Wright V. Falwell

Great smackdown given to the GOP over their hypocrisy on the Wright issue. One juicy bit:

And let's be clear as to who we're talking about. Falwell was a gross extremist. "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being," he said. I struggle to find Wright's comparably offensive remark. Yet Falwell is a man the Republican Party embraced, while Wright is denounced. Similarly, Wright also gets criticism for saying, "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." Compare that to Falwell's legendary post-9/11 pronouncement, where he said, "the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'" Explain the moral difference to me.

You can't make this stuff up. If there's one thing that Hillary has gotten right, it's been her insistence all along that the right wing attack machine would somehow lay down if Obama captured the nomination. That's not going to happen. I have a sinking feel this election could be one of the dirtiest of all time. On the plus side, the GOP will probably do incalculable damage to their standing in the nation even if they somehow win the White House. The flight from R to D has been going on for several years, if they keep running elections based solely on racial smears, religion, and fear mongering it will only serve to turn off broader and broader swaths of the nation.

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Destroy The Village To Save It

I posted earlier on this a few hours ago. Kos gets it exactly right:

the only path to victory for Clinton is via coup by super delegate.

She knows this. That's why there's all the talk about poaching pledged delegates and spinning uncertainty around Michigan and Florida, and laying the case for super delegates to discard the popular will and stage a coup.

Yet a coup by super delegate would sunder the party in civil war.

Clinton knows this, it's her only path to victory, and she doesn't care. She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.

...

To reiterate, she cannot win without overturning the will of the national Democratic electorate and fomenting civil war, and she doesn't care.

That's why she has earned my enmity and that of so many others. That's why she is bleeding super delegates. That's why she's even bleeding her own caucus delegates (remember, she lost a delegate in Iowa on Saturday). That's why Keith Olbermann finally broke his neutrality. That's why Nancy Pelosi essentially cast her lot with Obama. That's why Democrats outside of the Beltway are hoping for the unifying Obama at the top of the ticket, and not a Clinton so divisive, she is actually working to split her own party.

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Black Is The New President, Bitch

Best smackdown of the year award goes to Tracy Morgan. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing, it's a classic:

Barack is qualified. Personally, I want to know what qualifies Hillary Clinton to be the next president. Is it because she was married to the president? If that were the case then Robin Givens would be the heavyweight champion of the world. If Hillary’s last name wasn’t Clinton, she’d be some crazy white lady with too much money and not enough lovin’. That’s where I come in. I know women like that, you do not want them on the phone at 3 in the morning. In conclusion, three weeks ago, my girl Tina Fey went on the show, she declared that “bitch is the new black”. You know I love you, Tina. You know you’re my girl. But I have something to say. Bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch.

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Why Is She Still Running?

The math looks well nigh impossible. The superdelegates are leaving her, she has an almost insuperable deficit in the popular vote, ditto for the pledged delegates, and has lost the total number of contests by almost 2 to 1. So why is she still in it? It seems to me her strategy has 2 parts. The first is to persuade the supers that Obama is unelectable. Accomplish this, and those supers that have already committed to Obama will switch their votes and swing the nomination to HRC. There's all kinds of risk to this approach - it would require a staggering amount of mudslinging and negative campaigning which is in direct contrast to the Obama campaign relatively mud-free run. The costs of this strategy can't be understated.

If it worked, she would have effectively split the party by smashing it and picking up the pieces. Winning this way would result in a useless nomination as the perceptions of her within the party would be fatally impacted. We already know how independents and Republicans feel about her, any split within the party is instantly fatal. Call it the Vietnam village strategy - destroying the village with bombs in order to save it.

If it didn't work, then Obama as the general election nominee is now damaged goods. He would have been attacked incessantly by Democrats for close to a year, and would then have to turn around and face the Republican attack machine.

Of course, there could be an implicit strategy here to intentionally cause Obama to fail in the general. This saves the date (2012) for the Clinton's to swoop in and save the day. To summarize, from the Clinton's perspective it's not exactly win-win. (call is not-lose, not-lose). From the perspective of the Democratic Party (i.e., 50% of the American people), it's a big Screw You. Classy stuff.

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The Long and Grinding Road

It just occurred to me that this damn campaign will have lasted 2 years when it's all said and done (most candidates declared their intentions around January/February 2007). The conversion of presidential politics to a 24/7, 365 day a year business strikes me as a HUGE problem for American democracy in the long term.

To put it in perspective - 2 years is 50% of a President's term, 100% of a term in the House, and 33% of a term in the Senate. Since running for President is a full-time endeavor, that means anyone running for the office is spending larger and larger portions of their terms on the campaign trail rather than helping constituents. Presumably, the candidates are the best and brightest from the party so that means our country's brightest leaders are continually in full on campaign attack/counterattack/spin mode.

Of course, this was never a problem in early America. It was thought back then that the very act of campaigning for an office automatically disqualified you from the job. The Founding Fathers probably couldn't even conceive of a day when candidates would spend 16-18 hours criss-crossing the country every day for 2 years. The thought would probably boggle their minds - hell, it boggles mine to think about it.

So how does running for President impact your voting record? Nowadays, voting records are a very powerful tool used by the opposition. They can use it to effectively paint a candidate with whatever color is most effective. See John Kerry 2004 (and any other race in recent memory). On the Republican side, take it as a given that some "think" tank will release a "study" showing that the current Democratic nominee is the most liberal in the country. On the flip side, there is a competing pressure coming from the nominee's own party to appeal to the base voters. Two years before an actual primary, and the only people paying attention are the ultras, the voters who absorb every bit of campaign nonsense and feed it into the partisan amplifying media. This produces a disinclination to work across party lines, vote for bipartisan bills, and otherwise be seen as compromising with the other party. It exacerbates the hyperpartisanship that's currently seen in Washington and it's doing so for longer and longer stretches of the legislative session. So instead of building statesmen, we're building partisan warriors and the country is suffering as a consequence (deadlock on healthcare, immigration, social security, etc. etc. etc.). The people are demanding solutions, and all they're getting is sound bites.

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FL, MI: Details of a possible delegate plan under discussion

Finally, it looks like we're getting sensible plans that don't threaten to blow up the entire party or present the opportunity for massive fraud.

Michigan's 156 delegates would be split 50-50 between Clinton and Obama. Florida’s existing delegates would be seated at the Denver convention -- but with half a vote each. That would give Clinton a net gain of about 19 elected delegates.

Clintonistas are going to scream bloody murder, that's a given. But unless a solid workable plan is hammered out within the next few weeks, this is probably the best bet going.




read more | digg story

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Mail-in Primary Not Looking Good

http://www.sptimes.com/2008/03/12/State/Vote_plan_has_tight_d.shtml

I mentioned this before, but the link above restates some of the difficulties with running a mail-in primary. One aspect I overlooked was the possibility of minority groups being disenfranchised. Not to mention the Limbaugh effect - certain to be an even bigger problem when any Republican (who didn't vote in the original GOP primary) can switch party affiliations and vote by simply checking a box and dropping a letter in the mailbox.

Look, coming up with an efficient and fair mechanism to allow millions of people a chance to vote is an inherently complex affair. The sheer logistics of a statewide primary under the best of circumstances is mind-boggling (at least to my simple brain). Jury rigging a statewide mail-in primary to slip past the June 10 deadline with the fate of the Democratic nominee at stake is insane. Frankly, it's the Florida state party acting irresponsibly again.

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