I’m pretty sure I saw Paul Krugman on my NJ Transit train this morning. He was sitting across and two seats behind me in a quarter-full car and was typing on a laptop. I know he’s affiliated with Princeton, and he might have been going there — I was on an express train and Princeton was the next stop after Newark.
I’ve disagreed with stuff he’s written about Clinton and Obama lately, but I wouldn’t have known what to say to him.
Thinking again about the Obamacrombie boys, I dug up this Salon.com profile of Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO from two years ago. It’s worth reading because of how creepy and obnoxious the guy comes across. (I linked it here when it originally ran.)
He wants desperately to look like his target customer (the casually flawless college kid), and in that pursuit he has aggressively transformed himself from a classically handsome man into a cartoonish physical specimen: dyed hair, perfectly white teeth, golden tan, bulging biceps, wrinkle-free face, and big, Angelina Jolie lips…
As far as Jeffries is concerned, America’s unattractive, overweight or otherwise undesirable teens can shop elsewhere. “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,†he says. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.
Two years later it still makes me want to vomit.
So, other than the Obama/Abercrombie/Fitch dorkwads…
I wanted to write some sort of insightful post about the Pennsylvania primary results. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything insightful. It just goes on and on. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy just won’t die. She’s like the Anti-Monitor in issue #12 of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Seriously, though…
Not that it matters, since I already voted (2½ months ago!), but I think I’ve returned to being neutral in the Democratic race. Or at least I feel less personally invested in an Obama victory. If for some reason he doesn’t get the nomination, I won’t feel personally offended like I would have after the Texas and Ohio primaries.
He still has my heart, but Hillary’s been starting to win my head. (Al Gore in 2000 had both; John Kerry in 2004 had neither.)
Hillary’s a dark lord, but she’s our dark lord. She has an intuitive understanding of how the Republicans play the game. At the same time, that’s what I don’t like about her. She’s adopted the Republican narrative. She’d endorsed the Republican way of playing.
Obama either doesn’t understand the narrative, or he doesn’t feel he needs to play it. “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” Indeed. I’m increasingly frustrated by his unwillingness to play the game. Look, you’ve got the youth vote locked up already. Can you finally start turning your attention to the working class and elderly? Not everyone will go to your website and look at your specifics. Will you please deign to talk about them and play the game? There are some idiots out there who need to be led by the hand. They’re not going to seek out your positions. You have to talk about them.
Hillary Clinton’s transformation is unbelievable. She’s morphed from a “liberal elitist” enemy of the right into a gun-toting, shot-drinking, working-class hero. She’s practically the waitress who served Obama his uneaten waffle and topped off his coffee.
Oh, and she’s ready to nuke Iran.
What the frak happened to her?
I’m not as sure as Eric that McCain’s a goner. By all rights, George W. Bush should never have been reelected. Never underestimate the stupidity of the American people. On the other hand, McCain should be benefitting greatly from the internecine Democratic warfare right now, and yet he still can’t break his 45 percent ceiling, so who knows what will happen.
See? Like I said. I have nothing useful to say.
What’s up with the three gay A&F-wearing dorks standing right behind Obama while he gives his speech? And don’t answer your frickin’ cellphone while he talks. It’s distracting! Stop talking to each other and fooling around! Pay attention to the candidate! You’re pulling focus!
[Update: I’m not the only one to notice. More here, here, and here. Two of those three bloggers have no gaydar.]
[Update 2: Yes, it’s a little thing. But campaign events, especially major prime-time events, should be well stage-managed, and I’m surprised those three tools made it onto the stage right behind the candidate.]
[Update 3: Keith Olbermann on MSNBC: “If you have the sudden urge to run out and buy a fleece…”]
Tomorrow’s the Pennsylvania primary? Already? It arrived faster than I thought.
I’m serious. Seven weeks ago, when we had the Texas and Ohio primaries, I agonized that we were going to have to go through another seven weeks of this. Now those seven weeks have passed, but it doesn’t feel like that long. I don’t know why. Maybe time moves more quickly when primaries or caucuses aren’t happening every week.
The whole nominating contest is a blur at this point. I’m numb. I almost don’t care who the nominee is anymore. Obama is bruised and battered, and Clinton has morphed into Richard Nixon with a universal health care program. In other words, Lyndon Johnson. Well, Lyndon Johnson minus Vietnam. Actually, Lyndon Johnson minus Vietnam doesn’t sound so bad.
Hillary Clinton = (Nixon + universal health care) – Vietnam
Hillary Clinton = Nixon + (universal health care – Vietnam)
Hillary Clinton – Nixon = universal health care – Vietnam
As of tomorrow, time elapsed since the Iowa caucuses: 110 days.
No, seriously.
This is my second Talking Points Memo link today, but I like it. Josh Marshall points out the absurdity under which Clinton and Stephanopoulos seem to be operating:
Organized campaigns of falsehoods, distortions and smears used to be something most people thought of as a bad thing…. Now, however, members of the prestige press appear to see it not as a matter of guilty slumming but rather a positive journalistic obligation to engage in their own organized campaign of falsehood, distortion and smear on the reasoning that it anticipates the eventual one to be mounted by Republicans. In other words, we’ve gotten past the debatable rationale that journalists have no choice but to cover smears and distortions once they’re floated into the mainstream debate to thinking that journalists need to seek out and air smears and distortions on the grounds of electability, as though the mid-summer GOP Swiftboating was another de facto part of the election process like primaries, conventions and debates.
It’s an expansive rationale under which Gibson and Stephanopoulos may have failed their civic responsibility by not pressing the point of whether Obama is a hereditary Muslim or his mother had a predilection for dark-skinned socialists.
As I’ve noted it’s pretty nauseating and disillusioning that Sen. Clinton has now also convinced herself that she’s providing a service by mounting her own Swift Boat campaign.
It’s ridiculous. What was it that Tom Lehrer said about Henry Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973? “It was at that moment that satire died.” Well, we keep finding new ways to kill it. This is why “The Daily Show” is funnier than SNL’s “Weekend Update”: because news clips today are comedy in themselves. You don’t need to add anything. Reality is its own joke.
I really wish the media would stop letting the Republicans define the narrative frame. It’s got to stop.
Oh hell yes. Here’s my candidate.
I love 2:28.
Why is running for president such an impossible job? And why (until lately) have Clinton and Obama been so close in national polls? Because we don’t know what the hell we want in a president.
From The Paradoxes of the American Presidency, by Thomas E. Cronin and Michael A. Genovese, here’s a list of paradoxes that shows how confused the American people are about what they want. Some of these seem to apply to the Democratic primary contest.
Paradox #1. Americans demand powerful, popular presidential leadership that solves the nation’s problems. Yet we are inherently suspicious of strong centralized leadership and the abuse of power. Thus we place significant limits on the president’s powers.
Paradox #2. We yearn for the democratic “common person” and simultaneously a leader who is uncommon, charismatic, heroic, and visionary.
Paradox #3. We want a decent, just, caring, and compassionate president, yet we also admire a cunning, guileful, and, on occasions that warrant it, even a ruthless, manipulative president.
Paradox #4. We admire the “above politics” nonpartisan or bipartisan approach, and yet the presidency is perhaps the most political office in the American system, which requires a creative entrepreneurial master politician.
Paradox #5. We want a president who can unify diverse people and interests; however, the job requires taking firm stands, making unpopular or controversial decisions that necessarily upset and divide.
Paradox #6. We expect our presidents to provide bold, visionary, innovative, programmatic leadership, and at the same time to respond pragmatically to the will of public opinion majorities. That is to say, we expect presidents to lead and to follow, and to exercise “democratic leadership.”
Paradox #7 Americans want powerful, self-confident presidential leadership. Yet we are inherently suspicious of leaders who view themselves as infallible and above criticism.
Paradox #8. What it takes to become president may not be what is needed to govern the nation.
Paradox #9. The presidency is sometimes too strong yet at other times too weak.
Paradox #10. Presidents affirm the existing order and major traditions of society, yet often must also create a new order and boldly depart from the norm.
I watched the debate tonight. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but: I think Clinton definitely had the better evening. Obama seemed off his game. The questions were appalling — Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous both seemed to be channeling Tim Russert, and they brought up every possible scandal that has been raised against Obama. Including the flag pin thing! Are you kidding me?
Nothing about Mark Penn or his Colombia trade deal. But questions about Wright, and some Weatherman guy.
But Obama didn’t respond well to the questions at all. He sounded halting and hesitant and defensive when he spoke.
Clinton, meanwhile, seemed polished and prepared and seemed to know her stuff. If this were the only debate I’d seen, and I were voting in the Pennsylvania primary, I might vote for her.
Not that she has a chance of getting the nomination anymore, but she might very well be a better candidate against McCain than Obama would be. She’d certainly be better than either John Kerry or Al Gore at going on the offensive and standing up for herself.
Obama sometimes seems to be morphing into Adlai Stevenson before our eyes. We might get killed again this fall with him as the nominee.
Obama works under the assumption that people are smart. Case in point: his wonderful speech on race last month.
Clinton, on the other hand, works under the assumption that people are dumb and need things explained to them in simple terms.
Unfortunately, I think most people are dumb.
I don’t necessarily mean that as a knock against Clinton. It’s just the way things seem to be.
I’m still depressed about the state of politics and the state of humanity and the state of human communication and the state of human mutual understanding. I’m letting it all get to me too much.
Animosity and intolerance and prejudice and prejudgment are all part of the human condition, along with love and joy and solidarity. I don’t know why I should expect any of this to change.
I should probably disengage. I know I won’t, because I’m such a politics junkie and love clicking on website X or Y all the time to see the latest news. But I should at least try. Or if I can’t disengage, I should at least stop trying to expect perfection from us human beings and accept the messiness of the world.
Many people have praised the speech Obama gave yesterday. But other reactions to it have left me depressed.
I used to be optimistic and idealistic about the power of dialogue to change the world. If we could all empathize with other people more, I thought, the world would be a better place. (Empathize: identify with, and understand, another’s situation, feelings, and motives.)
I used to think that only children were in thrall to their fears and emotions, and that when they grew up into adulthood, the fear would go away, and it would be replaced by understanding.
But it strikes me that so many adults in this world are actually just children in grown-up bodies. They are people who can lift heavy objects, and reach the top shelf, and drive a car, and hold down a job, and make a living, and raise a family. They are people who can generally function in this world day to day, independently. And yet so many of these people haven’t really grown up. They’re still too much in thrall to their fears and emotions. And it prevents them from understanding the world. From knowing the world. From knowing the people in it.
Obama gave a wonderful speech yesterday — a speech, by the way, that he apparently wrote himself. (That shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, he wrote a highly-praised, nuanced and deeply felt book back in 1995, when he wasn’t a politician and wouldn’t have had motivation to use a ghostwriter. And he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, so he’s not exactly an idiot. Maybe he received input on the speech from others — I haven’t seen it reported that he did, but maybe he did — but even if he did, the thoughts were his. It’s not like someone pushed a sheaf of paper in front of him and said, “Read this.”)
It’s not an easy speech to digest. You have to do a little more work to understand it than you have to do with most politicians’ speeches. It’s only words, but it demonstrated a fine understanding of the racial divisions that contribute so much to mutual suspicion and animosity in our country today. And, not incidentally, Obama also did a fine job, I thought, of explaining that sometimes, you have emotional ties to people in your life who may say things and hold beliefs that you profoundly disagree with. You might choose to shun these people. Or you might choose not to shun them, because even though you disagree with them, they’ve become like family to you, and you prefer not to shun family.
And yet some people think it’s their place to judge Obama for the choice he’s made.
I was particularly frustrated by a comment to a post on Eric’s blog. (I don’t know Ryan, the commenter, so I take issue only with his words, and only because those words are representative of what other people have written elsewhere on various blogs in the past 24 hours. I don’t mean to criticize the commenter himself.)
Ryan wrote:
I did read the speech. And I still don’t care. Actions speak louder than words and as a gay, I walked away from hateful religon, so can Obama, esp. when “unity” is his buzz words. So the world being complicated doesn’t “cut the mustard” so to speak. Wright is wrong. Obama sat and listened to his spew for 20 years. There’s no excuse. None.
[…]
Obama’s ACTIONS have spoken louder than any fancy speech his writers write. He supports hateful Wright, for whatever reason Wright is angry. I care not.
Hate is wrong. Wright preaches hate. Obama supports that hate by donating to his church, by attending his sermons, by naming his book after one of those sermons, by bringing his daughters to hear him preach.
End of discussion.
End of discussion?
That’s a level of certitude I can’t imagine holding. About almost anything.
I’m tired of reading comments by people who think it’s their place to judge how another human being handles a particular situation. As I said, I’ve seen similar comments on numerous blogs in the last 24 hours, and it frustrates me to no end. People are coming to a situation with their preconceived notions, and they won’t let anything change their minds.
I’ve been guilty of this myself, of course. In this political season, I’ve felt a visceral dislike of Hillary Clinton over the last couple of months, and I’ve expressed it on this blog. I’ve been trying to combat that dislike. I can’t presume to know what’s in her heart or her mind. I don’t think she’s an Ambitious Dragon Lady; I think she has deeply held, deeply felt beliefs about health care, and about children, and about making this country a better place. I don’t know if she has the political skill to achieve her goals as president; she might be deluding herself, as all politicians do (including, perhaps, Obama). And I think she’s made some dishonorable political choices in this campaign. My primal instinct is to hate her guts and hold her in contempt for the way she’s conducted it. But I’m trying to get past that, because, really, what the hell do I know?
“What the hell do I know.” I wish more people lived by that creed instead of feeling secure in their certitude. I try to, even though I’m not nearly as successful at it as I’d like to be.
There have always been wars and there always will be. There have always been dictators who weren’t loved enough or secure enough as a child, and there always will be. Throughout history, a large portion of the human population has remained childlike, and a large portion of the human population always will.
Why bother with the dialogue and the words? What good can it do? Damned if I know sometimes.
While writing this, it was pointed out to me that tomorrow would have been Mr. Rogers’s 80th birthday. (In his honor, tomorrow is “Won’t You Wear a Sweater?” Day.)
I adored Mr. Rogers as a child; sometimes he seemed to be the only person in the world who wouldn’t judge me, who would accept me unconditionally. He taught us some of the most emotionally healthy lessons there are. Here are some:
Of course, I get angry. Of course, I get sad. I have a full range of emotions. I also have a whole smorgasbord of ways of dealing with my feelings. That is what we should give children. Give them … ways to express their rage without hurting themselves or somebody else. That’s what the world needs.
You know, you don’t have to look like everybody else to be acceptable and to feel acceptable.
I have a very modulated way of dealing with my anger. I have always tried to understand the other person and invariably I’ve discovered that somebody who rubs you the wrong way has been rubbed the wrong way many times.
If more people were like Mr. Rogers, the world would be a better place.
Barack Obama gave an amazing speech about race and religion in America this morning. Appropriately, he gave it at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, because it was a very American speech. You can read it and I’m sure you can watch it somewhere [update: here].
It blew me away. I’ve never heard anything like it from a presidential candidate. I’ve never heard a politician speak so honestly, intelligently and insightfully about the racial and religious divide in this country.
It appears to have been prompted by the Rev. Wright comments. But he used the opportunity to speak not just about Rev. Wright but about larger issues. He explained the source of Wright’s anger without justifying it. He explained what Wright has meant to him personally, even though he thinks many of Wright’s views are deeply flawed.
He said that while Wright’s views come from a place of anger, so do the views of many working-class white Americans who blame their place in life on affirmative action, or who resent, rightfully, the implication that they themselves are somehow responsible for this country’s history of slavery.
I don’t even know what part of the speech to excerpt here, because passage after passage is insightful. Here’s a taste.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS…
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.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
I think this is going to go down as a legendary speech, on a par with Kennedy’s 1960 speech about his Catholicism.
Obama could have disowned Wright and quit his church. It might have been the easier thing to do. He could have been that calculating. Another politician might have thrown his friend overboard. But Obama has principles. He stood up for himself and defended someone who has played a meaningful role in his life.
I wonder if Obama is too smart and insightful to be President of the United States. But then I think to myself how wonderful it is that we finally have a candidate who doesn’t treat us like idiots – who has enough faith in us to appeal to the better angels of our nature.
I don’t know if that faith is justified; it might be proven wrong. But it’s so refreshing to see a politician take that gamble.
Glenn Greenwald, mockingly, on the uproar over Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
White, right-wing Christian evangelical rage against America is understandable, respectable, and noble. Liberal black Christian anger towards America is scary, subversive, and despicable.
Hmm… this makes a really good point. Maybe it would be better for Obama to let the Florida primary results stand:
Suppose the results from the January primary are allowed to stand. This will net Clinton 37 pledged delegates, and therefore Obama’s pledged delegate lead will go from approximately 161 to 124. Now, even with this hit and a big loss in Pennsylvania, it seems unlikely that Senator Clinton can get within 100 pledged delegates of Obama (the popular vote, too, looks like a long shot for her). In this scenario I see almost no chance of Clinton getting the nomination.
But, what if there is a Florida revote in June? Clinton will probably win but only net, say, half as many delegates. But she will have won another big state, not to mention the last big contest heading into the convention. Is that talking point worth twenty delegates? I think it might be. Admittedly, it’s also unlikely that Clinton can win the nomination under this scenario, but it could be more likely. Clinton needs a game-changer, and a Florida re-vote in June might be the ticket. Again, I am not saying this is necessarily the case, but if I were Obama I might rather go into the convention with a 110 delegate lead and Florida a distant memory than with a 130 delegate lead and a slew of bad headlines.
Michigan’s Soviet primary is another story, where Clinton was the only named candidate on the ballot. “The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” Hillary Clinton said this morning. My god. She is beyond shameless.
Fine.
Clinton’s probably going to wind up getting the nomination through sheer determination. Florida and Michigan will hold revotes, and she’ll win them both, as well as Pennsylvania. Even if she doesn’t wind up with a delegate lead, she could wind up with a popular vote lead, and then she’ll convince the superdelegates to vote for her, arguing that she’d be a stronger nominee.
She’ll win that argument because as the weeks roll on, she’ll show that she’s right. Obama is beginning to run on fumes. This Rezko and Canada/NAFTA crap, real or not, caught him off guard. After the Clintons had to endure years of the Whitewater non-scandal, it’s breathtakingly hypocritical and cynical of them to push the Rezko thing. But they know how to get people talking about these things, and it adds to the perception that Obama hasn’t been fully vetted, even if these are ginned-up controversies. It’s meta-politics: look at all the problems you’re going to run into if you select Obama as your nominee.
As much as she pisses me off, Clinton seems to know how to go into attack mode. Obama doesn’t. God help us if we have another John Kerry who disdains attack politics and then gets clobbered by the Republican machine.
That 3 a.m. ad was good, because it played on fear and drew contrasts with Obama, and yet it wasn’t overtly negative. Obama needs to do something similar – some sort of hybrid ad. Of course, if he does that, he sullies his image, which is all he has going for him.
Clinton’s team, by its own actions, has shown the failure of Obama’s philosophy. Her team has shown that we can never reach consensus. Consensus requires cooperation from both sides, and if one side won’t cooperate, you’ve failed. Obama’s philosophy is based on the notion that the people are tired of the old politics and want change. But if majorities are falling for Clinton’s crap, then Obama’s philosophy is wrong.
We can never get past the old politics because the old politics is politics. The new politics is not actually politics. And democracy requires politics.
I feel personally wounded by all this. All my life, people have told me that I’m not practical, that I just don’t understand how the world works, that I’m naive. Or maybe it was just my parents who told me that. I wasted my law degree, I didn’t go for the high-paying job, et cetera. This just proves that people like my dad are right, that I’m an idiot, that I have no business being here.
I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s how it makes me feel: that you people who support Hillary are the smart ones, and that I’m a fool. Fine. I get it. Enjoy your candidate, revel in her victory, and I’ll just sit back here in my stupidity, because really, I’m just too dumb to know any better, aren’t I?
And now for a personal note regarding tomorrow’s primaries.
I’m really nervous. I know, it’s silly because it’s just politics. But I am.
I’ve said or linked to a few snarky things about Hillary Clinton on here lately. If she wins Texas and Ohio and ultimately wins the nomination, then that’s going to mean that my team lost. Or, if Obama wins the nomination and turns out to be a weak general election candidate, or if he wins the election and turns out to be a horrible president, I’ll look like a tool.
I don’t think any of my pro-Clinton readers care about this, but I kinda do.
So let me just state that there are some things I like about Hillary. And there are some things about Obama that give me pause. I deliberated agonizingly about whom to vote for in the New York primary, even though I ultimately voted for Obama with enthusiasm.
If Hillary Clinton wins Ohio and Texas tomorrow, I’ll be disappointed. And then, if she gains momentum and becomes the nominee, I’ll try to put aside the things I hate about her and remind myself of the things I like about her. And I’ll definitely vote for her in November. Probably enthusiastically. I mean, she’s a Democrat and therefore I love most of her policies. I deplore some of her campaign tactics right now, but if she gets the nomination and uses those same tactics to propel her to a win — well, I still might not like the means, but I’ll like the ends.
After all, as one candidate has pointed out, we’re all on the same team.
Someone needs to explain to me why the fact that Hillary Clinton has won several big states in the Democratic primaries/caucuses, while Obama has won mostly smaller states, means anything. I’ve seen Clinton supporters make this argument several times and I don’t understand what it’s supposed to mean. It’s mentioned here as well.
First of all, it doesn’t matter which states you win; it matters how many delegates you win. If you can win X number of delegates by winning a few big states or lots of smaller states, it’s the same thing.
Are the Clinton people trying to say that her wins in big states will make her a more viable candidate than Obama in the general election? That’s as silly as saying that Obama’s wins in traditionally red states will make him more likely to win those red states in November.
Um, these are all contests among Democrats (and some independents). There are no Republicans voting in them.
I guess Clinton could argue that her California win makes her more viable in that state in November. California had an open Democratic primary but a closed Republican primary, so independents could vote only in the Democratic primary. Most independents who voted in the Democratic primary chose Obama, but Clinton still beat him. This could mean that not enough California independents were enthusiastic enough about Obama to vote for him, and that they’d be more likely to vote for McCain instead of Obama in November. But it really means nothing, because I don’t see how Clinton could argue that she’d be better than Obama at attracting independents from McCain.
So winning a few big states as opposed to several small states means nothing. Right?
Am I missing something?
Bloomberg.com: “Gay Clinton Backers Defect to Obama.”
I don’t like headlines that make generalizations like this, but it’s interesting reading.
I’m starting to really want this nominating contest to end already.
Next Tuesday probably won’t be decisive. Obama might win Texas and Clinton might win Ohio. If Clinton wins both, the race continues. Even if Obama wins both (and they split Rhode Island and Vermont), Clinton has said she’s looking to Pennsylvania on April 22.
April 22! That’s seven weeks from now. Fifty-four days from today. How much time is that, you ask? Well, 54 days ago was January 5, right between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Think of how long ago that was and how much has happened since then and then realize that that’s the amount of time between now and the Pennsylvania primary. I don’t know if I can bear our party’s tearing itself apart for two more months.
Mike voiced similar thoughts eons two months ago, and I disagreed with him then. Now I’m starting to see his point. I guess it’s a subjective question of how much more of this I can personally take.
It’s ironic. Everyone complained that by front-loading the primaries, the nominating race was going to be over too soon and we were going to have to suffer through a nine-month general election campaign. Instead, the race is taking forever.
The 2004 nomination battle started later and ended earlier than this one. On January 19, 2004, John Kerry won the Iowa caucuses. On March 2, 2004, Super Tuesday, Kerry crushed his last remaining rival, John Edwards, who then decided to drop out. Time elapsed: 43 days.
This year, the Iowa caucuses were on January 3. It’s 56 days later and we’re still in the thick of it.
The day after Super Tuesday 2004, the New York Times wrote:
With yesterday’s balloting, 29 states and the District of Columbia have now passed judgment on the Democratic field. And the party’s leaders appear to have accomplished precisely what they were looking for in setting up this calendar: A near-consensus candidate, chosen early and with minimal bloodshed.
How nice.
On the other hand, after we nominated Kerry we got buyer’s remorse. At least this year we’ve been able to vet the candidates more. It’s good that Obama didn’t cruise to the nomination after Iowa. Whichever candidate ultimately wins the nomination will have been tested and vetted and will have learned greatly from the experience. Ultimately, this fight will make our nominee a better candidate.
Eh, who am I kidding. I have no idea what it all means. It’s just agita-inducing.
Russert: Senator Obama, you’re black. Louis Farrakhan is black. Please repeat after me: All the blacks hate all the Jews.
Obama: No, Tim.
Russert: Please?
Obama: No, Tim.
Russert: Don’t you agree that this will be much better television if I put the words “Judaism” and “gutter religion” in the same sentence?
Obama: Hard to say, Tim.
Russert: Louis Farrakhan, Moammar Qaddafi and your pastor walk into a bar. Doesn’t that prove that you hate all the Jews?
Obama: Actually Tim, I like Jewish people.
Clinton: I just think it’s very important to add that I like them more.
[via TPM]