Obama

Read more about the article Know Hope

Know Hope

April 22nd is a long way off and my nerves are a little bit frayed right now so I’m going to step away from politics for a while here on the blog and focus on some other stuff (see below).

For a final bit of perspective on the meaning of last night’s results, I cede the floor to the inimitable Andrew Sullivan:

Obama supporters should not be dismayed.

Obama has a tougher, nastier opponent in the Clintons than he does in McCain. If he wins this by a long, grueling struggle, he will be more immune to the lazy, stupid criticism that he is some kind of flash in the pan, he has more opportunity to prove that there is a great deal of substance behind the oratory, he has more of a chance to meet and talk with the electorate he will need to win in the fall.

I think the argument for Obama is easily strong enough to withstand the egos of the Clintons. The more people see that her case is almost entirely a fear-based one and his is almost entirely a positive one, the more he will win the moral victory as well as the delegate count. In the cold light of day, the bruising news that the Clintons are not yet dead seems less onerous.

Know hope.

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Read more about the article Primary Predictions: Prepared for the Worst

Primary Predictions: Prepared for the Worst

I’m fully prepared for the highly likely possibility that Clinton wins both OH and TX tonight, albeit narrowly, and if so, will rightfully declare that her campaign will continue through Pennsylvania’s 4/22 primary. The “comeback kid” spin will be dizzying, again, for the next 24 hours, despite the reality being that she won’t actually have managed to put much of a dent in the overall delegate gap, the previous benchmark her campaign had set to measure her viability when they thought this would be finished back on February 5th.

Delegate counts aren’t a sexy story, though, and the media is still engaging in a silly moment of self-loathing thanks to Tina Fey, so the Obama campaign will have their work cut out for them over the next seven weeks.

Assuming tonight doesn’t result in an unexpected blowout by either side — and all spin aside, that’s really what Clinton needs to legitimately justify her staying in the race — here’s what I think Obama’s plan of attack will [should] be to deliver the final knockout blow in Pennsylvania, if not before:

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Read more about the article Scorched Earth Politics

Scorched Earth Politics

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou4JnWQsxKw] Because in the end, it's all about getting a Democrat Clinton back in the White House, right? I'm not terribly confident that this thing is going to end tomorrow night, but I'm more and more confident that the Democrats are going to find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again. On a related note, I think Bloomberg may have taken his cards off of the table a week too soon and perhaps not by accident, considering Mr. Non-Partisan's recent $500k donation to the NY G.O.P. to help Republicans hold on to their tenuous control of the State Senate…

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Read more about the article The War in Iraq Summed Up

The War in Iraq Summed Up

 In last night's debate, Obama put it this way: "The question is who's making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch. The fact is that Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on day one, but in fact she was ready to give in to George Bush on day one on this critical issue." And to John McCain today, he offered this: "John McCain may like to say he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but so far all he’s done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq."…

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Read more about the article About the Farrakhan moment

About the Farrakhan moment

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=nJkU1e-_r3w]

The lowlight of tonight’s debate was, without question I think, when Tim Russert referenced Louis Farrakhan’s “endorsement” of Barack Obama this past weekend, asking if he accepted his support, and after Obama clearly and completely denounced Farrakhan’s past statements about Jews and Judaism as “unacceptable and reprehensible” and defended his own record on Jewish issues and U.S.-Israel relations, Hillary Clinton managed to sink beneath her husband’s worst “dogwhistle” moments in South Carolina and finally and effectively guarantee that I will never cast a vote for her ever again, in any election of any kind.

Referencing her first Senate run in 2000, she jumped into the discussion just as it seemed to be ending, noting with a straight face that she had “faced a similar situation” and, for a moment, I thought maybe she was going to do the honorable thing and defend Obama against a valid question that Russert was belaboring after 5 minutes, but instead she decides to attempt to score a cheap point by playing semantics:

“One of the parties at the time, the Independence Party, was under the control of people who were anti-semitic, anti-Israel, and I made it very clear I did not want their support, I rejected it. I thought it was more important to stand on principle…

You asked specifically if he would reject it and there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting. I just think we’ve got to be even stronger.”

(Transcription via Ben Smith)

Mind you, the Independence Party carries very little weight in a statewide race here in New York and, once Rudy Giuliani was forced to drop out because of his battle with prostate cancer, Clinton coasted to a relatively easy victory, so claiming that her rejection of their support was some principled stand as opposed to little more than a grandstanding pander bear moment for the Jewish community is simply disingenuous. Further, equating the formal support of a political party, no matter how small, with that of a singular, though controversial, individual is extremely disingenuous.

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