16 April 2008

More unintentional humor, as the NYT editors grump over the fact that Hillary and Obama are fighting each other over:

...guns and religion — not big issues for Democratic primary voters.

Indeed, there are many big problems to discuss and not enough discussion of them. Both candidates, for example, were too passive during last week’s Senate testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador in Baghdad.

It was shockingly clear that President Bush has no plan to end his disastrous war in Iraq except to hand the problem on to his successor. But neither senator made a mark questioning the general or the ambassador at the hearings. And they were silent afterward, while Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, talked of victory. The Democrats should have been explaining how they plan to bring American troops safely home and contain Iraq’s chaos.

Since I'm at home and don't have to keep up any public front, I almost got the giggles at watching the New York Times add its own diss to Obama's when it comes to the things which are important to Pennsylvania primary voters.

Slap! you dumb hicks in the heartland, say the elite NYT editors from their penthouses...we'll tell you what your issues are!

That's one sure way to identify a Liberal: he's the guy telling you what you should find important, and what you need not. Quit clinging to guns and religion and your bitterness will go away like magic.

I also liked their complaint regarding what the Democrats should have actually been explaining: "how they plan to bring American troops safely home and contain Iraq's chaos."

Mr. Editor, they didn't do that for the very simple reason that they have absolutely no good idea how to do that. Obama, as the NYT doubtless has conveniently forgotten, would have had all of our troops home by, well, last month. No idea how, of course, but it sounded good at the time. Better than bitter, anyhow.

The reason this campaign started out as the Democrats’ big chance to take back Washington is that Americans face huge challenges on which the Republicans have an abysmal record: Iraq and Afghanistan, the trashing of America’s global image, inequitable taxes, a flagging economy, epidemic home foreclosures, lost jobs, soaring health care costs and struggling schools.

These are the issues Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton should be addressing. We hope they get back to them, starting tonight at their debate in Pennsylvania.

Alas for the Democrats, even though it seemed like a good thing at the time, they won control of both houses of congress a couple of years ago, and that's where all of the legislation is written. And how can America's image be trashed when we can watch Nancy Pelosi cozying up to Syria's leader and former President Carter smooching with Hamas? And what does "inequitable taxes" mean? That someone isn't paying enough, therefore taxes will have to be raised. Democrats can bring that bill forth any time they feel like...they just don't feel like making it that much of an election issue, for some reason.

Oh, well, I also enjoyed this comment by Mr. Ordinary Democrat about the Obama miscue and Hillary's pounce:

It also offered Mrs. Clinton a fresh rationale to make to superdelegates that Mr. Obama is a flawed general-election candidate.

That, however, is precisely what troubles many voters in Pennsylvania and beyond.

“I wish they would just go into a corner and figure it out and quit fighting,” said Dave Davis, 52, an electrical worker from Oregon, who heard Mr. Obama speak at a union rally on Tuesday but is undecided between the candidates. “Taking shots at each other isn’t doing anybody any good. It will only help Republicans in the end.”

What do you suppose he means they should do in that corner? What conversation does he expect them to have in private? What does "figure it out" mean? Obama agrees that he is an elite snob and Hillary agrees to quit pointing that out to other people now that he had admitted the truth to her? Or should they be cutting a deal...you drop out now and I'll do this and that for you?

Or is that just another one of those ideas that sounds good but nobody actually knows what it means in practice?

Next I get to the Washington Post's humor section: their front page. Here I can read, in adjacent columns:

Uh...doesn't this mean that 8 percent don't want to see either one of them on the top of the ticket? And these are Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents? How leaning are they?

Nearly six in 10 Democrats who are aligned with one of the candidates said they would prefer to see Clinton and Obama continue campaigning until one of them wins a clear victory, rather than bringing the fight to an early conclusion. ... When asked how superdelegates should decide which candidate to support, nearly half of Democrats said they should follow the overall popular vote, while just one in eight said the number of delegates won in primaries and caucuses should be the deciding factor. Nearly four in 10 said superdelegates should choose the candidate they think is the best.

Six in ten don't want the race to end short of the end of the full primary season.

Six in ten think the popular vote is more important than the elected delegate count.

At www.realclearpolitics.com, they have six different methods of calculating the popular vote. The largest margin of the six is 827,308; the smallest is 94,005. In between are calculations yielding 204,227; 422,314; 532,536; and 717,086.

The 94,005 number includes Florida and Michigan voters which many think should be counted, somehow.

According to RCP, Clinton has an 8.4% lead in Pennsylvania. Crank, whir...346,014 votes.

Suddenly, Hillary leads in the popular vote according to at least two counting methods, and is close in the third.

Some people, perhaps more hopeful than correct, think Hillary has a 20-point lead in Pennsylvania. If that were true, suddenly the popular vote is a win for her five out of six and essentially a tie for the sixth.

There are 4.2 million registered voters in Indiana, and they are free to vote in either primary. Hillary's RCP lead there is 4.6%. Now she's ahead on all counts.

There are 5.7 million registered voters in North Carolina. Twenty percent of them are unaffiliated and can vote in either primary. Obama's RCP lead there is 14.5%. He's going to need it!

There are 2.5 million registered voters in Puerto Rico, on the final day, believed to be strongly in favor of Clinton.

It hardly seems likely that Hillary will not be able to claim the popular vote total according to at least one of the vote-counting schemes. If Obama stumbles, she might even be able to claim them all.

Obama will still lead in pledged delegates, BUT...but now only 1 Democrat in 8 thinks that should be the deciding factor.

I've said all along that I think that when the smoke clears after the locked doors are opened at the convention, Hillary will be the nominee. She has to convince the superdelegates, nearly all of which are themselves elected Democrats who have to run for their own political lives. Hillary and Bill control uncounted (because they are undisclosed and unknown) millions of dollars which can be used for the campaigns of their friends.

In politics, the rule is not "what have you done for me?" or even "what have you done for me lately?" but "what can you DO for me?"

The superdelegates will rationalize thusly: (1) the Florida and Michigan voters really should be considered somehow, and since the states and the party could not figure out how to do that, it's up to me to see that fair play for them factors in; (2) Obama's pledged-delegate lead was gained in large part by uncontested caucus states Hillary didn't enter, so it's also up to me to see that that fact is somehow factored in; (3) the Clintons have lots of money and a huge machine, plus staying-power, whereas Obama is really only a flashy but untested unknown quantity.

Two unknown quantities: (1) who will make the next--or the most--gaffes between now and the convention? (2) if Iraq surprises the Democrats by looking so improved that the fact can no longer be ignored, Obama is stuck with his "no" vote, but Hillary can do as I have long predicted she will, in that situation...

Namely, remind us all that SHE proposed regime change in Iraq back in 1998, long before George Bush came along and fouled up HER PROPOSAL! Why, she even single-handedly passed a Public Law to that effect!

And do you know what will be ironically as funny as hell? She'll be a lot closer to being correct than she has been making all of her previous claims along the campaign trail!

Of those two candidates, only Hillary can suddenly assume a thoughtful and serious attitude and carefully weigh both sides of the equation and decide that she can bring victory to Iraq where all others have failed.

What's that? She'll lose the anti-war crowd, the Kos Kids? Sure, but are most Americans really anti-war or are they really anti-losing? Don't you think that if Hillary could promise them victory in Iraq that they wouldn't take it and run?

Liberals don't get it any more than Obama did. His words were not ill-chosen or 'inartful' for the crowd he was addressing! The doors were closed, no reporters had been admitted, the only attendees were believed to be carefully-vetted Obama supporters who had a lot of money invested in Obama, and he was speaking to his audience, not the outside world.

As John Fund reported the other day, Obama's initial reaction to the flap was said to be wondering what he said wrong.

In fact, the first thing Obama said afterward, in his defense, was that it was a "little typical sort of political flare-up, because I said something that everybody knows is true".

You'd probably have to be my age to remember back when there when there always used to be black kids in what we referred to back then as bowling alleys. Only they used to set the pins.

Back then it was done by hand. And, yes, I used to do it, myself. Uh huh, for money. A job. It's hard work and it's dangerous, too. There's not much room to get out of the way, back there, and pins go flying all over the place. And some of the drunken idiots don't always look to see that the pin-setter has gotten out of the pit before they throw their second ball. No, I don't remember what I used to get for a game, except I remember that it didn't fold. Yes, a long time ago.

Arianna Huffington, who made the decision to publish the account of the senator's remarks by her blogger, Obama donor Mayhill Fowler, savages Hillary for jumping on the controversy:

"Clinton's cynical distortion of Obama's remarks is in keeping with her campaign's modus operandi. On the foreign policy front, we've been fed a steady diet of her RNC-patented attacks: No Democrat can be trusted with national security -- except her. Obama hasn't crossed the threshold to be commander-in-chief. Etc.

"Now she's turned to the domestic policy section of the RNC playbook, twisting Obama's words in a way that confirms every right-wing demagogic caricature of her own party."

It just gets better! Have you noticed how much they've tried to play down the actual location of Obama's speech? Sure, they can hardly avoid mentioning that it was in San Francisco, but how often do they tell you where, exactly, or who the closed-door attendees were?

Only the ultra-rich of the richest fat cats on the Left Coast. Literally priceless!

The New Republic's John Judis:

"There is even a slight chance that Obama's words in San Francisco could cost him the nomination. Obama is almost certain to have more elected delegates in June than Hillary Clinton, but if he loses Pennsylvania by 15 percentage points (which is not out of the question), that could start a media firestorm around his candidacy that could contribute to other primary defeats and to superdelegate support for Clinton. It's not likely to happen, but after Obama spoke his mind, and, perhaps, lost small-town voters' hearts, in San Francisco, it has suddenly become conceivable."

You'll notice that this liberal writer doesn't even claim that Obama misspoke, or chose his words poorly, but that he was guilty of speaking his mind! Judis also recognizes the big distinction between San Francisco and small-town voters, the same way that Obama does.

Dick Polman of the Philly Inquirer scoffs at Hillary's strategy:

"If she can successfully brand as 'elitist' a guy who was raised by a single mother far from the comfortable suburban trappings that she enjoyed as a child . . . well, to the victor goes the spoils. If Cling-gate buoys her Pennsylvania vote tally, and helps her surpass the 10-point margin she won in Ohio, Obama will have to deal with the consequences - including talk, encouraged by the Clinton camp, that he's just another rareified Adlai Stevenson egghead."

Uh huh, and how will he do that, exactly? He can't go bowling, or deer hunting, and he most certainly cannot go into a 'regular guy's' bar and toss down boilermakers, not after Hillary did that. And showing off his basketball moves again only, however unfortunately, doesn't do much to reduce the racial stereotype.

What can he do to look like a regular Joe Sixpack sort of guy? Tell Michelle to take the kids out of summer camp...or at least quit complaining about how much money they're spending that way?

Talk about the summer jobs he had as a kid? Barack and I could share a beer and talk about setting bowling pins, fighting forest fires, delivering ice (blocks, using tongs, as well as cubes and crushed), washing pots and pans, mopping floors, waiting table, digging post-holes by hand, eradicating gooseberry plants with a pick-axe from National Forest lands...I did all of those things, so he must have, too, right? Or maybe we could talk about our paper routes...or our military service?

White wine? Well, my style runs more to what we called, in looser times, Dago Red.

Which reminds me that today would have been the birthday of Mark Imperatore, who I addressed on this mailing list as Da Dago. He died earlier this spring, far too young, leaving behind a wife and a daughter close to Tony's age. It smarts not to be able to wish him a happy birthday.

The American people will forgive slips, even condescension IF they are followed by genuine apology and not repeated ad infinitum. But in this case, there will be a growing weariness, followed by anger, at the notion that a Presidential candidate thinks he can say whatever he wishes, associate with whomever he wants, and feel it's the electorate's, not his own, ensuing problem. So the rub for the Obama campaign is not simply that he has no experience outside the Ivy League and Chicago, or even that he made a Faustian bargain with the Trinity church to jump-start his career, but rather his hubris this spring — which as we speak is bringing on a summer nemesis.

On the serious note of Iraq, here's what really happened and is happening in Sadr City, from an important Iraqi blogger in Pajamas Media:

No Iraqi leader since 2003 has had the same broad support for a policy that Maliki has right now. For the first time a leader has the support of a majority of Shia, along with the approval of the Sunni and Kurds in addition to the sympathy of the public, which has grown tired of the recklessness and violence of Sadr’s movement. For the first time the leader appears more like a leader of Iraq than a leader of a particular sect, party, or ethnic group. Moreover, he has won the support of the coalition to further build an unprecedented consensus among all concerned parties.

I see that Maliki and the government are standing before a chance that will not come again to move the country forward. I’m optimistic about Maliki’s promises and determination more than ever and I totally agree with him that the solution is in disbanding the Mahdi Army (or al-hal hoa al-hal; literally, “the solution is in the [dis]solution,” in a play on words of which Iraqis understand the implicit meaning). Again, the main element in a resolution for the battle should not be exclusively military through disarming the Mahdi Army, nor exclusively political by excluding the movement from the political process. It has to be also judiciary.

The rule of law must be established and emphasized through prosecuting the heads of the movement who are involved in major atrocities. Evidence is abundant and damning; the movement repeatedly took up arms against the state and caused the deaths of many thousands of civilians and security personnel. In fact the movement itself keeps offering free confessions every time they boast of their militiamen’s performance in battle. If we actually succeed in putting the leaders of the militia on trial, then I believe that all others who illegally carry arms will be facing a serious challenge. As the Arabic proverb says, “Hit the big and the little will be frightened.” Right now the Mahdi Army is the biggest among insurgents, so defeating it will make others think more than twice before they take up arms against the legitimate institutions of the state.

I hope the Iraqi leadership benefits from this moment of unity, not only to quell violence but also to promote political reconciliation. I agree with observers in Baghdad who say that we’re witnessing a political spring. The most important event so far has been Maliki’s meeting with VP Hashimi to discuss the revival of the national unity government. Actually, a political breakthrough is now more likely to take place than ever, especially since all rivals have acknowledged Maliki’s role as a leader of a central government that has the exclusive right, and the obligation, to restore the prestige of the state and establish the rule of law.

Harry Reid and the short-sighted Democrats think that we're refereeing a sectarian battle between competing political groups, but it's a lot different than that. It's different because one group represents the legitimate elected government, whereas the other is unlawful.

It would be like the Black Panthers trying to take over and run the government in Oakland, for instance; or the Aryan Nation taking over Montana.

Very important progress going on now in Iraq! They have nine more months to go under Bush, and you can bet that they're praying for McCain.

Obama comes across less like a candidate in Pennsylvania than an anthropologist in Borneo.

His mother got her Ph.D. in anthropology, studying the culture of Indonesia. And as Obama has courted white, blue-collar voters in “Deer Hunter” and “Rocky” country, he has often appeared to be observing the odd habits of the colorful locals, resisting as the natives try to fatten him up like a foie gras goose, sampling Pennsylvania beer in a sports bar with his tie tight, awkwardly accepting bowling shoes as a gift from Bob Casey, examining the cheese and salami at the Italian Market here as intriguing ethnic artifacts, purchasing Utz Cheese Balls at a ShopRite in East Norriton and quizzing the women working in a chocolate factory about whether they could possibly really like the sugary doodads.

I don't know about you, but I wondered what kind of a working-class bar served Crown Royal for its boilermakers. I thought they were complaining about tough economic times?

I learned to drink my whiskey one summer in western Utah, working with an old mining geologist, my professor, who considered it one of his responsibilities to teach me how to drink like some of the rough miners we expected that I would be working with in the future, and not embarrass myself. Or my teacher.

He taught me the etiquette rules for passing a shared pint bottle of cheap whiskey back and forth. We had neither ice nor glasses out in the field, and the thought of any kind of mixer would have gotten you laughed completely off the job. At five on a summer afternoon, that pint bottle of whiskey had been sitting in our luggage in the back of the pickup truck all day at temperatures of 100 degrees or better.

There was a 'right' way to pass the bottle, a right way to wipe the neck off with the heel of your hand, and a proper drink consisted of a swallow big enough to cause a 'gurgle' in the neck of the bottle. All done without a grimace, of course.

Back in those simple, early days, we understood without making an issue out of it that working miners were different kinds of people than college professors and mining geologists, but if we wanted to have any chance at all of dealing with them honestly then we had to have an education which included at least some experience of their way of life.

This wasn't snobbish. Snobbish was when you refused or else didn't even bother to learn.

We never took a drink before the work day was done at 5 or 6 in the summer afternoon, but we always had a drink then. We would polish off that hot pint of straight (and rather cheap) whisky on an empty stomach, after which it was my job to drive us the 45 miles or so back to whatever little town we were staying in that night. Sometimes we would stop in the middle of the desert somewhere and he'd get out his .38 and we'd do some target practice on the empty bottle, my test being to prove that I, as a Marine veteran, could still shoot better than he could. Not that we set any records. And I actually think that Bronson was happy when I won most of the time, because it made his occasional triumph all the sweeter.

I loved that old guy and I'm pretty sure he loved me, and I probably disappointed him greatly when I didn't continue my graduate studies under him and then become one of his staff on the faculty. In one of my alternate universes, I wish I had. I could have honestly enjoyed an academic career at the University of Utah and I'd be a revered emeritus professor by this time.

Another favorite is the time that I arrived in the British Virgin Islands and met the young widow. At the time, I had just gotten good and started on my own real estate company in Walnut Creek, California, and had met the girl I later married. We had been taking sailing lessons on the San Francisco Bay when our sailing school decided to sponsor a discount bareboat sailing trip to the BVI. The price was fantastic and it was another opportunity for me to investigate a possible future retirement location, so off we went.

When we arrived our bareboat had not been provisioned yet, so we whiled away the afternoon in the local bar right at the marina. During the course of the day we became acquainted with all of the rather large group of mostly transients who drifted in and out, and I had fallen into conversation with an attractive French woman my own age, middle 30s. It turned out that she was a fairly recent widow, her husband died in an accident, and she had just arbitrarily decided to buy a sailboat with part of the insurance proceeds and sail around the world. She had no previous sailing experience, and her crew consisted of her two children, 8 and 10 or so, and her mother.

I had been thinking about buying a live-aboard sailboat so when she asked me if I'd like to see her layout I accepted with appreciation. We took her dinghy over to where the boat was moored and I went aboard to inspect everything and also to meet her two very nice children and her still very nice and attractive mother. At that time, I spoke a small amount of French and we were all very enchanted with one another.

They had just sailed across the Atlantic from France, and the next day they were headed down toward the Panama Canal and from there to Tahiti. Just the four of them. Needless to say, I admired her pluck tremendously.

She looked at me, as we were getting ready to leave and go back to the group, and said very simply: "come with me."

As you've undoubtedly guessed, I declined. I had a new business which was going very well and a girlfriend I liked a lot and I simply was not prepared at all for the question, not even in the slightest. We'd had a friendly and enjoyable afternoon of conversation but it hadn't been sexual in its overtones, although she certainly was attractive enough. I'd really been interested in seeing her boat more than anything else she might have to offer, it simply hadn't occurred to me.

Ah, me, sometimes I wonder if I don't need my head examined. An attractive and wealthy young widow my own age with her own live-aboard sailboat, headed for Tahiti with two very nice children and a mother attractive enough to be troublesome. And French, besides. I like to joke about the French, but actually I've had some very pleasant experiences with them and never a bad one. And French food is, without doubt, the best in the world.

God must have looked down at me, shaken His head sadly, and said okay, dummy, do it your own way.

Against my better judgment, I watched their debate tonight hoping for a slip. They both made the same one, over Iraq, so that's another subject, but otherwise they played things cautiously.

The striking thing, I thought, was that neither one of them seemed to have the slightest notion how social security was funded, or what payroll taxes were (except 'regressive' and 'capped') or what happened to the trust fund money...and neither one of the, ah, moderators, asked any critical questions about their opinions on the subject.

Except for Iraq, I thought it was a tame debate and rather boring. But maybe, in the words of Michelle Obama, I'm just out of touch.

What turns off voters is the detached egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action — the same quality that got the professorial and superior Adlai Stevenson mocked by critics as Adelaide. The new attack line for Obama rivals is that he’s gone from J.F.K. to Dukakis. (Just as Dukakis chatted about Belgian endive, Obama chatted about Whole Foods arugula in Iowa.)

Obama did not grow up in cosseted circumstances. “Now when is the last time you’ve seen a president of the United States who just paid off his loan debt?” Michelle Obama asked Tuesday at Haverford College, referring to Barack’s student loans...

Obviously, giving $20 grand to the God Damn America Pastor and paying for the kids summer camp and piano lessons, not to mention buying their Chicago mansion, must have come first. At least, that's all that I concluded from her complaint.

I have to admit that I cannot relate to Obama. I might have been a college professor, true, but I was also a Marine and might have been an officer if I had wanted to stay...another alternate universe not explored. I feel a much greater connection with McCain than I do with Obama.

One of my frustrations on the debate tonight was the same as always...the moderators fail on their follow-up questions.

Obama, defending his San Francisco comments, said that he didn't put things as well as he should have. Hey, he explained, I've said things badly in the past and hey--shrugging to show his humanity--I will in the future. I'm human.

I wanted to jump up and ask him if he was going to be willing to extend the same courtesy to McCain.

Later, Obama was proclaiming his willingness to debate McCain on the issues. Over and over, though, he kept bringing up George Bush.

I waited in vain for the moderators to point out that Bush wasn't running again, but they didn't. As good liberals themselves, you see, they have already subscribed to the allegation that McCain will be a continuation of Bush, accepting the Democrat position as if it were true and beyond question.

It would be really interesting to actually have a debate with moderators asking real questions...and then insisting on following the resulting side-steps to a conclusive answer. How many questions tonight never were answered?