read on these internets from Obamatons pushing hate against her supporters is irony at its purest.”

Obamaton?!

Re-education camp? Obamenema?

Obamatabs?

Those sound pretty “mocking” and “hateful”. You think I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. That’s fine, and you can post all day and all night about it. But don’t let’s play make-believe about how above the fray you are, and how shocked - SHOCKED! you are. Just keep on posting about how the party is a “sham” despite the fact that it had the guts to undergo something rather unpleasant this past weekend transparently on live TV. Despite the fact that it’s winning federal-level elections in traditionally safe Republican strongholds.

When I insinuated that the Ron Paul people were cultists, they merely confirmed the point by spamming my site with hundreds of insane rants. I use my site to support my candidate, as I have done throughout the existence of this site. Furthermore, when my candidate’s opponent and her supporters behave like imbeciles, I’m going to post about it if I feel like it, regardless of your delicate sensibilities. Because that, too, is something I’ve done since ‘03.

Don’t get all self-righteous about mockery and hatred when you spread it around yourself.

I think the word for this Harriet Christian individual is “dreck”:

When Hillary Clinton began her quest for the Presidency, she was despised by a good half of the electorate-at-large.

Now? In late May 2008? She’s despised by a good half of the Democratic Party, too. Not because she’s a woman. Not because she’s a Clinton. Not because she’s from New York. Not because she’s opinionated and strong.

She’s despised because she’s a sore loser, and she’s playing the feminist victim card in a way that cheapens both words.

Any suggestion that her loss in the primaries has to do with sexism or unfair media treatment is patently false, and truly pathetic. If that’s the message she wants to send to her supporters, so be it. She lost fair and square partly because of the mismanagement of her own campaign. I hope all of this nonsense is somehow worth it for her.

Say what you want about Olbermann, but he’s one of the very, very few cable commentators who doesn’t scream at you, doesn’t rely on flash and graphics, and otherwise isn’t a caricature of himself. Good for him for what he’s doing - being intelligent and speaking to you like a grownup. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not.

And the best part of this commentary comes at around the 8 minute mark, when he lists of the myriad things we have “forgiven” Clinton over the course of the primary, in spite of her easy morphs into victim mode.

Like the NY Lottery - hey, you never know.

This has to be one of the dumbest things said on the campaign trail this year. The fact that it was said by the candidate who’s got the experience - the one who’s been fully vetted - the one who’s ready to lead on day one, makes it all the stupider.

Her apology:

“I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever,” the former first lady said.

“Sorry if it was offensive” does-not-equal “sorry I said something offensive”.

Of all the things in the whole world she could have brought up as an excuse for staying in a race she’s already lost, arguing that RFK wasn’t shot and killed until June is probably the last one on the list. It is offensive not only because dredging up RFK’s assassination is in poor taste this week, with news of Teddy Kennedy’s illness. It is offensive because bringing up the specter of assassination is beyond the pale - well beyond anything normal people would discuss as part of a primary campaign. It’s like taking being at a romantic dinner at Olivers, pulling your pants down, hopping up on the table, squatting, and taking a shit right there in the middle of the table.

Seriously, Mrs. Clinton, the race is over for you. Drop out now while you still have a political career.

UPDATE: Even the argument itself is fallacious, regardless of its offensiveness. In 1992, the New York Times noted that, by March 20th, Paul Tsongas was running out of money and pulled out of the race. He said,

the alternative was to play the role of spoiler.” ‘That Is Not Worthy’…”That is not what I’m about,” he continued. “That is not worthy. I did not survive my ordeals in order to be the agent of the re-election of George Bush.”

In the meantime, the (Bill) Clinton campaign argued that the mathematics made him the inevitable nominee:

Mr. Clinton is already close to the halfway mark in the number of delegates needed to win the nomination and has a 7-to-1 edge over Mr. Brown, who is running a maverick, anti-establishment campaign. Many Democrats said that barring an unexpected collapse by Mr. Clinton’s campaign, it is difficult to see how Mr. Brown can overtake the Governor.

“It certainly brings it much closer to a conclusion,” said Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic national chairman. “You could argue that it’s theoretically possible for Jerry Brown to mount a come-from-behind challenge, but the math and the reality of Bill Clinton’s momentum certainly work against him.”

And note that in 1992, the New Hampshire primary took place during the second half of February - not in January.

As Marc Ambinder argues,

For those who contend that Clinton was referring to competitive contests or example, why didn’t she bring up Ted Kennedy in 1980? Or Gary Hart in 1984? I think she was pointing to primary races where the eventual nominee was unknown at this point in the cycle…. But 1984 would apply more, her husband was the de-facto nominee at this point, and the compressed calender really renders such comparisons null and void.

Even if her point is legitimate, surely she is aware of the sensitivity of the subject.

Obama has done exactly the right thing over the last week or so - pretend Clinton doesn’t exist. Yes, his campaign issued a statement calling what Clinton said, “unfortunate” and said it “has no place in this campaign.” Other than that, Obama has been looking more presidential than either McCain or Clinton this past week, easily morphing from defense to offense whenever McCain attacks him, and by mounting a general election campaign.

But only in Cloudcuckooland, which has a new resident.

To compare what happened in Zimbabwe - (the ruling party was unhappy with the result, so it rigged the results to require a run-off and permit it to wage all-out political war against the opposition) - to what happened in Florida and Michigan this year is so baseless, so beyond the pale, so Godwinian in its obnoxiousness.

We already saw yesterday that Senator Clinton likened the Florida and Michigan primaries to what happened to Democrats in Florida in 2000. To Democrats, those are fighting words - especially given the fact that Clinton uttered them in Boca Raton, where many elderly Jewish voters miraculously chose to ignore Pat Buchanan’s anti-Semitism to vote for him in 2000.

The ultimate irony here doesn’t have to do with the fact that Clinton said she’d follow the rules set forth by the DNC and then decided not to when it suited her. The irony is that Florida and Michigan intentionally and knowingly violated DNC rules and pushed their primaries up to January so that they would have a similar impact on the primary race as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The DNC warned those states in 2007 that any effort to do that would result in those states’ delegates not being seated.

If people in Florida and Michigan are angry and their “disenfranchisement”, they have only to look to their state party organizations, which had been forewarned of the consequences far in advance. If Hillary Clinton is so shocked by the disenfranchisement of Florida and Michigan Democrats, then the time to speak up was back in 2007 when she was the presumptive nominee - not now, when she’ll quite obviously do and say anything to harm the person who has since become the presumptive nominee. She could have objected to the DNC, or tried to change those states’ parties minds.

And the further irony is that if Florida and Michigan had pushed their primaries back to May or June, they would have been far more important to the process overall than they ever could have imagined.

The saddest thing, however, is that the mismanagement of the Clinton 2008 campaign has revealed her to be a poor strategist and a worse manager. It has revealed her to be petty, hypocritical, false, and vindictive to millions of people who had respected and supporter her in other endeavors.

I look forward to her continued service in the United States Senate, which is nothing to sneeze at. I think that her current petulant and harmful behavior has prevented her from being any sort of VP contender.

It all started with this letter:

Hillary Clinton signed it:

So did Barack Obama. Upon signing the letter, Obama did not campaign or participate in either state’s primary, and withdrew his name from Michigan’s ballot.

Hillary, on the other hand, did no such thing. And then she started losing contests to Obama. Now she has this to say:

Now, I know that Senator Obama chose to remove his name from the ballot in Michigan, and that was his right. But his choice does not negate the votes of all those who turned out to cast their ballots, and we should not let our process rob them and all of you of your voices. To do so would undermine the very purpose of the nominating process. To ensure that as many Democrats as possible can cast their votes. To ensure that the party selects a nominee who truly represents the will of the voters and to ensure that the Democrats take back the White House to rebuild America.

Now, I’ve heard some say that counting Florida and Michigan would be changing the rules. I say that not counting Florida and Michigan is changing a central governing rule of this country - that whenever we can understand the clear intent of the voters, their votes should be counted. I remember very well back in 2000, there were those who argued that people’s votes should be discounted over technicalities. For the people of Florida who voted in this primary, the notion of discounting their votes sounds way too much of the same.

She has fought a valiant campaign. I’m sure she and her supporters are crushed and disappointed. But she will not win the nomination. Not unless she futzes with the rules to such an intense degree that the other people - the people in the states that chose Obama over her - are magically disenfranchised. She signed a pledge and is looking to renege on it. She wants to subvert the rules to which she agreed. Why she’s choosing so brazenly to damage her reputation and family legacy is inexplicable.

If you haven’t read Dana Milbank’s piece in today’s Washington Post likening Hillary Clinton’s campaign to the parrot in the Python sketch that’s not dead, but pining for the fjords, you should do so…. NOW!

I especially love this passage:

2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton’s plane to Charleston’s hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane’s wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.

Oh, and since I know you want to watch it now, here ya go:

Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me

Oliver Willis calls it the first Democratic bigot eruption. If she wasn’t done with this race yet, she sure is now.

DEMS: …Hello?

Hillary: Hey baby.

DEMS: C’mon Hillary. Enough with this.

Hillary: Don’t you get it? You NEED me.

DEMS: No, I don’t. It was fun while it lasted but I’m with Barack now. I made my choice, it’s done.

Hillary: You can’t really mean that. How can you say that after all the good times we had?

A blogger imagines Hillary Clinton as a psycho ex-girlfriend.

The political fad this week seems to be a gas tax holiday. Politicians with ambitions as lofty as President and as lowly as county legislature are proposing that just about every federal, state, and county tax on gasoline be abrogated because, evidently, we are entitled to tax-free, cheap gasoline. Never mind that taxes on gasoline pay for things like road maintenance.

Aren’t you somewhat tired of politicians treating you as a stupid, sound-bite consuming clown? Because that’s what this does. Gas may be ridiculously expensive right now, but there are so many causes of that, none of which get addressed by this politics-as-usual, quick-fix pander which, according to Paul Krugman wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem:

Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.

Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that. So it’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.

The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.

In fact, there’s not one economist who thinks this is a great idea. (I’m sure there’s one out there. Maybe two. But they’re the Dr. Nick Rivieras of economics.) If you drop the price, demand will rise, and the prices will go up and the oil companies’ already swollen profits will swell further. Yay! In addition to all that, budgets already factor in gas tax revenue, and at least on the local and state level would need to be made up somewhere.

The idea of a gas tax cap in New York - where it runs on a sliding scale - makes some sense, to prevent windfalls when gas prices soar. But abolition is downright silly.

Do we really want to screw with the economy on the fly like this? If we want to abolish the gas tax, wouldn’t it be better to do it as part of the annual budget process, rather than pandering to voters during an election cycle?

Originally from the New York Times, HT Richard Florida’s Creative Class Blog.

Changes nothing.

The last primaries before Pennsylvania’s to which any attention was paid took place in Ohio and Texas on March 4th. Back then, Pennsylvania polling showed Clinton’s lead to be 52 - 37 over Obama. Over 6 weeks of having Clinton throw the kitchen sink at him, and then some, he still managed to close the gap. The final result was 55 - 45. Clinton didn’t persuade a whole lot more people, but Obama sure did.

So, we’re back to where we were yesterday. Obama has an insurmountable lead in combined pledged and superdelegates, and Clinton will continue her effort to convince superdelegates to select her anyway at the convention because she can defeat Obama in the “bigger” states.

My perspective is that there’s one candidate who’s appealing to people’s desire for change, unity, and hope, and there’s another candidate who refuses to permit some younger upstart to take away what’s rightfully hers, and she’ll do and say anything to stop him. The Hudsonists will argue that I’m just a liberal elitist; a modern-day version of the Manhattan socialites in Radical Chic. That, however, doesn’t change the facts.

None of this will be done until August, and Clinton’s ridiculously negative campaign is rending the party in two.

Maybe this one is better:

For God’s sake. Why the need to pad the resume?

There was a vote yesterday on an amendment to the 2009 budget, which would have placed a moratorium on Senators’ earmark spending for one year. It failed 29 - 71. From CNN:

Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted in favor of the amendment.

“We’re disappointed that only 29 members of the U.S. Senate understand that the American people want us to stop this practice, which has led to corruption,” McCain said.

Earmarks are requests for money by a specific legislator, usually for his constituency, added onto often unrelated government spending bills.

Earlier, Obama made public his requests for earmarks, after McCain challenged him and Clinton on the spending measures.

McCain had urged his Democratic rivals to reveal the earmarks they’ve asked for and turn back the money that hasn’t been spent yet.

Part of what attracts me to Obama and his campaign is the call for transparency and openness. That’s why he’s released his tax returns, and why he immediately released, in great detail, a list of earmarks he’s requested during his three years in the Senate. This way, people can pick through them and determine what he’s done for his district, but also whether he’s granted special favors to donors or friends.

Also according to information released Thursday by the Obama camp, the Illinois senator had 138 earmark requests for the 2007 fiscal year.

His total requested funding was about $330 million. His average request was about $2.4 million, with the largest request being $62 million intended to modify a Boeing 747 aircraft to capture infrared images of the Earth.

In a statement this week, Obama complained that earmarks are doled out based on a lawmaker’s seniority, not the merit of a project, and that many of the projects “fail to address the real needs of our country.”

Earmark opponents pushed for the ban after watching Congress approve an increasing number of special projects in recent years.

Clinton, to her credit, released hers late last night, as well.

Also, Obama approached Clinton on the floor of the Senate to discuss the tone of the campaigns of late. Specifically, things like Samantha Power, Geraldine Ferraro, and yesterday, Mark Penn testing a “if not Hillary, then not Obama” strategy, which the Obama camp mocked the crap out of here.

Another Cultist Criticizes Clinton:

Remember Geraldine Ferraro? She’s a Clinton surrogate, and she came up with this happy little ditty the other day:

“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.”

She justified it by saying that had she been male, Mondale never would have picked her as a running mate in 1984. Because getting picked as a running mate is, apparently, the same as having a lead in the Democratic primaries. Ferraro is shocked that anyone would be offended.

Obama said,

…that if someone in his campaign had suggested that Hillary Clinton “is where she is only because she is a woman” she would be offended.

Better still, Ferraro came back with:

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”

Clinton has neither denounced nor repudiated Ferraro’s nonsense.

The reason why comes courtesy of Philadelphia Daily News:

Think of it this way. It was easy for Obama to reject and denounce an out-there hatemonger like Louis Farrakhan, and it should have been easy for John McCain to fully reject and denounce anti-Catholic whack job John Hagee (why he hasn’t is mindboggling). But the Clinton campaign can’t reject and denounce Geraldine Ferraro, because it would be rejecting and denouncing itself.

A sculptor brought in to mold a Hillary Clinton voter would have crafted Geraldine Ferraro from scratch. She’s 72 years old now. White. Female. Ethnic. Catholic. Emotionally vested in the idea that a woman should become president in her lifetime. Hailing from the community that was once the face of white middle-class America. Got where she was with the enthusiastic backing of New York big labor. Has views on the role of race in American politics that aren’t exactly ready for prime time, but well, hey, once they get out there you can’t really put the genie back in the bottle, now can you?

Pennsylvania is chock full of voters like this, many of them Democrats. You can — and should — argue whether “Archie Bunker” is a valid stereotype of Pennsylvania voters in 2008. Bloomberg News has already been out with its take on Obama’s “Archie Bunker” problem. It noted how Obama’