Blogito

Har de har har, big wins for Hillary in Texas and Ohio...you drop out, girl, you're hurting the party! Ha. Hillary knows she has 313 pocket delegates in Michigan and Florida, Obama just doesn't know how bad off he actually is as his campaign cries out that they're still ahead in delegates.

Mr. Obama came out shortly before midnight to speak to a crowd in San Antonio, and laid out the argument his campaign would make in the days ahead.

“No matter what happens tonight,” he said, “we have nearly the same delegate lead that we did this morning, and we are on our way to winning this nomination.”

Sorry kids, you don't have enough delegates to win outright, even presuming you are really ahead. Now it gets down to the politics of the back room.

However, the NYT reports the caucus victory for Obama with only 36% of them counted...can't this still swing the state his way? Isn't this premature? Maybe there aren't enough voters there? I'm not talking about the number of delegates now, I'm only talking about "winning" the state. Ah, now I see...we're talking about

Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday from his hotel room in San Antonio to congratulate him and to say he looked forward to running against him, said Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs. Mrs. Clinton said much the same in her speech.

Advantage to Obama on that one. The man certainly presents himself well and with a certain grace.

But now the Obama scandals will surface with a vengeance, head of Pennsylvania!

Interesting side note...in all of the victory speech appearances, Mrs McCain is at John's side. Hillary stands alone or with a surrogate male governor.

Anyhow, isn't the lead in elected delegates meaningless, now? Obama will argue that the superdelegates should be required to vote the same way the elected delegates did, but that would mean that the superdelegates were, in fact, superfluous and might as well not even be there. This isn't the reason why their status was created, however, so his argument fails on that point alone.

Another thing to keep in mind is exactly WHERE Obama got his big lead in elected delegates. By far the biggest share come from two small western states which he probably won't even win in the national election. How much should they count, if you are a superdelegate thinking about the general election? And you have to know that, whether they are admitted or not, the Michigan and Florida voters are really there, so pretending they are not is only politics...but that's your job to counter, isn't it?

Do we know how, in a mechanical sense, the superdelegates vote? Do they each and every one stand up at the convention and vote openly?

And aren't the reports on McCain's victory interesting? Three different items on the Washington Post describe Huckabee as "withdrawing", "exits", "dropping out"...but not simply losing.

Michael Gerson on the candidates, picturing President Obama's willingness to meet with even bad guys:

The New York Post runs a front-page picture of the Obama-Ahmadinejad handshake under the headline "Surrender Summit!" The story notes another of Obama's historic firsts: the first American president to meet with a Holocaust denier. The Israeli prime minister publicly asks, "Why is the American president meeting with a leader who calls us 'filthy bacteria' and threatens to wipe us 'off the map?'"

Clearly, Obama thinks he can talk him out of it, even if others think this is unrealistic.

Fareed Zakariah says that a lot of other people are suddenly beginning to get more realistic about Obama:

Listening to the Democrats on trade "is enough to send jitters down the spine of most in India," says the Times Now TV channel in New Delhi. The Canadian media have shared in the global swoon for Obama, but Greg Weston recently wrote in the Edmonton Sun: "What he is actually saying - and how it might affect Canada - may come as a surprise to otherwise devout Barack boosters." The African press has reported on George W. Bush's visit with affection and, in some cases, contrasted his views on trade with the Democratic candidates'. The Bangkok Post compared the Democrats unfavorably with John McCain and his vision of an East Asia bound together, and to the United States, by expanding trade ties.

The backlash could be greatest against Obama because he's raised the highest hopes. A senior Latin American diplomat told me, "Look, we're all watching Obama with bated breath and hoping [his election] will be a transforming moment for the world. But now that we're listening to him on trade - the issue that affects us so deeply - we realize that maybe he doesn't wish us well. In fact, we might find ourselves nostalgic for Bush, who is brave and courageous on trade and immigration."

I suspect a lot of people who have gotten caught up in the Bush-hating frenzy may find themselves making belated discoveries about what he actually did, not what his detractors claimed that he did.

The candidates' supporters often argue that they don't really mean what they say, that their proposals on trade agreements involve only minor tinkering. It is an odd defense of candidates promising change, honesty and a new approach to politics to say that they are being cynical and hypocritical.

Hillary and Obama think that their election is so critical that the end justifies the means. If they are cynical and hypocritical then it is because they have been forced to be in order to win, therefore it isn't really their fault.

Look, they are both lawyers, and lawyers have their own way of looking at things. John McCain, for instance, could never take the stand and defend a murderer in court, but both Obama and Hillary could by simply arguing that that was their job and the American justice system demanded it. They would be right, too, of course...but I still prefer McCain's view to theirs. Maybe the murderer actually is guaranteed a fair trial, but it doesn't mean that I have to defend him.

I know, I know. This is all about the Democratic primaries in states like Ohio and about union support. But you can't target messages so easily anymore. What is said in Ohio is heard in Ghana, Bangladesh and Colombia.

A lot of candidates have not quite realized this yet. Just like a great many politicians and others don't seem to understand that their past speeches, utterances and declarations are all available on the internet for those willing to look.

Look, for instance, at Gloria Steinem's attempt the other day to portray McCain's wartime experiences as not any reason to qualify him for the presidency, quite as if she had not supported Kerry for exactly that same reason. She said that his military experience would make him less-likely to vote for war...quite as if Kerry had not voted FOR the Iraq war, something she has apparently conveniently forgotten and I guess hopes everybody else has.

President Bush yesterday pledged to stand by Colombia, but the U.S. administration has lost so much influence in the region, that it is being advised to leave regional countries like Brazil and Mexico to negotiate a drawdown.

From a WSJ article wondering what the candidates are going to do to strengthen the dollar:

Given that Sen. Obama has garnered the support of Paul Volcker, the highly-respected former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan, U.S. voters are apt to get a meaningful and well-considered reply. "I think we are skating on increasingly thin ice," Mr. Volcker noted in the Washington Post in April 2005. He warned that the stagflation of the 1970s was characterized by "a volatile and depressed dollar, inflationary pressures, a sudden increase in interest rates and a couple of big recessions." Mr. Volcker's solution? Act now to comply with "the oldest lesson of economic policy: a strong sense of monetary and fiscal discipline."

Man, aren't you glad that's all we need to do? Uh...how do we do that, exactly? Volcker notes that an increase in interest rates led to recessions and stagflation, so would he raise interest rates now to strengthen the dollar?

Look, the other day Richard Cohen was bemoaning the fact that so many young black men were incarcerated. The solution, of course, is to strengthen the bond of marriage in the black community to prevent illegitimate babies and to cause black fathers to remain home to provide stable family relationships. There, wasn't that easy?

Probably the best first step America could take would be to balance the budget, and I suspect McCain is probably by far the strongest candidate in that respect, no matter how you feel about the rest of his conservatism.

He could throw consternation into the Democrat campaign by announcing that he would veto any future budget which contained a deficit, and he'd do that by eliminating all pork. Democrats would run around in little circles, sobbing. Of course, some powerful Republicans wouldn't be very happy, either.

On another topic, Tony Blankley with the best line I've heard about conspiracies:

I’m a true conservative, and Lord knows that McCain was not my first choice for the nomination. But if I have to hear one more “we didn’t get Reagan” hissy fit from a fellow Republican, I’m going to puke. Let me state what no one wants to admit—a true conservative cannot win this year. The critical voters—the 10% that decide these things—do not want another Bush-like conservative in 2008. A center-right candidate is our only shot this time. We’re on defense. For the GOP, this election is about holding the line and buying time until a new crop of conservative leaders and ideas can get established.

This November we’ll have two choices:

1) A pro-life, pro-gun budget hawk who takes national defense seriously, or

2) A socialist

Stay home if you want. But I don’t want to hear these same people whining in 3 years when our taxes go up and a city gets incinerated.

A "true conservative" not only cannot win this year but I doubt seriously if one can any year. When has one ever done so? Reagan, curiously enough, is now a "true conservative" only viewed in retrospect and forgetting some of his truly horrible decisions, like abandoning Lebanon after so many of our Marines were sacrificed for nothing, as a result. That cutting-and-running also helped Osama think America was weak, every bit as much as the feckless Clinton years did.

The morning after reviving her candidacy with two big primary wins, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) hinted Wednesday that she and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) may wind up as ticket mates.

“That may, you know, be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who’s on the top of ticket,” Clinton said with a laugh on the CBS’s “The Early Show.” “I think that the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me.”

Could it happen?

Yes, but only with Hillary on the top. She has argued for too long that she is the senior in experience. Obama, on the other hand, could gracefully concede to the need for more national seasoning and make a plausible case for being vice president first. But will he? Consider:

The delegate math is still grim for her in that Obama will almost certainly end the primary season ahead in pledged delegates. This will make it very difficult for the all important Super Delegates to rally to her side. Obama’s argument will be compelling; that he won more primaries and that key Democratic constituencies favor him. It will be an argument that will be difficult to counter.

Again, this paints the superdelegates as merely superfluous, with no choice of their own but to follow the majority. Somehow I don't think that argument is going to sell very well to the superdelegates, who have a different definition for "super".

Obama’s argument will be compelling; that he won more primaries and that key Democratic constituencies favor him. It will be an argument that will be difficult to counter.

All of this is in the future. For the moment, Clinton can claim a comeback while Obama will seek to regain his lost momentum. But hanging over his head is the prospect that his name will be dragged into the corruption trial of his long time friend, patron, and fund raiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko. His press conference yesterday, where both Rezko and the NAFTA gaffe were major topics, went very badly for the candidate. In the end, he stalked off the stage leaving reporters screaming questions in his wake.

“I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid,” Steinem spewed, later adding that “from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”

From Vietnam to Iraq, self-contradictory feminists have always behaved as if serving in the military was about nothing more than “killing people” — even as they clamored to put women on the front lines in combat roles in the name of gender equality. Leave it to the progressive left to smear their sisters after pushing for decades to integrate them into the “war machine.”

With due respect to Michelle, I don't think there are any men reading this who do not know and expect women to behave, ah, illogically. This is not a matter of disrespect, or at least it should not be, but merely a recognition of the fact that we simply are not wired the same way.

From Power Line, something that should be very obvious but seemingly is not...to Obama, et al, at least:

For years now, the American left has been arguing that the war in Iraq is a distraction from the "real" war against al Qaeda and is counter-productive because it's "creating" new terrorists. Apparently, it never occurred to these deep-thinkers that inflicting a defeat on al-Qaeda in Iraq -- a defeat made possible because a previously sympathetic population turned with our help against al Qaeda -- might constitute a devastating blow to al Qaeda's standing in the Arab world.

The idea that losing a war hurts one's standing may be a novel one for our sophisticated liberals. But Osama bin Laden has long grasped it, famously stating years ago that "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."

Our amazing progress in Iraq is demonstrating that, for now, al Qaeda rather than the U.S. is the weak horse in the very country that al Qaeda has identified as the key battleground in its struggle against us.

Amazing how Obama and Hillary and that crowd cannot see something so plainly in open sight.

With Obama saying the hour is upon us to elect a black man and Hillary saying the hour is upon us to elect a woman, the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts.

People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?

As it turns out, making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history. It’s all about the past. Will America’s racial past be expunged or America’s sexist past be expunged?

Unless, of course, Hillary takes on Obama as her vice president and expunges both. Was this the plan in the first place, screwed up a bit when Obama did better than he expected? Is he now unwilling to keep his part of the bargain?

For the Illinois senator, the meaning of the primaries is clear - he has to get tough. Hillary can still win this nomination. The proportional representation system of allocating delegates chosen by primaries and caucuses mutes the impact of the popular vote.

Hillary is not that far behind in the popular vote...try less than 300,000 if Florida is counted. What if she wins the popular vote but loses the elected delegate vote? Ah, how sweet that would be, huh?

If Clinton is able to score a series of popular-vote victories in these late primaries, she could lay the basis for an appeal to the superdelegates to disregard the results of January and February and look instead at her success in the later contests.

Oh, yeah, Dick, really good advice there. You don't trade punches with the best counter-puncher in the business, that's playing into their strength. You ever hear of "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"?