[6/13/08 update: Tim Russert passed away today. I was mad at him 3 1/2 months ago when I wrote this entry, and the title of this post is overly harsh. See my tribute to him.]

Tim Russert disgusted me with his Farrakhan crap in last night’s debate. He’s so obsessed with playing “gotcha,” creating controversy, trying to trip candidates up.

First he asks Obama about Louis Farrakhan.

MR. RUSSERT: … On Sunday, the headline in your hometown paper, Chicago Tribune: “Louis Farrakhan Backs Obama for President at Nation of Islam Convention in Chicago.” Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can’t censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you reject his support?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, Tim, you know, I can’t say to somebody that he can’t say that he thinks I’m a good guy. (Laughter.) You know, I — you know, I — I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments.

Okay. Asked and answered. Next topic, right?

Wrong. Because even though Obama has answered the question, Russert seems not to care. Because getting Obama’s answer isn’t the point. Tim’s question is apparently the point. He wants to create “a story.”

MR. RUSSERT: The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism “gutter religion.”

“Some voters.” Did you talk to any? “May have” a problem. May? Has Russert talked to actual voters who have raised this concern? Or is he just trying to be controversial? I actually yelled “fuck you” at the TV at this point.

But Obama cuts him off.

OBAMA: Tim, I think — I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That’s why I have consistently denounced it.

This is not something new. This is something that — I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I’ve been very clear, in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him.

Good. We’re done, right?

Sigh:

RUSSERT: The title of one of your books, “Audacity of Hope,” you acknowledge you got from a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church. He said that Louis Farrakhan “epitomizes greatness.”

He said that he went to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to visit with Moammar Gadhafi and that, when your political opponents found out about that, quote, “your Jewish support would dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell.”

What do you do to assure Jewish-Americans that, whether it’s Farrakhan’s support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?

Who said Obama had to “assure Jewish-Americans” of anything? He has nothing to assure us of. And why is it “assure Jewish-Americans” instead of “assure all Americans”? Are Jews the only people who care about anti-Semitism? Are blacks the only people who care about racial discrimination? No, but for Russert, it’s all about pie charts and voter sub-groups.

And what does Israel have to do with any of this? Since when are all Jews of one opinion about Israel? (Or about anything?) Israelis themselves are divided over the direction of their country, as the citizens of any good democracy would be. Why wouldn’t American Jews be divided as well?

What was the point of Tim’s question? Does he have any evidence that Obama is anti-Semitic? No. So shut the fuck up.

I think I see Russert’s deal. For him, it’s all just a game. He doesn’t care about the substance of the candidates’ responses. He cares only about how they respond. He’s not interested in whether candidates can fix the nation’s problems; he only wants to know whether they’re good at playing the game. The game that he himself is a part of.

Josh Marshall says, “As a Jew and perhaps more importantly simply as a sentient being I found it disgusting.”

I agree.

Here’s the video.

Here’s my voting history, as much as I can remember, since I turned 18 in 1991. I’ve included federal races as well as some notable state races.

From 1992 to 1995 I was an absentee New Jersey voter going to college in Virginia. In 1995 I became a Virginia resident; in 1999 I moved back to New Jersey; in 2005 I became a New York resident.

1992 (NJ)
President: Bill Clinton/Al Gore
U.S. House: Herb Klein

1993 (NJ)
I don’t remember voting in the governor’s race (Republican Christie Whitman vs. the beleaguered incumbent Democrat Jim U.S. Florio).

1994 (NJ)
U.S. Senate: Frank Lautenberg (beat Chuck Haytaian)
U.S. House: Herb Klein (lost to Bill Martini in the 1994 Republican Revolution; two years later, Martini was beat in turn, one of only 8 of 54 Republican House freshmen to be ousted)

1995 (VA)
State senate: Emily Couric (didn’t she look like her sister?)

1996 (VA)
President: Bill Clinton/Al Gore
U.S. Senate: Mark Warner (lost to John Warner; went on to serve as governor; running for Senate again this year)
U.S. House: probably Virgil Goode (who later switched parties and became a nut)

1997 (VA)
I don’t remember voting in the governor’s race (Republican Jim Gilmore vs. Democrat Don Beyer).

1998 (VA)
I can’t remember if I voted in the U.S. House election.

2000 (NJ)
President: Al Gore/Joe Lieberman
U.S. Senate: Jon Corzine
U.S. House: Bob Menendez

2001 (NJ)
Governor: Jim McGreevey

2002 (NJ)
U.S. Senate: Frank Lautenberg (this is when Robert Torricelli dropped out and Lautenberg quickly replaced him on the ballot)
U.S. House: Bob Menendez

2004 (NJ)
President: John Kerry/John Edwards
U.S. House: Bob Menendez

2005 (NY)
Mayor: Mike Bloomberg

2006 (NY)
Governor: Eliot Spitzer
U.S. Senator: Hillary Clinton
U.S. House: Jerrold Nadler

2007 (NY)
Presidential primary: Barack Obama

The only Republican I’ve ever voted for is Mike Bloomberg. And that hardly counts. I don’t know why it took me so long to register as a Democrat.

Interesting tidbit from tomorrow’s New York Times. Barack Obama may have an edge over Hillary Clinton in the Texas primary next month for the following reason:

In Texas, Mr. Penn said Mrs. Clinton would be helped by the Latino vote — which he said could ultimately be as much as 40 percent of the electorate.

But Mrs. Clinton faces another problem there in the form of that state’s unusual delegation allocation rules. Delegates are allocated to state senatorial districts based on Democratic voter turn-out in the last election. Bruce Buchanan, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin, noted that in the last election, turnout was low in predominantly Hispanic districts and unusually high in urban African-American districts.

That means more delegates will be available in districts that, based on the results so far, could be expected to go heavily for Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton, Dr. Buchanan said, “has got her work cut out for her.”

To be honest, this doesn’t seem fair.

At any rate, I don’t think Hillary can be counted out yet at all. There are two more debates coming up. Hillary’s good at debates; Obama’s not usually at his best during them.

As the primary season has shown so far, anything can happen.

I’m about a third of the way through Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, by Taylor Branch. Parting the Waters is the first book of Branch’s massive trilogy interweaving the history of the black civil rights movement with the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. The first book alone is 922 pages; together the three books are about 2,300 pages. (I’m not counting acknowledgements, endnotes, index, etc.)

Parting the Waters is absorbing. It really brings the chaos of the era to life: bus boycotts, marches, bombings, jailings, political machinations, internal dissension within the civil rights movement. It seems like half the movement involved creating plans and the other half involved scrambling to respond to unforeseen events.

I’m not really setting out to finish the book — it’s just that I keep reading it and it keeps being interesting. I started the book because I wanted to read something meaty, and for a long time it had been on my mental list of things I eventually wanted to read in my life. (It’s long been acclaimed and it won the Pulitzer for History in 1989.)

Partly because February is Black History Month and partly because Barack Obama has broken so many racial barriers lately, the book seems particularly appropriate right now. Unfortunately, since it’s a biography of Martin Luther King, we know how the story ends.

Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 79 last month. He wouldn’t even be 80 years old today. That brings home with great clarity how young he was when he was assassinated, and how much life that assassination deprived him. It’s jarring to take him out of the myths of history and imagine him living on into the present — which, under normal circumstances, he would have.

I wonder what he would think of Barack Obama?

Mike says:

Re. Obama: I don’t believe in “the politics of hope,” or “crossing the aisle,” or any of that horseshit.

But if other people do, and can be convinced to keep on keepin’ on…well, I’ll see you in November.

Pithily put.

Chris Crain, on Obama vs. Clinton on gay rights:

I know what life is like for gays who live in my native South, and I’ve seen firsthand how the issue can rip apart families and friendships. And laws like the Defense of Marriage Act have a direct impact on my life, since my partner and I cannot live together in the U.S. because of it. It makes a real difference to me that Barack Obama favors full repeal of DOMA and Hillary only half, and because she has consistently tried to defend the nefarious law signed by her husband in 1996.

Why is there such low turnout in the Louisiana primary today? That’s bad news for Obama. It scares me.

I think Joe Perez has most accurately captured why I’m supporting Obama for the Democratic nomination.

But I want to point this part out specifically.

Unfortunately, too many Obama supporters have gotten carried away with their enthusiasm and have built up a puffed up image of the man as a sort of messiah figure…

Obama is not a saint, nor a savior, nor the second coming of JFK and MLK all rolled into one… But nevertheless, he’s my call.

Just because I support Obama does not mean that I’m a mindless idealist falling prey to hype. In fact, one of the reasons that I initially leaned away from him was because many of his supporters unsettled me.

It’s interesting for me to go back and read that post and see how I changed my mind. That’s one of the great things about blogging, keeping a diary, whatever – you can record the history of your thoughts and see how they’ve evolved (or haven’t).

Clinton appears to be on her way to winning California by a huge margin (but not with a large enough percentage to win bonus delegates). What’s with Edwards getting 10 percent of the votes?

[Morning update: okay, not so huge. And Edwards is getting more like 4 percent.]

And Andrew Sullivan points out that California’s gay population is going for Clinton over Obama by nearly 2 to 1. WTF?

I’m disappointed Obama didn’t win my home state of New Jersey. But it’s all about the delegates, not about who wins states. Clinton 53 to Obama 45 means they basically split the delegates.

(Obama did win my home county, Essex.)

My hero Michael Chabon writes in support of Obama and against the phobocracy. I think his reasons for supporting Obama are more idealistic and head-in-the-clouds than my reasons, but there it is anyway.

Glenn Collins explores whether Jews are more inclined to support Clinton or Obama. He finds that it’s up for grabs.

One attorney says, “I think there is going to be a split between established older voters in the Jewish community, with whom Hillary will do well, and younger and more liberal Jews who see Obama as an agent of change.” So this seems to mirror the general Democratic population.

Each candidate has the support of several Jewish politicians:

Aside from [Ed] Koch, prominent Jewish politicians supporting Mrs. Clinton include New York’s other senator, Charles E. Schumer; Senator Dianne Feinstein of California; and Representatives Gary L. Ackerman of Queens, Eliot L. Engel of the Bronx, Jerrold L. Nadler of Manhattan, Anthony D. Weiner of Queens and Brooklyn.

Among Senator Obama’s political supporters are several Jewish members of Congress: Representatives Steve Rothman of New Jersey, Adam B. Schiff of California, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Robert Wexler of Florida.

Me, I agree most of all with Ed Koch, who says, “I don’t speak for the Jewish community, and nobody speaks for the Jewish community. The Jews, individually, speak for themselves.”