• Over at her excellent new blog, Kathy G. highlights some ways Hillary Clinton is like Nixon and shows why that's not a bad thing.
• David Sirota has a long piece in In These Times arguing that Hillary Clinton is deliberately exploiting racial animus because she succeeds in states with some black people but not a lot. It's an interesting argument (though not as novel as he seems to think) and it's supported by a striking graph, but I thought the part about her use of racial tensions was somewhat unpersuasive although there are a few dramatic examples.
• Mark Sanford may not be as likely a VP pick for McCain as many people have presumed because he abandoned McCain late last year.
• The Politico taxonomizes superdelegates.
• The girl who Clinton met on the tarmac in Tuzla says she doesn't remember any danger. This primary has totally jumped the shark.
  
• Ben Smith points out that candidates' statements on whether they will drop out have zero predictive value.
• Obama did personally look over a questionnaire he filled during a 1996 run for Illinois state Senate in which he expressed some "liberal" positions. His campaign had denied this, but the original document has now been found.
• Mark Halperin argues that Clinton is running hard despite her long odds because she genuinely believes Obama has little chance of being elected.

--Sam Boyd

This looks to me like a clean victory for Sadr. In the words of the immortal Jim Malone, if you open the door on these people, you have to be prepared to close it; Maliki couldn't close it, and now he looks pathetic. It's becoming clear that Maliki or elements within his government asked Sadr to ask for a ceasefire, which indicates that the former believed there was no chance for victory.

The broader point is that the Iraqi central government utterly lacks meaningful coercive capacity. Training is all well and good, but after all the development of skill is something quite different than the development of capacity; the well trained Army that fought in Basra and Baghdad lacked the wherewithal to deliver victory against Sadr's militia. And of course when the central government tries to exert its authority and fails, it is weakened as a result.

The Surge and the broader tribal strategy has utterly failed to create Iraqi state capacity. Divide and rule is a fine strategy for running a territorial empire, but a poor one for attempting to make a new state.

See Spencer for more.

--Robert Farley

Many journalists I know have been chatting this week about Eric Alterman's New Yorker piece on "the death and life of the American newspaper." Alterman focuses on Huffington Post as the epitome of the "new," newspaper-killing media, portraying the site as the bad cop to Talking Points Memo's good cop. TPM, of course, is a site that does real reporting and digging, while HuffPo's news gathering apparatus is secondary to its function as a gathering place for liberal punditry. The risk of all this online news, Alterman writes, is that eventually, with advertising dollars moving to the web, no one will be able to afford expensive, real-time reporting projects such as the New York Times' Baghdad bureau, which costs $3 million annually. Alterman, somewhat credulously, quotes Arianna Huffington's more positive forecast of the future of news:

"As advertising dollars continue to move online—as they slowly but certainly are—HuffPost will be adding more and more reporting and the Times and Post model will continue with the kinds of reporting they do, but they’ll do more of it originally online.” She predicts “more vigorous reporting in the future that will include distributed journalism—wisdom-of-the-crowd reporting of the kind that was responsible for the exposing of the Attorneys General firing scandal.” As for what may be lost in this transition, she is untroubled: “A lot of reporting now is just piling on the conventional wisdom—with important stories dying on the front page of the New York Times."

Like Alterman, I believe the Times deserves more credit than that, but I'd caution against devolving into full on hand-wringing over the future of news. For one thing, online-only, analysis-driven news sources have been around for way longer than Alterman admits, since the advent of Salon and Slate in 1995 and 1996. Slate especially has a model that relies upon a parasitic relationship with the traditional press (see "Today's Papers"). Secondly, non-profit journalism is a business model that can yield excellent, independent reporting, from the St. Petersburg Times, to new projects such as Pro-Publica and the Washington Independent, to our very own American Prospect. And third, for-profit online journalism is actually becoming more and more reported. The Politico, for example, no matter what you think of their coverage, employs dozens of reporters who are traveling around the United States breaking news on the presidential election.

In other words, there are lots of hopeful models out there for online news gathering. Let's not be afraid of the future.

--Dana Goldstein

Given Hillary Clinton’s consistent lead in Pennsylvania, I think that Barack Obama rolling up his blue collar sleeves and throwing some strikes and gutters with a few Average Joes in Altoona—as adeptly reported by The Baltimore Sun’s Paul West—is going to be too little, too late. Obama’s multi-stop, six-day bus tour may limit the damage and limit Clinton’s delegate takeaway some.

As I read this piece, it occurred to me that this traditional, retail-style of politics is not how Obama has chosen to campaign so far. Indeed, what’s especially interesting and refreshing about Obama is that he has generally shunned the dress-up-in-local-garb, pander-heavy approach so familiar to American politics. There are important rites of passage in politics, and all politicians have to make diplomatic gestures, on stages foreign and domestic, to show respect to audiences. The picture of him in Somali garb is a rare counter-example of the style of politics he seems to shun—though also I see he called today for a national holiday to commemorate Cesar Chavez’ birthday. (By which I mean no disrespect to Chavez, who is certainly worthy of such a distinction.)

Maybe I’m missing something by not being on the trail since South Carolina, but I don’t notice Clinton doing much of this retail-style pandering either, and that makes me wonder if this is a natural consequence of being a woman and the unfair, greater risks of mockery that come with women dressing up in absurd local outfits and such. Here’s hoping that, as the share of women in elected office rises (though in state legislatures it seems to have leveled off the past 10 years), there will be fewer of these absurd rituals and more substantial appeals to voters’ better motives. Frankly, I've always suspected that voters are more, not less offended when a politician thinks that the shortcut to their hearts (and ultimately their votes and/or campaign contributions) is to play dress up, participate in the local customs, and otherwise allow oneself to be reduced to the rites and passage for retail pandering.

--Tom Schaller

World magazine, the journalistic outlet of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" guru Marvin Olasky, reports this week that at last month's Council for National Policy meeting religious right granddaddy Paul Weyrich solemnly regretted supporting Mitt Romney instead of Mike Huckabee:

In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, "Friends, before all of you and before almighty God, I want to say I was wrong."

In a quiet, brief, but passionate speech, Weyrich essentially confessed that he and the other leaders should have backed Huckabee, a candidate who shared their values more fully than any other candidate in a generation. He agreed with [Home Schooling Legal Defense Association President Michael] Farris that many conservative leaders had blown it. By chasing other candidates with greater visibility, they failed to see what many of their supporters in the trenches saw clearly: Huckabee was their guy.

Oops. Turns out, according to the article, that some religious right leaders were swayed by "a gesture that—like much of Romney's campaign—was both opulent and desperate, Romney sent everyone in attendance an expensive office chair, along with a note that read, 'You'll always have a seat at our table.'" But Romney's ingratiating efforts earned him "only a footstool at the Christian conservative table." Now the religious right is disappointed that it's stuck with John McCain, whose CNP speech, said Bill Owens, the president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, "was a disaster. It just proves he has no clue what we're about."

--Sarah Posner

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say we need Al Gore doing something other than attempting to save the Democratic Party from itself. This week, Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign to mobilize Americans on climate change. It's one of the most expensive and ambitious public advocacy campaigns in history, according to reports, and it's clearly timed to coincide with the presidential election and what will (one hopes) be the beginning of a new era in Washington.

Too much of the "green" movement in mainstream America of late has been about changing your lightbulbs or buying organic toaster strudel. While that's all fine and good, it's action on the hill -- a binding national carbon emission cap, the ratification of a new global treaty – that might actually prevent catastrophic climate change. Unfortunately, climate change still doesn't rank as a high political priority for most Americans, which is what Gore hopes to change with this giant new campaign.

It's exactly what we need right now, since though I spend a lot of time ragging on John McCain's environmental credibility, he is a lot more likely to take action than Bush ever was. But it will take a lot public pressure to get him to do so. And even with Obama or Clinton in the White House, climate change is not going to be the top priority unless the public is more vocally concerned. Al Gore knows this, and we need him to make this happen.

--Kate Sheppard

• Campaign '08: James Carville writes an op-ed defending his "Judas" statement from last week, The Washington Post editorial board believes the calls to push Clinton out of the race are premature and she vows to stay in the race until Denver. Obama thinks Clinton should stay in the race, and the Texas state convention awards him at least 37 caucus delegates.
  
• Zbigniew Brzezinski argues elegantly for withdrawal from Iraq and Kevin Drum rounds up reporting on the recent fighting in Basra.
  
• Pulitzer-winning reporter Eric Lichtblau condenses the argument of his new book, Bush's Law, for the NY Times.
• Chris Cillizza nears completion of his list of the best state politics blogs.
• George W. Bush threw out the first pitch of the Washington Nationals season opener Sunday night to an audibly displeased crowd. One commenter at the Washington Post has a much better suggestion for the ceremony.

Leading figures in the Democratic Party are calling on Hillary Clinton to step out of the race. A bunch of superdelegates are poised to back Barack Obama over the next few days. Clinton, meanwhile, maintains that she's staying in until the convention. What to do? Kevin Pedraja offers this modest proposal:

Rather than asking Hillary to step aside and return to the Senate as one of 100, Democratic Party elders should offer her the role of Majority Leader as an incentive. It's a brilliant idea. Not only would this be a position of influence for Hillary and thus satisfy her need to be in the spotlight, it solves another major problem for the party: Reid's feckless leadership. Hillary has shown an ability to work across the aisle during her tenure in the Senate and she possesses something that Reid does not, namely a spine.

I think it's a wonderful, if entirely implausible, solution. But who would have to be the one to call Harry up and break the news?

--Kate Sheppard

The Wall Street Journal reports that, in addition to Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the entire North Carolina Democratic House delegation -- crucial, given the approaching, May 6 primary in Tar Heel land--will come out publicly for Barack Obama. They are, of course, superdelegates all.

For about a month now I have maintained that the only way Obama is going to finally wrap up the nomination is to catch or overtake Hillary Clinton in the superdelegate count. Yes, he leads overall on the strength of his margin among pledged delegates won in state primary and caucus contests thus far, but a superdelegate lead has a variety of advantages beyond the obvious result that it would widen (rather than shrink) his pledged delegate lead.

First, it means he would be batting for the cycle, so to speak (it’s baseball opening week), in terms of demonstrable measures of Democratic primary support: ahead among popular votes, ahead (insurmountably) in number of states won, ahead in pledged delegates, and ahead among declared superdelegates. In that sense, catching her among the superdelegates literally eliminates any quantifiable, results-oriented electoral claim Clinton has to the nomination.

Second, and more importantly, catching her among superdelegates would prove his support among the “Democratic establishment,” whatever and whoever they may actually be. Let’s be honest: Heading into this primary it was (and still is) the Clintons’ party until and unless somebody takes it away from them. And, more than any other indicator, leading among superdelegates would affirm Obama's acceptance and embrace by, and eventual control over, “the powers that be” in the Democratic Party.

--Tom Schaller

The news last week about a number of Democratic superdelegates moving toward Barack Obama or, even if ardent Clinton supporters like Joe Andrews of Indiana, admitting they would hesitate to be responsible for the superdelegates overruling the pledged delegates, reaffirms a point I've been making for weeks: All this talk about what the superdelegates "ought" to do is a distraction, part of the "fog of nonsense," to use Josh Marshall's phrase, that is keeping the illusion of a Clinton candidacy alive. The relevant question was always what they will do, and there was never a reason to think that they had any pressing desire to overturn the will of the pledged delegates.

As to the "ought" question, even though the historical record shows that superdelegates were created as a way to prevent nominees who would be abjectly unelectable (not that either George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, or Walter Mondale was thought to be unelectable at the moment of the convention), they were given free will and what they ought to do is, whatever they want. If a superdelegate decides to follow the national pledged delegates, the national popular vote, the popular vote in his or her district, some assessment about electability, or his or her own deep preference about who would make a better president, all those are legitimate reasons. And chances are that various superdelegates will make their choices on any and all of those reasons. As a result, the movement of the superdelegates as a bloc in the direction of Clinton was always unlikely; the qualms expressed by even strong Clinton supporters like Andrews make it impossible.

The Clinton campaign now kind of reminds me of the physics metaphor of Schroedinger's Cat. If you recall, this is a thought-experiment that is supposed to help explain transitional sub-atomic states: imagine a cat in a closed box with a vial of poisonous gas and a geiger counter. If an atomic particle decays, the gas is released and the cat dies; if not, the cat lives. Until you open the box, you have a cat that is maybe dead/maybe not.

I have to admit, I've never really understood this metaphor. It seems like it might be simpler to just explain the physics. There's a box with a cat in it and the cat is either dead or alive. So what? It's not both dead and alive. And that seems to be the state of the Clinton campaign now. As long as they can keep spinning -- e.g. Bill Clinton's new line that it's the delegates elected in primaries that count, not caucuses -- they can keep the box closed. The campaign is both dead and alive. But eventually someone will open the box. I suspect it will happen sooner than we think.

The body of Keith Maupin, a 20-year-old Army sergeant from Ohio who was kidnapped in Iraq almost four years ago, has been found and identified.

What a tragic loss. But at least the uncertainty of his poor family has ended. It’s hard to imagine a fate worse than losing a loved one in the war, but suffering for four years without knowing for certain what happened to a love one and then finding out he’s dead is worse.

If his family chooses to bury him in Arlington, I hope they find solemnity in a Section 60 burial. (If you’ve never visited the area at the national cemetery where the Iraq dead are buried, and you live or come to Washington, it is worth visiting.) RIP, Sgt. Maupin.

--Tom Schaller

At TNR's The Plank, Josh Patashnik responded to my support for paid maternity leave by writing:

I would question, though, whether this is really something we want to be requiring employers to provide. Insofar as paid maternity leave is something we think we need (and it should be!), funding it is a shared responsibility that government needs to undertake, not employers. If your welfare state rests on a foundation of coercing corporations into providing benefits, you're probably going to wind up with a lot of economic distortions and a pretty crappy welfare state to boot.

But a great model for "shared responsibility" already exists. Senators Chris Dodd and Ted Stevens have proposed setting up a family/medical/maternity leave insurance system into which employers, workers, and government all contribute. Here's how it would work: Employers and employees would each contribute .2 percent of the worker's salary to the fund, and the federal government would pay all the administrative costs. Workers would be guaranteed up to 8 weeks paid or partially paid family/medical leave, tiered according to their income. For example, an employee making under $20,000 would receive 100 percent of their salary while on leave, while those making $61,000 to $97,000 would be entitled to only 40 percent of their salary. Those making more than that would not be guaranteed paid leave.

--Dana Goldstein

• Regardless of whether there's a superdelegate "convention" it seems that everyone agrees that once the last primaries are over on June 3rd all superdelegates should make a decision about who they support and do so publicly rather than wait for the convention (at least I haven't heard anyone argue this is a bad idea). Howard Dean suggests they do so by July 1st, though why they'd have to wait a month is unclear to me.
• Meanwhile Senator Pat Leahy argues that Clinton should drop out now. Even if more leaders join him though, I could see this actually helping Clinton. The average voter probably has less of an idea of how hard it is for Clinton to win at this point than people like Leahy do and a movement to encourage her to drop out of the race could be perceived as an unfair attempt to rig the result (wrongly, in my view). Clinton has done best when she's been seen as a victim and more calls for her to drop out could increase her support. On the other hand, they could also influence superdelegates who are probably more important than voters at this point and push them away from supporting her.
• The Clinton campaign argued that Obama has been lying by claiming to have been a law professor. While technically his title at the University of Chicago Law School was "senior lecturer" the school says that senior lecturers are considered professors and that Obama was offered a tenure-track professor's position several times but turned it down due to lack of time (he was also a state senator at the time). So yeah, this is just about as dumb an argument as you think.
• Clinton adviser Jamie Rubin describes Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble as a "crankpot" (which is an awesome coinage by the way) for saying that Clinton did not have a big role in the Northern Irealand peace process (he also accused the man of sexism and of being a conservative because he is a Protestant).
• Radar asks if you can tell the difference between descriptions of Jesus and Barack Obama. It turns out to be rather hard.

--Sam Boyd

And so it begins. John McCain launches his first national television ad for the general election today, which in a single minute manages to refer to the U.S. as a "she" that must be protected in that creepy-uncle kind of way, suggest that one must serve in the armed forces to be a true patriot, and insinuate that other presidential candidates are less "American." Soaring to new heights of class, that John McCain:

As Ezra points out, there was a time when McCain didn't think candidates should talk about their experience in Vietnam.

--Kate Sheppard

So 21 super-rich Hillary Clinton funders are threatening Nancy Pelosi for having the audacity to claim that superdelegates should back the candidate with the most pledged delegates. Between them, they've donated $23 million to Democrats since 1999, not to mention likely soliciting millions more from their rich friends and associates, so their threats aren't exactly hollow. Their letter included the thuggish closing threat that they "hope you will be responsive to some of your major enthusiastic supporters." Now MoveOn (which has endorsed Obama) has responded with an open letter to Pelosi pledging that "thousands of us will have her back" if she continues to sticking up for "regular Americans."

Sigh. I sure hope we have a nominee before Nancy Pelosi has to cut someone.

--Kate Sheppard

An interesting article from TAP Grand Poobah Bob Kuttner defending Obama's recent speech and praising its tying of the mortgage crisis to larger structural problems. One thing to add is that crucial to Krugman's critique of Obama is that the precise details of the candidate's policy proposals (as opposed to their general tenor) is more important than the candidate's records. At least in a non-parliamentary system, this is a highly problematic assumption, and Obama's record is on balance somewhat more progressive than Clinton's. Moreover, the most crucial variable in determining what happens to ambitious policy proposals is the number of Democratic votes in the Senate, and Obama is likely to have longer coattails in marginal races. Even on the issue -- health care -- where Clinton has a clearly superior proposal, I doubt that on balance Clinton is more likely to get reform passed, or that a bill that passed under her watch would be significantly more progressive.

--Scott Lemieux

As the primary season drags on, you might be getting tired of always hearing about the same stuff. Fortunately, someone has a brand new idea: Democrats throwing reproductive freedom under the bus! Kinda!

Winters ­who is the author of a forthcoming book, “Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats,” ­ thinks Clinton could expand her support in the Pennsylvania primary (and in the general election) by distancing herself “from some of the more extreme pro-abortion arguments.” He elaborates:

She could say that the Democrats need to move beyond simply defending Roe and find alternatives to abortion or new ways of preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. She could repeat her husband’s mantra that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” and point to ways that might make it more rare.

If one wants to give this a charitable interpretation, the obvious problem is that Clinton has already done this, which should have taught us for the umpteenth time that when given the choice between preventing unwanted pregnancies (and hence reducing abortions) and regulating female sexuality, American anti-choicers have an extremely strong tendency to choose the latter. I don't see any evidence for the existence of a free ride where Democrats can pick up lots of anti-abortion voters without changing their substantive positions at all. I also don't know what "extreme pro-abortion" arguments Clinton and Obama subscribe to, but presumably the problem is that they believe that women other than affluent ones who live in cities should have access to safe abortions instead of believing that some classes of women should be subject to a blizzard of irrational regulations.

In a similar vein, Amy Sullivan goes into her views on the subject at greater length. In addition to the free ride problem, her discussion is centered around an alleged contradiction that isn't hard to explain. She claims the views of many Americans are incoherent because they have moral qualms about abortion but don't want it to be illegal. But, of course, there's not really a contradiction here: many more Americans believe that adultery is immoral than believe that adulterers belong in jail. This is particularly true given the ineffectiveness of and gross inequities inherent in criminalizing abortions, and it remains extremely frustrating that Sullivan and others who share her views generally refuse to discuss this. "I think abortion is immoral," full stop, isn't going to expand the pro-choice coalition or convince people to vote for Democrats.

--Scott Lemieux

Kevin Drum highlights a ranking of the most name-dropped think tanks of 2007. The study, by FAIR, found that overall think tank citations dropped 17 percent last year. Like Kevin, I'd chalk that up to more digestible policy analysis available online. Think tanks like the New America Foundation and the Center for American Progress (my former employer) are beginning to understand that and co-opt the blogging medium.

The bad news for left-leaning think tanks is that Brookings, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Enterprise Institute, and Heritage fill the top four slots, and CAP, at number 8, is the highest ranked left-of-center organization. The Kaiser Family Foundation is number 7 and described as "centrist," but with their data-based approach to health disparities, I'd say they have a pretty progressive influence on the world.

All that said, it's not clear to me that the number of media mentions a think tank accrues can really be used a stand-in for influence. Think tanks brief members of Congress, meet off-the-record with journalists and pundits, and also act as a job mill for out of power political parties.

--Dana Goldstein

Kai Wright is joining us as a guest columnist for two weeks. This week, he considers the current state of AIDS research:

...There was no mistaking the disappointment in Anthony Fauci's remarks to the 300 scientists he brought together in Bethesda, Maryland, this week. On the heels of one the biggest setbacks AIDS research has seen since its early years -- a failed vaccine that had promised to mark the beginning of the epidemic's end -- Fauci convened the sober meeting to rethink the whole enterprise. And after 25 years of aggressively pursuing an AIDS vaccine, the new perspective he urged upon researchers was a return to "fundamental questions." It sounded an awful lot like starting over.

Worse, it sounded like starting over with a handicap. AIDS research hasn't been spared the budget cuts that have hit the National Institutes of Health throughout the Bush years. And even as Fauci tried to reassure the gathering that there'd be enough money to re-prime the research pump, he conceded he'd never seen times so tight. A scientist to the last, Fauci called it "an unprecedented phenomenon."

It's also a stunningly fast reversal of fortune. As recently as last summer, even the most sober observers suspected the vaccine sleuths were on the cusp of a world-changing breakthrough for AIDS, one on par with the 1996 unveiling of multidrug antiretroviral therapy, which slammed the breaks on AIDS deaths in the developed world.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

I'm of the firm belief that all the folks contemplating an Al Gore escape plan are entirely delusional. In addition to being impractical and not the most democratically sound manner of selecting a candidate, we need him out there working as the country's leading spokesperson for action on climate change.

Gore seems fairly content right now serving as the self-appointed "P.R. agent for the planet," and he provides the much-needed voice of environmental consciousness in this country. He won a Nobel Prize for it. He's slated to appear on "60 Minutes" this weekend taking on all the remaining climate skeptics. His Alliance for Climate Protection is set to launch a new $300 million ad campaign on global warming next week. The work he's doing in the climate and energy arena is absolutely imperative, and would unfortunately only be one among many issues he'd have to take on as president. The country (and the planet) needs him pushing the next president on climate change, not attempting to be the miraculous savior of the Democratic Party.

--Kate Sheppard

From our April issue: Chris Mooney reviews David Michaels' Doubt is Their Product and uncovers a cottage industry of scientific deceivers:

For Michaels, these companies are the scientific equivalent of Arthur Andersen. He calls their work "mercenary" science, drawing an implicit analogy with private military firms like Blackwater. If the companies can get the raw data, so much the better, and if they can't, they'll find another way to make findings of statistically significant risk go away. Just throw out the animal studies or tinker with the subject groups. Perform a new meta-analysis. Conduct a selective literature review. Think up some potentially confounding variable. And so forth.

They can always get it published somewhere. And if they can't, they can just start their own peer-reviewed journal, one likely to have an exceedingly low scientific impact but a potentially profound effect on the regulatory process. ...

The 1998 Data Access Act (or "Shelby Amendment") and the 2001 Data Quality Act, both originally a glint in Big Tobacco's eye, enable companies to get the data behind publicly funded studies and help them challenge research that might serve as the basis for regulatory action. Meanwhile, the 1993 Supreme Court decision in the little-known Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals case further facilitates the strategy, unwisely empowering trial court judges to determine what is and what isn't good science in civil cases. Under Daubert, judges have repeatedly spiked legitimate expert witnesses who were otherwise set to testify about the dangers demonstrated by epidemiological research. Often juries don't even hear the science any more because the defense can get it thrown out pre-trial.

It's all about questioning the science to gum up the works. The companies pose as if they are defending open debate and inquiry and are trying to make scientific data available to everyone. In reality, once they get the raw data, they spend the vast resources at their disposal to discredit independent research.

Read about the threat to public health and comment here.

--The Editors

The Obama camp is celebrating the endorsemet of Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey. The Associated Press reports on a heretofore unknown demographic group!

Obama strategists hope that Casey can help their candidate make inroads with the white working-class men who are often referred to as "Casey Democrats." This group identifies with the brand of politics Casey and his late father, a former governor, practiced - liberal on economic issues but supportive of gun rights and opposed to abortion. (Obama favors some gun-control measures and backs abortion rights.)

Also from Obama this morning comes a link to this Bloomberg News article, which describes Clinton as facing "a widening credibility gap" on issues such as her role in the Bosnian and Irish peace processes and her opposition to NAFTA. Obama's Bill Burton is also hawking a New Hampshire Union-Leader editorial that gets irate over a Bill Clinton statement that questioned New Hampshire's early place in the primary process in order to assert that Florida and Michigan should have their votes counted. But one thing I really can't get worked up about in late March is how New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner feels.

Meanwhile, the Clinton folks are hawking Paul Krugman, who today compares Clinton's economic package favorably to both Obama's and John McCain's.

--Dana Goldstein

Ben Smith reports that Howard Dean has spoken on when the superdelegates should weigh in:

Harry Smith asked if after the nominating contests end with the South Dakota and Montana primaries on June 3, "Do you want the superdelegates to have some sort of vote immediately so that you'll know months in advance of the convention what the outcome is?”

Dean replied: “Well, I think the superdelegates have already been weighing in. I think that there's 800 of them and 450 of them have already said who they're for. I'd like the other 350 to say who they're at some point between now and the first of July so we don't have to take this into the convention.”

I'm only half kidding about the vacation.

--Phoebe Connelly

Is the Al Gore escape clause scenario really a possibility?

Joe Klein ponders the possibilities. So does Glenn Hurowitz.

--Tom Schaller

Slate launched "Hillary Deathwatch" last night, "a daily update on Hillary Clinton's dwindling chances of winning the Democratic nomination." I'm as confident as anyone that her chances are slim, but couldn't they have come up with a less morbid name? Even Alberto Gonzales got the more pleasant-sounding "Gonzo-Meter."

They've got her chance of winning at 12 percent right now, which they peg as "generous." Feel free to weigh in with your own prognostications in comments.

--Kate Sheppard

• Think Progress runs down McCain's extensive connections to the oil industry and his record of supporting tax breaks for oil companies.
• You wouldn't know it from your average newspaper, but in many ways the general election has already started.
• McCain is raffling off a seat on his press bus to top donors. I guess there's nothing wrong with that and, as Jay Carney says, it's a way for McCain to raise money off his warm relations with the press, but if I were a reporter on that bus I'd feel a bit uneasy being used to raise money for the candidate I'm covering.
• Obama supporter, superdelegate, and Governor of Puerto Rico Aníbal S. Acevedo Vilá has been indicted for campaign finance violations. This creates some problems for Obama in a state where the conventional wisdom was already that Clinton was favored. However, according to this guy, who seems to know what he's talking about, the American media doesn't get Puerto Rican politics and Obama is actually better positioned to win there.
  
• You know all the punditry based on the Gallup daily tracking poll? Hooey says Pollster.com. Similarly, Mori pointed out that the number of Democrats saying they would vote for McCain if their preferred candidate doesn't get the nomination is actually quite low by historical standards. I'm still not convinced this primary is good for the party, but it isn't as disastrous as we think (it's not a trainsmash, as an English friend of my family likes to say) which is a good thing because, as I said on Tuesday, it ain't gonna be over anytime soon.
• The recession, coming soon to an economy near you.

--Sam Boyd

Amanda Terkel over at Think Progress catches John McCain plagiarizing large portions of his foreign policy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council yesterday. Sizable chunks of it were lifted directly from a speech made by retired Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer in 1996, and apparently it's not the first time he's lifted from Ziemer. It also appears that some of the parts that weren't stolen from someone else were merely recycled from a speech McCain himself gave in 2001, back before the Iraq War even started. I'm not sure what I should be most concerned about though -- the plagiarism, or the fact that McCain couldn't come up with anything new to say.

UPDATE: Think Progress has updated their post to note that Ziemer’s speech may have been plagiarized from McCain, who apparently used those lines in 1995. Which means that they're all recycling each other's old lines. This doesn't make me feel any better.

--Kate Sheppard

Dear Howard Kurtz,
I was really excited when I saw you quoted my TAPPED post in your column today:

American Prospect's Dana Goldstein sees a more fundamental flaw:

"I'd add that, like John McCain, most members of the campaign press corps just aren't all that interested in or knowledgeable about public policy. Most cover politics, as it's so often been noted, as a sport."

McCain, he reminds us, "now opposes Roe v. Wade, marriage equality, comprehensive sex-ed, and doesn't believe condoms prevent the spread of HIV. So if we journalists value skepticism and cynicism so much, we should really be applying some to John McCain."

Just one thing. I'm a "she."

--Dana Goldstein

We're in that stage of campaign speculation where anyone who introduces a Barack Obama speech is assumed to be a serious vice presidential prospect. That makes today's man of the hour New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who was on hand this morning for Obama's speech on the economy. But let's just slow down and remember that Bloomberg has a lady "companion," used to be a Republican, and is a Jewish man from New York City. I think not.

Matt Yglesias has a much better idea for what Bloomberg should do when he's term limited out of the mayoralty:

Bloomberg could leave NYC and move on to a second political career as the mayor of a more challenging city. He did a good job in New York, but can he tackle the more serious problems of a Baltimore? A Detroit? That'd be truly great mayoring.

Indeed, I've often thought that other cities would benefit more than New York from Bloomberg's governing style. What's more realistic, though, is Matt's other suggestion that Bloomberg take his immense wealth and invest in a policy shop pushing the importance of urban issues.

--Dana Goldstein

Obama's senior economic adviser Daniel Tarullo hosted a conference call on the candidate's economic speech today, in which Obama proposed a second economic stimulus package of $30 billion as well as stronger regulation of the country's financial system in order to prevent another housing crisis. The second stimulus package would include a $10 billion foreclosure prevention fund, $10 billion in immediate relief for state and local governments dealing with the crisis, and an extension of unemployment benefits. Tarullo characterized the measures as "timely, targeted, and temporary," and emphasized the importance of reforming the financial regulatory system in general. Obama is also calling for a financial advisory group composed of people from outside the government to advise the president and Congress on the state of financial markets and the risks that are developing down the road. "Financial regulators understandably get caught up in the problems and issues of the moment, they oftentimes don't anticipate what the next problem is going to be," said Tarullo.

Tarullo is an interesting figure, having served in the Clinton administration as the deputy assistant to the president for economic policy as well as the assistant to the president for international economic policy. Here are some of his other remarks from the call, in which he criticized regulatory actions of the '90s:

It was apparent during the last significant set of changes in our financial laws, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, that the exercise in Washington was essentially an exercise among the different interest groups of financial institutions [...] They were the ones who were at the table, they were the ones doing the negotiations. Thus perhaps it's not surprising that while the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act stripped away some of the regulations which were clearly outmoded [...] that act did not substitute or did not even create the path toward substituting an effective financial regulatory system to deal with the kinds of financial instruments [...] such as we now see [...] or the mega financial institutions.

Tarullo also offered criticism of the economic proposals of the other candidates:

McCain this week gave an interesting speech, but one that was essentially backward looking -- "Here's my views about how some of the problems evolve." But he didn't say what he's going to do now. Sen. Clinton added a proposal to have a commission to see whether some of the other things that she's proposed would work. Well, Sen. Obama, a year ago when maybe there was some time to take a top-down survey and see what the views should be, he proposed to Sec. Paulson and Chairman Berneke a commission with a broader membership about a year ago. Now he believes the focus should be taken precisely so we can stop that downward spiral.

--Kate Sheppard

Today at TAP Online Gershom Gorenberg recounts the recent hounding of Barack Obama for the supposed anti-Israel stance of his informal adviser Robert Malley, a story that stretches back to the close of the Clinton administration:

There's more at work here than the usual, nearly boring, attempts to slime a liberal candidate as anti-Israel for the "sin" of supporting what Israel needs most -- determined diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. Lurking in the background is another of the battles over how Israel-Palestinian history is told. In that fight, the original furious critic of Barack Obama's adviser is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. There's also a lesson about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Besides settling the practical questions, it requires resolving the conflicting narratives about the past. To approach this task, the next president will need not just hard work, but a gift with rhetoric, with words.

The Malley story actually goes back to 2001, when the former Clinton foreign policy staffer began writing about what went wrong at the Camp David summit the summer before. First in the New York Times, then in a joint article with Hussein Agha in the New York Review of Books, Malley described mistakes made by Israel and the United States, not just by the Palestinians, that led to the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. ...

As Malley wrote in the Times, by 2001 the accepted story of the long summit was that "Camp David is said to have been a test that Mr. Barak passed and Mr. Arafat failed." While rejecting that simplistic account, he and Agha did not spare criticism of the Palestinian side. "The Palestinians principal failing is that ? they were unable either to say yes to the American ideas or to present a cogent and specific counterproposal of their own," they wrote in their detailed New York Review article. Even more telling is their assertion that for the Palestinians "Oslo ... was not about negotiating peace terms but terms of surrender." This was hardly an attitude likely to lead to creative diplomacy.

But Malley and Agha also described the mistakes of Clinton and, particularly, of Barak. As prime minister, Barak first tried to negotiate with Syria, treating the Palestinians as second priority. More concerned with not upsetting Israeli settlers than with addressing Palestinian concerns, he allowed rapid settlement construction to continue. He prevented any progress in preliminary negotiations, insisting that a peace deal would have to be put together at the conclusive summit. To the Palestinians, these moves radiated arrogance and were an attempt to force them into a corner. Once at Camp David, Barak did go beyond what Israel had offered earlier, yet kept his position ambiguous. The Palestinians did make concessions, but neither side went far enough to bridge the chasm between their positions. As for Clinton, his errors began with pushing Arafat into an ill-prepared summit.

Read the whole story and comment here.

--The Editors

Brian Schaffner at the Center for Congressional and Presidential studies blog provides some needed context regarding that Gallup poll from yesterday which showed that 28 percent of Clinton backers and 19 percent of Obama backers would vote for John McCain if their candidate was not the nominee. Using a similar poll from the 2000 campaign, Schaffner reminds us:

In March of that year, the Pew Center for the People & the Press released a report titled "Bush Pays Price for Primary Victory." Following Bush's victory in the 2000 primaries and McCain's exit from the race, the Pew survey found that 51% of those who backed McCain during the primary campaign would vote for Gore in the general election. Only 44% of his supporters said that they would be casting their votes for Bush. Furthermore, a significant share of Bradley supporters also said that they would be supporting Bush in the general election, including 39% of his independent backers.

I've never really taken seriously the notion that the drawn-out nomination battle would permanently damage either candidate. Rather, the lasting damage, if any, will be on the Democratic Party and its efforts to build a future electoral and governing majority. But as long as the nomination is decided before the convention, there should be adequate time to make that happen.

--Mori Dinauer

Yet another poll out today on the effect of the Wright controversy and subsequent Obama speech. Seems neither has had that much of an influence, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Both Clinton and Obama are pulling 45 percent support from registered Democrats, with Obama up from 43 percent two weeks ago. If anything, he appears to be doing better with white voters than he was a month ago, when Clinton led 51 to 39 percent. The gap is now down to 49 to 41 percent. These polls were conducted on Monday and Tuesday, which means the speech and coverage of the issues had a week to set in. I think this just further confirms my belief that many Americans, when asked to engage in the real issues, are understanding of and likely to agree with the assessment of race in America that Obama offered in the speech. Of course, these figures are for registered Democrats, and Obama has shown some slippage with conservatives and Republican voters, according to this poll, so it's hard to say what kind of effect the issue would have in the general election.

But the poll also contained a significantly disconcerting figure for Democrats in general: one-fifth of both Clinton and Obama supporters said they would vote for McCain if their first-choice candidate isn't the nominee.

--Kate Sheppard

Though I occasionally disagree with his conclusions -- the notion that the states are not really that red or blue, when 29 of them were decided by 10 percent or more in the 2004 presidential race, and the share of counties that went at least 60 percent Democratic or Republican jumped from 36 percent to 44 percent nationally between 2000 and 2004 -- Patrick Ottenhoff’s “The Electoral Map” is one of my favorite blogs. Maybe because I'm a left-brainer, visual/mapping-style learner, I find his analysis generally strong, often superb, and the maps and other visuals always compelling.

The idea that the Clinton-Obama nomination could come down to North Carolina is fascinating. Take at look at Ottenhoff’s analysis of the Tar Heel State and how it might shake out.

--Tom Schaller

Because the New York Times failed to nail the personal angle of the John McCain-Vicki Iseman scandal, McCain’s relationship with the lobbyist will probably recede forever from view. Nobody in the media wants to touch it.

Well, not nobody. The Atlantic’s Josh Green explains why it’s not about the alleged interpersonal relationship, but the very public relationship between McCain-Iseman relationship that is at the heart of the scandal—especially for the self-styled, anti-special interests and anti-earmark maverick crusader. Whatever the nature of their interpersonal relationship, if any, McCain and Iseman managed to get close enough to produce a nice “purple cow” together.

--Tom Schaller

Over on Huffington Post, Trey Ellis says the solution isn’t for Hillary Clinton to drop out, it’s for Barack Obama to stop taking her seriously:

You have more delegates, much more money, you’re John McCain to her Mike Huckabee. So why act as if she’s on equal footing? […] The answer isn’t for Hillary to quit, it’s for Obama to convince her supporters to abandon her.

In terms of strategy, he’s probably right. There’s really not a whole lot of sense in taking on Clinton directly at this point. We all know where they stand on policy issues. She’s made it clear she doesn’t intend to drop out anytime soon. If he wants to move this thing forward, it’s her supporters he should be targeting rather than engaging in tit-for-tat with the candidate herself. And as Ellis points out, that means crafting a more populist message, aiming for the blue collar supporters Clinton has been more successful in reaching and “channeling his inner Edwards.” Seems like an idea that’s been raised quite a few times over here.

—Kate Sheppard

Congress has offered New York City $354 million to help launch a congestion pricing program that would reduce carbon admissions while raising much-needed funds for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Under such a program, most drivers would be charged $8 for driving south of 60th Street in Manhattan. But there's a catch, as the New York Times reminded in an editorial yesterday: To get the money, New York must approve a final plan by April 7.

The Albany holdout is Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has some amendments he'd like added to the plan, such as an exception for low-income drivers who have no other way to get to work. Quickly dealing with Silver's concerns and signing him onto the program will be a first test for the newly-minted and sex scandal-beset Governor David Patterson.

It's especially important to secure the federal funding now because of the MTA's financial predicament. Planned upgrades to the subway and bus systems have been canceled because a tax on real estate transactions was a crucial source of income. Of course, thanks to the mortgage crisis and larger economic downturn, those funds are drying up. The congestion tax would provide a much more dependable revenue stream.

--Dana Goldstein

• In addition to Hillary Clinton warming up to Richard Mellon Scaife, her campaign has also begun distributing an American Spectator article on Obama's alleged "Jewish problem."
• In superdelegate news, Hillary has called Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen's idea for a super delegate convention "an intriguing idea." Several wealthy Clinton donors have written a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, demanding that she retract her statement last week that suggested the supes should endorse the candidate with the most pledged delegates.
• After opening a can of Straight Talk whoop-ass on the housing crisis yesterday, John McCain turned his attention to national security, giving a speech at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. 
• McCain VP speculation continues apace, with the current hot tickets being Chris Cox, Rob Portman, and Condoleezza Rice.
  
• Steve Benen notes that the the National Journal's widely debunked ranking of the most liberal senators from last month is alive and well, and being used by everyone from James Dobson to Mark Penn to fuel attacks against Barack Obama.
• And then there were two ... Mike Gravel leaves Dems to join the Libertarian Party. You know, the party that really represents the legacy of FDR.
• And in lighter, non-campaign news, New York City toys with a new, official nickname.

--Dana Goldstein

The liberal media...sigh...we're so disconnected! Despite all our hand-wringing over the damage this extended primary is doing to the Democratic coalition, a new Rasmussen poll says 62 percent of Democrats nationwide want the race to continue, and that 22 percent each believe that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama should concede. Obama supporters, however, are more likely than Clinton supporters to believe the opposing candidate should drop out.

--Dana Goldstein

In this week's FundamentaList, find out how Republicans courting their own inflammatory preachers have the Jesus Shield -- but that Barack Obama, with his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, does not. Read it to find out how the right-wingers get a pass from the press, while left-wingers are "Other-ized."

At Salon, Glenn Greenwald, who has been addressing the same issue, discusses God's Profits and has posted a podcast interview with me about it. At Open Left last weekend, Paul Rosenberg posed insightful questions to me about God's Profits in a book salon. And Media Matters has documented these rules that seem to govern press coverage of Wright, as compared to its coverage of Rod Parsley and John McCain.

The Council for National Policy, the secretive umbrella conservative group with the biggest, strongest Jesus Shield out there, has posted McCain's speech from a few weeks ago on its web site. The release of a presidential candidate's speech to the group is unprecedented, and you can read it here. The speech is pretty unremarkable, and doesn't cover any ground McCain hasn't covered in other public appearances, which is probably why the group decided that releasing it wasn't about to divulge any well-kept secrets.

--Sarah Posner

From our April issue: Robert Borosage sees the populist writing on the wall for 2008:

John Edwards is gone, but his populist rhetoric and agenda hold center stage in the Democratic presidential race. The Democratic race has come down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two relatively cautious moderates, tutored by Citi-group's Robert Rubin and his Wall Street-funded Hamilton Project, who have nonetheless both become unlikely populist scourges as the primary season rolled on. ...

No question that Midwest voters are looking for a populist champion. Ohio suffers what Jesse Jackson termed the "trifecta of devastation." It has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. It never enjoyed the housing boom but is nonetheless the center of the collapse. In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development sold homes in Cleveland for less than the price of a latte at Starbucks. The state is disfigured by the long-term poverty of its inner cities and rural Appalachian counties. Even John McCain started talking about creating jobs when he got to Ohio. ...

The fall election will be largely framed around two very different, very populist appeals. McCain will revive the Reagan argument -- government is the problem. He'll pledge to cut spending and taxes, and let you keep more of your money. The incompetence and corruption of government over the last eight years helps make his case. And McCain, the "sheriff" against earmarks, is perfectly situated to make this argument.

Against that, Clinton and Obama argue that the reason things are bad is that government has been handed over to the entrenched "corporate interests." Ironically, Hillary has been running to Obama's populist left through most of this campaign. Her appeal was strengthened by the economic record of her husband, but her populist credibility was also undermined by it, inasmuch as the Clinton presidency championed the corporate trade agenda, cut domestic spending dramatically as a percentage of gross domestic product while running up surpluses, pushed financial deregulation, and failed on health-care and labor-law reform.

Can the Dems ride the spirit of populism all the way to the White House? Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

So why isn't it a huge gigantic big deal that a presidential candidate running on a national security platform doesn't understand the difference between Iran and Al-Qaeda? On the Times op-ed page today, Neal Gabler suggests that John McCain's store of goodwill with the media stems from his own sense of cynicism and irony, traits journalists revere. "They are reacting to something deeper than politics. They are reacting to his vision of how the world operates and to his attitude about it, something it is easy to suspect he acquired while a prisoner of war," Gabler writes. He continues, "The candidates who are dead serious about politics, even wonkish, get abused by the press for it. Mr. McCain the ironist gets heaps of affection."

I'd add that, like John McCain, most members of the campaign press corps just aren't all that interested in or knowledgeable about public policy. Most cover politics, as it's so often been noted, as a sport. How else to explain lines like this one, from Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei's much-lauded Politico piece on the press' complicity with Hillary Clinton's claim that she can still win the nomination without deeply dividing the Democratic Party: "That’s certainly possible — and, to be clear, we’d love to see the race last that long — but it’s folly to write about this as if it is likely." The press would love to see the race last until the convention. That's not because they're fascinated by the debate over health insurance mandates. It's because it's fun and dramatic, like a basketball game going into overtime.

Gabler argues that when McCain ran for president in 2000, he was lauded for shooting the same "straight talk" off the bus as on it, while this year, journos just feel so special that they're getting the "real" McCain while voters hear pablum about conservatism. In actuality, McCain has always been a flip-flopper who uses the media to do his bidding. Here's what Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote about McCain during the 2000 race: "McCain's people whisper, Don't worry. He's not really so anti-abortion. He'll come around on gay rights, gun control and almost anything else you can name. He's a reasonable man--big-hearted, too."

That's the same McCain who now opposes Roe v. Wade, marriage equality, comprehensive sex-ed, and doesn't believe condoms prevent the spread of HIV. So if we journalists value skepticism and cynicism so much, we should really be applying some to John McCain.

--Dana Goldstein

Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) is starting rumors that if there isn't a Democratic nominee by August, we may end up with a brokered convention and a compromise candidate. That candidate, he reckons, could be Al Gore. Mahoney, who is a superdelegate, suggested this during a meeting last week with the editorial board of the local Palm Beach newspaper. I'm fairly certain that it won't come down to a brokered convention, and even more certain that Al Gore isn't interested in another go at the presidential race – especially not one that he wouldn't even start until the end of August. Seems like wishful thinking to me.

--Kate Sheppard

The latest dispatch from Mike Gravel:

"I wanted to update you on my latest plans before news gets out. Today, I am announcing my plan to join the Libertarian Party, because the Democratic Party no longer represents my vision for our great country. I wanted my supporters to get this news first, because you have been the ones who have kept my campaign alive since I first declared my candidacy on April 17, 2006.

"The fact is, the Democratic Party today is no longer the party of FDR. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism -- all of which I find anathema to my views. By and large, I have been repeatedly marginalized in both national debates and in media exposure by the Democratic leadership, which works in tandem with the corporate interests that control what we read and hear in the media. I look forward to advancing my presidential candidacy within the Libertarian Party, which is considerably closer to my values, my foreign policy views and my domestic views. "

So wait, the Libertarian Party is the true party of FDR now? Really Mike? And switching to that party will somehow make you less "marginalized"?

--Kate Sheppard

Speaking of Obama and the Wright controversy, the New Yorker’s George Packer has a great commentary out this week, which concludes thusly:

Obama is staking his campaign on the very point he tried to make to Reverend Wright two decades ago: that the dreams and interests of hard-pressed Americans are more important than matters of race. Democrats have been trying to make that argument for a long time, while Republicans have been winning elections. For half a century, right-wing populism has been the most successful political force in America, aided greatly by the tendency of liberals to fall into the competing claims of identity groups. Obama is a black candidate who can tell Americans of all races to move beyond race. As such, he is uniquely positioned to put an end to this era, and uniquely vulnerable to becoming its latest victim.

I would add that Obama would not merely be the latest victim, but the most notable or greatest victim (in terms of magnitude). Obviously, race issues and identity politics have been used to damage Democrats in the past, including Democratic presidential candidates. What's new here is that Obama actually proposes to solve this problem (maybe not once and for all, but certainly once).

Though I think critics are correct when they complain that Obama often promises to tell Americans what they need to hear but rarely risks actually doing so—and that he only gave the Philly speech when the Wright pressure built to such a level he was forced to—what he chose to say under pressure reveals a lot about him. Maybe he had no choice but to give that speech, but he proved he is willing to take Packer’s gambit that, with speeches like that, he can finally de-fang right-wing populism, even if it makes him highly vulnerable in November.

--Tom Schaller

According to new research from the Department of Health and Human Services, though life expectancy for the nation overall is on the rise, the gap between the rich and the poor has increased drastically in the past 20 years. In the early '80s, the richest Americans lived an average of 2.8 years longer than the poorest, but by 2000, the gap had widened to 4.5 years. Researchers report life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than it was for the poorest sector of the population by 2000, and the gap continues to widen.

Researchers cite a number of contributing factors: affluent and better-educated people are more likely to have quality health insurance and be able to take advantage of medical advances, and are less likely to smoke, live in dangerous neighborhoods, or eat unhealthy foods. And while the statistics overall are quite depressing (though not entirely unexpected), perhaps more depressing is the coverage of the findings in the New York Times, which trotted out representatives from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute to pin the disparities on "health literacy" alone. Since of course, the chief factor must be the ignorance of poor people, not, of course, any of the social and economic patterns that would make better education and health care more available to wealthier people. The absurdity of their reasoning aside, since when does an article about the factual and scientifically documented disparities of health in America require the opinions of conservative think tanks?

--Kate Sheppard

Over at Talking Points, Josh Marshall raises the interesting question of why Hillary Clinton is sitting down at editorial board meetings with none other than Richard Mellon Scaife, and wonders why she would have us believe she was in any way surprised by a question about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy during such a sit-down.

Yes, why? And where, oh where, is David Brock now? Scaife was once the Great Demon of Clinton World. Now she’s sitting side-by-side with him?

When this primary (finally) ends, whether Clinton loses or manufactures some amazing comeback, there will be two interesting storylines regarding her campaign. The first will be how she was unprepared for the nomination contest to go beyond the February 5 “Super Tuesday” round of primaries and caucuses--how her "inevitability" campaign led her inevitably to being caught flat-footed. The second will be how, after that point, she was prepared to do just about anything to recover footing and/or knock Barack Obama off his, of which the Scaife meeting is only the latest episode.

--Tom Schaller

• The Pennsylvania primary is still almost a month away. That's easy to forget, but it's essential because a lot of the punditry going on right now entails straight line projections from the present. For instance, at the height of the Jeremiah Wright controversy, people started talking about what would happen if Obama lost North Carolina. Now, as he's responded to that and Clinton is embroiled in her own YouTube moment, one poll shows Obama with a commanding lead there. Now, Obama is having a good week and people are starting to talk about pushing Clinton out of the race. But it just would be bizarre for her to do so now. But who knows, Edwards dropped out a weird time too, so anything is possible.
• Is the Democratic primary recruiting new Democrats? The Washington Post makes the case.
• More people (more than 4 million) watched Obama's speech on race on YouTube than watched Mike Huckabee's Chuck Norris endorsement -- which previously held the record for most viewed video by a presidential candidate.
• A few weeks ago, when Clinton wasn't doing too well, she floated the idea of getting Obama's pledged delegates to switch to her side (which they are allowed to do under party rules but which would be widely and correctly perceived as illegitimate and underhanded). Her campaign scrambled to backtrack, but now she's doing it again and her campaign is sending mixed messages about their intentions. Really though, this is all just a way to increase uncertainty and prevent a perception of an inevitable Obama victory.
• Finally, just for fun, the campaign has gone on so long that it's starting to generate some of the most deeply perplexing and bizarre web videos I've ever seen. I mean did you really expect a music video starring Hillary Clinton as portrayed by a Chilean little person of indeterminate gender? Or a horrendously off-key performance of a song called "It's Raining McCain?" Did ya?

--Sam Boyd

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier today for two consolidated custody cases: Munaf v. Geren and Geren v. Omar. (I blogged about them last week.) In these cases, the Court will assess the Bush administration's assertion that the U.S.' participation in a multinational force -- even one dominated and led by American forces -- precludes U.S. citizens who are detained by U.S. military officials from filing habeas petitions in the United States.

The government's argument -- delivered by the Department of Justice Deputy Solicitor GeneralGregory Garre -- rests on the Hirota v. MacArthur case of 1948, in which Japanese citizens detained in Japan by the Allied Powers, which were under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, filed a habeas petition directly with the Supreme Court; the Court decided that it could not adjudicate this petition since the tribunal that convicted and sentenced the petitioners was not a U.S. tribunal. There are, however, two important differences between Hirota and Munaf and Omar. The 1948 case dealt with Japanese soldiers in Hirota, while Shawqi Omar and Mohammed Munaf are both American citizens. Secondly, as pointed out by Justice Ruth Ginsburg, there was a conviction and a sentence in Hirota; Omar's case has yet to be investigated by Iraqi courts, and Munaf's conviction has been thrown out.

Garre claimed the 1948 decision points to the conclusion that it was the presence of an international authority that was key to the Court's finding that it had no jurisdiction. Justice David Souter rebutted this argument, saying, "If that rule is applied to this case, it means that the president acting alone can make an agreement for an international force or a cooperative force, and that agreement of the executive alone in effect eliminates habeas jurisdiction over an American citizen. And that obviously is in tension, if not inconsistent, with the Suspension Clause, and it's a little scary." Omar and Munaf's lawyers dispute the government's interpretation of Hirota on the grounds that it makes a mountain out of a molehill. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled mostly favorably in three other post-9/11 cases dealing with individual rights vis a vis executive power (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld). In Hamdi the Court allowed the habeas petition of an American citizen initially detained in Afghanistan to be heard without bringing up the fact that the U.S. military is also part of a military coalition in that country.

The Court's decision could have significant ramifications as the use of multinational forces increases in conflict zones. Furthermore, according to the Associated Press' amicus brief, American journalists' efforts to cover wars and other international conflicts will be severely derailed if the Court decides to do away with the ability of U.S. citizens to pursue claims of wrongful imprisonment by U.S.-led coalition forces. The AP has been fighting the detention of photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been detained in Iraq by the U.S. military since April 12, 2006. Hussein has been accused of being a security threat, despite the fact that no evidence has emerged that suggests wrongdoing.

--Anabel Lee

First Congress lifted the ban on needle-exchange funding in D.C. last December. Then yesterday brought news that lawmakers might lift a decades-old ban against HIV-positive people visiting or immigrating to the United States. What’s happening on the Hill? Are legislators ceding their bunker-mentality approach to domestic AIDS policy?

As the Houston Chronicle reports, since 1987 the United States has imposed severe restrictions on HIV-positive foreigners. They are not allowed to immigrate to or even visit the United States “unless they qualify for narrowly defined waivers.” The Senate Foreign Relations committee tacked the amendment to lift the ban onto the president’s global AIDS relief package, which will be up for debate in the Senate shortly, and Congress seems likely to lift the ban.

Of course, President Bush will still have to sign the bill and the Department of Health and Human Services, which has final say over the list of diseases that bar entry into the United States, will also have to fall in line. But choosing to retain such a paranoiac policy would only serve to undermine any efforts this administration takes on either the international or domestic AIDS front. It would also be a disservice to American citizens. Restricting immigrants and visitors who are HIV positive doesn’t protect people from getting the disease; it limits our ability to understand the pandemic and it reduces our capacity to confront it.

--Andrew Green

Paul has an excellent piece up today on the insidious raced-based campaign conservatives are already running against Barack Obama. There seems to be no bottom to the conservative smear barrel. Yesterday, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt gave us a preview of yet another: he's used naughty words before! And they were recorded! He even won a Grammy for it!

The minions are already running with it, and Hewitt got Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) to concur that it is profoundly upsetting to have a high-ranking political leader who uses bad words on occasion (unfortunately, the audio isn't up online yet). Of course this smear is also racially loaded, attempting to paint Obama as foul-mouthed and uncivilized. And we all know Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Dick Cheney have never used that kind of language.

--Kate Sheppard

Among some pro-Obama bloggers, today is the "Day of Blogging for Voter Justice." Members of a group calling itself the Afrosphere Action Coalition are promoting an online petition asking Hillary Clinton to drop out of the Democratic primary in order, as Jack Turner writes at Jack and Jill Politics, "to help unify the party and unify the country." Turner warns, "We will destroy this party and do lasting damage to this nation if the Democratic campaign continues along its present course. Feelings are hardening on both sides; relationships are being strained, and if this goes to Denver there will not be enough time to heal the widening rift."

The petition itself takes a much harsher stance, suggesting that a Clinton presidency, because of her campaign's supposed race-baiting, would be worse than a McCain presidency:

Should the Democratic Party leadership nullify the people's votes by giving Mrs. Clinton the nomination, despite the popular will as represented by earned delegates, we would then call upon African-American voters and all Democratic Party constituencies and supporters to withhold their support from a Hillary Clinton candidacy in November. We have survived eight years under President Bush and, if compelled to do so, we will survive four years under a President McCain. However, we cannot and will NOT survive the nullification of our most hard-won right - our votes.

This is yet more troublesome evidence that as the nomination fight wears on, race will become a more and more divisive issue among Democrats. Indeed, asking superdelegates to overturn the popular vote in the case of the first African American to have a shot at the White House brings up painful memories of centuries of disenfranchisement perpetuated against African Americans. If Hillary had an almost insurmountable lead and Obama refused to drop out, some supporters of women's leadership would be, I think, equally perplexed.

All that said, the superdelegates are a part of the Democratic nominating process and both candidates have the right to campaign for their support up until the convention. Grassroots Democrats and the DNC may very well realize after this year that the primary system is flawed and overly complicated. But until then, it's hardly surprising that a candidate behind in the popular vote by just 3 points would want to use every tool in the shed to stay in the running.

--Dana Goldstein

To follow up on what I wrote earlier about the Democratic race, David Brooks argues today that this past week has actually been bad for Clinton, not Obama, by noting three phenomena: Obama successfully weathered the Jeremiah Wright flap without suffering permanent campaign damage; re-votes were prevented in Michigan and Florida; the superdelegates are beginning to accept that they must line up behind the pledged delegate winner. Brooks drops Hillary's electability chances from 10 to 5 percernt for these reasons, and then spends the rest of his column describing how terrible it will be for the party for her to proceed on such a slim chance.

I'm not sure if I agree about Michigan and Florida; just because they aren't re-voting doesn't mean we know how their delegates are going to be counted -- if they are to be counted at all. And that uncertainty makes it difficult to pin down uncommitted superdelegates; one suspects they shy away from having to make the tough decision, even though it is clear they are going to have to make that decision eventually. Like it or not, the party leadership is going to have to step in and actually lead; that is, if they want a nominee now, instead of after three months of intraparty infighting while John McCain gets a free ride.

--Mori Dinauer

Matt pointed to this story yesterday, and I have to second how important the big win in the Port of Los Angeles was last week. (In fact, I have an article about it in the next issue of In These Times). But the coalition that came together to force a comprehensive overhaul at the largest port of in the country is certainly big news for the future of progressive coalition-building.

The short version of the story is that in 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act and deregulated the trucking industry, turning drivers into independent contractors. Truckers became responsible for maintenance, route planning and parking, which has been hard on truckers, who average an annual salary of $30,000. So most drive old, polluting diesel rigs, which has trashed the air around the Los Angeles Port, not to mention every other port in the country. California has set a goal of cutting diesel pollution in the state 85 percent by 2020, and the trucks at the port are some of the first targets for action. The problem is, few of the drivers can afford to buy new trucks, which cost upwards of $125,000.

The issue brought together groups as disparate as the Teamsters, the National Resources Defense Council and the American Lung Association under the umbrella of the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports, to force a change in the trucking system. Under the new system, drivers will now be employees of the trucking companies, which will be responsible for getting them new trucks and taking care of those trucks. Drivers will get better wages, benefits, and the right to unionize. Community members get the clean air they've been pushing for over the past 20 years. It truly is an example of the good guys winning, and winning because they were able to merge interests. It's also a strong precedent for all the other ports in the country.

--Kate Sheppard

From our April issue: Robert Kuttner notes that regardless of who the next president is, they will need to soundly reject 30 years of entrenched free-market ideology if they wish to ameliorate the looming economic crisis:

After the Great Crash, it took three agonizing years before the nation had the good fortune to elect Roosevelt, and a decade until the New Deal and the economic stimulus of war finally ended the Great Depression. This time, we are in both better and worse shape. On the plus side, the right did not succeed in repealing the entire New Deal. Thanks to deposit insurance, Social Security, a more activist Federal Reserve, and federal spending of nearly 20 percent of gross domestic product, government can still play much more of a stabilizer role today than in 1929.

On the minus side, the bipartisan right did succeed in repealing far too much financial regulation, hence the current credit crisis; the U.S. is in hock to foreign creditors; the dollar is plunging; unemployment is rising; commodity prices are soaring; stagflation looms; trade policy serves financial elites rather than the nation; and the private financial system may need to be recapitalized, either by foreign governments that share few of our values, or by U.S. taxpayers.

Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

The Las Vegas Review-Journal's Molly Ball has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the record seeming to imply that high-level, uncommitted Democrats are ready to tell Hillary to quit the race:

Question: Do you still think the Democratic race can be resolved before the convention?

Reid: Easy.

Q: How is that?

Reid: It will be done.

Q: It just will?

Reid: Yep.

Q: Magically?

Reid: No, it will be done. I had a conversation with Governor Dean (Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean) today. Things are being done.

Cryptic. But as I wrote yesterday, the tide is truly changing -- power players such as Reid and Nancy Pelosi are now willing to say on the record that they believe primary campaigning should end after the remaining states have voted and pledged delegates have been allotted. That means things are looking dismal for the Clinton camp, since extending the race indefinitely into a superdelegate fight is their only practical strategy.

--Dana Goldstein

An organic strawberry farmer in Idaho is running for Sen. Larry Craig's Senate seat under the name Pro-Life. The man formerly known as Marvin Pro-Life Richardson was barred from using his once-middle name during his quixotic 2006 gubernatorial run because of Idaho's policy prohibiting "slogans" from appearing on the ballot. The Associated Press reports:

Now, though, officials in the Idaho secretary of state's office say they have no choice because Pro-Life is his full and only name. He says he will run for the highest state office on the ballot every two years for the rest of his life, advocating murder charges for doctors who perform abortions and for women who obtain the procedure.

Wow. Do you think voters will fall for this ploy? Here at the office, Ann is wondering if she can change her name to Barack Obama and run for city council.

--Dana Goldstein

It isn't surprising that the 2008 GOP playbook against Barack Obama will focus on race. But as Paul Waldman has discovered, the attacks will be anything but subtle:

The voters Obama needs, it is now sometimes said, are the "Reagan Democrats," those blue-collar whites who rejected their traditional ties to the Democratic party to support Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. But one of the things that has been forgotten about the Reagan Democrats is that the phenomenon was built almost entirely on racial resentment. The question now is, will those voters be receptive to a black candidate? At their birth nearly a quarter century ago, the answer most certainly would have been no. ...

It's almost three decades later, and American opinions on race have become far more progressive in the interim. But Greenberg's point about how "progressive symbols and themes have been redefined in racial and pejorative terms" points to an effort at which Reagan excelled but Republicans continued after he was gone. They successfully defined nearly the entire project of government in domestic affairs as taking money from hard-working white people and giving it to shiftless blacks. When Newt Gingrich wanted to fight Bill Clinton's spending bills, he offered a new version of Reagan's "welfare queen" -- the nefarious money pit known as "midnight basketball," a catch-all for efforts to give inner-city kids an alternative to hanging out on streetcorners. It may have been offered only a tiny bit of federal funds, but the specter of taxpayer money going to black teenagers was just too much to stomach. As Gingrich understood as well as anyone, merely invoking certain kinds of government spending is enough to activate associations with undeserving or even threatening blacks in the minds of many voters. (One reason why: as copious media research has demonstrated, news programs are more likely to show images of African-Americans when they talk about poverty, welfare, and drugs -- despite the fact that most poor people, welfare recipients, and drug users are white.) And let's not forget that it isn't just blue-collar whites who are susceptible to racial appeals. The working class hardly has a monopoly on racist sentiments.

Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

Good article about Iraq from McClatchy:

A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.
Simultaneously, in the strategic southern port city of Basra, where Sadr's Mahdi militia is in control, the Iraqi government launched a crackdown in the face of warnings by Sadr's followers that they'll fight government forces if any Sadrists are detained. By 1 a.m. Arab satellite news channels reported clashes between the Mahdi Army and police in Basra.

The freeze on offensive activity by Sadr's Mahdi Army has been a major factor behind the recent drop in violence in Iraq, and there were fears that the confrontation that's erupted in Baghdad and Basra could end the lull in attacks, assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.

As the U.S. military recorded its 4,000th death in Iraq, U.S. officials in Baghdad warned again Monday that drawing down troops too quickly could collapse Iraq's fragile security situation.

Was there ever a more obvious instance of a monopoly than the merger of XM and Sirius, the two providers of satellite radio services? It's no surprise, of course, that yesterday the Bush administration Justice Department approved the deal, which will affect 17 million listeners. The upside will be that consumers won't have to purchase two separate subscription services to listen to their favorite shows; currently, for example, if you want to listen to Snoop Dogg, you have to buy XM, while NPR is available only on Sirius. The downside is that the merger runs the risk of fostering the same homogenization in satellite radio that Clear Channel has brought to FM radio, though admittedly, XM and Sirius are much more committed to musical diversity and independence than Clear Channel ever was, as a company with deep ties to conservative politics.

The FCC could still block the deal, and commissioners have said they're undecided. So stay tuned.

--Dana Goldstein

A couple weeks ago, I asked why the undecided superdelegates haven't just come out in favor of one of the candidates, rather than letting the contest drag onward to the convention, considering that in the end, they would be the deciding vote anyway. Kevin Drum thought it was a good question, and the Politico ran a piece last Friday that took the question to its reasonable conclusion: what does Hillary Clinton's campaign think?

Well now we have an answer. At mrsuper.org ("An undeclared superdelegate debunks myths, offers insight and answers questions about the 2008 Democratic nomination process for President of the United States."), the anonymous superdelegate author responds to my original question:

There are a couple of reasons. The first is that there could be Supers who want to vote against the way their state voted, and they want the process to play out in order to justify their switch - it provides political cover (how each chooses to justify that is up to them). The second and more salient reason is because the appearance of Supers endorsing at this point, when the race is this close, could give the appearance of tampering as each individual endorsement exponentially affects the delegate race more than any single state election. It's bad PR for the Party if a race is seen as being fixed by Party insiders.

Real superdelegate or just some guy with an opinion? Persuasive or not? Discuss.

--Mori Dinauer

• It's a quiet day in campaigns -- maybe we've just run out of things to say. However, there are a couple of new developments including a new push by Clinton to promote economic issues.
• Chris Hayes brings us the latest in anti-Obama smears.
• The idea of a mini-convention for superdelegates is starting to take hold.
• The DNC highlights some of McCain's flip flops and distortions of his own record.
• Via Jonathan Martin, with the Republican primary over, reporters are starting to examine McCain's record in more depth. USA Today details his links to telecom lobbyists and the LA Times examines his spotty record of predictions on the war.
• Noam Scheiber reports on Democratic fears of a bruising brokered convention.
• Evan Bayh, Clinton supporter, suggests a completely wacky way of deciding who's winning the primary that -- suprise! -- shows Clinton in the lead.
• Last week the Washington Post's Fact Checker column pointed out that not only did Clinton not dodge sniper fire when she landed in Bosnia with Sinbad, she was actually met by a child who read a poem about love. A new video on YouTube summarizes in handy film-trailer format -- very funny, unless you're Clinton. Her campaign says she "misspoke."
• Hagel may not back McCain.

--Sam Boyd

Defense News:

The U.S. plans to urge Britain to launch a "surge" in Basra to combat increasing violence in the southern Iraqi region, the Sunday Mirror newspaper reported.

Britain, which has around 4,100 troops in Iraq, transferred control to Iraqi forces in December last year but could now be asked to step up its role again amid top-level concern about the situation, the paper said....

But unnamed senior British civil service sources told the Sunday Mirror that Britain would be highly reluctant to go back into Basra because of pressure at home to pull troops out.

"We do not have enough troops for a surge ourselves. The hope is that we can train enough Iraqi army recruits in the next year to cope with the inter-tribal warfare going on in Basra," one source quoted by the paper said.

• I'm glad that the Surge is going so well that we require additional British troops; typically when we are "winning" we require fewer, rather than more, troops over time.
• I'm hardly surprised that the British are sounding reluctant on this. While we were surging last year they were downsizing, and I can't imagine that the Brown government is too terribly excited about stepping more deeply into the mess that Blair made.

--Robert Farley

Over at the Democratic Strategist James Vega, a strategic marketing consultant, takes a look at the big picture of how the the various formally unaffiliated partisan groups will attempt to shape the contours of the 2008 election. He notes that while a lot of money will be flying around on both the right and left, that money won't necessarily be spent in the same capacities:

[B]ecause the large liberal-progressive organizations are generally more oriented toward grass-roots and GOTV organizing then big-money advertising campaigns, it is probable that in the specific area of TV and radio advertising by independent committees the pro-Republican advantage will be even greater. This is particularly disturbing because independent committee money -- free from the need for the candidate to directly endorse its message -- is the best tool for the most dishonest and scurrilous type of attack ads.

Vega doesn't go into great detail about what these negative ads will look like, but he doesn't have to. Voters already have negative associations with certain candidates; all the ad does is subtly unlock that subconscious association. He also suggests how to potentially fight back, but warns that such damage control has to be started preemptively -- something that a drawn-out primary works decidedly against. One such group that has been capitalizing on this is the Republican Majority Campaign, discussed at length here by TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel. "[A]s for the decision to attack both candidates, [Republican Majority Campaign's chairman Gary] Kreep said the group was working to 'soften them up for the general election.... We decided we wanted to be out front on it.'"

When these guys start rolling out their A material we're going to wish we were back in the halcyon days of discussing the Democrats' "race problem."

--Mori Dinauer

"This delegate dissonance wasn't anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature. They had the record of revolutionary America to go on."

This is all in the context of an opinion piece dedicated to describing the Democratic Party as inherently undemocratic. Leaving aside that it's John "wiretap 'n' torture" Yoo who's making this argument, it astonishes me that he can't even accurately describe how presidents get elected in this country. Yoo claims that presidents are directly elected by the people so that they can remain independent of Congress. I guess he slept through Constituional Law 101 at Yale because that's not what Article II says (hey, explains his unitary executive theories, too!). Anyone who took elementary civics knows that presidents are chosen by electors who are chosen by the several states, which them makes beholden, if anything, to those several states.

As if this isn't bad enough, Yoo then goes on to describe the 2008 election as akin to that of 1824, where John Quincy Adams won on electors, rather than the popular vote, and the matter was settled in Congress (bad!), just as Art. II, section 1 specifies. Curious Yoo wouldn't think of a more contemporary example like, say, the election of his former boss, but then it wouldn't be a Democrat usurping the will of the people which leaves the question of why the WSJ would publish something like this in the first place.

--Mori Dinauer

I wanted to give Bill Clinton the benefit of the doubt on his "two people who loved this country" and "instead of all this other stuff" comments on Friday, which I were played on loop on broadcast news over the weekend. It seemed clear enough to me that he was implying that Barack Obama is not candidate who loves this country, which I've noted before seems to be a meme the Clinton campaign is promoting consciously. The reaction to the reaction seems to reinforce that. But maybe I'm just being to hard on Bill Clinton. What do TAPPED readers think?

--Kate Sheppard

Here's an interesting lesson in how to bias poll results. Compare this new CBS poll on public opinion following Barack Obama's speech last week on race in America with this new poll from Insider Advantage. Note the different phrasing and significantly different results.

In the Insider Advantage poll, folks were asked if they are "aware" of the "situation regarding Sen. Barack Obama’s church pastor," and 82 percent said they were. Eighty-three percent said they are "aware of Obama’s speech on Tuesday" in which he "addressed the issue of his pastor." "Taking all this into account," 20 percent said they were more likely to vote for Obama and 49 percent said they were less likely to. Note the lack of any concrete statements about what the speech was about, and the prolific use of ambiguous scare words to create the impression of controversy. When people are asked about the substance of the speech, however, the results were considerably different. From the CBS poll:

Sixty-nine percent of voters who have heard or read about Obama’s speech say he did a good job addressing the issue of race relations, and 63 percent of voters following the events say they agree with Obama's views on race relations. Seventy-one percent say he did a good job explaining his relationship with Wright.

This really just goes to show the degree to which the perception of controversy fans the flames of animosity and distrust. Asked to engage in the real issues, people are both more understanding and more likely to agree with Obama's assessment of race in America offered in the speech. Of course, the folks over at The National Review are heralding the Insider poll since it helps them perpetuate the idea that Americans are turning away from the scary black candidate. They seem to think it's the more honest assessment of the impact of the speech, because Insider Advantage "carefully crafted the poll’s questions" so as not to mention "race" or "controversy." Right, because ambiguity and insinuation always make for better poll results. At least when you're The National Review.

--Kate Sheppard

The religious right will love this: John and Cindy McCain's 23-year old daughter, Meghan, the McCainBlogette, has taken to the pages of GQ to proclaim her love for all things, er, not the least bit culturally conservative.

Of the MTV show "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," Meghan gushed, “It’s a bisexual-dating show! It’s hilarious!” Meghan raved about burlesque stripper Dita Von Teese, saying, "I love the way she dresses. If I could look like that all day, I would." (Von Teese, by the way, used to be married to Marilyn Manson, he of androgynous goth infamy.) About Barack Obama, she admitted, "universally women find him attractive. Whatever.” Then Megan straight-out rejected Mike Huckabee as her dad's running mate:

That’s not going to happen. I don’t think they’d be a good match for a lot of reasons and am not even sure if that’s what Huckabee’s going for, anyway. I think he wants to be the head of the evangelical movement.

Megan also told the reporter, Greg Veis, that she's into "metrosexual," "yuppie," "journalist" types like himself. Was she flirting? She followed with the following advice to any men who might be interested in her: "If you’re an investment banker, don’t hit on me. You can quote me. I’m not interested.”

Meghan even admitted to voting for John Kerry in 2004, after George W. Bush's team leveraged dirty tricks to push her dad out of the presidential race in 2000. But the biggest shocker was that she refused to identify as a Republican, saying, "I’m an Independent. Socially liberal, economically conservative."

Veis concludes that the McCain campaign has given Meghan the freedom to speak candidly in an attempt at making the 71-year old candidate seem younger to moderate swing voters. Do you think this strategy works, or will it just further alienate the GOP social conservative base? It's worth pointing out, of course, that McCain's positions on social issues have little to do with his daughter's “socially liberal” predilections. He's firmly anti-marriage equality, anti-Roe v. Wade, pro-abstinence education...and the list goes on and on. Meghan, though, seems like a decent girl who, as Amanda Marcotte points out, seems desperate to bust out of the constraints of GOP femininity.

--Dana Goldstein

Perhaps inspired by recent increased media scrutiny of John McCain's legislative record and reputation for being a maverick, the DNC has created a lovely web site where John McCain debates ... John McCain (H/T Marc Ambinder). Here's hoping this gets more attention than similar efforts from last year.

--Mori Dinauer

Uncertain about the presidential candidates' positions on the economy? As Tom Schaller noted earlier, advisers to each have a quick synopsis in the Washington Post today. Gene Sperling, speaks on behalf of Clinton's desire to apply a "Main Street Test" to economic policy. Meanwhile, Austan Goolsbee offers a 3-step plan that preemptively tackles bad foreclosures and the housing bubble, as well puts money back in Americans' pockets. For his part, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin offers a combination of tax credits, tax cuts, and modernizing the unemployment and training programs.

Let the debate begin.

--Mori Dinauer

I'm going to take a stab at starting a periodic new TAPPED feature called “This Should Make You Nervous.” Herewith, and with no great fanfare, is the inaugural edition, on the theme of presidential candidate electability:

If you’re Barack Obama, this should make you nervous.

If you’re Hillary Clinton, this should make you nervous.

And if you’re John McCain, this should make you really nervous.

--Tom Schaller

TAP's senior correspondent Spencer Ackerman spoke at length with Barack Obama's senior foreign policy advisers and discovers a radical reconceptualization of the War on Terror:

This ability to see the world from different perspectives informs what the Obama team hopes will replace the Iraq War mind-set: something they call dignity promotion. "I don't think anyone in the foreign-policy community has as much an appreciation of the value of dignity as Obama does," says Samantha Power, a former key aide and author of the groundbreaking study of U.S. foreign policy and genocide, A Problem From Hell. "Dignity is a way to unite a lot of different strands [of foreign-policy thinking]," she says. "If you start with that, it explains why it's not enough to spend $3 billion on refugee camps in Darfur, because the way those people are living is not the way they want to live. It's not a human way to live. It's graceless -- an affront to your sense of dignity." ...

This is why, Obama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise -- because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place. "It's about attacking pools of potential terrorism around the globe," Gration says. "Look at Africa, with 900 million people, half of whom are under 18. I'm concerned that unless you start creating jobs and livelihoods we will have real big problems on our hands in ten to fifteen years." ...

If he wins in the general election, he will face a crush of foreign-policy problems so enormous that they risk overwhelming even the most competent, experienced national-security team. Iraq is, of course, a nightmare, and al-Qaeda is not just sitting still in its Pakistani safe haven. To propose rebooting U.S. foreign policy now is, to say the least, ambitious. Many military leaders consider Obama an unknown quantity. At a recent talk, Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks said that officers and soldiers serving in Iraq thought that McCain and Clinton would both pursue a foreign-policy commensurate with Bush's, but Obama left them puzzled. Once in office, Obama might feel compelled to turn his back on the critique he makes on the trail.

But while the doubts about Obama contain fair points, they also, to a certain degree, reflect a triumph of the Iraq War mind-set. Why not demand the destruction of al-Qaeda? Why not pursue the enlightened global leadership promised by liberal internationalism? Why not abandon fear? What is it we have to fear, exactly?

Doctrine of the future? Read and discuss here.

--The Editors

I can't overstate the influence of MSM articles like this one and this one, which finally outright assert that Hillary Clinton's only pathway to the Democratic nomination is through the rather anti-democratic means of using superdelegates to overturn both the popular vote and the pledged delegate count (people have been reading our own Mark Schmitt!). The Obama campaign narrative and the media narrative are beginning to converge on this point. Check out the last 30 seconds of this video of an Obama campaign event last Friday in Salem, Oregon. Asked to explain why, in a nutshell, people should choose him over Clinton, Obama said, "She doesn't believe, I think, in bottom up democracy. And if you don't believe in that, you're not going to change Washington. You'll tinker around the edges, but you're not going to bring the kind of change the American people are desperate for."

Hat tip: Jack and Jill Politics.

--Dana Goldstein

Joe Romm notes one of the many problems with John McCain's op-ed in the Financial Times last week on the role of the U.S. and Europe in world leadership. Namely, that the only energy source he mentions to address the "looming threats of climate change and the degradation of our planet" is nuclear energy:

New technologies hold great promise. We need to unleash the power and innovation of the marketplace in order to meet our environmental challenges. Right now safe, climate-friendly nuclear energy is a critical way both to improve the quality of our air and to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.

That dependence, I am afraid, has become a vulnerability for both the US and Europe and a source of leverage for the oil and gas exporting autocracies. The US needs to wean itself off oil faster. Europe needs a comprehensive energy policy so that Russia’s oil and gas monopolies cannot behave as agents of political influence.

But as Romm points out, nuclear energy can't really solve our dependence on oil, since less than 2 percent of our electricity comes from oil. Moreover, we import the majority of the uranium we use to create nuclear energy, and thanks to a recent deal the Bush administration made with Russia, a good share of that uranium comes from Russia -- one of the autocracies he wants to distance us from.

This just reaffirms the fact that John McCain is not serious about taking action on climate change or energy independence, and would do little to make the U.S. a "model country" in that regard.

--Kate Sheppard

Over at the Carpetbagger, Steve Benen has a nice little takedown of John McCain’s tax position and fiscal solvency. The Arizona senator supports continuing George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which would cost the Treasury about $400 billion, or somewhere between 10 and 12 times as much as if McCain, Lord Supreme of All Mavericks, were able to eliminate every single earmark in the federal budget—and good luck with that, sir. (Related note: This morning the Washington Post is running on its op-ed page side-by-side-by-side commentaries from economic advisers working for McCain’s as well as Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s campaigns.

It continues to amaze me how McCain gets such a free pass on ridiculous statements and more ridiculous proposals. If McCain proposed putting eliminating the federal deficit by putting all the artifacts in the National Archives up for sale on eBay--and added, during his announcement, that he believed the eBay staff was being trained by Iran--he would get away with it.

--Tom Schaller

• Patrick French, an English historian and biographer of the Tibetan cultural movement, argues in the Saturday New York Times that the Dali Lama, despite being a valuable spiritual leader, has been ineffectual politically.
• Colbert I. King explains why Obama sticks with his church in Saturday's Washington Post.
• Obama's speech on race might have salved any permanent damage to his campaign, as this Gallup daily tracking poll suggests.
• Wall Street Journal Online for non-subscribers?
• The LA Times runs a Sunday story on John McCain's Iraq gamble and how his career has informed his foreign policy decisions.
• Matt Yglesias argues in favor of partisanship in The Atlantic.
• Finally, Barney Frank wants to legalize it. You know, it.

I received my doctorate from North Carolina, so I'm obviously not an objective observer about Duke, who lost to West Virginia Saturday in the NCAA men’s tourney. And let me say up front that there is plenty of unjustified, unchecked snobbery in Tar Heel Land, especially as directed toward those "filthy farmers" at North Carolina State, among others.

But for those unfamiliar with Duke Disdain, the roots of which have a lot to do their penchant for fielding teams chock full of court-slapping pretty boys (and mostly white boys) from affluent families in New Jersey or someplace, and who were high school All-Americas and state players-of-the-year (or both) before coming to Duke, you must read the piece in yesterday's New York Times quoting WVU players, after the game, expressing utter amazement that Duke's team boasts eight high school All-Americas on its roster. (The Mountaineers, like the vast majority of Division 1 programs, have none.)

In college basketball recruiting there are a few teams, Duke perhaps most especially, who "eat first." So when Duke is starved out of the tourney by a team like WVU and almost one round earlier against Belmont—teams that must pick from the leftovers after the big schools gobble up most of the top talent—well, it's amazing, because it's so rare, to hear players like WVU’s come right out and say what every fan is thinking but the announcers and even most sports columnist will rarely say. But that’s exactly what the Mountaineer players did, and bless their hearts for that.

--Tom Schaller

President Nicholas Sarkozy has announced that France will cut its airborne nuclear weapons by one third. France currently operates two thirds of the "nuclear triad", which consists of land based ballistic missiles, submarine launched missiles, and airborne nuclear weapons. France gave up the land based missiles several years ago, and is now cutting back on the bomber force. Alex Harrowell on French nuclear doctrine:

France, like Israel and the UK (although the UK doesn’t have a published doctrine), has a traditional policy of minimal deterrence. This argues that nuclear weapons are subject to diminishing returns; the consequences of having all your cities nuked once are not noticeably better than twice, three times, or more, so the certainty of retaliation is much more important than its scale. “Superiority” is probably meaningless, and anyway uneconomic if not actively dangerous.

Of the declared nuclear powers, only Russia and the United States have robust capabilities in all three legs of the triad, although the Chinese submarine force is growing in capability. The United Kingdom operates only ballistic missile submarines, and the others have a combination of ballistic missile and airborne forces.

This probably shouldn't be read as a step on the road to French nuclear disarmament. I think that there's a considerably greater chance that the United Kingdom could give up its weapons in the next couple of decades; the expense of replacing the Trident submarine launched ballistic missile will be immense, and Britain has a much closer relationship with the United States than France. Nevertheless, assuming a minimum deterrent (and ballistic missile submarines provide a nearly indestructible second-strike capability) the fewer the nuclear warheads, the better.

--Robert Farley

The Associated Press' count of the U.S death toll in Iraq has reached 4,000. A roadside bomb killed four soldiers yesterday.

--Dana Goldstein

• Bill Richardson endorses Obama, bringing with him his legions of supporters... or not. The CW seems to be that this may signal a shift among superdelegates towards Obama, but I doubt it.
• The Politico brings out the big guns (Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen) to point out that, despite what you'd think from reading media coverage of the race, Clinton has only the slimmest chance of victory. If this gets picked up as the dominant narrative it could sink what little chance Clinton still has.
• TPM Muckraker looks into the Obama passport kerfluffle, and explains the circumstances surrounding the accessing of Clinton and McCain's files as well. More analysis and some unanswered questions from MSNBC's David Shuster here.
• In case it wasn't clear, the Florida and Michigan revotes are more dead than Dick Cheney's heart.
• Jamie Kirchik believes that all the talk about Obama's race speech is obscuring the real issue -- would he have nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yes, really. Oh, and if the answer is no he has no business being president according to Kirchik. Never mind that there were probably other ways to demonstrate a heretofore unknown weapon than dropping it on two major metropolitan areas...
• The lottery for protest spaces at the DNC are over and everyone is happy except a group calling itself "recreate 68". If they really wanted to recreate 68, they shouldn't have a permit anyway, right?
  
• We've seen some dumb spin this race, but this is the dumbest I've seen in a good long while.
• I see John McCain's lips moving, but all I hear is Grover Norquist talking.

--Sam Boyd

Like Addie, I was somewhat surprised by Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama today, since before dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination, he was Hillary Clinton's staunchest defender in debates. One might even have thought he was buttering Clinton up in hopes of perhaps landing a post in her administration. Of course, Richardson says it's nothing personal, but I, too was struck by the line on supporting a candidate who "rejects the politics of pitting race against race." It does indeed seem as if he is implying that the Clinton campaign has been doing just that. Richardson, who aspired to be the first Latino president, can clearly understand the effect that hate crimes, economic hardship and scapegoating have had on race relations in America, so I'm not surprised that Obama's speech pushed him towards an endorsement.

It will be interesting, though, to see whether the speech has an effect on the larger Latino voting bloc, which has clearly helped Clinton in many primaries thus far. But as many studies have shown, the notion that there's a giant "rift" between African Americans and Latinos in the United States is largely fictional. In the primaries, I think it's been less racial tension than name recognition that has caused a gap between the candidates among Latino voters. It seems highly possible that Obama's speech and Richardson's endorsement might help close it.

--Kate Sheppard

Courtney Martin thought Michel Gondry's Be Kind, Rewind was a great commentary on the role of creativity in forging community:

Everything about the Jersey town where Be Kind, Rewind takes place is dying and decrepit. The viewer has the sense from the very start that the townspeople are doomed to lose. The moneyed developers' invasion appears inevitable. Corporate, Hollywood jerks (led by the frigid and funny Sigourney Weaver) show up demanding that the homemade videos be destroyed because of copyright violations (or else Jerry and Mike will be charged with fines with too many zeroes to count). And then there's the ridiculous task at hand of recreating the store's entire video library.

But in the end, it is the townspeople's commitment to one another, their tenacious creativity, their joy and spontaneity, that actually makes the lightening-speed march into the future -- the focus on money and legality and technology -- irrelevant. They win because they're not even playing the game of uber-American consumption and competition. They're just hanging out, imagining, and creating. Having a good communal laugh. In the end, it is this creativity, kindness, and community that really matter.

--The Editors

The most promising AIDS vaccine in the pipeline was a bust -- and might actually have put participants in field tests at greater risk of becoming infected. Other trials of similar vaccines have also been called off, which raises an important question: is funding for AIDS vaccines a waste of money?

It also raises the question of where to direct funding for HIV/AIDS prevention. Should it go to long-shot vaccines or other, more proven prevention methods, like condom distribution and community awareness campaigns? The Washington Post reports that the National Institutes of Health directed $497 million of its annual budget towards AIDS vaccine research this year. That money could have bought a lot of condoms.

But the debate is a bit misguided. It’s unlikely that NIH funding or Big Pharma money aimed at finding a vaccine would ever be redirected toward prevention and education campaigns. Rather, the vaccine’s failure serves notice that a panacea is still years, if not decades away. And while research toward a vaccine continues -- as it should -- world leaders and the broader global public health community should be spurred by recent failures to recommit to existing prevention strategies.

--Andrew Green

Via Editor and Publisher, John Hagee has told the New York Times Magazine that John McCain sought out his endorsement, that his "love" of Israel is not tied to his bloody and violent view of biblical prophecy about the end-times and the Second Coming of Christ, and that his church loves gay people.

The first revelation is not really news. Largely shunned by the religious right political establishment, McCain sought out Hagee -- a rising national figure due to his burgeoning organization, Christians United for Israel, that made a nice fit with McCain's foreign policy, when the anti-choice elites were still miffed about McCain-Feingold and his "agents of intolerance" remark. The two had a tete-a-tete over breakfast in San Antonio, and Hagee gave his blessing to McCain's position on Israel.

As to his second statement: it's laughable.

And as to the third, here's what Hagee had to say about homosexuality in his 2000 book endorsing George W. Bush for president (God's Candidate for America: Letting Your Light Shine in a Dark World, Global Evangelism Television, 2000):

Throughout the Bible, without any hint of compromise, God makes it clear that homosexual conduct is not just wrong -- homosexuality is an abomination. It is sin, plain and simple. Homosexuality and lesbianism are nothing more than perversions of God-ordained sexuality. . . .

Above all, homosexuals want normalcy, acceptance, and equivalence with heterosexuals. Satan being the father of liars, he does not want the truth told about his demonic perversion of family sexuality; instead he offers a lie, a perversion that twists "not normal" into "happy and carefree." ...

It is a sign of our troubled times, a proof that we are in what Jesus called the "last days," that legislators are having to enact laws spelling out the obvious: that marriage is a unique covenant between a man and a woman. Why is this happening? Because the forces of darkness, in their unending assault on the family, are seeking to redefine away the uniqueness of the family unit to where any group of people could seek the legal protection of family status.

If Satan can destroy the family, if he can erode away the societal foundations that undergird the traditional upbringing of children, then he can capture the next generation ...

Meanwhile, Hagee reports through his ministry newsletter this week that he has needed the protection offered by his devoted Jewish friends from all those terrible attacks he's had to endure from the media:

I want to thank each of you for every loving expression which made my 50th Anniversary in the ministry a moment in time I will cherish forever.

I received your letters, cards, plaques, a beautiful masterpiece of art, flowers, cowboy boots and an 8' Menorah from the Jewish Community of San Antonio and Houston. It is now being made in Jerusalem and will be placed in our Prayer Garden in about 6 months.

I also received a love gift from "The Friends of John Hagee" across the nation. Thank you from the depths of my heart for your loving expressions.

Perhaps the most practical and unique gift I received was from the Jewish Community in Los Angeles. It was a construction hard hat that was given to me to "protect you from all the brick bats being thrown at you in the media."

God bless the Jewish people...they are so very practical at all times. And truth be told, I never needed that hat more than right now! ...

The majority of our days are behind us...but the best is yet to be. The latter days shall be greater than the former because the God we serve takes us from glory to glory. The last stop is just inside the Eastern Gate; the glory of which is beyond the ability of the human mind to conceive.

I am now preaching a series titled, "Vote the Bible." It is a 3 part sermon series that covers the following:

* God's Purpose for the Church
* Should Christians get involved in the Political Process?

* The Bible's Position on Abortion
* Defending Religious Freedom...Is It Ever Right to Defy the Government?

* War: Is It Ever Justified?
* The Crisis of Education
* The Coming Economic Crash
* The Immigration Crisis
* The Marriage Crisis
* Global Warming: Fact or Farce?

I want you to get this series, listen to it until this oasis of truth becomes a part of your knowledge base and then give it to friends and family. This series can make a difference as America prepares to select our next President.

Well, it can't be any mystery whose side he's going to come down on in that sermon series. Let's see if McCain gets ready to denounce or reject any of it.

--Sarah Posner

Dana Goldstein reports, the ideology behind school vouchers is being debated beyond America's borders:

Undoubtedly, Canadians are far from immune to the combustible racial discussions with which Americans are so familiar. But what's strange about the Afrocentric education controversy is the way in which Canadian media have, almost without realizing it, absorbed the twists and turns of the American "school choice" debate, some of them ideologically-motivated and intellectually dishonest.

In January, for example, Canadian newspapers and television networks reported on a pro-Afrocentric-schools lecture by former Milwaukee public schools superintendent Howard Fuller in front of the conservative Economic Club of Toronto. Milwaukee is the location of the largest private school voucher program ever enacted. Currently, over 17,000 students there, the great majority of them low-income African Americans, participate in the program. "The fact of the matter is that you already have separation," said Fuller, who is black. "Poor people in Toronto are not swimming in the mainstream." About the Milwaukee voucher program, he claimed, "Thousands of lives have been saved because this program exists."

What Fuller didn't mention is that independent assessments of Milwaukee's voucher program have consistently shown that students attending private schools on the government's dime perform no better academically than socioeconomically similar children in traditional public schools.

Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

The March issue of The American Prospect carries a special report, "Mobilizing Millennials: Will Their Economic Raw Deal Fuel the Next New Deal?" in which I have an article, "A New Deal of Their Own." Here I pursue a theme that I have raised in Freedom's Power and in a series of articles (see an earlier post on my website on "The Idea of a Young America Program").

The persistent problems among America's children are well known. What's less widely appreciated is that during the past 35 years these problems have increasingly extended into young adulthood. But not all age groups have seen their fortunes sink; the economic situation of the elderly has improved markedly, thanks in large measure to public policy. I argue:

As this contrast suggests, the difficulties facing the young generally -- both children and young adults -- are the result of long-standing limitations in social policy whose effects have been aggravated by recent changes in the economy and the family. The three great waves of social reform since the 1930s -- the New Deal, the post-World War II GI Bill, and the Great Society -- failed to establish durable policies in support of the young.

It's this historical point that is the key contribution of this piece. Each of these previous eras of reform in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1960s originally included a substantial component targeted to young adults. But unlike the programs for the elderly, the programs for the young were never successfully institutionalized, and those that have remained have been supported by discretionary spending and proved far more vulnerable to cutbacks during recessions.

How to remedy that problem? I've offered several proposals. The first step, however, may be recognition by the young themselves that America hasn't done right by them and that they need a new deal of their own.

Young people interested in these issues should consider attending a conference of the Roosevelt Institution April 9 in Washington D.C.: "Toward a New New Deal: FDR's Liberalism and the Future of American Democracy."

--Paul Starr

Kate Sheppard talks to state party representatives and finds frustration over the status of Florida's delegates, compounded by reminders of the 2000 election:

While much of the coverage of the Florida question has focused on the back-and-forth between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Democrats in the state like [Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen] Thurman have a host of concerns stemming from the delegate debacle. But other than flat-out rejecting another vote, consensus in the state is not clear on what they'd like to see happen.

Foremost among their shared concerns are the record 1.7 million Democrats that came out to vote in January -- more than quadruple the total the number that voted in the 2004 primary – which most state Democrats feel shouldn't be ignored by the national party. Any attempts to vote again would produce nowhere near that level of turnout, and it would expend financial resources better spent on ensuring this coveted state doesn't go red once again in November. More importantly, the Florida Democrats' firm stance on upholding their January vote forces the DNC to make a decision on how to deal with states that buck the primary scheme -- an issue that's bound to come up again. ...

Ana Cruz, a Clinton adviser for the state of Florida and the volunteer chair of Florida for Hillary, says that the ongoing debate over the delegates is exceptionally frustrating for Democrats who worked on the 2000 election in the state. Cruz knows those frustrations well, having served as the executive director of the state party and the deputy finance chair for Gore's presidential campaign.

"A lot of us fought so hard in 2000 to win this state. And then for the DNC to turn around and treat us like the red-headed stepchild once again, it's just not fair, and it's just not right," said Cruz.

"People want their vote to be heard, regardless of what the DNC says," Cruz continued. "They've been disenfranchised since 2000, and they're not going to tolerate it."

Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

While I was eating dinner last night, Lee Habeeb, the 47-year old conservative talk radio producer who was revealed Wednesday as one of the creators of the incendiary "Is Obama Wright?" viral video, surprised me by calling my cell phone in response to my interview request from earlier in the week. He described himself as an avid old school hip hop fan who makes anti-Obama videos for "the joy" of it. Habeeb, who was quite chatty, suggested that GOP operatives have asked to buy the rights to his video, which fanned the flames of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy by depicting both Wright and Obama as stereotypical “angry black men.” Here are excerpts from our conversation:

You chose Public Enemy's rap song "Fight the Power" as the soundtrack for your video, and included a clip replaying Michelle Obama calling her husband a "black man" over and over. Many people have called the video racist. How would you respond?

The Public Enemy song, it’s simple irony for people who were rap fans in the 90s, and I’m a big old school rap fan from back in the '90s, when there was actually good rap. What did Public Enemy say was the National Anthem of the 1990s? "Fight the Power." So we used that song to say, "Why is Obama the only candidate on stage during the National Anthem without his hand over his heart?" He has a different relationship to his flag than those other people do. ... But he had plenty of flags around him when he made the speech [on race in America Tuesday]. I think there were eight. ... It's not that [Obama's] not a good patriot, that he’s not a good man, that he’s not a good citizen. No. I just think that he’s a phony on this issue.

How does your employer feel about you being revealed as the creator of the video?

I work for a great company [the Salem Radio Network] that has basically said, "We don’t control the free speech of our employees in their free time.” I said, "Would you guys mind if I do things on the side?" And they said no.

Would you ever want to work in political advertising?

No, we don’t want to do ads, though we’ve been approached.

Who has approached you?

Republicans have asked to just simply buy it from us. No names need to be mentioned, but there's been approaches. We’re doing this for fun. I already have a job, I want this to be a joy. And that's what it is, a joy.

What do you think of the McCain campaign suspending a staffer for disseminating your video?

I think shame on John McCain, because he’s basically saying to his campaigners, "Don’t have opinions."

Habeeb's "NHaleMedia" already has a new video out on YouTube. He describes it as a demonstration that Obama is "one man with two standards...one for a black old senile coot and one for a white old senile coot." It depicts Obama during an interview with MSNBC's David Gregory last year, saying that he believed Don Imus should be fired for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy headed hos." It compares that statement to various Obama quotes sympathetic to Jeremiah Wright.

Habeed told me that an upcoming video will ridicule Chris Matthews for supposedly supporting Obama, and will poke fun at Matthews Obama for dancing on air with talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. (Pssst...Ellen is a lesbian!) "You'll die laughing!" Habeeb gushed, but then sort of lost me when he explained that by using "Who Let the Dogs Out" as the soundtrack, "We're going to imply that Chris Matthews left broadcasting to be a rapper!"

--Dana Goldstein

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has, at long last, endorsed one of the Democratic contenders for the party's presidential nomination, and that choice is Barack Obama. As a former political appointee of Bill Clinton (served as energy secretary and, later, U.N. ambassador), it's interesting that Richardson chose to endorse Obama before the convention. According to Richardson's e-mailed endorsement statement (received via the Bilerico Project), he did so partly because of the speech Obama delivered about race earlier this week:

Earlier this week, Senator Barack Obama gave an historic speech. that addressed the issue of race with the eloquence, sincerity, and optimism we have come to expect of him...

As a Hispanic, I was particularly touched by his words. I have been troubled by the demonization of immigrants--specifically Hispanics--by too many in this country. Hate crimes against Hispanics are rising as a direct result and now, in tough economic times, people look for scapegoats and I fear that people will continue to exploit our racial differences--and place blame on others not like them.

The current story about Hispanics voting in the Democratic primaries is that they're Clinton's to lose. Whether or not the endorsement of a New Mexico leader will matter to Latinos in Pennsylvania, whose big-deal primary takes place in 30 days, remains to be seen.

But reading Richardson's missive, my eyes kept wandering back to this paragraph:

Senator Obama has started a discussion in this country long overdue and rejects the politics of pitting race against race. He understands clearly that only by bringing people together, only by bridging our differences can we all succeed together as Americans.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this but, in a two-way race, the governor's assertion that the contestant he's endorsed "rejects the politics of pitting race against race" would seem to suggest that the other has not.

--Adele M. Stan

I've been critical of Obama for some poor policy choices and rhetoric when it comes to coal. But Hillary Clinton deserves a good deal of chastising as well. Via WattHead, West Virginia Public Radio conducted this interview with Clinton on Wednseday, in which the candidate made quite a few uncritical comments about the worst possible choice for American energy. To wit:

Coal fits in very importantly because obviously, we have a great reserve of coal.

And:

The challenge is how we are going to continue using coal and meet a lot of our environmental challenges. What I have said is that we'll have a new cap-and-trade system, and we'll take a lot of the money we raise from that cap-and-trade system and invest it in ... clean coal technology.

Clinton also voiced support for "subsidies to coal-to-liquids plants" and said she's "excited" about the prospects of "clean" coal, going so far as to admonish the Bush administration for pulling the plug on FutureGen, the pilot clean coal plant, which was probably one the best decisions of this administration.

Most troubling though is her apparent ignorance about the environmental and health costs of coal mining, which destroys mountains, forests and streams, contaminates drinking water, kills miners, and creates community reliance upon an industry that most acknowledge is on its way out:

I’m not an expert. I don’t know enough to have an independent opinion, but I sure would like people who could be objective, understanding both the economic necessities and environmental damage to come up with some approach that would enable us to retrieve the coal but would enable us to do it in a way that wouldn’t damage the living standards and the other important qualities associated with people living both under the mountaintop and people who are along the streams.

WattHead and David Roberts have much more on how (misguided? ignorant? deceived?) Clinton appeared on this issue.

--Kate Sheppard

Via TPM, this CBS News poll that came out yesterday shows that Obama's appeal among independents is down quite a bit -- he's at 38 percent now, down from 46 percent in February. McCain's at 46 percent, up from 36 percent. Clinton is at 36 percent, up just one point since February. I'm sure the Wright flap hasn't helped Obama much with these voters, especially with the portion that I mentioned the other day. It should also be noted that the poll was conducted March 15-18, which didn't give much time for Obama's speech on Tuesday to affect opinions either favorably or negatively.

Even if those numbers are somewhat disconcerting for the Obama camp -- and for any Democrat interested in winning come November, since Clinton's figures aren't too impressive there either -- overall the poll bodes well for Obama. He's ahead of Clinton among all registered Democrats, has the highest favorability rating, and would beat McCain by a higher margin than Clinton in current head-to-head match-ups. The question of independent voters, however, is a big one, and it will be interesting to see what kind of effect his speech this week had on them.

--Kate Sheppard

Thirty percent of American teenagers drop out of high school. And as the New York Times reports, states are obscuring the extent of the crisis by cooking the books, sending one set of drop-out figures to Washington, and using another to chart progress at home:

California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 percent but reports an estimated 67 percent on a state Web site. Delaware reported 84 percent to the federal government but publicized four lower rates at home.

The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals. ...

Furthermore, although the law requires schools to make only minimal annual improvements in their rates, reporting lower rates to Washington could nevertheless cause more high schools to be labeled failing — a disincentive for accurate reporting.

--Dana Goldstein

• Clinton "equivocates" on the desirability of Mountaintop removal mining.

• A poll shows Clinton doing better against McCain than Obama and suddenly Mark Penn thinks hypothetical matchups matter. Why anyone takes anything he says seriously at this point is beyond me.
• So far the only new information to come out of Clinton's schedules as First Lady is that she held meetings on NAFTA and didn't hold meetings on the Family and Medical Leave Act.
• The right wing is outraged that Obama disrespected his grandmother... really.
• Even David Broder isn't impressed with McCain's rhetoric on Iraq.
• Finally, just for fun, DMX is rather surprised to learn there's a man named Barack Obama running for President.

--Sam Boyd

Today, Lawrence Lessig gave a talk at the National Press Club announcing the launch of Change Congress, an effort Sam Boyd and I looked at last month. Change Congress is premised on ameliorating the dearth of trust and truth in government when it comes to "easy" public policy questions, such as promoting nutritional health and addressing global warming (his examples). The failure of government -- specifically, Congress -- to tackle these issues comes down to one thing in Lessig's view: "improper dependence" on money, an "economy of influence" that breeds "institutional corruption."

Lessig's insight is laudable, for most people understand corruption to be a simple exchange: the greedy member of Congress accepting a suitcase of money in exchange for political favors to a wealthy client, usually a evil corporation with a sinister and equally greedy agenda. This old-style corruption has largely been eradicated, Lessig argued, replaced with something that turns basically honest people into dependents of monied interests. Solving the problem, then, is a matter of "changing the power of money," specifically how it is used in the political process and where it originates.

Enter Change Congress. Taking cues from Wikipedia's model of breaking tasks into "manageable, digestible and segmentable" chunks, individual candidates and citizens can take pledges to support reform and transparency, refuse lobbyist and PAC money, permanently ban earmarks, or introduce public financing into Congressional races -- in any combination or none at all. These pledges are not, however, designed to be putative, like ATR's anti-tax pledge. Rather, they create a relationship between voters and Change Congress candidates, and that involvement creates a sense of purpose -- voters become "invested" in the campaign. If this model sounds familiar, that's because Joe Trippi, architect of the 2004 Howard Dean campaign, consulted with Lessig in creating this approach. But the real innovation is not the pledges, but how they are used to "track" support for reforms and thus map actual vs. pledged support (including a handy interactive map at the Change Congress web site). During the Q&A session, someone asked Lessig if Change Congress would utilize this information to create a database of Change Congress voters that could be used to leverage support challenges to corrupt and entrenched incumbents. Lessig asserted that this was precisely the point of the citizen pledge. The final "layer" would be to actually fund reform, which is where the money bans and public financing elements enter the process. Obviously a major criticism is whether this puts the cart before the horse. If funding reform is the final step, how are Change Congress candidates supposed to get into office in the first place?

Lessig acknowledged that while this "beta" effort should work in theory, it had yet to be proven. As one member of the audience asked, "will this get boots on the ground?" That's the ultimate test, Lessig responded, and indeed it is. However, the example of success embodied by the Dean campaign -- and its progenies -- is, from an organizational perspective, encouraging. Whether it will actually generate candidates conducive to the Change Congress effort remains to be seen. Lessig described the project not as "all or nothing," noting that however people wished to get involved and on what issues was their business. He cited the example of Creative Commons, the last major enterprise he participated in, as functioning in an essentially meritocratic capacity once it had been established. And that appears to be Lessig's ultimate goal: to get Change Congress off the ground, have it be self-sustaining, and involve people who feel left out of the political process.

Matt Stoller asked an interesting question of Lessig: what about the secrecy inherent to the institutions that make up the national security apparatus? How can they be reformed? Lessig did not have an answer, but suggested that by removing earmarks from the process, one leg of the military-industrial complex could be severed. Stoller's question demonstrates that politically, the rules that apply to policy-making simply don't apply in the national security world. Given that reality, we can take heart that it would be the exception to the success of the Change Congress movement -- if we can call it that. For unlike movements that are attached to individual candidates or a particular policy issue, Change Congress transcends the usual arguments about money's corrupting influence and sees the big picture. Corruption isn't the most important problem, Lessig said, but the merely the first problem, which is to say that all our other problems stem from it. He could be right, but rhetorical differences aside, doesn't prioritizing it ensure that it is the most important problem?

2008 might be the year of "change" campaigns, but as far as these things go, this one is as serious as it is ambitious.

--Mori Dinauer

...and does a pretty good job.:

Out of this thin gruel, [Stephen] Hayes attempted to make a meal in the Standard’s pages this week. He lifted as many bullet points from the report as he could that, out of context, seemed to bolster his theory. He then went about attacking reporters who accurately wrote that the study found no direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Hayes tacitly promised his readers that history will ultimately vindicate him, writing that "as much as we have learned from this impressive collection of documents, it is only a fraction of what we will know in 10, 20 or 50 years." And he expressed puzzlement that an administration with an obvious credibility problem had not "done anything to promote the study."

Ah, the treasured "I'll be vindicated by my children's children" strategy; last refuge of the false prophet, but who cares because we'll all be dead anyway. Ackerman also takes on Jeff Goldberg, who like Hayes is relying on the likelihood that none of his readers will bother studying the report on connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq:

What he’s hoping you’re too half-awake to realize is that there’s a difference between generic "terror" groups and Al Qaeda. The report, as I wrote in my piece, does not say, at all, contra to Goldberg’s misleading implication, that Saddam collaborated with Ayman Zawahiri. It says that around 1993, a memo from one of Saddam’s apparatchiks noted, "In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt." Years later, that organization would merge with Al Qaeda. Nowhere in the report does Joint Forces Command substantiate that Saddam and Zawahiri’s group actually, you know, did anything together.

"The goalpost are being moved" is becoming a trite phrase, but it's too accurate not to use here. These men sold us on connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein; having failed to demonstrate any, even after the uncovering of the Iraqi archives and the interrogation of multiple members of the Hussein government and of Al Qaeda, they are left with innuendo about shadowy connections between Hussein and terrorists groups that were, notably, not Al Qaeda.

It's too much to ask that the Weekly Standard will ever disavow or even stop publishing Stephen Hayes, but we could at least hope that The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Slate would refrain from giving Goldberg the opportunity to spout such nonsense.

--Robert Farley

... and smiley faces, apparently. This is the graphic the National Review chose to promote Larry Kudlow's defense of Bush's "confidence" in the economy:

Yeah, why not optimism?

--Ann Friedman

The exact nature of the coming economic recession is largely one to be debated amongst economists. But the fact that it will be national in scope, and will be at the center of an historic election year, will obscure some of the downward effects the recession will have on state and local governments. This report on looming state budget shortfalls from stateline.org is unambiguous about the seriousness of the problem. The big picture:

Today, 22 states have a collective budget shortfall of at least $37 billion, which is about the same size deficit they had at the start of the 2001 recession, said [Iris J.] Lav of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. If the current downturn follows the path of previous recessions, 35 to 40 states could face budget cuts in 2009, the National Governors Association recently estimated. Deficits are a far greater problem for states, because, unlike the federal government, states must make cuts or even raise taxes to balance their budgets. CanagaRetna said 2001 was different because states were coming off the boom times of the 1990s and didn’t have a backlog of unfinished projects as they do now. States are still trying to rein in health care costs and improve their education systems, which together eat up more than 60 percent of state spending. But states also are trying to figure out a way to fix the country’s crumbling infrastructure, pegged at $1.6 trillion, collectively.

The article describes a vicious circle where states slash social programs -- such as closing mental health facilities -- to balance their books and thus exacerbate the problems those social programs were meant to address in the first place. But there is another downside. As states make their budgets and programs leaner, they lose the will for legislative experimentation, which effectively kills the idea of using states as "laboratories" for more ambitious projects, like universal health care. Worse, states will turn to alternative revenue streams, such as legalized gambling, in order to meet their shortfalls, which bring with them new social problems that tight budgets are unable to address. But it is hard to see this story getting much coverage due to its dispersive nature (the scenario in each state is different) and the fact that the news cycle will be dominated for the rest of the year by a national recession, a national election, and a nation at war.

--Mori Dinauer

TPM's Greg Sargent reports that the political aide, Soren Dayton, was linking to this incendiary video through his Twitter page.

Politico's Jonathan Martin found that the video was produced by a former producer of arch-conservative Laura Ingraham's talk radio show.

Wonder why Dayton was "suspended" instead of fired...

--Dana Goldstein

In response to my post explaining why it should have already been common knowledge that Hillary Clinton played no role in passing the original Family Medical Leave Act, Ezra muses, "One vaguely wonders whether Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd eventually came out for Obama out of pique at Clinton's habit of laying claim to their legislative accomplishments."

It strikes me that politics at the presidential level consists, in large part, of taking credit for other people's work. The same accusation has been flung at Obama from disgruntled former Illinois state Senate colleagues who resented his celebrity status. Long-serving legislators such as Dodd and Kennedy are hyper-conscious of giving credit where credit is due, since they're accustomed to building coalitions and trading favors. At a press conference on proposed regulatory changes to the FMLA last month, Dodd apologized for what he said was over a decade of former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder's work in passing the FMLA being ignored. He told reporters that as he stood behind President Bill Clinton on stage at the bill's signing, he looked out into the audience, saw Schroeder, and immediately realized she belonged up on the dais. Dodd said he regrets it to this day.

--Dana Goldstein

This year's Take Back America (TBA) conference, which concluded yesterday, had a distinctly different feel to it than in years past. Last year, of course, there was the thrill of having each of the major Democratic presidential contenders come to woo the conference-goers. The timing of this year's confab was presumably based on the notion that a nominee would have been apparent by now, and held to account by TBA's progressive attendees.

Best-laid plans notwithstanding, another difference this time -- one quite heartening, if not exactly bracing -- was the emphasis on structural dynamics and governance. (Aren't you excited?) At a panel on the 2008 electoral map, Matt Stoller of OpenLeft.com spoke of the use of primary challenges to Democratic incumbents, such as that recently won by Maryland's Donna Edwards against incumbent U.S. Rep. Al Wynn, in order to take the existing structure and turn it more progressive. (When I told Stoller that he's the progressives' Richard Viguerie, he called the comparison "imprecise." Okay, so maybe he's our Paul Weyrich.)

David Sirota, at a great panel on the global economy that also featured The Nation's Naomi Klein, discussed fissures in both the Republican and Democratic coalitions, while Klein reminded the audience that "the New Deal was a compromise forced on Roosevelt by the power of the left." And most fascinating, perhaps, was a glimpse of electoral shifts on the religious landscapes, as discussed at a panel on religious activism. There Katie Barge of Faith in Public Life noted that, in recent exit polls, only voters in Republican primaries were asked if they were evangelicals or "born-again Christians." But her organization's own numbers suggest that in Ohio, for example, 43 percent of voters in the Democratic primary described themselves that way.

So if you're wondering why nothing this election season is making sense, that's because there's a migration going on between the parties, and changing dynamics within those parties. Hold onto your seats.

--Adele M. Stan

Note: Our own Robert Kuttner and Ezra Klein were featured panelists, as well, at TBA, but it would be conceitedly rude of us to tell you how fabulous they were.

Peter Dreier concludes from voting patterns that Obama's problem might be more class than race-based:

[L]et's be clear about the class nature of racial prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, and disparities. Wealthy whites are more likely than working-class whites to use the race card in the voting booth. Voting statistics reveal that most upper-income whites consistently vote in Republican, not Democratic, primaries, which means they don't have to vote for black or Latino candidates. And in partisan run-off elections, wealthy whites overwhelmingly vote for Republican over Democratic contenders. In the 2004 presidential contest, eight of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts voted for Bush. The two districts that went to Kerry were both in California's high-tech-oriented Silicon Valley. White voters earning incomes of more than $200,000 a year cast 66 percent of their ballots for Bush. ...

Although working-class white Americans may harbor racist sentiments, they do not control the major institutions that are responsible for America's racial divide, including the economic forces that sometimes pit white, black, and Hispanic working families against each other for jobs, housing, and decent schools.

Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

Via DailyKos, Mike Huckabee on the Jeremiah Wright flap:

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"... I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus ..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

He may have abhorrent views on abortion, homosexuality, creationism, and plenty of other issues, but I have to say, this statement gets him a few points in my book.

--Kate Sheppard

Via Kingdaddy and Jason Sigger, Dana Perino on women in defense:

Some of the terms I just don’t know, I haven’t grown up knowing. The type of missiles that are out there: patriots and scuds and cruise missiles and tomahawk missiles. And I think that men just by osmosis understand all of these things, and they’re things that I really have to work at — to know the difference between a carrier and a destroyer, and what it means when one of those is being launched to a certain area.

Right... because men do have an inborn understanding of the difference between a Tu-95 "Bear" and a Tu-160 "Blackjack".

The first point worth making is that, as a professor who teaches Defense Statecraft, I can testify without reservation that most men are just as ignorant of defense issues as most women. When they take classes on defense, they learn a lot; Ms. Perino is welcome to sit in on my course anytime she wants. A second point is that one of the most notable shifts in the security/defense academy over the past 15 years has been the substantial increase in the number of women who do defense; on both the academic and the policy side, the "old boys club" is giving way to a situation in which women are extremely productive on traditional security and defense issues, and have opened up new areas of inquiry.

The last and most important point is that while we commonly here complaints from conservatives about the general ignorance of Americans on defense issues and of the increasing separation of the military experience from public life, it is only because of such ignorance and separation that conservative ideas on defense can thrive. To put it bluntly, this video would only work on a populace utterly ignorant of defense reality. The Iraq War made the most sense to people who knew nothing of the difficulties of military state-building, or of the problems of counter-insurgency war. Perhaps most clearly, the anti-ballistic missile system survives only because most people -- not just women -- don't take the time to work through the technical, financial, and strategic issues associated with its construction; defending America sounds well and good, the details be damned.

--Robert Farley

That's the take-away from this morning's press release wars. Here's an excerpt from an AP report that Bill Burton highlights:

"Clinton says her years as first lady equip her to handle foreign policy and national security as president. But the schedules show trips packed with plainly traditional activities for a first lady, along with some substance. For example, in her January 1994 visit to Russia with her husband, her schedule is focused on events with other wives. She sat in on a birthing class at a hospital, toured a cathedral and joined prominent women in a lunch of blinis with caviar and salmon."

Birthing! Blinis! Ladies who lunch! (Read: Someone keep this flighty chick away from the red phone!) Seriously though, a bigger story supposedly "uncovered" in the First Lady papers is that Hillary never held or attended any meetings on the Family Medical Leave Act, which was the first piece of legislation President Bill Clinton signed, 10 days after entering office. Having just written a piece about the FMLA for the upcoming print issue of the Prospect, I can tell you that anyone familiar with the law should have already realized Hillary's very limited involvement. The non-profit organization the National Partnership for Women and Families originally drafted the bill, which was then championed in the House by former Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder and in the Senate by Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy. These three were at work trying to pass the FMLA from the late-1980s on, while the Clintons were in Arkansas and running a national campaign. So while Hillary did indeed have a history of involvement with work-family issues, she couldn't have possibly been a big player in the original Beltway push to pass the FMLA.

--Dana Goldstein

Tom Schaller wonders whether John McCain will ruin Democrats' chances at making some gains in the Southwest.

McCain represents Arizona, the fastest growing state in the nation's fastest growing and increasingly pivotal electoral region, the Southwest. Couple his home region advantage with his prominent leadership role on the immigration issue and the man whom anti-amnesty conservatives openly deride as "Juan McCain" is, in theory at least, the Republicans' best chance to keep the Hispanic-heavy Southwest in the GOP's column this November. "It completely screws [the Democrats' Southwest ambitions] up," McCain adviser Charles Black recently told the Washington Post. "We nominated the one person who will not suffer that backlash."

Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

I only have a few minutes to write this up, and I still have not seen the video version of Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday in Philly in full, and because of travels didn’t have a chance until yesterday to read it in full. But the thing that most strikes me about Obama’s speech, once all campaign and electoral dynamics are set aside, is the deep, almost sad irony of the criticism, most notably but not exclusively coming from Hillary Clinton, that Obama is little more than a guy who gives a good speech.

Why is this such a sad, and sometimes tragic irony? Because not only are speeches like Tuesday’s necessary, but the establishmentarian powers in the country—and by that I don’t intend a veiled dig against Clinton, who herself often rails quite nobly against such powers—are more than happy to sit and applaud politely, maybe even fall over each other like puppies trying to climb out of a box to praise great speeches about serious, troubling issues like Tuesday’s undoubtedly was...so long, of course, is that all they need suffer, or do, is that: Listen to speeches. This is the level of tolerance, I dare say, for orators who some might consider forerunners in some ways (racial or otherwise) to Obama, be they Jesse Jackson or Paul Wellstone. “Great little speech, fella, thanks for that,” comes the reply. “Now pack up and please go back into your little cubby hole, if you don’t mind.”

Is Obama capable only of giving a good--even great--speech? Is he a rhetor nonpareil, but ultimately not much more than a Symbol-in-Chief? Maybe, in the end, that will prove true--though I think he has already proved otherwise, that his skillset is far deeper, his vision much wider. Still, what most bothers me most about this week is not that good speechmaking may be the most he’s capable of, but that suffering politely through a powerful, necessary and overdue speech is so often the most the powers-that-be in America are capable of enduring. And in the absence of action—indeed, as a distractingly lovely and relatively painless substitute for real action—what it says about American political leadership and its fascination with great speeches, no less its simultaneous intransigence toward doing anything about moving words to action is, I submit, a far greater indictment of Obama’s “he giveth good speech” critics than of him.

--Tom Schaller

Dana already mentioned her discomfort yesterday at joining in on protests of late. In the run-up to the war, I attended every major protest in New York and D.C., which were invigorating events filled with thousands of Americans from all walks of life. After a long break, I attended an anti-war protest here in D.C. last fall, and the only folks who came out were the old peacenik and socialist types, the true believers that would probably be there no matter what the situation in Iraq. My thoughts then were similar to Paul's -- the protests have gotten pretty absurd, and people are probably better off voicing their opinion about the Iraq War in other ways.

But I have to say that yesterday I was more than a little sad that there weren't thousands of Americans -- myself included -- out in the streets demonstrating their distaste with the war in very visible ways. Far more Americans have turned against the war over those past five years, but you wouldn't have known it by walking down the street here in D.C. yesterday. Part of me still holds onto the idea that visible, public outcry has relevance, and wishes that all of us were out there today joining in with the motley crew still holding vigil five years later.

--Kate Sheppard

From the Obama campaign's Bill Burton, in an email to journalists:

We wish the McCain campaign well as they try to figure out the difference between Iran and al Qaeda.

--Dana Goldstein

• Obama gave a big speech on Iraq today which included a bunch of sharp hits at McCain.
• McCain has actually said, falsely, that al Qaeda and Iran are working together four times -- a mistake akin to saying the John Birch Society and the Weathermen were close allies in the sixties.
• Reverend Wright is defended by ... Mike Huckabee, and quite ably too.
• Clinton hires a second pollster which apparently fulfills a Penn-t up desire among some of her staff.
• Obama's speech yesterday may become the most-watched political speech on YouTube ever.
• Al Sharpton announces that he's secretly working with Obama. Yes, that makes about as much sense as you think.
• Now you too can find out what Hillary Clinton was doing every day she was First Lady. Thrilling, I know.
• Clinton is hitting Obama as hard as she can on his opposition to a re-vote in Michigan, arguing that failing to allow it is a betrayal of the principles of the civil rights movement.

--Sam Boyd

The Democratic Party continues hurtling toward disaster, as now Michigan as well as Florida Democrats have proved unable to agree on plans for a new primary. While Senator Hillary Clinton has supported the proposed do-overs, Senator Barack Obama’s campaign has opposed them--leaving the party with no apparent option for representing either state at the national convention in August.

Before today’s failure in Michigan, there was still the possibility of a fair deal for all sides concerned. On Florida, that would have meant acceptance of Sen. Bill Nelson’s proposal to count the results of the January primary, but only to give the delegates half a vote apiece. That compromise would have been consistent with the original Democratic Party penalties for states that advanced the dates of their primaries or caucuses in violation of the party’s schedule. And it would have been the same penalty the Republicans imposed on Florida. No one could then have complained in November that the Democrats had been unfair to what is, after all, one of the crucial swing states.

Michigan, however, presents a different problem. Since Obama wasn’t on the January ballot in that state, there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate way to count the results of that vote. The logical compromise, therefore, seemed to be a do-over in Michigan combined with the Nelson proposal for Florida.

Well, that’s impossible now--and the burden for the failure falls clearly on Senator Obama’s supporters, who, perhaps understandably, didn’t want to risk the psychological impact of a defeat in Michigan at the end of the primary season.

But having prevented any new vote in Michigan, Obama's campaign may well have given up any moral claim to oppose seating of the delegates elected in January.

As of now, the Democrats are planning to hold a national convention without what would have been the third and fifth largest state delegations. The analysts who are saying it will all blow over are a lot more certain than I am of how the voters in those states will react to the exclusion of their representatives. I can’t think of a recent case in which a political party has inflicted on itself such severe and unnecessary damage.

--Paul Starr

Catching up on my reading, I was surprised to see that The New Republic wasn't running anything to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.

On the other hand, there is this appreciation of Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke:

"This is another way of saying that Haneke's great interest is in dramatizing repression: the plot of people, especially the high-minded bourgeois, looking away."

They do that sometimes, don't they?

--Phoebe Connelly

Early this afternoon Michigan's state Senate Democrats effectively killed the proposal for a June 3 re-vote. What likely happened? In large part, Michigan Democrats -- especially Obama supporters -- were uncomfortable with the funding structure, which would have relied upon about $12 million in private donations secured mostly by Clinton-backers.

Back to a fight within the DNC about whether and in what proportions to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates.

--Dana Goldstein

From the archives: TAP's fall 2002 editorial against the war and Paul Starr from 2003 on the myth of Iraq as an "easy war."

--The Editors

On my way into work this morning, I ran across groups of protesters preparing to participate in anti-Iraq war demonstrations in front of the White House, on the five-year anniversary of the American occupation. A few were on stilts and dressed in over-sized Grim Reaper costumes. A bunch were earnest looking college students; one young woman held a sign saying, "My 'economic stimulus' got sent to Iraq." And of course, the "Out of Palestine!" crowd was out in force as well. It was a motley crew, and not one I was completely comfortable joining for a variety of reasons. But all in all, I was glad these citizens were out there, doing their duty to democracy despite the intractable political circumstances that make ending the war almost an impossible feat until a Democrat is elected president.

That brings me to Paul Waldman's anti-protest column from yesterday, titled "Political Theatre of the Absurd." Paul makes a convincing case that the Code Pink and Berkeley city councils of the world sometimes make antiwar protest seem amateurish and silly. Indeed, I've long been annoyed with Code Pink in particular for the way it targets female politicians for special abuse because of a belief in the traditional -- and I think false -- notion that women are inherently more peace-loving than men. But I've also seen Code Pink be effective, by heckling Hillary Clinton until she was forced, in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable speech, to defend her refusal to apologize for her war authorization vote.

Sure, the Berkeley city council's decision to protest a Marine recruitment center plays into conservative myths about antiwar activists being anti-military. But it is powerful that hundreds of city councils nationwide have passed resolutions against the Iraq war. If nothing else, those local statements provide a counter-narrative to the pro-war-at-all-costs stance taken by the administration, and let people around the world see the diversity of American opinion.

So in short, I believe there's a place for protest, even if we've learned over the last 8 years that it makes precious little difference in how our nation wages its foreign policy.

--Dana Goldstein

Via Right Wing Watch, ABC News recently ran a story about the Southern Baptist's declaration on global warming, highlighting the infighting among right-wing Christians on the matter. While the Southern Baptists have come around on the issue, Family Research Council's Tony Perkins maintains that the movement supporting action on global warming is yet another conspiracy by abortion-huggers and the gays:

He's also got a new book out, Personal Faith and Public Policy, in which he argues that Christians should welcome the storms and droughts that result from climate change as signs of the Second Coming. Rather than supporting public policy to curb warming, Christians should "look inwardly" and make sure they are "spiritually prepared to meet the End Times."

Because making the world a less hospitable place for future generations is clearly a pro-family stance.

--Kate Sheppard

Spencer Ackerman on where we are now:

So now the U.S. military command in Iraq has put together a new profile of the foreign cohort within al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It's based on debriefings of 48 foreign members of AQI currently in U.S. custody. In other words, Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), the proper name for the U.S. military leadership, wanted to spread the word about what its most-implacable foe really is. Here is what that enemy looks like. I'll call him Mr. AQI.

Mr. AQI is a man in his early-to-mid 20s. Chances are he came to Iraq from either north Africa or Saudi Arabia. He's single. He's lower-middle class and has some high school experience, but probably not a diploma. To earn his wages he worked in construction or maybe drove a taxi. Mr. AQI probably didn't have any significant military experience prior to joining AQI. His relationship with his dad isn't so great. And while he's been religious for as long as he can remember, he wasn't, you know, a nut about it.

So what brought Mr. AQI to Iraq? At the mosque, he met a man who could tell Mr. AQI just wanted to belong to something. That man told Mr. AQI he had something Mr. AQI needed to see. Very often, according to Colonel Bacon, it was an image from Abu Ghraib. Or it was a spliced-together propaganda film of Americans killing or abusing Iraqis. The narrative that weighed heavily on Mr. AQI, Colonel Bacon said, was that it was his "religious duty go to Iraq," where he would serve as "an avenger of abused Iraqs."

But Iraq wasn't what he thought it would be. Mr. AQI wasn't an infantryman, where he'd bravely stand and fight Americans, he was pressured into being a suicide bomber. Nor were his targets the Americans he wanted to hit -- they were the Iraqis he came to avenge. According to Colonel Bacon, in some cases, Mr. AQI was happy to be in American custody, where he would no longer cause Iraq any more pain.

Let that sink in for a moment. For Mr. AQI has a lesson for us. Counterfactual conditionals are always problematic, but in all likelihood, according to MNF-I's own profile, if the United States. were not in Iraq, Mr. AQI would be back in his taxi in Algiers or Jedda. Were it not for Abu Ghraib -- which, of course, never would have happened had we not invaded -- Mr. AQI would never have felt that it was his religious duty to kill Americans. And were it not for the war, thousands of Americans and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive, right now, and all without a propaganda windfall that spikes terrorist recruitment for the extremist lurking around the mosque trying to generate new Mr. AQIs. And what is true of our foreign-born Mr. AQI is all the more true of the perhaps 95 percent of AQI that's Iraqi Sunni. Not one of them would have any reason to be a member of AQI if George Bush did not give him one.

And from the archives, James Galbraith, Laura Rozen, and Michael Tomasky.

--The Editors

Let's break down this morning's press release war over the proposed do-over of the Michigan primary.

The Obama camp is concerned its supporters will be disadvantaged in two ways. First, they claim many Obama voters were siphoned off into the Republican electorate on Jan. 15 because their guy wasn't on the Democratic ballot. According to DNC rules, anyone who voted in the Republican primary is ineligible to vote in the proposed June 3 Democratic re-vote. Of course, Obama is the Democrat who does best among independent and Republican voters. Secondly, first-time voters, another key Obama constituency, are ineligible to vote by absentee ballot in Michigan. In other words, in order to request an absentee ballot, you must have already voted at least once in person.

The Clinton campaign counters that Obama never complained about Illinois' ban on absentee ballots for first-time voters. Of course not. Illinois was -- duh -- a cakewalk for Hyde Park's hometown hero. Clinton also says it was Obama's choice to keep his name off the Michigan ballot. That's true, and his and John Edwards' original decisions to do so were colored, in large part, by the fact that the state seemed like a clear win for Clinton. By keeping their names off the ballots, they stripped the original Michigan primary of its legitimacy.

Just a little short-term historical perspective as we consider the fate of Michigan's votes.

--Dana Goldstein

OK, I'll admit it. We're seven months into this financial crisis and I still don't really understand it. I'm guessing there are plenty of others out there who don't either. Thankfully, the Times saw fit to offer an explainer today. I also found this DIY web comic "Subprime Primer" helpful, and infinitely more amusing.

--Kate Sheppard

The first question about the D.C. gun case is, how will they rule? Reporters who observed the oral argument yesterday seem nearly certain that 1) a majority of the Court will find some individual right to gun ownership in the Second Amendment, and 2) the D.C. gun ban will be struck down. All observers also point out that most of the interesting questions will come in the scope of the Second Amendment rights identified by the Court: what kind of regulations short of an outright ban of a large class of gun might pass constitutional muster? Given the minimalism that tends to characterize the late Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, my guess is that they will say very little about how the newly identified right will apply in future cases. (Scalia's dismissal of Dellinger's claim that finding an individual right would make it harder to ban machine guns or armor-piercing bullets makes it unlikely that even he will press for a particularly broad rule.)

The other question is whether this is a good thing. As with most constitutional issues of any interest, the text is unclear and can plausibly support both positions, so we're left with a largely pragmatic judgment. I don't really have a problem with where the Court seems headed. At least in a context of a federal system where weapons can be easily acquired right outside District limits, it's hard to argue that the D.C. ban is an especially effective public safety measure, and it's a very broad restriction. And although I'm often skeptical of minimalism, I think in this case leaving future cases open to particularized judgments that balance Second Amendment rights against the reasonableness and effectiveness of regulations makes a lot of sense.

--Scott Lemieux

Over at the National Review, the Phi Beta Cons are rejoicing over a federal judge's decision yesterday to uphold Proposal 2, the Ward Connerly-backed ballot initiative that passed in 2006 under the misleading name "The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative." Proposal 2, of course, effectively overturned the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in support of the limited use of race as a factor in the University of Michigan's admissions decisions. Now the admissions committee cannot consider race at all, a change that when affected in California (thanks to Connerly's Proposition 209) led to hundreds fewer students of color enrolling at UC-Berkeley and UCLA annually.

Connerly associate Jennifer Gratz, the original plaintiff opposing the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies, told media yesterday that foes of Proposition 2 were all akin to the radical student protest group By Any Means Necessary. But in actuality, mainstream progressive organizations such as the NAACP and the ACLU support affirmative acction, as does the U.S. military and national organizations representing working women. (White women are the leading beneficiaries of affirmative action policies.) Indeed, a national coalition of business, labor, military, and civil rights advocates are banding together to fight Connerly's attempts to ban affirmative action through ballot initiatives in five more states this November: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. For more on that looming struggle -- and its potential effect on a presidential race that will surely include either a black man or a woman -- check on my report from last year.

--Dana Goldstein

I got a chance to read over Obama's speech again (full text here), which gave me a better chance to evaluate it on not just delivery, but on merits. I find Obama to be a good speaker, but I don't think he's amazing. Whenever I hear or read people raving about how moving he is as a speaker or how much he sounds like a "black preacher," I often fear it's just a slightly more socially acceptable version of remarks about how "articulate" he is, which I touched upon a while ago. He is a good speaker, yes. But today's speech was not remarkable for that reason. It was a bit too long. It plodded at times. Some have said it tried too much to offer historical contextualization. But what it did, like no speech before it, was lay out the reality of race relations in America today. I've never heard this kind of candor from a politician, perhaps because there has never been a national political figure in the position to speak so eloquently on the state of race relations in our country. It was stark. It was honest. It touched upon the anger, mistrust and resentment among both the black and white communities of this country in ways that aren't often even acknowledged privately and definitely not spoken of in the public sphere, at least not by leaders at his level.

One of the challenges with a speech like this is, as Mark Hemingway notes on The Corner (yes, I am agreeing with him, but only on this point), that there are no ten-second takeaways for cable news to play on loop. I also agree with Michael Crowley in that the speech probably wasn't what crass electoral politics demand.

But most of all, I agree with Addie's assertion that this was the most important address on race since Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. King's speech may have been more powerful rhetorically, but this speech really laid down the complexities of race in America in a way that someone with Barack Obama's experience can appreciate uniquely. As I said earlier, it was the appropriate response not just to the Wright flap, but for framing the relevance of his candidacy. Regardless of what happens in this campaign, this will be a speech that I play for my children one day to give them an understanding of what race relations in America were like in 2008. In that regard, it was truly a landmark, and I hope that when I do get to play that speech for my children, things are different here.

--Kate Sheppard

My first reaction to reading the text of Obama's speech on race and Rev. Wright was that it was too long and defensive. And echoing in my ears was still the insistence of a colleague on the subway this morning that "white people don't want to hear a long lecture about the complexities of race. They want to feel good about themselves." (In other words, they want to "purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.")

But it was a very good speech, in part because it was delivered in such a relatively flat and straightforward way, and because just when you thought he would dodge a point (even having read the text), he stepped up and dealt with it. I've really appreciated that each Obama speech has become slightly more mundane, workmanlike, and thus presidential, because you can't build a long campaign and a presidency on incandescent moments.

Like Ed Kilgore, I'm continually fascinated not by the content of Obama's religious experience but by how he got there. Most politicians talk about religion from the perspective of having been raised in families that are somewhat more observant than they are as adults, so they are elevating religion from their childhood and their parents or grandparents. Others, like George W. Bush, found in religion a private salvation. Obama's experience is unlike either one, and frankly unlike anyone's I know: His work as an organizer led him to the church, the church was the heart of the community in which he was working, he became religious because of his commitment to social change. It was neither personal, nor familial, but part of his forming an identity, but not just as an individual, as a member of a community. And thus, race, his public life, and religion are intertwined in a way that they are not for most people, even people whose social values and work originates in their faith.

Kilgore comments that this "won't make a lot of sense to those Americans who view church membership as an expression of consumer choice, and ultimately, of the spiritual discrimination and good taste of the religious consumer." Indeed, this was the viewpoint of my colleague this morning -- if you don't agree with what you hear in a church, go to another church. But Obama's analogy to family answered that about as well as could be answered -- the church wasn't serving just a personal function for him, it was situating him in a community in which he had chosen to live and work -- and work on behalf of.

I'm mystified when people talk about Obama as if he were pure ego, as if he believes that the "Barack Obama brand" itself delivers change. He is in fact the most deeply communitarian politician -- in the sense of Michael Sandel or Charles Taylor's point inarguable point that our identities cannot exist outside of our of social interactions and networks -- I have ever seen. His identity -- as African-American, as Christian -- is chosen and it is chosen because it situated him within a community.

For Sandel and others, "communitarianism" was a critique within liberalism to the overly "atomistic" and legalistic view of identity of rights-oriented liberalism and particularly the influence ofJohn Rawls. There was an attempt in the 1990s to build a kind of political movement around the idea, and Bill Clinton adopted some of the language, but it didn't really go very far, partly because, as Paul Starr writes in Freedom's Power, "it has at best been a supplement or corrective to tendencies within liberalism." But in Obama that supplement or corrective can be quite substantive, as I thought was shown in Alec McGillis's comparison of Obama and Edwards in their approaches to poverty -- for Edwards poverty is about not having enough money, and the solutions are economic, including helping people move to where jobs are, where Obama was attracted to comprehensive efforts to rebuild community, including the non-economic aspects of life.

In today's speech, community played a role of lifting the question out of the stale argument about identity politics, and remind us that it's about much more than who's black, who's a woman, who said something that might be considered racist, who has an advantage because of their identity. One's identity is indeed the sum of your experiences and social interactions and where you situate yourself in a community. I thought Obama basically did that for everyone in his speech: himself, Rev. Wright, his own white grandmother, and even Geraldine Ferraro.

I guess I liked the speech a lot more than I thought I was going to on first read.

--Mark Schmitt

• The big news today is Barack Obama's speech (video here) on race (he wrote it himself apparently) which seems to have been generally well recieved (haven't had a chance to watch it yet myself). See Ezra, Dana, and Kate for favorable reviews and somewhat less positive reactions from The National Review courtesy of Kevin Drum.
• McCain makes a gaffe on Iraq, accidentally revealing that he doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam.
• Marc Ambinder runs down the state of play on the Florida DNC delegation. It also looks like Michigan won't vote again. As Steve Benen has more, but the bottom line is that revotes in either state seem exceedingly unlikely.
• Liberal groups announce a $425 million coordinated voter mobilization and reigstration effort. This includes many groups who always spend large ammounts in election years, but it also represents an unprecedented degree of cooperation between them. The lion's share of the funds come from unions which should remind anyone who'se fogotten just how important they remain to the Democratic coalition.
• Most Democrats think it would be unfair for a candidate who came in second in pledged delegates to win with superdelegates.

--Sam Boyd

Yesterday's Times article about the inequities of civil unions is indeed important reading. In many contexts, obtaining civil unions is an improvement on the status quo, but it's also important that civil unions haven't produced marriage-in-all-but-name but in practice seem to fall short of equality. For state courts considering the question, such inequities seem relevant to whether civil unions (as opposed to equal marriage rights) can be consistent with equal protection of the laws, especially since the legislative entrenchment of gay marriage in Massachusetts makes assumptions that civil unions will provoke much less backlash than actual equality quite questionable.

--Scott Lemieux

I have to admit that the fact that Charles Murray thinks that Obama's speech was brilliant makes me wonder if I'm missing something. But like Kate, I think he's right on the merits.

--Scott Lemieux

Why, after Geraldine Ferraro's comments, didn't Hillary Clinton stand up and deliver a speech on how she sees race in America?

Ok, ok, of course I understand why Obama was the one expected to offer a definitive statement on race. I just don't like it very much.

People of color are not the only people who have a racial identity, and are not the only people who deal with issues of race in this country. Just like women are not the only ones who deal with issues of gender.

Just had to say that again.

--Ann Friedman

I referred to Robert F. Kennedy's landmark speech on GDP last week. Today is the actual 40th anniversary of that address, and to mark it, here's the entire speech (complete with patriotic soundtrack):

What's particularly salient for me is its relevance today's environmental concerns, as folks hem and haw at the prospect of even a tiny loss to our GDP if we take action on climate change. Growth in GDP means so little if the country -- and the world -- isn't a place where future generations can live. It was true 40 years ago, and it remains so today.

--Kate Sheppard

I finally got around to opening up the March 8 issue of the National Journal, with its provocative and conventionally-wise cover story about “The New Center,” which naturally makes the always-asserted, rarely-documented case that the freshmen Democrats won because they are more centrist. We first heard this in electoral terms when they won in 2006, and now, with floor voting records, we are hearing the echo in terms of their congressional behavior patterns. But just how accurate is the pre-ordained conclusion that Democrats won (and, naturally, can only win) by moving to the center?

Turns out, there’s a fair degree of barefoot or just plain lazy empiricism in Richard Cohen and Brian Friel’s “special report.” To wit:

• There are 43 frosh Democrats, 13 of whom replaced fellow Democrats who retired, ran for higher office, etc. In those cases, I directly compared the NJ’s reported 2007 rankings (see p. 22 of print version; can’t find scores online) of the newcomers with the 2006 rankings of the fellow Democrats they replaced. And guess what: Only 5 of the 13 have more centrist voting records than their predecessors. So, when blue replaced blue, voting records got bluer, not redder. Oops.
• As for the 30 Democrats who replaced Republicans, there is a marginal, at best, “centrism carried the day” case to be made: 18 of the 30 are more centrist than the Republican they replaced. To determine that, I took the NJ’s ratings for the 30 GOPers turned out and computed the net distance from a baseline, midpoint score of 50 (rankings are bounded between zero and 100). So, there are obvious centrist-won-out cases, like Arizona freshman Democratic centrist Harry Mitchell (liberal rating: 54) replacing arch-conservative Republican JD Hayworth (conservative rating: 85)—because a distance from 50 of just 4 is obviously much shorter than a distance of 35. On the other extreme, however, are cases like freshman liberal Democrat Paul Hodes (liberal score, 76) of New Hampshire replacing centrist Republican Charlie Bass (conservative score, 52). So, 18-12—or just three switched members (and there were some close calls) from being a 15-all split.
• Overall, then, of the 43 House frosh, 20 are more liberal than either the fellow Democrats they replaced or farther from the center (more liberal) than the (less conservative) Republicans they replaced. Meanwhile, 23 can be said to be certifiably more centrist. But from this near-tie among the 43 Democratic newcomers the storyline just had to be: Dems win by moving to the center! The selective analysis and quotes offered within the story—surprise!—confirmed this narrative.

A final note: Because the 30 Democrats who replaced the Republicans are, in every case, more liberal generally (even if closer from the liberal side of the 50 midpoint than the Republicans they replaced were from the conservative side of it), the 110th Congress is of course more liberal than the 109th was. In fact, the 110th is the most liberal in American history; surely it’s more liberal than the last Democratic Congress under Bill Clinton in 1993-94, chock full as it was with many southern Democratic seats now held by far-more-conservative Republicans. But hey: Don’t expect to see any mainstream media analyses pointing this out because, as usual, such narratives don’t fit with Washington pundits’ pre-conceived, if fictitious, conclusions about what happened in the 2006 midterms which, again, far too many “experts” in this town simply decided long ago was an election Democrats won because they finally learned to act more like Republicans. Oh, and I’ll be holding my breath for a correction or counter-piece from the National Journal...won’t you?

--Tom Schaller

Yes, mark this down in the annals of absurd hyperventilating about the last century's demons, as Ken Blackwell, who once compared gay people to barnyard animals, denounces today's Barack Obama speech. Blackwell, who lost his own race to become Ohio's governor in 2006 by a two-to-one margin, had this to say in a press release from his employer, the Family Research Council:

Barack Obama just gave an eloquent speech, but one that does not address the underlying nature of Senator Obama's beliefs. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, like Mr. Obama, believes in a state-centered 21st century form of big-government socialism. This 21st century form of socialism is at the heart of the Liberation Theology Rev. Wright preaches from the pulpit. Today, Mr. Obama again made it clear, with all his eloquence, that he still embraces these beliefs that would require dismantling the free-market system that has made our country's economy the most prosperous in all of human history. . . .Proponents of Liberation Theology, like Rev. Wright, teach that God commands us to form a government that will supervise our economy to create government-subsidized jobs under central-government planning; guarantee healthcare and education by having government control both; and achieve 'economic equality' by redistributing wealth through massive taxes on the affluent and massive government entitlements for the poor. . . . His speech was magnificent in its elegance and rhetoric, but today Mr. Obama reminded me yet again of his worldview that embraces, among other things, partial-birth abortion, military weakness, and economic socialism. Thank God for religious liberty and free elections!

Sure, the Ron Paul campaign was a media spectacle (remember the blimp?), but I've long been skeptical of arguments that Paul's, er, impassioned, group of young supporters could be considered some kind of libertarian generation, or taken as proof that the marriage of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism somehow dominates in Generation Y. After all, when I chatted with young Ron Paul supporters in Iowa, they were skeptical of their candidate's free market health care reform plan and his anti-abortion stance, ignorant of his disturbing record of race-baiting, and sympathetic toward Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. What they adored about Paul was his ability, in every televised debate, to humiliate his Republican opponents when it came to the Iraq war. In this disgruntled, outsider, antiwar old man, young people found a mirror image of their own disgruntlement and outsider status -- and most importantly, their opposition to the war.

Now Tim Fernholz comes along at Campus Progress and really crystallizes my thoughts on Paul's candidacy:

Once it became apparent that Paul wasn’t going to gain the support of the traditional GOP constituencies, and early primaries demonstrated that he lacked tangible support, people lost interest. And, despite the spin of his supporters, this wasn’t even a moral victory; unlike former Democratic candidates John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, Paul did not impact the tone of his party’s primary. While Edwards and Kucinich pulled the front-runners to the left on issues of poverty, Iraq, and trade, the Republican leaders continued to remain in favor of the war and to ignore Paul’s more abstract concerns about the federal reserve, the gold standard, and federalism.

Read the whole thing.

--Dana Goldstein

On the heels of new reports suggesting cannibalism was a major part of the political platform of Liberian strongman and Pat Robertson chum Charles Taylor, Ken Silverstein happily notes that accusations of cannibalism against another American client may be overblown. Of Brigadier General Teodoro Obiang, dictator of Equatorial Guinea and beneficiary of support from the Bush administration and Exxon-Mobil:

Obiang’s exoneration as a flesh eater clearly marks a major victory for President Bush’s Freedom Agenda. Now, the only remaining human rights issues left to be addressed in Equatorial Guinea are “abridgement of citizens’ right to change their government; instances of physical abuse of prisoners and detainees by security forces; poor conditions in prisons and detention facilities; impunity; arbitrary arrest, detention, and incommunicado detention; harassment and deportation of foreign residents with limited due process; judicial corruption and lack of due process; restrictions on the right to privacy; restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press; restrictions on the right of assembly, association, and movement; government corruption; violence and discrimination against women; suspected trafficking in persons; discrimination against ethnic minorities; and restrictions on labor rights.”

--Robert Farley

I know a lady, a close relative, shall we say, who has a few things in common with Geraldine Ferraro -- generation, ethnic experience, outer-borough accent. After Barack Obama, in his grand national debut, addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2004, she sent me an indignant e-mail, asking why everybody talked about him as this black star of the Democratic Party, when he was just as much white as he was black. In other words, she wanted to claim him, too (and perhaps claim his intellectual gifts as his mother's legacy).

Watching Obama (on TV) deliver today what I believe to be the most important address on race since Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, my sense of the uniqueness of Obama's candidacy was further distilled. The resentment of my kin notwithstanding, she had a point: Obama is as much white as he is black, and that matters in ways she may not have contemplated. For instance, his cross-cultural experience gave him a window on the ways in which white resentment manifests itself, and he has loved people who, were he not their kin, might have treated him poorly based on the color of his skin and the texture of his hair. (See Kate's post, with the excerpt from Obama's speech about his grandmother, and his dead-on description of white resentment as it exists among certain white "ethnics".)

Indeed, it is thrilling to see a man who, by virtue of his appearance, will always be a black man in the eyes of America, come so close to attaining the presidential nomination of one of the nation's two major political parties. But it is his biracial experience that gives him the insight to make the whole thing work, and to embody, quite literally, a deep longing for a closing of the racial chasm.

--Adele M. Stan

Paul Waldman takes a bemused look at Code Pink and the anti-war antics of the left and sees neither bark nor bite:

If nothing else, progressives can take heart in the fact that relative to the extremists on the right, the fringe elements on the left are utterly harmless. The occasional eco-vandal notwithstanding, these days radical leftists don't stockpile weapons, they don't bomb federal buildings, and they aren't plotting the overthrow of the government. There was a time when leftists did such things, of course, but decades have passed since the Weathermen and their ilk passed into history. Our extremists may be ridiculous, but they aren't hurting anyone. Except, that is, for the causes they advocate, and the progressive movement itself ...

What worked for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s is not going to work today. And the truth is that comparing the civil rights marches to a bunch of people carrying signs with "No more war!" on one side and "Free Mumia!" on the other is an insult to everyone who took part in the civil rights movement. The civil rights activists weren't just looking to feel good about themselves. The political actions they undertook were carefully planned and well-executed. They knew exactly which levers of mass and elite opinion they needed to press and how to do it. They weren't trotting off for a Sunday to hang with some friends and speak their minds -- they were engaged in a deadly serious enterprise, one with enormous personal risks, and they approached it with the seriousness it required.

Read the rest and comment here.

--The Editors

I think Obama's much-anticipated speech on race today hit the appropriate tone not just for addressing the Jeremiah Wright flap, but for framing the relevance of his candidacy in general. It was best in the way it framed the discomfort and resentment in the discussion of race in America that has lead to a "racial stalemate" for so many years, and made race "a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect." That stalemate is reflected in the sermons of Rev. Wright, but they're also reflected in the white community. I found this part particularly salient:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

"Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," he continued. He referenced our still-segregated schools, our achievement gaps, the legalized discrimination that prevented black Americans from buying homes and joining unions, which created the ongoing wealth and income gaps. Yes, there are ongoing problems, but America is not irrevocably bound to this history. We can overcome those barriers. We can end the racial stalemate and move forward. It was the appropriate tone for the speech, not denying the validity of Wright's concerns while at the same time not embracing bitterness or divisiveness.

--Kate Sheppard

Obama's still talking, but I've read through the entire text. All in all, this speech dealt with race more honestly than I've ever heard the topic discussed by a politician. But it was too long. He should have cut the entire section where he quotes from his own book, Dreams from My Father. The strength here wasn't really Obama's recounting of his own life, but his framing of the role of race in American history and in our society today. One highlight was Obama's explanation of how white America bequeathed poverty and inequality to black America over centuries of discrimination:

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

Then Obama pulled one of his best stunts -- stating a conservative principle, and then very, very gently debunking it.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

He offered economic populism as an antidote to racial tensions:

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

An unexpected thread throughout this speech was a focus on the role of segregated schools in creating racial inequality -- and a clear admittance from Obama that our schools remain racially and economically segregated today. Good stuff, and reminiscent of when John Edwards was still campaigning.

--Dana Goldstein

There’s a lot of anticipation for Barack Obama’s late-starting and now just-underway speech on race. Some are expecting him to hit it out of the park. The embargoed copy of the speech certainly promises some compelling, even lyrical language. It should be well-received.

And yet, overall, even if Obama hits a home run, can this entire fortnight—which began with Geraldine Ferraro’s comments, was ramped up by all the Rev. Jeremiah Wright YouTube video releases, crescendos today, and will still resonate for a few more days if not weeks—possibly be judged a win for Obama? I doubt it, because all this controversy has done is reinforce that Obama is, as our own Paul Waldman predicts he will be incessantly depicted by his enemies, as “the Other.” You can already see, in the comments from people like MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan, almost delight in pointing out that he and people like Wright are, well, just “different”—meaning, of course, different from the white majority.

Incidentally: If you want to talk about contrasts, it’s amazing that on the same network featuring Buchanan, Sally Quinn did a great job this morning, as the networks were killing time waiting for Obama to arrive on stage, pointing out all the incendiary and unacceptable statements that preachers from Jesse Jackson to Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell to Billy Graham, have made over the years…and the absence of any real expectation that the white politicians who relied on their support give a major speech denouncing them and reflecting on race or religion in American politics.

--Tom Schaller

With renewed attention on John McCain's "spiritual guide," Ohio's neo-Pentecostal preacher Rod Parsley, the editors here have republished my 2005 expose of the televangelist, "With God on His Side." The piece details Parsley's rise to the national political stage after campaigning with Bush-Cheney Ohio campaign co-chair and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell for Ohio's 2004 gay marriage ban, thus delivering Ohio to Bush, and how the religious right and the GOP cynically saw the white preacher's appeal to black audiences as a useful GOTV tool. And if you think Barack Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright has some controversial preaching in his vault, Parsley has produced all manner of screeds against gays, Muslims, the "liberal media," separation of church and state, and any school of thought that interferes with his dominionist fantasies for criminalizing abortion and adultery and teaching his followers to "invade the culture" by getting jobs in government, media, and entertainment.

While Wright preaches a very confrontational form of a social justice gospel, calling on his followers to confront institutional racism and economic injustice, Parsley's gospel is individualistic, capitalistic and materialistic. Parsley preaches the controversial (some Christians say heretical) Word of Faith doctrine, which you can learn more about in my book, God's Profits. It teaches followers that God wants them to be rich, the way to riches is by tithing to one's pastor, and that poverty is a curse of one's own making, evidence of a lack of faith. Meanwhile, Parsley lives in a million dollar home and flies around the country in a private jet his church purchased for him. Social safety net? No way, says Parsley. As McCain's other endorser, John Hagee, has written, government welfare programs are Satanic. If you have enough faith, God will provide for you.

Parsley's routine has gotten him into trouble: he's been sued by congregants, even members of his own family. His former lawyer was disbarred for engaging in criminal activity. More recently, the church was found liable in a lawsuit brought by a family whose child was badly beaten by a teacher in the church preschool, and many of the school's teachers were found by a state licensing agency to lack proper certification. Parsley was the subject of an Internal Revenue Service investigation, following complaints that he illegally campaigned for Blackwell when the latter (unsuccessfully) ran for governor in 2006. But Parsley beats back all controversy; he's regular visitor to the White House and Capitol Hill, and Republicans turn to him for advice. For his followers, he's God's anointed -- not to be questioned or criticized. For them, God is talking through Parsley -- and McCain is banking on them listening.

--Sarah Posner

The Florida Democratic Party has abandoned their plan for a mail-in vote, after state party leaders expressed concerns with the proposal. In a letter sent to the press last night, Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman asserted that the state would not vote again and expressed disgust with the way they have been treated by the DNC:

Does ‘537’ ring a bell? It should. It’s the number of votes that separated Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore in Florida in 2000. It’s the number that sent this country and this world in a terrible direction. We can’t let 537 – or the Republicans – determine our future again. President Bush plans to stop in Florida tomorrow to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Republican National Committee’s efforts to elect his successor in November. The last thing America needs is a third Bush term.

Despite the widespread anxiety that working families feel, not to mention the broad agreement among economists that we are in a recession, President Bush and John McCain blindly believe that the economy is strong. And let me remind you that John McCain endorsed President Bush’s decision to deny health care to thousands of Florida children by vetoing an expansion of the successful SCHIP program. McCain also promises to jeopardize the financial security of Florida seniors by privatizing Social Security. He continually threatens to push Florida’s military families to the brink by keeping American troops in Iraq for “100 years” or more.

This is why we are Democrats, and this is why we must stick together, no matter where this ongoing delegate debate takes us. Last week, the Florida Democratic Party laid out the only existing way that we can comply with DNC Rules – a statewide revote run by the Party – and asked for input. Thousands of people responded. We spent the weekend reviewing your messages, and while your reasons vary widely, the consensus is clear: Florida doesn’t want to vote again. So we won’t.

Thurman went on to argue that a solution to the state's delegate issue will have to come from the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee, which is scheduled to meet again in April. Which means we're not at all closer to a solution for the state.

--Kate Sheppard

My god. If I have to write another early morning blog post about a politician's sex life, I'm just going to have to stay in all day and shower. Now New York's new governor, David Paterson, has admitted to an extramarital affair that ended in 2001. His wife, Michelle, also says she cheated.

Talk about putting a damper on what should have been a happy occasion! It was less than 24 hours ago that I choked up reading Patterson's inaugural speech, truly inspired by all the challenges he has overcome as a person with a severe disability. The Daily News, which broke the affair story, seems to be implying in a side bar that it's possible Paterson used state money to pay for trysts with his former lover at the Quality Inn on West 94th Street in Manhattan. So far, there's no proof of that. It seems that Paterson used the motel for multiple occasions, from housing his Albany staff on visits to the city, to meeting with his girlfriend, to rekindling his marriage with Michelle once they entered couple's therapy after the affair.

I know, I know. Way too much information. Can we get back to governing now? Indeed, the political fall out from this revelation shouldn't be huge -- unless it comes out that Paterson did use state funds to pay for improper hotel stays. As far as we know, Paterson didn't break the law or engage in anything particularly shocking. Let's hope that's the case, because next in line for the New York governor's mansion is Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, who is just about the most unlikely person in the State of New York to reform Albany.

--Dana Goldstein

• The most striking thing I've read today was this column by the AP's Ron Fournier. Ostensibly it describes the political risks for Obama of appearing "arrogant" and claims, in Fournier's typically harsh language, that he "oozes a sense of entitlement" and so on. Fournier's opinion is certainly one a reasonable observer could come to, but it's also incredibly one-sided (he quotes Michelle Obama praising Barack but doesn't mention that she's been criticized for how often she puts him down on the trail for example) and states as facts things that are at best very debatable. What's more, penning a column focusing entirely on evidence of Obama's arrogance on the premise that this arrogance could be politically damaging is almost certain to be a self-fulfilling prophecy if repeated enough times. Fournier is a proponent of reporters speaking a