Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama is a big deal--but it ought to be difficult for Obama-backers to raise a full-throated cheer for it. Obama's chief selling point at the start of the campaign was that he had been right on the Iraq war. Powell, of course, was not only wrong; he had lent his prestige to the invasion, fronting for the Bush White House on the phony WMD case. And while some may view Powell's Obama endorsement as a stab at rehabilitation, Powell has never fully come to public terms with his role in the Iraq WMD scandal.

On Meet the Press, Tom Brokaw gently approached the matter:

BROKAW: I want to ask you about your own role in the decision to go to war in Iraq. Barack Obama has been critical of your appearance before the United Nations at that time. Bob Woodward has a new book out called "The War Within," and here's what he had to say about Colin Powell and his place in the administration: "Powell didn't think Iraq was a necessary war, and yet he had gone along in a hundred ways, large and small. He had resisted at times but had succumbed to the momentum and his own sense of deference -- even obedience -- to the president. Perhaps more than anyone else in the administration, Powell had been the `closer' for the president's case on war." ...What's the lesson in all of that for a former -- for a new secretary of state or for a new national security adviser, based on your own experience?

POWELL: Well, let's start at the beginning. I said to the president in 2002, we should try to solve this diplomatically and avoid war. The president accepted that recommendation. We took it to the U.N. But the president, by the end of 2002, believed that the U.N. was not going to solve the problem, and he made a decision that we had to prepare for military action.I fully supported that. And I have never said anything to suggest I did not support going to war. I thought the evidence was there. And it is not just my closing of the whole deal with my U.N. speech. I know the importance of that speech, and I regret a lot of the information that the intelligence community provided us was wrong. But three months before my speech, with a heavy majority, the United States Congress expressed its support to use military force if it was necessary. And so, we went in and used military force.

My unhappiness was that we didn't do it right. It was easy to get to Baghdad, but then we forgot that there was a lot more that had to be done. And we didn't have enough force to impose our will in the country or to deal with the insurgency when it broke out, and that I regret....

BROKAW: Removing the weapons of mass destruction from the equation, because we now know that they did not exist, was it then a war of necessity or just a war of choice?

POWELL: Without the weapons of mass destruction present, as conveyed to us by the intelligence community in the most powerful way, I don't think there would have been a war. It was the reason we took it to the public. It was the reason we took it to the American people, to the Congress, who supported it on that basis, and it's the presentation I made to the United Nations. Without those weapons of mass destruction then, Iraq did not present to the world the kind of threat that it did if it had weapons of mass destruction.

That last sentence is a syllogism. Of course, without WMDs, Iraq was not the threat it would have been had it possessed WMDs. The point was that it did not possess WMDs. And as Michael Isikoff and I showed in our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, the Bush administration purposefully exaggerated the error-ridden WMD case that was in itself based on faulty and incomplete evidence. But Powell dumps all the blame here on the intel gang for screwing up the intelligence. That's too convenient a dodge. Here's a case in point: the Bush White House claimed that aluminum tubes obtained by Saddam Hussein could only be used for nuclear centrifuges. Yet the nuclear scientists within the intelligence community with the most expertise on the subject disputed this. That did not stop Dick Cheney and Condi Rice from making claims on this matter that were utterly false--claims that analysts at Powell's Department of State would have known were false.

This campaign is becoming ridiculous. And let's be honest: it is John McCain's fault.

Yesterday, his aides went bonkers over Barack Obama's remark that John McCain and Sarah Palin by campaigning for "change" are putting "lipstick on a pig." The McCain camp quickly arranged a conference call for reporters, during which former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, a Republican, accused Obama of mounting a sexist attack on Sarah Palin. (It was not an attack on McCain, because apparently he does not use lipstick.) Obama's comment, as many have pointed out, was not a chauvinist jab at Palin. He was using an expression that, again as many others have pointed out, McCain has also used on occasion.

Yet today, the McCain campaign released a web ad that quotes CBS News anchor Katie Couric ("one of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life") and that accuses Obama of mounting a sexist "smear" against Palin. (A lipstick smear?) Of course, Couric was not referring to Obama's remark. Talk about taking a statement out of context. And the ad maliciously plays Obama's lipstick comment over a headline that reads, "Barack Obama on Sarah Palin." This is nothing but deceitful.

Worse, while the McCainiacs were falsely charging Obama with sexism (playing the gender card?), they were putting out a recklessly false television ad that claimed Obama had backed legislation in Illinois to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners. A McClatchey fact-check of the ad noted this charge was without merit and absurd. The legislation had allowed local school boards to teach "age-appropriate" sex education and had provided schools the ability to warn kids about sexual predators and inappropriate touching. That is, it was designed to protect children. Yet McCain was trying to turn it into anti-Obama ammo. (Joe Klein is really upset about this.)

The McCain Mafia seems committed at throwing whatever it can at Obama: from falsehoods about taxes and earmarks (example: Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere) to silly and unsupported charges about sexism and sex-ed. Their strategic goal, obviously, is to keep Obama pinned down. Should the Obama campaign waste time knocking down these purposeful errors and excessive spin? That would be letting McCain shape the debate to his advantage. But if the campaign allows this stuff to hit the wall--and maybe stick--the McCain mob wins. Should it sling crap back at them? Perhaps Team Obama ought to stick to the ground game campaign manager David Plouffe has designed and not be distracted by the cable news noise. But at some point does that noise affect the ground reality? I suppose the only answer is, the Obama camp has to do it all: swat the flies, make its own case (for Obama and against McCain), and keep moving ahead.

But so much for an honorable campaign from an honorable man. Then again, given that McCain has already explicitly accused Obama of traitorous conduct (opposing a war to win an election), nothing should come as a shock. Not even abusing sex education to score points. The fortunate thing for McCain is that presidential campaigns have no true referees. Some in the media try, but the McCain camp is doing all it can to turn the election into a battle between its side and the media, a naked attempt at delegitimizing media criticism of the Palin pick and other McCain campaign moves. There is no power that can slap McCain with what he truly deserves: a time-out in a corner.

It was inevitable. American advocates of the Iraq war are now arguing that they know better than Iraq's leaders when it comes to how long U.S. troops should stay in Iraq. And this approach seems to be animating John McCain's view of the war.

Advocates of the war received a blow recently when the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said several times that it would like to see some sort of timetable for a U.S. pullout. For McCain, this was particularly troubling, for it placed the Iraqi government closer to Barack Obama's position (set a schedule for a gradual withdrawal) than his position (stay and win, win, win, and then withdraw). So what's a neocon to do? Simple: attack Maliki.

In The Washington Post, Max Boot, a foreign policy adviser to McCain, wrote:

There is some irony in the fact that Democrats, after years of deriding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a hopeless bungler and conniving Shiite sectarian, are now treating as sacrosanct his suggestion that Iraq will be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Naturally this is because his position seems to support that of Barack Obama.

A little skepticism is in order here. The prime minister has political motives for what he's saying -- whatever that is. An anonymous Iraqi official told the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, "Maliki thinks that Obama is most likely to win in the presidential election" and that "he's got to take preemptive steps before Obama gets to the White House." By smoothing Obama's maiden voyage abroad as the Democratic nominee, Maliki may figure that he will collect chits that he can call in later.

Giving the Iraqi prime minister an added motive to posture about troop withdrawals, even while he explicitly eschews binding timelines, is that he is engaged in contentious status-of-forces negotiations with the United States. He may figure that threatening to boot us out gives him more leverage over our troops. Beyond the negotiations, there is the imperative of Iraq's provincial elections, supposed to take place this year. Maliki no doubt expects that his Dawa party will reap political benefits from appearing to stand up to the Americans.

Oh my goodness! A political leader making statements and setting policies because of...politics! How dreadful. Boot goes on to diss Maliki: "Keep in mind also that Maliki has no military experience and that he has been trapped in the Green Zone, relatively isolated from day-to-day life. For these reasons, he has been a consistent font of misguided predictions about how quickly U.S. forces could leave."

That is, Boot, who toils as a fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations, knows more about conditions on the ground than Maliki. One need not be a fan of Maliki--who has indeed run a corrupt and inept administration--to note that he's the guy who was selected by Iraqis to be their leader and render such judgments. And that his ineptitude does not allow the United States--or the McCain campaign--to dismiss his decisions. (Can other nations do that regarding George Bush?) And what's the logical extension of Boot's (and McCain's) stance? To lean on Maliki? To support "regime change" in Iraq? To threaten to stay in Iraq no matter what the Iraqi government says. Boot does acknowledge, "Of course, if the Iraq government tells us to leave, we will have to leave." But he's essentially saying, pay no attention to what the Iraqi government is signaling. What a nice lesson for the burgeoning democracy in Iraq.

On the Hill, Republicans have been taking a similar posture. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt told the Post, "I find it interesting that Prime Minister Maliki is now the person to go to." This was a sneering remark. But whom should be gone to? When the Iraqis voted for the new government, supporters of the war hailed the event as a breakthrough justifying Bush's decision to invade a country on false (or inaccurate) pretenses. Oh, what to do when the results of that election produce inconvenient consequences?

It may well be true that Maliki is declaring he wants U.S. troops out to enhance his political standing, as local elections approach. But all politics is local. As local politics in Iraq places Maliki and his government more in sync with Obama than McCain, the McCain camp is left with the Ugly American option of insisting it knows better than the locals. And who's going to buy that?

This was first posted at motherjones.com...

As John McCain moves to select a running mate, it seems--at least for the moment--that the star of potential veep nominee Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor, is rising. This is good news for Democrats.

On one level, Jindal is impressive. The son of Indian immigrants, he's only 37 years old, and he has already been elected a member of the U.S. House and a governor. (Talk about a Junior Achiever!) Yet can McCain, who claims Obama is not sufficiently experienced to become president, say with a straight face that Jindal is prepared to take the helm. And Jindal's record in Louisiana--including his stint in charge of the state health department--has its spotty moments. Then there's that exorcism.

Blogs and news outfits have already picked over a 1994 essay that Jindal, a convert to Catholicism, wrote for a Catholic magazine, describing an exorcism of a friend in which he was an observer/participant. Not only did Jindal and his pals manage to drive the Satanic demon out of their friend; the exercise, Jindal suggested, also cured her skin cancer. The article was entitled, "Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare."

Americans tend to be quite religious. Most tell pollsters they believe in heaven and hell (and assume they are heading upward, not downward, once they expire). Many tend to believe literally in the devil. But how will an amateur exorcism--that violated Catholic law (which allows only certified exorcists to perform the ritual in very limited circumstances)--play with, say, swing voters? No doubt, Jindal will have to discuss the episode. With Oprah perhaps? That would indeed be Must See TV.

Here's one excerpt of his article that an interviewer might want to ask about:

While Alice and Louise held Susan, her sister continued holding the Bible to her face. Almost taunting the evil spirit that had almost beaten us minutes before, the students dared Susan to read biblical passages. She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence "Jesus is Lord." Over and over, she repeated "Jesus is L..L..LL," often ending in profanities. In between her futile attempts, Susan pleaded with us to continue trying and often smiled between the grimaces that accompanied her readings of Scripture. Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed "Jesus is Lord."

With an almost comical smile, Susan then looked up as if awakening from a deep sleep and asked, "Has something happened?" She did not remember any of the past few hours and was startled to find her friends breaking out in cheers and laughter, overwhelmed by sudden joy and relief.

As a vice presidential candidate, Jindal would be under great pressure--and ought to be--to make other participants in the event available for interview. In the article, he used fake names. But he insisted every single detail was true. Given that such an event must have had a profound impact on him--he came face to face with a real demon!-- this possible president-in-waiting would be obligated to prove that he got the story right, that he was not exaggerating. (Remember how the press and the GOPers went after Al Gore's claims in 2000 with a vengeance?) And the media, of course, would be on the hunt to find "Susan" to get her side of the tale. (Enquiring minds might want to know if her skin cancer is still gone.)

Is Jindal prepared to disclose more about this exorcism? Is the McCain campaign prepared to see more disclosed? The event is a legitimate target for voter interest and media scrutiny. After all, Representative Dennis Kucinich had to explain his UFO siting. And Jindal should not be allowed to hide behind the cloaks of faith and personal privacy. Barack Obama had no choice but to explain his relationship to a particular minister. He didn't duck the issue by claiming it was a private relationship based on faith. So if Jindal is anointed by McCain, the exorcism will be fair game.

America may or may not be ready for a national political debate about exorcism and Satanic demons. By picking Jindal as a running mate, McCain would give the country a chance to find out.

I recently wonderedif McCain was getting close to creating an unfortunate (for him) campaign narrative: he's not with it. The latest evidence:

Asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer Monday morning whether the "the situation in Afghanistan in precarious and urgent," McCain responded:

"I think it's serious. . . . It's a serious situation, but there's a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border," said McCain, R-Ariz., said on "Good Morning America."

Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border. Afghanistan and Pakistan do.

Okay, he probably meant to say the "Afghanistan/Pakistan" border. But can you imagine if Barack Obama made a similar verbal slip? The McCain camp would declare it proof he is unfit to command. And media commentators would howl. (Have you noticed that much of the media coverage of Obama's overseas trip is framed this way: the trip is fraught with risk....for if he makes any mistake overseas, he's done for?)

Yet with McCain, this is just another....eh, McCain moment. Like when he repeatedly mixed up Sunni and Shia. And when he kept referring to Czechoslovakia (a country that no longer exists). And when he couldn't accurately describe (or remember) his stands on key policy matters. (See the posting below.) How many passes does McCain get? I don't know. But this is one envelope he doesn't want to push.

It's not often that I recommend reading The Washington Times, the conservative newspaper owned by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, but a report it published on Friday on John McCain was a scorcher. Here are some excerpts:

At times it appears Sen. John McCain's Straight Talk Express should stop and ask for directions.

From signature issues such as immigration and climate change to tax cuts, the presumed Republican presidential nominee sometimes just seems lost as to his own record and his stance on hot-button social issues.

After Mr. McCain said he opposed child adoptions to gay and lesbian couples, his campaign clarified that he wasn't making policy and would leave the issue to the states.

In the past week, the candidate was unable to say whether he thought health care plans that cover drugs to treat impotency also should cover contraceptives. Mr. McCain voted against such a proposal in 2005.

For a candidate who delights in telling audiences that it's time for "a little straight talk," he has given his opponents chances to question that reputation....

Ouch. The piece goes on:

Twice this year, Mr. McCain has said he doesn't support "mandatory" caps on greenhouse gas emissions, even though that is the crux of his proposal to address climate change....

On immigration, Mr. McCain misrepresented his own record on the most important vote of the past 40 years. He told the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials that he supported the 1986 amnesty. Mr. McCain voted against that bill, telling the Arizona Republic in his hometown that it was racist and would lead to employer discrimination.

So what's the explanation for McCain's constant (to be polite about it) swerving? The article quotes conservative activist and former Reagan administration official Donald Devine: "He's not a detail person. He's not a liar. I think he just can't believe that he would ever do anything wrong. He would think that would be some kind of moral failing, and he just figures there's got to be something that isn't right with what the other person said." How's that for an endorsement? McCain's no liar, he just can't believe he can make a mistake. And he doesn't have a head for details!

McCain better watch out. He's getting quite close to establishing--here comes that buzz word--a narrative. And it ain't a flattering one: it's the story of an older candidate who either (a) cannot remember what he has said or done or (b) misrepresents the facts for political expedience. Neither scenario is in sync with a tale of a straight-talking, independent-minded politician. And the last thing McCain can afford is to come across as discombobulated or confused--especially about his own positions and actions. When The Washington Times takes notice, that's one helluva warning. This is a meme just waiting for MSM attention.

A prominent liberal commentator approached me today and said, "I'm sorry I voted for Obama." This person was livid about Obama's vote for the FISA bill. ("Telecom immunity is a biggie for me," s/he said.) And this commentator, after complaining Obama's plans for the economy and energy independence were not extensive enough, shared his/her big fear with me: "He's an empty suit."

That's not my take. But there's obviously a liberal backlash against Obama, especially among a small cadre of bloggers who were enraged by his vote for the FISA legislation. Liberal voices, such as Arianna Huffington, have slapped or blasted Obama for supposedly moving to the center. My hunch is that these criticisms do not reach the swing, independent, moderate, whatever-you-call-'em voters who don't yet know for whom they're going to vote. (Obama versus McCain--you have to be pretty distant from the political process to have to wrestle over that choice.)

But I suppose one question is whether the left-of-center complaints about Obama provide any drag on his campaign. In 1992, similar criticism of Bill Clinton did nothing to slow down Clinton, who angered (or irked) many liberals with his triangulations and connections to the Democratic Leadership Council, a corporate-backed group that spent much of its time bashing the base of the party. But the more contemporary evidence is Obama's continued success at fundraising. On Friday, his campaign announced that he had raised $52 million in June. That's $30 million more than McCain raked in--and only $3 million less than what Obama raised in his best month (February).

Bottom-line, he's still going strong. At least in June, that is. All this fundraising was before his FISA vote and before the media misreported that he was backtracking on his vow to disengage in Iraq. But the numbers indicate that throughout June, after he became the presumptive nominee, he still was drawing new supporters (Hillary Clinton backers?) and continuing to build an enormous base of donors he can tap for the general election. The July fundraising figures, though, will be interesting--revealing whether the recent outburst of liberal dissatisfaction has spread beyond the blogs (and whether McCain's recent blunders have even further dampened enthusiasm for his campaign).

It's not hard to imagine the calculation going on at Obama HQ: we'll take the grumbling, as long as Obama can still work his magic with voters (especially those in-the-middle uncommitteds) and donors. But at some point, might there be a real cost? Watch the July ticker.

Will John McCain soon move to an all-Iran-all-the-time campaign?

Consider this: as I've noted previously, Iraq may be fizzling out as a campaign issue for McCain. One of his strongest arguments against Barack Obama is national security. And he has used Iraq as a battering ram, claiming that Obama is a defeatist who would let the terrorists win in Iraq. Though the war is quite unpopular, McCain and his strategists apparently believe that voters don't want to lose the war and that voters can be frightened into supporting the candidate who promises triumphant victory not tail-between-the-legs extrication. At least, McCain can tout his Iraq stance as evidence that he is tough enough to take on the evildoers and protect the homeland. George W. Bush sort of pulled this off in 2004. Much of the public by then had turned against the war, but Bush and Karl Rove pointed to the war as proof that Bush was willing to everything necessary to defend the United States. The argument was something like this: Bush is so committed to protecting the United States he'll even invade the wrong country. And it worked.

Can McCain's variant--championing an unpopular war to display cajones--succeed? His problem is that the Iraqis may not cooperate. The other day Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki said that there should be a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. And the negotiations between Baghdad and the Bush administration over the agreement governing U.S. forces in Iraq has bogged down because of the Iraqi demand for a timetable and for stripping immunity from U.S. troops and contractors. A source who recently spoke to the Iraqi foreign minister tells me that the foreign minister was insistent that this agreement contain some sort of timetable.

So if the Iraqis end up endorsing a timetable or asking the U.S. to leave, McCain won't be able to use Iraq as an issue. (And, of course, if the ground reality in Iraq becomes worse, McCain's case will also be weakened.) So what's a hawk to do? Thankfully for McCain, there's Iran. He can bang that drum from now until Election Day. Hype the threat. Promise clear and decisive action--and confrontation, if need be. A warrior candidate needs a war (or near-war). Expect more Iran-slamming from the fellow who has had lots of trouble telling apart Sunni from Shia.

BTW, yesterday I linked to a Reuters article quoting military analysts who said there was no reason to go ballistic over Iran's recent missile tests. It's a point that was lost in all the tough talk that politicians dished out yesterday. So here are some excerpts from that article:

Iran showed footage of missiles on Wednesday it warns could reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East, but military analysts said the damage they could wreak was limited and not enough to deter any would-be attacker....

"This is the Iranians saying: 'We can match you if it comes to that'," said Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank in London. But, he added, the "possession of some rockets" was not going to stop Israel from going ahead if it felt it must bomb Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear arms.

Defence analyst Paul Beaver said Iran's missile programme was fairly advanced but that it still needed to get accuracy and guidance systems right for long distances. "They are some way away yet from threatening Israel or U.S. bases," he said.....

Iran may fire the missiles if it were attacked but its "real strength lies elsewhere," Pieter Wezeman, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Analysts say Iran could employ unconventional or "asymmetric" methods to strike back, for example against U.S. forces in Iraq and by disrupting crude supplies vital for the world economy with hit-and-run attacks against oil tankers.

The U.S. political discourse over Iran would be improved by the addition of such cool-headed appraisals. But that would not be in the interest of McCain and the Republicans.

Forget the recent manufactured news about whether Barack Obama was shifting his position on Iraq. (He's always said that he has a goal of withdrawing troops within 16 months and would aim to do so in a responsible and careful manner, meaning that it could take longer or shorter.) The real story is this: in the general election, one candidate says, This war was a mistake and we must end it and begin disengagement; the other proclaims, This war was righteous and we must keep our troops there (maybe up to 100 years) and win it. Given public opinion on the war, it's no wonder that the Republicans and the McCain campaign want to muddy up this stark difference--and the best way for them to do that is to make it seem as if Barack Obama has an unsteady hand when it comes to the war. So expect the desperate GOPers to pounce on any Obama remark that they can twist into purported proof that Obama is not really sure what he wants to do about Iraq.

But on Iraq the McCainiacs have more to worry about then Obama. They are being undermined by Baghdad. On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that he wants some sort of timetable for a U.S. troops withdrawal. Though his national security adviser added that any timetable would be conditioned on the ability of Iraqi forces to provide security, this was the first time the PM had mentioned a schedule for disengagement. (All politics is local: Maliki's party faces a stiff challenge in the upcoming provincial elections from Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has called for the departure of U.S. military forces.)

So how can McCain and his gang now accuse Obama of being a defeatist surrender-monkey when his call for a timetable for withdrawal is echoed by the leadership of Iraq? This is a real problem for McCain. He has no edge on Obama when it comes to the economy. His only hope of upstaging Obama--policy-wise--is on national security matters, with the Iraq war front and center. But if the Iraqis don't buy the absolute necessity of U.S. troops remaining in Iraq, what does McCain have to offer? (How do you say nada in Arabic?)

I've been repeating this for a year--sorry to do so again--but the reality on the ground in Iraq in the fall will have an impact on the U.S. election. The connection used to be obvious: bad news there would be bad news for the Republicans here. But there's now another possibility: good news there could be bad news for Republicans here. If there are too many explosions and little political progress in Iraq, McCain could pay a political price on Election Day. But if the Iraqis decide they want to go it on their own with the Americans gone, McCain would have no Iraq policy left. Sure, he could claim the surge worked and try to claim credit. But voters, as the cliche goes, tend not to reward presidential candidates for past actions; elections, the consultants keep reminding us, are about the future. Americans don't want other Iraqs in the future. And without Iraq, McCain is merely a sometimes quirky Republican ex-maverick who has yet to learn how to speak convincingly about the number-one issue, the economy. He needs Iraq. But he needs it not too hot and not too cold--and the stove is far beyond his control.

Wow. This just in:

Breaking the mold of traditional political Conventions, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) today announced that Senator Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States at Denver's INVESCO Field at Mile High. INVESCO Field can accommodate more than 75,000 people and will be the site of the 2008 Democratic Convention's final day of programming on Thursday, August 28, 2008.

So on the final night of what is expected to be a no-news (as is now routinely the case) convention, the Dems will not mount the typical Nominee's Big Speech in the convention arena but hold an Obamapalooza in a stadium, with the seats filled not merely by delegates, operatives, and contributors but by regular folks. That will add some grandeur to the climactic night--which will be occurring on the 45th anniversary, to the day, of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Talk about big nights. What's John McCain going to do to match all this? Rent a battleship for his acceptance speech? Announce--prematurely--the bombing of Iran?

It's no happy July 4th for the economy. According to the latest government stats, several tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs in June. Of course, that's news that the presidential candidates have to respond to. Look at their statements.

Barack Obama:

As we head into the 4th of July weekend, today's report that our economy has lost another 62,000 jobs is a stark reminder that far too many Americans will spend this holiday out of work and struggling to provide for their families because of the failed policies of the last eight years.

Our economy has now shed 438,000 jobs over the past six months, while workers' wages fail to keep pace with the skyrocketing cost of gas, groceries and healthcare. The American people are paying the price for the failed economic policies of the past eight years, and we can't afford four more years of more of the same. That is the essential issue of this campaign because Senator McCain has fully embraced the Bush economic agenda. I believe it has to change.

But, as these numbers demonstrate, the American people can't wait another six months. We need action now. That's why I'm calling on Congress and the President to enact real, immediate relief with energy rebates for working families this summer, a fund to help families avoid foreclosure, extended benefits for the long-term jobless, and assistance to states that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn.

As President, I'll move us in a new direction with policies to restore broad-based, bottom up growth that benefits all Americans. I will provide working families with a middle-class tax cut; fight for affordable health care and college tuition; work to help raise workers' wages, and invest in infrastructure, education and a clean energy future to create millions of new jobs. That's the change the American people need."

John McCain:

Americans across this country are hurting and today's job numbers are just the latest indication. From rising gas prices to home foreclosures, families are struggling to meet economic challenges that become greater every day. Washington can no longer abdicate its responsibility to act. Our focus must be clear: enact policies to create jobs today.

To get our economy back on track, we must enact a jobs-first economic plan that supports job creation, provide immediate tax relief for families, enact a plan to help those facing foreclosure, lower health care costs, invest in innovation, move toward strategic energy independence and open more foreign markets to our goods.

The American people cannot afford an economic agenda that will take our country in the wrong direction and cost jobs. At a time when our small businesses need support from Washington, we cannot raise taxes, increase regulation and isolate ourselves from foreign markets. These are the same old siren songs that have failed the American people time and time again.

Notice anything? Obama is in a position to blast current federal policies (i.e., George W. Bush) and to remind voters that over 400,000 jobs have been lost in the past six months of Bush's watch. Thus, change is needed. And who represents change? Well, you know.

McCain, though, bemoans the consequences of the faltering economy but he does not hold any specific player accountable. He merely swings at a generic target: Washington. Of which he has been a part of for decades. His target is not the Bush administration but the "economic agenda" of his unnamed political foe.

Summing up, Obama surveys the economic troubles, and he says that ongoing policies (Bush's policies) are wrongheaded and a new course--his course--must be plotted. McCain looks at the economic mess (which is associated with an administration he supports) and says let's stick with the general approach of the past seven years and don't trust that other guy's solutions. Which message do you think has the better chance of resonating with voters? After all, what's the real problem: "old siren songs" or present policies?

MORE BLOGGINGHEADS.TV. See me and Jim Pinkerton tussle once more on Bloggingheads.tv. On this edition, we ponder whether the Supreme Court is in play in the 2008 election. Is Wes Clark out of play? Has Obama put religion in play? And have the Taliban put Afghanistan in play? And there's more: Pinkerton explains why you should worry about China and India in space--and not global warming. By the way, he wants to build a giant pipeline across the United States--not to carry oil, but water, from East to West. Check it out.

FIRE UP THE BARBECUE. Enjoy your Fourth and all that potato salad. (Hmmmm, potato salad.) I'll be back next week.

We interrupt politics-as-usual and the parallel who's-up/who's down media coverage to bring you...policy substance. And policy substance about an issue much neglected: U.S. relations with Mexico and Latin America. Please--por favor--don't click away. It seems to me that one of George W. Bush's greatest failures (and lost opportunities) is Mexico. When he entered office as a boy-president, Mexico was actually one of the few foreign policy matters that he knew something about and that he seemed to care about. But he has done nada during his two terms to address the problems plaguing U.S.-Mexico relations. And it seems obvious--wall or not--that the United States will at some point have to deal with trade, crime, drugs, and immigration challenges that bind together us gringos and our poorer neighbors.

This week, McCain took a trip to Mexico and Colombia to highlight, in part, his devotion to free trade. Political strategists of both parties scratched their heads, because this issue is no winner for McCain--especially in the tight states of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But this is a nonpolitical posting, so let's get back to the substance.

On the occasion of McCain's journey to Latin America, the policy people at the Washington Office of Latin America, a nonprofit shop, pulled together a memo on the McCain trip. The paper notes, "The trip follows nearly eight years of neglect toward Latin America under the Bush Administration. Would a McCain Administration be any different?" And it poses some tough questions that the media should ask McCain. Here's a sampling:

Congress just approved $400 million dollars of security assistance to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative. Yet the United States has made no commitment to address two key catalysts in the violence: steady demand for drugs in the United States, and the illegal flow of weapons into Mexico. Senator McCain has expressed support for the Merida Initiative, but how would he tackle these two domestic problems that contribute to the bloodshed in Mexico?

The Bush Administration has supported the Mexican government's increasing use of the military in anti-drug operations, despite accusations of serious abuses by the military against civilians in the course of these operations. Will McCain back Mexico's use of the armed forces -- instead of the police -- in drug sweeps indefinitely? How would he address the growing reports of human-rights abuses by Mexican forces, and how does he envision rebuilding civilian authority in the drug war in Mexico and throughout Latin America?

Before NAFTA, supporters of the agreement said it would increase employment in Mexico and narrow the gap between U.S. and Mexican wages. Just the opposite has happened. The annual number of undocumented immigrants arriving in the United States from Mexico nearly doubled in NAFTA's first decade. Has the NAFTA experience made McCain rethink his uncritical support for free trade and, if elected, what would he do to address the root causes of economic insecurity in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America?

These are solid queries that McCain ought to confront. They're certainly more important than a debate over what Wesley Clark said about McCain's military service. What makes me believe they will get less attention?

On a McCain campaign conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham and former POW Orson Swindle continued to bash retired General Wesley Clark for his recent statement that John McCain's military service did not qualify him to be president. Graham, who has become a lead attack dog for McCain, touted McCain's executive experience, citing his days as a squadron leader and his tenure in the Senate. And Exhibit A regarding McCain's spine-of-steel leadership, he noted, was McCain's criticism of Donald Rumsfeld's failed strategy in Iraq. This is a familiar refrain within the McCain camp: McCain was willing, even at political peril, to decry the disastrous Rumsfeld policy in Iraq. Supposedly, this shows McCain is a fellow of guts and grit.

Wait-a-second. It's not that gutsy when you scapegoat the Pentagon chief but let the commander in chief off easy. Moreover, why should McCain win points for denouncing a failure once it was widely perceived as a failure. Where was this former military man prior to the war. When informed experts--including General Eric Shinseki--were suggesting that the Rumsfeld plan for Iraq was inadequate (because a lot more troops would be needed inside the country after the invasion), McCain did not display prescience and courage by backing them up. I recall no sign of him questioning the planning of the war or the early post-invasion decisions of the Bush administration. Two weeks before the war, he said, "I have no qualms about our strategic plans."

After the invasion, McCain did stand by the administration and Rumsfeld for several years. In March 2004, he said, "We're on the right course." In May of that year, he was backing Rumsfeld, saying it was "premature" to talk of booting Rumsfeld from his job. "He's done a fine job," McCain remarked. In December 2005, he said, "I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq" and called for staying the course. And into 2005, McCain insisted that there were the right number of troops in Iraq--that is, that no surge was needed. (You can find a list of McCain's everything's-going-well remarks here.)

Why award McCain a medal for eventually slamming Rumsfeld and backing a surge? Had he earlier--even before the war--pointed out problems and called for a more effective strategy, he would deserve kudos for both smarts and political courage. He did indeed break with Rumsfeld (not Bush) sooner than some other Republicans. But he rode the Bush-Rumsfeld Express for years. Which leads to this fair conclusion: had he been in charge, he would have made the same mistakes they did.

Here's a dispatch I posted at MotherJones.com about a press conference held on Wednesday afternoon....

David Plouffe looks ready to roll. At a Washington, D.C., press conference, Barack Obama's campaign manager surveyed the general election political landscape for several dozen reporters, and he spoke confidently, like a man who will have the money to do all that he believes is necessary and optional. Which he is, because he can expect to have $200 to $300 million to deploy--now that Obama has decided to sidestep the public financing system (which awards $85 million to party nominees) and raise much more from individual donors.

Plouffe repeatedly noted that the Obama campaign will have the resources to challenge John McCain in practically every state and to pursue multiple strategies for victory. That is, the campaign can attempt to win by holding on to every state John Kerry won in 2004 and swinging only Ohio from R to D, or it could win by bagging Iowa plus Colorado and New Mexico. Or how about losing Pennsylvania but winning Virginia and North Carolina? Plouffe claimed that Obama was already competitive in states that are not traditionally Democratic in presidential races, such as Alaska and Montana and that he can make a run at McCain in Georgia (where Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, a former GOP congressman from Georgia, might draw votes from McCain). Plouffe has the money to invest in a number of game plans--to run ads and set up staff in various states. And as the election approaches, he will be able to determine which states to stick with or abandon. He's in a candy store with plenty of allowance.

How will he use the money? Plouffe told the reporters that a top priority is to "shift the electorate." He wants to spend a lot on registering African-Americans and voters under the age of 40 to "readjust the electorate" in assorted states so the voting pools in these states are more pro-Obama. "A couple of points here, a couple of points there," he says, and red states can go blue. Especially smaller states, where a swing of 10,000 votes could be decisive. And, he emphasized, his campaign will have sufficient resources to identify the people it needs to register, contact them directly, and mount targeted get-out-the-vote efforts. The campaign, he said, is not just going to set up registration tables outside community events.

And there's more. Plouffe boasted that Obama's campaign will not have only an edge in volume (more volunteers, more organizers, more door-knocking, more phone-banking, more precinct work, more advertising); it will have an advantage in quality. There's a "persuasion army" working on behalf of Obama, he said. He pointed to polls showing that Obama supporters and Democrats are far more enthusiastic about this election than McCain supporters and Republicans. Consequently, Obama persuaders--supporters who volunteer or merely talk up Obama among friends and relatives--are likely to do a better job than McCain persuaders. This is "a hard thing to quantify," Plouffe remarked. But he added, "we think it means a lot."

It was an impressive performance: more cash, more volunteers, more ads, more opportunities to go on offense, more enthusiasm, more...everything. And when I asked Plouffe about possible racial bias among voters, he said that based on the campaign's own research, "we certainly don't believe it will be a major impact....It's not a barrier for the people who will be deciding this election." In other words, voters who won't vote for Obama because he is biracial are the same voters who wouldn't vote for any Democratic nominee. Is Plouffe right about that? Well, he seemed confident. But, then, he seemed confident about everything. He did acknowledge that all elections have unforeseen twists and turns. Yet whatever comes, he and Obama will not have the excuse, "if only we had more money, we could have tried...." Plouffe essentially said that he is going to play every angle he can imagine. And that's not spin.

On Monday, I was at the annual Personal Democracy Forum, and the news of the day--in between wide-ranging talk of social networking, new politics, and blogging and journalism--was a brief exchange between Tracy Russo, who was deputy director of online communications for John Edwards' 2008 campaign, and Mark Soohoo, an adviser to the John McCain campaign for online matters.

It was a slam waiting to happen.

In early February, John McCain, in an interview with Yahoo news, acknowledged that he does not know how to use a computer without his wife's assistance (thus, he couldn't say whether he prefers a Mac or a PC). Bloggers and techies have been poking fun at McCain ever since.

So at the PDF confab, Russo, while sitting on a panel with Soohoo, remarked that she did not see how anyone unfamiliar with computers could become president in 2008. Soohoo responded the best he could:

You don't necessarily have to use a computer to understand, you know, how it shapes the country....John McCain is aware of the Internet.

Aware of the Internet? It's a remark ready-made for derision. But let's (at least this time) avoid the cheap shot, for there is a serious point here: where is McCain's intellectual curiosity? Over the past decade, more and more Americans of all ages have become wired. Using email and the Internet has become a fundamental activity of modern life. How could McCain, who has long wanted to lead this nation, say to himself, I don't need to know how this stuff works? And in an era when so much depends on the Internet--including much of the economy and aspects of national security--how could a senior legislator and commander-in-chief wannabe eschew firsthand experience of how this series of tubes and wires functions?

What motivated--or demotivated--McCain to be a computer illiterate? Is he a fuddy-duddy resistant to change? Is he--let's be frank--too old to absorb new notions? Is he a Luddite? None of these are qualities you'd want in a president. Are there other explanations?

This is no laughing matter. At a debate, a town hall meeting, or a press conference, McCain ought to be pressed on this point. Not as gotcha politics; this is fundamental politics. Voters ought to know what makes a candidate tick--or not. Soohoo's reply to Russo was, of course, insufficient. Being "aware" is not enough. McCain needs to say more on this front. Maybe in an email.

A bit slow on the uptake, I just noticed that Nicolle Wallace (formerly Nicolle Devenish) is a senior adviser to the John McCain campaign. She used to be communications director for the George W. Bush White House and was a top spinner for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004. And her involvement in the McCain campaign is an indicator of an institutional problem for McCain.

Before I explain, let me flash back to a telling encounter between Wallace and CNN's Wolf Blitzer that occurred on November 22, 2005:

BLITZER: Welcome back. The attacks and counterattacks over Iraq reached a new level in recent days with Congressman John Murtha's call for a speedy pullout from Iraq and an emotional House debate on that idea. Joining us now from the White House, the president's communications director Nicole Wallace....Was it a mistake for the White House to compare what John Murtha was saying to Michael Moore, the liberal filmmaker?

WALLACE: You know, I think that words have such power in this debate. But if you look at the policy that Michael Moore advocated for the duration of last year's presidential campaign, it is the exact policy that the congressman proposed....And certainly the policies that Congressman Murtha advocated are not debatable. He was very clear. He advocated an immediate withdrawal from the battle space in Iraq.

BLITZER: He didn't advocate an immediate withdrawal. He said over the next six months, and then to keep the troops in neighboring states like Kuwait, Qatar, over the horizon, to go back in if necessary.

WALLACE: Well, look, you've had him on your air for a lot of the last five days and I think he's probably articulated his position much more clearly than I can do. We disagree with the...

BLITZER: That's what he articulated the first day when he made his long statement.

WALLACE: Well, I'm not sure what you want to debate me on, Wolf.

BLITZER: I'm not debating. I'm just saying he didn't call for an immediate withdrawal.

WALLACE: Well, what he is advocating differs from current White House policy. And, frankly, I only saw two other Democrats, Democratic colleagues of Congressman Murtha's side with his position. But this is a healthy debate to have.

BLITZER: I want to be precise on this, Nicole, because words matter.

WALLACE: Absolutely.

BLITZER: The resolution that was in the Congress used the words "immediate withdrawal." And there were three Democrats who voted for that. Congressman Murtha talks about a six-month phased withdrawal and then keeping troops in the region, which is significantly different.

Did she mean that "absolutely"? Probably not. In this one exchange, Wallace first tried to misrepresent Murtha's position as "immediate" withdrawal. Blitzer called her on it. She next claimed--falsely--that only three Democrats supported Murtha. And then Blitzer called her on that. So two fibs (or lies, if you prefer) within moments. A total disregard for the truth.

What does this have to do with McCain? I'm not sure he understands that the basis for the maverick reputation he once developed was his self-professed commitment--realized or not--to so-called straight talk. During his 2000 campaign, he did come across as not-the-usual politician. He often--though not always--said what he believed. And he told hard truths about the corruptions of Washington.

That was then. In the eight years since, he has taken more dives and has flip-flopped enough (especially on the Bush tax cuts) to place him in the category of ordinary pol. Republican strategists are worrying that McCain may have a tough time selling himself as a change-seeking, independent-minded maverick. Well, if he and his campaign play traditional, spin-centric politics--see here for examples--the ol' McCain will remain lost. The more he depends on Nicolle Wallace and like-minded political operatives, the harder his mission will be.

What's John McCain thinking?

On Friday, he published an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press that hailed NAFTA and slammed Barack Obama for raising questions about the free trade pact. And on the same day, he was scheduled to speak at the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa, where he would deliver the same message.

From the op-ed:

The North American Free Trade Agreement has provided our economy with a framework in which we can become more competitive....What is needed is the cooperative work of partners to reduce the burden of complying with NAFTA's rules of origin and to reduce border delays so they do not become impediments to trade or the equivalent of a tariff. Perhaps most of all, those who would lead our countries must work to ensure that the benefits of NAFTA are understood throughout our countries, and not jeopardized through "cowboy diplomacy."

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama does not understand this. He has called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," characterizations that are out of touch with the reality of NAFTA in Michigan. What truly would be devastating is to jeopardize the trade expansion of NAFTA through a misguided, isolationist impulse that would inevitably and understandably alienate a key partner like Canada.

McCain seems to want to create a black-and-white debate: NAFTA-is-good/criticism-of-NAFTA-is-bad. From that simplistic perspective, Obama's call for revisiting and revising NAFTA has to be bad.

But the Obama camp must be thinking, "thank you, John McCain." NAFTA is not a political winner. Not if polls are any indication. Last December, a Pew poll showed that among Democratic primary voters, 45 percent said free trade agreements are a "bad thing." Only 36 percent said such agreements are a "good thing."

Sure, you say, that's just those protectionist, hide-their-heads-in-the-sand, turn-back-the-clock, enslaved-to-Big-Labor, anti-globalization naysayers of the Democratic Party. But look at how Republican voters broke on this issue: 45 to 39, "bad thing" versus "good thing." That is, GOPers had the same view of free trade agreements as Democrats: most don't like 'em. This marked a downward shift for NAFTA. A 2005 poll found that 44 percent of the public considered NAFTA a "good thing," while 34 percent did not. More recently, an April Pew poll found dislike of NAFTA among all registered votes, with 48 percent calling the agreement a "bad thing," and only 35 percent describing it as a "good thing."

It sure makes sense that as the economy droops, there will be more popular skepticism regarding NAFTA and other free trade agreements. (In that April poll, 61 percent said that free trade agreements lead to job losses; only 9 percent said these pacts create jobs.) Why, then, is McCain beating the NAFTA drum? Maybe this is an act of theological loyalty to the Church of Free Trade. But that April poll also asked registered voters who would be more likely to make wise decisions about trade. In that category, McCain had a 48-to-38 percent edge over Obama. Is he now trying exploit that gap? Perhaps. But as he celebrates NAFTA, McCain may actually help Obama close that divide. NAFTA is just slightly more popular than George W. Bush. If McCain wants to run with it, the Obama camp won't be unhappy.

Barack Obama bit the bullet and on Thursday opted out of the public financing system. In a piece for Mother Jones, I ask the question, Is he a promise breaker or a reform shaker? How you answer that might depend on whom you want to win in November. Here's how the article starts:

In the decades after Watergate, the basic thrust of campaign finance reform was this: limit the flow of big-money private contributions to candidates. No more bags of money for the pols. Now, only donations of up to $2300 from individuals are acceptable. And in the presidential race, there is public financing: the nominees--if they agree to forgo fundraising--receive full underwriting of their general election campaigns. This year that subsidy is about $85 million.

This system has been an imperfect reform. There have been loopholes. Well-heeled private interests have poured money into independent efforts to support a preferred candidate or, more often, blast that candidate's opponent. And parties could raise money, while corporations could donate unrestricted amounts to presidential conventions. So the opportunity for one side to outspend the other (using unlimited donations from wealthy individuals, corporations or unions) has remained. The influence of big money has not been eradicated. Still, presidential candidates, once nominated, could focus on campaigning, rather than cash-hunting.

Now comes Barack Obama.

He has run for president as an agent of change who slams the money-talks ways of Washington. As an Illinois state senator and as a U.S. senator, he has passed reform measures. Yet on Thursday, in an email to his supporters, he announced that he would not participate in the public financing system in the general election, despite an earlier promise to stay within this system. He will be the first major presidential nominee to reject public financing for the general election since Watergate. Instead of relying on that check from the U.S. Treasury, he will continue his record-setting fundraising operation. John McCain's campaign immediately and predictably proclaimed that this decision "undermines his call for a new type of politics" and will "weaken and undermine the public financing system."

Obama said:

It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections. But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we've already seen that he's not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.

Obama is clearly doing what's best for his political prospects. No doubt, Obama, who has raised about $265 million so far (while McCain has raised $97 miliion), can pocket hundreds of millions of dollars in the general election. So by eschewing the public financing system, he will have far more dollars to deploy--and be able to double, triple or quadruple what the McCain campaign raises and spends (presuming McCain keeps within the system).

But the story here is deeper than the simple narrative, Obama-sells-out-reform. His campaign, relying on Internet fundraising, has broken records in the number of small donors it has attracted. It has been far more populist than other major campaigns when it comes to fundraising. As Obama put it, "Instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, you've fueled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford. And because you did, we've built a grassroots movement of over 1.5 million Americans." Sure, Obama did receive a significant amount from maxed-out contributors and bundlers, but he has mobilized small contributors unlike no one else. Given that the goal of the reform system was to prevent big-money backers from getting their hooks into a candidate, are its restrictions less relevant for a candidate who does so well with small donors?

When the system was first designed, few could imagine an Internet-dominated world in which it would be possible for a candidate who motivates millions of voters to haul in so much from non-fat-cats. Are these rules then obsolete? And considering that Democrats have often been at a disadvantage when it comes to big-bucks fundraising (though not lately), should a Democratic nominee walk away from an advantage in people-power fundraising? After all, if literally millions of citizens yearn to make a small contribution to a campaign that aims to undo the work of the Bush administration, why stop them? Isn't that small-d democracy at its best? And Obama's decision will put him in a stronger position to pressure independent groups from raising and spending unlimited amounts to support him or attack McCain. If he does draw in $300 million or so in campaign donations, Obama will not need these outsiders. McCain, however, will. Even though McCain has said he does not fancy independent spending in campaigns, he will be less able to lean on these players (say, this year's Swift Boaters) to cease and desist. Assuming that McCain will rely on the public subsidy of $85 million, the GOP will somehow have to cover the $200 million-plus gap between the McCain campaign and the Obama campaign....

Read the rest here.

Newspapers often don't like to call public figures liars or dissemblers. But read this passage from the Washington Post article on the recent attempt of the McCain camp to portray Obama as weak on terrorism because he praised how Islamic terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 were prosecuted:

Tuesday, the McCain team drew a direct line between the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying that submitting the bombers to the criminal justice system was, in the words of former Navy secretary and 9/11 Commission member John Lehman, "a material cause" of the 2001 attacks. Lehman participated in the McCain conference call.

Lehman said grand jury evidence in the 1993 bombing was "put under seal" and not made available to the CIA, thus denying the agency timely access to information that "would have enabled many of the dots to be connected well before 9/11 and . . . give a good chance to have prevented" the later attack. In particular, he cited information concerning a connection between Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged ringleader of the 2001 attacks who is imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, and the bombing.

But both the report of the 9/11 Commission, which investigated intelligence failures leading to the 2001 strikes, and the prosecutor of the 1993 case disagreed with Lehman's version of history. The commission's final report, which Lehman endorsed as a member of the panel, gives no indication that any failure to share information on the bombing with the intelligence community had "significance for the story of 9/11."

Instead, the report cites political and intelligence failures to understand the scope of the terrorist threat after the 1993 attack, as well as a failure to fully analyze the implications of the available information. It also blames the FBI and the CIA for failing to effectively communicate with each other, problems that were later addressed in the USA Patriot Act and the reorganization of the intelligence community.

Grand jury secrecy "could have operated in these cases as a barrier to information flowing from law enforcement to intelligence," former U.S. attorney Mary Jo White, who successfully prosecuted six major terrorism cases including the 1993 bombing, said Tuesday. But, she added, "as a matter of fact it did not."

White and several people involved in the 9/11 Commission disputed Lehman's assertion that "the CIA was not allowed to see that evidence." Lehman also described then-CIA Director George J. Tenet as "flabbergasted at what he found in that material" once it was made available to him. But Tenet made no such claim in his 2007 book.

Bottom line: the McCain campaign attacked Obama falsely. It made up facts. It distorted history.

But this was not the focus on the Post's article which was headlined, "Candidates Clash on Terrorism: In Sharp Exchange, Each Side Calls Other's Position a Risk." The story led with the cat fight: McCain attacks Obama; Obama attacks McCain. The yadda-yadda-yadda of political coverage. Yet the reporters--Anne Kornblut and Karen DeYoung--did the heavy lifting and demonstrated that the McCain squad was stretching the truth to make its case, and they placed this information at the end of the article.

But how about breaking out of the he said/he said box? Here's an alternative lead: "On Tuesday, the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of having a weak position on terrorism, though it partly based its charge on assertions that were not accurate." That is, don't even give a candidate the room to make a charge that is supported by false information.

Throughout the media, there has been an increase in the factchecking of candidates' claims. The Post does this in a regular feature and awards Pinocchios to fib-telling pols. (Remember Hilary Clinton and the sniper fire in Bosnia?) But such vetting hasn't stopped politicians from playing with the truth. Perhaps it's time for the MSM to escalate and call out the truth-manglers in a direct manner within the news coverage. I don't know if that will slow down the flow of political lies. But it sure ain't likely to increase them.

It looks as if the staffers on the Overreaction Desk at McCain HQ are working overtime. First, they tried to make a controversy out of a Barack Obama throwaway line. Talking about his readiness to combat smears and negative attacks, Obama last Friday said, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." That prompted this reax from the McCain camp: "Barack Obama's call for 'new politics" is officially over....[He] said that if there's a political knife fight, he'd bring a gun." Obama was merely quoting the Sean Connery character in The Untouchables: "You wanna know how to get Capone. They pull a knife, you pull a gun." Citing Connery is not going to be a loss for a presidential candidate. Now, how would the McCainers respond, if Obama said, "Go ahead, make my day"?

On the more substantive side, McCain's team also pounced on Obama for a statement he made regarding apprehended terrorist suspects:

Let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, 'Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.' So that, I think, is an example of something that was unnecessary. We could have done the exact same thing, but done it in a way that was consistent with our laws."

What's wrong with that quote, if anything? Well, the McCain-bangers say that it shows that Obama wants to use only law enforcement techniques in going after evildoing terrorists--and that would place every single American family at risk, for the only way to deal with radical Islamic terrorists is to hunt them down in military fashion without being bogged down by the due process niceties of police work. But is that what Obama actually said or implied? A fair reading seems to be that he was referring to what happens to terrorist suspects after they are captured. In fact, as the McCain people well know, last year, Obama said he would be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan unilaterally. How's that for being a global Dirty Harry?

So the McCain gang was trying a bit too hard to stretch Obama;s remark about the treatment of detainees into proof that Obama is a weak-kneed defeatist who cares more about the rights of the 9/11 perps than preventing them from hitting the U.S. again.

But on a McCain campaign conference call on Tuesday--during which campaign aides and advisers--tried to brand Obama as soft on terrorism, the McCain squad did latch on to a developing meme on the right. Referencing Obama's support of the recent Supreme Court decision that said that Gitmo detainees have a right to habeas corpus, the McCain surrogates--responding to a question from Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard--said they'd like someone to ask Obama if he believes that Osama bin Laden ought to be allowed to submit a writ of habeas corpus to a U.S. federal court if he is captured by U.S. forces. You can expect voices on the right to echo this talking point--until the question is indeed put to Obama. In the meantime, wouldn't it be nice if we really did have to worry about what to do with a captured bin Laden?

UPDATE: That didn't take long. About two hours after the McCain conference call, the Obama campaign held its own call to respond. During the first question, Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner asked if Obama believes that bin Laden, if apprehended, should have the same rights as detainees in Gitmo. Senator John Kerry, speaking for Obama, said that the Supreme Court has decided what rights all Gitmo detainees must be awarded--and that McCain would have to abide by this, should he become president. The McCain team, Kerry said indignantly, is engaged in Karl Rove-style politics by claiming that Obama and the Democrats are legalistic and weak when it comes to terrorism, noting that the Democrats voted to support military action in Afghanistan. "This is typical of the Republican playbook," he said.

The Los Angeles Times offers a front-page corrective on Monday, with a report noting that women voters are moving from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama. Part of the end-of-the-primaries narrative was the spurned-women subplot: PO'ed female supporters of Clinton will vote for John McCain over the guy who prevented their gal from breaking the glass ceiling. Here's the money paragraph:

Now that the Democratic marathon is over, [female] Clinton supporters...are siding heavily with Obama over McCain, polls show. And Obama has taken a wide lead among female voters, belying months of political chatter and polls of primary voters suggesting that disappointment over Clinton's defeat might block the Illinois senator from enjoying his party's historic edge among women.

This is inevitable. Though enterprising reporters can no doubt find particular women voters who still are soooooooo upset about Clinton's loss that they will say they'd rather vote for McCain--or even Dick Cheney--instead of Obama, there's little reason to believe that women who supported Clinton will flock in statistically significant numbers to a long-in-the-tooth Republican who wants to criminalize abortion, continue the Iraq war, and trash-talk comprehensive healthcare reform.

So it's good news for Obama that McCain is using time and money to make a play for Clinton supporters. In a patronizing move, the McCain campaign dispatched Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to host women-oriented events for McCain in Ohio and Pennsylvania. As I pointed out elsewhere, Fiorina is an odd choice as an economic policy surrogate. Her stint at HP was no success. A merger went sour, thousands of workers were laid off, the stock price remained low, and, in the end, she was forced out by the board. I wrote:

In this time of economic insecurity, there's not much about Fiorina's time at HP that can be reassuring to voters (female or otherwise) experiencing financial jitters. After six years at Hewlett-Packard, she ended up symbolizing not one but at least three corporate excesses: outsourcing, M&A-mania, and golden parachutes. Workers and shareholders did not prosper during her reign, but Fiorina made millions, got a book deal, and now is a top PowerPointer for a presidential candidate. She's a real American success story--for corporate Republicans.

Does McCain think that a surrogate with ovaries is all he needs to win over still-angry Clinton supporters? Well, his campaign has also released a list of "prominent" Democrats and independents supporting McCain. Prominent? There was one name on the list of 30 that you might recognize: former Representative Tim Penny, a onetime Democrat from Minnesota who in 2002 ran for governor (and lost) as the Independence Party candidate. The others on the list were not so prominent: a city clerk in Mississippi, an alderman in Mississippi, a member of the budget committee of Palmyra (a small town in Maine). No big names. Joe Lieberman still is the mega-fish in this small pool.

This 2008 race will not be decided by Fiorina's stumping or the endorsement of city budget committee members. The general election is going to be a rather stark contest between two candidates who each will have plenty of opportunity to make the differences between them clear. Women who voted in the Democratic party will by and large vote for Obama over McCain. McCain really has little to say to them about what they care about. When it comes to women voters, moderate Republicans and independents--especially the white ones--are the ones to watch.

Recent news out of Iraq is bad for John McCain--not the news about military developments there (May was apparently the month with the lowest number of U.S. casualties since the invasion), but the political news. On Friday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared that the talks on a new U.S.-Iraq security pact were deadlocked:

We have reached an impasse because when we opened these negotiations we did not realize that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty and this is something we can never accept.

The U.S. and Iraqi effort to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement--which is supposed to be hammered out by the end of July--has become increasingly dicey. The Iraqi government, as provincial elections approach, do not want to say yes to the Bush administration demand that U.S. soldiers be afforded the right to jail Iraqis and conduct military operations on their own. Nor do members of Maliki's government and the parliament fancy affording legal immunity to U.S. soldiers and contractors. After all, whose country is it, anyway?

If the talks completely collapse (which is hard to imagine) and no new agreement is reached to replace the expiring U.N. mandate covering the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, the United States might have to withdraw. Whether the negotiations end in total failure or they produce an unsatisfactory-to-both-sides compromise, McCain could find himself in great political trouble.

Winning the Iraq war is the paramount issue of his presidential bid. But what if there is no war to win because the Iraqis either tell the United States to go home or won't allow it to conduct significant operations within Iraq? What if the Iraqis signal that maintaining a high level of U.S. troops in Iraq is not that important to them? How could McCain then continue to attack Barack Obama as a defeatist cut-and-runner who would imperil the United States by yanking troops out of Iraq? The war rug would be pulled out from under McCain.

I explain this more here. But the main point is that McCain's pro-war stance--as much as it is out of sync with popular opinion--could be further undermined if the government that he claims needs major U.S. military assistance says it would prefer, given the strings attached, to do without. McCain's presidential campaign is being held hostage by Iraqi negotiators.

A friend of Jim Johnson, the Washington player who resigned Wednesday as an unpaid veep-vetter for Barack Obama, tells me that Johnson woke up that morning, looked at the newspapers, saw that he had become a front-page problem for Obama--after The Wall Street Journal a few days earlier had reported that Johnson had received too-sweet home loans from Countrywide Financial--and made the snap decision to quit. By the end of the day, Johnson, who had canceled appointments he had lined up for the day, had left Washington and was in Sun Valley.

It was a quick end to the controversy. Obama fans can be encouraged by the fact that decisive action was taken fast. But Obama initially defended Johnson. So perhaps Obama himself was hoping to ride this one out, even though the episode had the potential to undermine his message of change.

The selection of Jim Johnson was itself troubling--whether or not Johnson did anything wrong regarding his dealings with Countrywide. He's a longtime Democratic Party insider, a "big-business Democrat," as Craig Crawford put its, who headed Fannie Mae in the 1990s and forged a close relationship with Countrywide. He's no agent of change in Washington.

The Democratic Party is full of "wise" men and women who jump between government jobs, campaigns, and well-paid private gigs. They can be campaign strategists one year, and corporate consultants or lobbyists the next--or sometimes, as in the case of Mark Penn, both at once. They are part of Washington's permanent establishment. And some will be making a beeline to the Obama campaign, now that he's the party's presumptive nominee.

To keep his message of change clear and honest, Obama is going to have to say no to these folks, even though they might come with experience and the best of intentions. He's already told Democratic lobbyists they cannot contribute to his campaign. And he will have to extend the rope-line further. Here's a suggestion: he should designate within his campaign an aide to be a "change ombudsman." This person will vet the vetters and everyone else working at a high level for the campaign to make certain none are agents of the status quo.

I'm only being semi-facetious. The Obama campaign will be growing now that he's the all-but-nominated nominee and absorbing Hillaryites and others. Someone on the Obama staff ought to be watching so that no other "big-business Democrats" are placed in positions where their mere presence could undercut Obama's overall message.

Obama's going to have a tough time working and calculating his relationship with the party establishment. (Remember all the corporate-sponsored sky boxes at past Democratic party conventions?) Some party insiders have gotten used to doing well in addition to doing good. Jim Johnson, for instance, was an advocate of extremely generous compensation packages for CEOs, made his own bundle at Fannie Mae, and benefited from accounting manipulations there (though he was never accused of wrongdoing).

Johnson is a warning for the Obama campaign. Beware the consummate Washington players who stock campaigns, transition teams, and administrations. Many are not in it for the change.

The John McCain campaign would rather you think of McCain as a POW than a longtime Republican senator. In a radio ad McCain is running in South Florida, the narrator says, "As someone who has survived the harsh conditions of the Vietnamese prisons, John McCain knows that freedom in Cuba won't be achieved with concessions to dictatorships." That's a pretty dumb formulation. First, the decades-old anti-Cuba embargo that McCain (and Barack Obama) supports has done nothing to achieve freedom in Cuba. One can even argue it has helped the repressive, thuggish regime of the Castro brothers continue its dictatorial ways. (Embargo fans appear to take the position that failure is an option.) Second, McCain's stint as a POW is not relevant to this policy debate. If McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton has convinced him that you shouldn't talk with tyrants, then why does he not call for ending all dialogue and trade with China? When it comes to freedom, the capitalist communists of Beijing are just as nasty as (if not more so) the socialist communists of Havana. But expect more of this: "As someone who has survived the harsh conditions of Vietnamese prisons, John McCain knows that American corporations ought to be taxed at lower rates."

Throughout his political career, McCain has not explicitly exploited his POW status as much as other politicians might have. He didn't really have to, given that his tale was so well known. But these days being a Bush-supporting Republican senator isn't much of a political calling card. So for McCain, it will be back to the future--again and again and again.

ISRAEL AND IRAN: CAN THEY PLAY NICE? Triti Parsi has a good piece summarizing the current state of play on Iran and noting what could go right in Iranian-Israeli relations (if there is the will):

Iran and Israel are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship that neither party can escape on its own. Here's how to break up their fight.

Last week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)--the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group--held its annual policy conference in Washington, and it went as you might expect. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain roused the faithful with a call to tighten the noose on Iran and mocked those who favor a more diplomatic approach. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that negotiating with Iranian leaders would be pointless "while they continue to inch closer to a nuclear weapon under the cover of talk." Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for "all possible means" to be used to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. A few days later, Israel's Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that an attack on Iran is "unavoidable" as long as Tehran "continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons."

As if to underscore these arguments, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad obligingly played the role of villain, predicting ominously from Tehran that Israel will "soon disappear off the geographical scene." Against this backdrop, it's safe to say that few at AIPAC were convinced by newly minted Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's call for direct U.S. talks with Iran (though the Illinois senator did win many new friends at the conference this year). In fact, AIPAC and Israeli leaders fear that any bargain between Washington and Tehran would come at their expense and have heightened their rhetoric accordingly.

It doesn't have to be this way. Although Iran and Israel will not be signing any mutual defense pacts anytime soon, the two countries aren't destined to be implacable foes. If anything, Israel could be a prime beneficiary of a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

It might sound inconceivable that Iran, whose leaders since 1979 have used the most venomous rhetoric against the "little Satan," would ever moderate its stance toward Israel. Yet a careful review of the past three decades shows that Iran's hostile rhetoric is more a product of opportunism than fanaticism. Iran and Israel have even been willing to work together quietly at times, despite their conflicting ideologies.

The reason is simple: When forced to choose, Tehran invariably chooses its geostrategic interests over its ideological impulses. In no other area is the decisiveness of the strategic dimension of Iran's foreign policy clearer than when it comes to Israel. When these two pillars of Iranian foreign policy have clashed, as they did in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran's geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed. Tehran quietly sought Israel's aid, and the Jewish state made many efforts to place Iran and the United States back on speaking terms....

Parsi makes a good argument that war is not inevitable. Not between Iran and Israel. And, perhaps then, not between the United States and Iran. Read the rest here.

This hey-what-happened-to-the-straight-talker line of attack on John McCain is becoming just too damn easy.

From today's Wall Street Journal"

At a roundtable with business leaders in Washington state last month, Sen. McCain expressed reluctance to support government incentives such as tax credits for wind and solar energy. He compared his stance on the matter to his position on corn ethanol. "I'm a little wary -- I have to give you straight talk -- about government subsidies," he said. "When government jumps in and distorts the market, then there's unintended consequences as well as intended."

From an article I wrote in March:

About a year after their [climate change] bill was defeated, McCain and Lieberman began drafting a new version. It was close to the original, but with one significant addition: billions of dollars in tax subsidies for the nuclear energy industry.

McCain had long been an advocate of nuclear power. "He feels strongly that nuclear power will be one of the keys to reducing emissions," says Heather Wicke, who was his environmental legislative aide at the time. But environmentalists who had worked with McCain and Lieberman on the first bill were stunned. In one meeting, lobbyists for environmental groups attempted to persuade McCain not to attach nuclear subsidies to the legislation, arguing that doing so would weaken support for the bill. "He shook his finger at us and scolded us," says one participant at the meeting, who recalls McCain saying, "You're wrong and I'm right." Wicke, now the director of policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council, notes that McCain had already made up his mind and that the session was "testy."

So when McCain said he opposed supporting funding for alternative energy because he's opposed to market-distorting subsidies, that was straight talk? Then how does he explain his attempt to hand billions of dollars in subsidies to the nuclear energy industry? A straight-talk explanation would be appreciated.

Here's the McCain-Obama face-off--at least the domestic side of it--in a nutshell. This morning the latest jobs numbers came out, and the news was bad: the U.S. economy lost another 49,000 jobs and unemployment increase half a point to 5.5 percent. Immediately both campaigns put out statements. Let's compare.

From Obama:

Today's jobs report is deeply troubling. Last month, our economy lost 49,000 jobs and the unemployment rate saw the greatest rise in more than twenty years. This is a reminder that working families continue to bear the brunt of the failed Bush economic policies that John McCain wants to continue for another four years. In the first five months of 2008, our economy has lost 324,000 jobs, and workers' wages once again failed to keep pace with the skyrocketing cost of health care, and college tuition, and gas. That's why we can't afford John McCain's plan to spend billions of dollars on tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, and that's why I'm offering change that will provide working families with a middle-class tax cut, affordable health care and college, and an energy plan that will create up to five million good-paying jobs that can't be outsourced. That's the change the American people are looking for, and that's how we'll build an economy of shared prosperity once more.

From McCain:

Today's news about unemployment is a stark reminder of the economic challenges facing American families. As the worst single monthly increase in the unemployment rate in two decades clearly shows, Americans across this country are hurting, and we must act now to support workers, families and employers alike. This means getting our economy back on track by providing immediate tax relief, enacting a HOME plan to help those facing foreclosure, lowering health care costs, investing in innovation, moving toward energy independence and opening foreign markets to our goods. These policies will help small businesses create the jobs that families need today. The American people cannot afford more inaction from Washington. The wrong change for our country would be an economic agenda based upon the policies of the past that advocate higher taxes, bigger government, government-run health care and greater isolationism. To help families at this critical time, we cannot afford to go backward as Senator Obama advocates.

Who's got the advantage? Obama, obviously. His position is clear and straightforward: the economic situation is terrible, current policies stink, Bush is to blame, I've got new ideas ready to roll. McCain has to acknowledge the current economic problems and tout his own policies (which are Bushian), but he cannot blast Bush, though he says the country "cannot afford more inaction from Washington," which is an indirect shot at Bush. He's left defining "change" as advancing Bush-like policies, and he has to slam Obama's "change" as nothing but backward movement. That's a tough political sell. McCain better hope the economic news is better in the months ahead.

MSNBC's First Read put out a good guide to the starting place for the titanic clash between Barack Obama and John McCain:

About two months ago, we unveiled our early look at the electoral map. And this being the second official day of the general election, now's as good a time as any to see where we stand in the McCain vs. Obama race.

Base Obama: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, MD, MA, NY, RI, VT (153 electoral votes)
Lean Obama: ME, NJ, MN, OR, WA (47 votes)

Toss-up: CO, FL, IA, MI, NV, NM, NH, OH, PA, VA, WI (138 votes)

Lean McCain: AR, GA, IN, LA, MS, MO, MT, NE, NC, ND (84 votes)

Base McCain: AL, AK, AZ, ID, KS, KY, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY (116 votes)

While both McCain and Obama get to 200 when adding up their base and lean states, it's clear to see that Obama has an early edge with the map. Not only does he have a stronger base than McCain does (153 votes vs. 116), but he also has more potential pick-up opportunities. When you add toss-up and "Lean McCain," Obama has the potential for another 222 votes outside his favored states. By comparison, McCain's toss-up and "Lean Obama" comes to 185. Of course, potential sometimes means just that -- potential. At the end of the day, Obama will likely win few, if any, of those Lean McCain states. But his reach right now seems much longer than McCain's.

It is indeed interesting that each candidate comes out of the gate with exactly 200 electoral votes from their best states. (You need 270 to win.) And in a CBS News poll out today, Obama leads McCain, 48 to 42 percent in a national survey, which is relatively close. It's always better to be ahead than behind, but what will matter on Election Day is not either candidate's national lead, but how they perform in those "lean" and "toss-up" states. As we've seen in the Democratic primaries, an election in any given state can trend far from the national numbers. Though Obama generally maintained an edge over Hillary Clinton in national polls during the primaries, the results in some states varied greatly from the national average (with each Democrat occasionally whupping the other).

It ain't going out on a limb to say that when the overall trends for the general election are in the Dems' favor McCain can still win by playing hard and tight in a few critical states. He does not have to buck the national tide from sea to shining sea; he has to do it in spots.

Still, there's something rather poetic about a clean and even start to the general election. In the past day, Obama and McCain have discussed holding joint town hall meetings or Lincoln-Douglas-style debates. How grand that would be. I've always thought that rather than mount formal and stuffy debates, we ought to put the two nominees in a room with a television camera and ask them to talk. How they handle each other, how they ask questions, how they respond to questions, how they hold themselves--all that would be useful information for voters. If either talked too long, interrupted too much, avoided issues, relied on spin rather than substance, rudely violated the basic rules of the event, he or she would risk the wrath of voters. So I say, let 'er rip: McCain and Obama, one table, two chairs, a set of television cameras, no moderators, no YouTube or email questions--and the American public watching. That would be Must See TV.

I just posted this at MotherJones.com....

With Barack Obama's loss in South Dakota and win in Montana on Tuesday night, the primaries and caucuses are over. The senator from Illinois who ran an unconventional movement-esque campaign of and for change is the winner. He has bagged the most voter-determined delegates and a majority of the superdelegates commitments, enough to declare victory. The nation is heading toward a general election featuring a dramatic face-off between a progressive who opposed the Iraq war and a conservative who was a cheerleader for the war. A fresh face versus a Washington veteran. A onetime community organizer versus a former war hero. A 46-year-old black man versus a 71-year-old white man. Assuming the Democratic mantle, Obama declared in a speech before thousands in St. Paul, Minnesota, "This year must be different than all the rest." It will be. And hours earlier, John McCain, delivering a speech in New Orleans, used the word "change" almost three dozen times. But before the Obama-McCain clash throttles up, there is one last item of business for the Democrats: Hillary Clinton must concede.

Can Clinton harbor any hope of nullifying the verdict of the millions of voters who flocked to the primaries and caucuses in record numbers? That would be the political equivalent of nuclear warfare. To do so, Clinton, who spent the end of her campaign positioning herself as a count-every-vote champion, would have to become an anti-democratic renegade, challenging the outcome of the voting and confronting the party leadership, which has signaled its preference for allowing the pledged-delegate count to determine the final outcome.

On Tuesday, AP reported Clinton had told New York lawmakers she was open to being Obama's veep choice--a sign she won't push the button. And in her speech to supporters in New York on Tuesday night, Clinton was conciliatory toward Obama. She declared, "we stayed the course," depicting her hang-in-there strategy of the past two months as a cause, not a political tactic. She made no mention of the superdelegates, dropping her usual pitch for their support. But in a combative tone, she proclaimed, "I want the 18 million people who voted for me to be respected and to be heard." Heard? Respected? In what way? And by whom? By Obama? That was a statement ready-made for interpretation by pundits and analysts. "Where do we go from here?" she asked. She answered, "I will be making no decisions tonight." Speaking to her supporters, she said, I want to hear from you." And she noted that in the "coming days" she will be consulting with party leaders.

In the dwindling weeks of the race, she played it both ways: good Democrat and bad Democrat. The good Clinton ceased her attacks on Obama and stopped questioning whether he was qualified to be commander in chief. Yet, at the same time, the bad Clinton raised questions about the legitimacy of Obama's win. Using fuzzy and misleading math, she claimed she had won more popular votes than Obama. Campaigning in Florida, she noted that its residents had "learned the hard way what happens when...the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner." At the Democratic Party's rules committee, Harold Ickes, a top Clinton adviser, angrily claimed that four of her delegates had been "hijacked" and threatened that Clinton would appeal the committee's compromise decision at the convention. Ickes' mad-as-hell performance, no doubt, reinforced the view held by some Clinton's supporters that Obama's triumph has come--at least, in part--as a result of unfairness and anti-Clinton bias.

Still, ever since the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, Clinton has managed to walk a careful line, keeping her post-primary options open without doing anything that could directly undermine an Obama candidacy in the general election. That allowed her to stay in the hunt--in case something precipitous happened to alter the race. It also permitted her to rack up a few more primary wins and continue to show her strength among blue-collar (or white) voters--which she could point to when arguing to superdelegates that she would be the better candidate to take on McCain in the fall.

But she can straddle no longer. On Tuesday night, MSNBC reported that Clinton wanted a private sit-down with Obama before conceding or embracing Obama as the nominee. Many party leaders--including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid--have said they have no patience for drawing out the race beyond the last primaries. Democratic figures--especially those backing Obama--have in recent weeks deliberately not called on Clinton to abandon her campaign. They have not been eager to force her out. But such courtesy will evaporate faster than desert rain in the "coming days."

It could well be that party leaders--out of kindness, respect, and worry (over whether her supporters will eventually swing behind Obama)--afford Clinton a few days to process her defeat. After all, this historic race was damn close, as so few nomination contests are. But this is politics, not therapy. So the grace period won't be long.

Understandably, the Senator from New York who almost became the first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination has put off this decision for as long as she could. And her performance in the final weeks of the campaign has strengthened her future presidential prospects. Should Obama lose to McCain, Clinton and her supporters could use these late-contest wins to bolster an I-told-you-so argument that would come in handy for the 2012 campaign. But if she does not play nice soon, she puts her future within the party at great risk.

All things come to an end--even tight and historic presidential nomination contests. Wounds are tended to; they heal. Bad feelings subside. Deals are cut, if need be. Political parties can--and do--come together. And heading into what promises to be a damn tough campaign, Obama will need Clinton and her followers. In his victory speech, Obama hailed Clinton and exclaimed, "Let us begin to work together." As a calculating politician, Clinton can probably be expected to do the right thing. But with the Clintons--politicians of unusual fortitude and audacity--you never know. Now that all the party's polls are closed, the moment belongs to Obama. He is the champion. He has made history. He has become the strongest progressive Democratic nominee in a generation. And, for Hillary Clinton, the clock has run out.

UPDATE: Associated Press reported on Tuesday morning that Hillary Clinton was preparing to concede after the voting in South Dakota and Montana ends, but the Clinton campaign put out a statement that said, "The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening."

Celebrating her not-so-relevant victory in Puerto Rico on Sunday, Hillary Clinton provided people who dislike the Clintons with a reminder why they do so: she claimed she had won the popular vote:

More people across the country have voted for our campaign, more people have voted for us than for any candidate in the history of presidential primaries. We are winning the popular vote. Now, there can be no doubt, the people have spoken and you have chosen your candidate.

It was yet another example of how Team Clinton always goes beyond acceptable spin. The say-anything approach harks back to the "meaning of is" remark or the "I did not have sex" comment. Her claim to be the popular vote champion is a slippery and audacious rendering of the actual facts. If you go to RealClearPolitics.com, you will see that there are several ways to tally the popular votes. And the only way that Clinton "wins" is if you include the disputed the Michigan contest, where Barack Obama was not on the ballot. Clintonites have advocated counting all the 328,309 Clinton votes in the Michigan primary and awarding Obama none of the 238,168 uncommitted votes. Doing so is unfair and absurd.

Instead of parsing words, as Bill Clinton did, the Hillary Clinton campaign is parsing numbers. The campaign even produced a campaign ad touting her No. 1 standing in the popular vote race--which is now her last-gasp argument to the superdelegates. You're probably familiar with the blatant hypocrisy supporting her claim. Clinton had previously said that delegates would decide the election (e.g., not the popular vote) and that the Michigan race would not count. Well, oops. But it's precisely that sort of situational positioning that has caused long-term skepticism of the Clintons. In arguing to seat the disputed delegations of Michigan and Florida, she has proclaimed herself the champion of voters-come-first democracy. But at the same time, she is trying to persuade superdelegates they should not follow the outcome of the primaries and caucuses and instead vote for the second-place finisher. That she and her aides shamelessly present such a self-contradicting case (as if we're all too dumb to see through it) is a sign of desperation, arrogance or (most likely) both.

Fortunately, all this has to come to a conclusion soon. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe by the end of the week. It's clear that leading yet-undeclared superdelegates (like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) are restless and are ready to declare their loyalty to Obama to end this nomination battle. Clinton's fun-with-numbers does not appear to be winning the day. The only calculation left for her is whether to acknowledge the real math. It will be quite a sad finale to her historic though losing campaign if she concludes it with the Clintonian claim that she really won.

Okay, I was wrong--partially--when I speculated that the meeting of the Democratic Party's rules committee would be anti-climactic. There was a climax--even if it was possibly a faux climax. It was not produced by the committee. The panel did the predictable thing: it seated Florida's disputed delegation, giving each delegate half a vote, and it did essentially the same thing with Michigan, assigning the uncommitted votes to Barack Obama. So at the end of the (long day), Hillary Clinton netted more delegates, but Obama maintained his seemingly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates. That was what was expected of the Democratic insiders on the committee. What was unexpected: Harold Ickes' reaction at the end.

After the committee voted 19-8 in favor of the Michigan plan, Ickes, a top Clinton aide and a member of the committee, issued what will from now on be known as the Ickes Proclamation. He declared that the committee was hijacking delegates from Clinton. "I am stunned that we have the gall and chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000 voters," he said. He presented a threat: "I submit to you that hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party unity." And he dropped a bomb: Clinton reserved the right to appeal the decision before the credentials committee at the convention.

It was as if Ickes was saying, "Watch out, we're going to the mattresses." Too bad he's not heavier; otherwise, James Gandolfini could play him in the HBO movie.

But his threat was odd. It could only put off the superdelegates that Clinton still hopes--against hope--to convince. It also undermined one possible Clinton game plan: be a good soldier, do everything possible to help Obama win, and then, should he lose to John McCain, proclaim, "I told you so" and automatically become the Democratic front-runner for 2012. And with all his talk of "hijacking" and top-down elitism, Ickes was questioning the legitimacy of the process that is on the verge of handing Obama the top prize. Ickes was pushing a rhetorical point--Obama's win ain't legit--that Clinton herself has made.

Then there's the substance of Ickes' outrage. He pilloried his fellow rules committee members for supposedly overriding the will of Democratic voters in Michigan. They really hadn't. It was impossible to know the will of Michigan Ds because Obama was not on the ballot for the state's disputed primary contest. But handing delegates only to Clinton would have been patently unfair. That aside, Ickes' argument was situational, not principled. His campaign's overall strategy (and its only chance) is to persuade superdelegates to choose Clinton even if Obama has won more delegates in the primaries and caucuses. So who's the true fan of voter-first, small-d democracy?

Ultimately, Ickes' threat may not matter. If Clinton suspends her campaign shortly after the primaries end on Tuesday and (after a period of mourning) gets on board the Obama express, Ickes tough words will be forgotten. Clinton even could raise the issue at the convention as the losing candidate in a fashion that would not be too disruptive--that is, if she has endorsed Obama and does not tie the Michigan fight to any outcome in the nomination process. But if she and Ickes and the rest of the Clinton posse continue to question the legitimacy of Obama's victory, there will be problems. For the moment, they can play it both ways. But they soon have to decide if their threats are empty or real.

When was the last time that cable news shows provided extensive coverage of a party rules committee meeting? If memory serves correctly, never. There's been a big media buildup to Saturday's Democratic Party rules committee get-together, where party insiders will hash out what to do about those disputed Michigan and Florida delegations. But the all-day long affair is likely to be a bust as media spectacles go.

First and foremost, as many others have noted (and noted), the outcome will not affect who's ahead in pledged delegates. If any delegates are approved--and the likely scenario is that at least half of the chosen delegates in each state will be okayed by the party--Hillary Clinton will cut Barack Obama's lead in delegates chosen by voters. But she won't overcome it. So Obama's camp can afford to be generous and compromise. Clinton, though, is insisting there be no compromise. She is playing the role of Moses, proclaiming, "let my people go"--that is, declaring that all the disputed delegates from these two states ought to be freed from DNC purgatory and afforded full rights at the Democratic convention. (Days ago, I explained why this is a phony argument.)

The party insiders who end up on rules committees are the type of political operatives who can work through the arcane details of party rules to strike decent deals. So it's likely that some arrangement will be hammered out. It won't be all the Clintonites are demanding. But will she then continue her campaign as a crusade for Florida and Michigan? That's doubtful. She seems to be winding down--perhaps coming to terms with a hard-to-face reality.

The DNC rules meeting is part of the step-by-step drawdown of her campaign. Think of a deep-sea diver who rises from the depths in phases so as to not get the bends. First, she had her good showings in West Virginia and Kentucky. Then she was a faux defender of democracy at the rules meeting. Next she will be Queen of Puerto Rico. Finally--finally?--she will cross the finish line with the South Dakota and Montana primaries on Tuesday. But then the race will be done. She may need a few days to confirm that her argument to the superdelegates--choose me because I have the better chance of beating John McCain--is not carrying the day. And she will have to end--or suspend--her campaign.

I've noted before that Hillary Clinton and her crew are probably now playing for 2012. (See here.) She's setting up a gigantic I-told-you-so, in case Obama loses to McCain in November. And imagine how much stronger her case will be if Obama goes down by losing Florida and/or Michigan. So her game plan, I'm guessing, is to do everything possible to rack up as many popular votes (and as many blue-collar voters) and to do all she can for the disputed delegates of Michigan and Florida--before she exits the race. That will put her in a rather strong (and, to some, an irritating) position should Obama flame out.

Which means that the DNC rules committee meeting is political theater, a show that likely won't mean much--and won't do much for Clinton in the current race. But it could become quite relevant if she ends up running for president in 2012.

Regular readers know that I broke the story about John McCain's problematic political alliance with the Reverend Rod Parsley, the Ohio megachurch pastor who has declared that it is the historic mission of the United States to see the "false religion" of Islam "destroyed." On Thursday, McCain--who had campaigned with Parsley in February and called him "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide"--rejected Parsley's endorsement. The repudiation was part of a twofer: at the same time, McCain dumped fundamentalist pastor John Hagee, who had called the Catholic Church "the great whore" and who had once said that Hitler's mass-murdering of Jews was part of "God's work."

In the media coverage of McCain's pastor problems, Parsley was second fiddle. Apparently calling for the eradication of Islam is not as politically troublesome as insulting the Catholic Church and describing the Holocaust as a necessary step for the Second Coming (because it drove the Jews back to the Middle East). But footage of Parsley's anti-Islam rants--which Mother Jones and Brave New Films posted on-line as a video--was played on MSNBC and on ABC (which mistakenly described its own report as an "exclusive"). And the McCain camp decided to lump the two fundamentalist extremists together and throw them under the same bus at the same time.

The media coverage has continued to focus more on Hagee, who preaches at a Texas church, than Parsley. But McCain's excommunication of Parsley may be more politically significant. Allow me to explain the melodramatic headline above: Parsley, who leads a church in Columbus, Ohio, is a political powerhouse in the Buckeye State. He registers social conservatives as voters and then drives them to the polls, where most of them presumably vote Republican. He's been credited with helping George W. Bush win Ohio in 2004, when Bush beat John Kerry by the narrow margin of 120,000 votes.

Ohio is once again a swing state--perhaps the most important swing state. It's hard to envision either McCain or the Democratic nominee (presumably Barack Obama) winning in November without pocketing Ohio. And it's hard to envision McCain winning the state without the assistance of social conservative voters (often miscalled "values voters"). The Ohio Republican Party has been decimated in recent years by various scandals, and the state is now governed by a popular Democrat (Ted Strickland). It has become much tougher ground for GOPers. Which means that McCain truly needs those social conservatives to turn out for him.

Parsley could have helped greatly in this regard. But now McCain has lost a shepherd who could lead tens of thousands of voters to the polls for the Arizona senator. Will these voters find the way on their own? Will they be angered that McCain betrayed a man they consider to be a conveyor belt for the word of God? (McCain as Judas?) With Parsley out of play for McCain in Ohio, McCain will have a tougher time winning this critical state.

And another point: in renouncing Parsley and Hagee, McCain said that his initial acceptance of their endorsements "did not mean I endorsed their views." That may be true to a point. Yet what did it mean when McCain called Parsley "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide"? That sure sounds like an endorsement. Why did McCain say that? It's doubtful that he was aware of Parsley's anti-Islam extremism or his other over-the-top views. McCain was simply pandering--mouthing words he did not really mean because that would help him get elected. If McCain is going to hail someone as a "great leader" and "moral compass," you'd expect him to know a thing or two about the fellow. Tossing off such praise in a who-really-cares manner sure ain't straight talk.

UPDATE: On Friday night, Parsley issued a statement saying he would not withdraw his endorsement of McCain. Then on Saturday he did just that.

Hillary Clinton is really pandering, as her campaign whimpers to a conclusion. In an interview on Wednesday with AP, she said she would support Michigan and Florida regarding their disputed delegations no matter what:

I will consult with Floridians and the voters in Michigan because it's really their voices that are being ignored and their votes that are being discounted, and I'll support whatever the elected officials and the voters in those two states want to do.

But wait a minute; those states violated Democratic Party rules--rules that at one time Clinton supported. Now she's saying that Dems in those naughty states ought to decide what happens to their delegations. That's just wrong. And it's also wrong for her to vow--as she did--a convention fight over these delegations, if the party does not work something out before then.

It's almost as if Clinton is grasping for a cause to justify her ongoing campaigning. And, as AP notes, seating the Michigan and Florida delegations in a manner most favorable to Clinton would still leave her trailing Obama in voter-determined (or pledged) delegates. But seating the delegations in such a fashion would bolster her bogus argument that she has done better in the popular vote. That claim only holds up if one adds to Clinton's tally the 328,309 votes she received in Michigan and award Obama zero votes from that state. Obama's name was not on the ballot for the disputed primary, but "uncommitted"--which was something of a stand-in for Obama--drew 238,168 votes. In any event, it is not reasonable for Clinton and her crowd to base their popular vote claim on the results in Michigan's unsanctioned contest.

Campaigning in Florida, Clinton, relying on her fuzzy math, hinted that Obama's victory might not be legitimate. She declared that Floridians in 2000 "learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren't counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner. The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: If any votes aren't counted, the will of the people isn't realized and our democracy is diminished."

Note her reference to the "candidate with fewer votes."

Clinton refuses to let go of her argument. She's no longer attacking Obama, but she appears to be residing somewhere between resignation and fighting on. She won't blast him, but she insinuates he's not won fair and square. Worse, in this AP interview, she hinted that she might continue her effort to win over superdelegates (and maybe even pledged delegates for Obama) after the primaries end on June 3. That would be going nuclear. It would tear the party apart. You think Obama and his supporters would roll over?

As Clinton comes to terms with what seems to be defeat, she is trying to have it both ways. She's doing nothing overt to undermine the likely nominee of her party, but she ain't bowing out and she keeps on insisting her party's making a big mistake. None of this is too much of a drag on Obama at the moment. But come June 3--or thereabouts--Clinton is going to have to quit or fire off one helluva shot. Judgment Day is nearing.

I'm traveling today and may not be able to post. But don't worry nothing that happens in Kentucky or Oregon today will change anything. In fact, what I wrote below will only be more relevant, as Hillary Clinton moves (or is pushed) toward the moment when she will have to realize her dream is over (at least for now). With only two small states--Montana and South Dakota--and Puerto Rico left, what can she hope for? Not much, except a bolt out of the blue that renders Barack Obama undeniably unelectable. Her campaign is now a faith-based endeavor. She and her supporters (see below) ought to get on with the uncomfortable exercise of dealing with reality.

Okay, we have a new meme: women supporting Hillary Clinton are so pissed off they will not vote for Barack Obama in the fall against John McCain. The Washington Post gives this narrative front-page oomph with a story that focuses on several angry Democratic women voters--that is, three--including one who vows to vote for McCain instead of Obama. Anecdotal evidence aside, the story refers to a recent Post/ABC News poll that found that a quarter of Clinton supporters said they will vote for McCain over Obama (and a similar number of Obama supporters said they would do the same if Clinton won the nomination).

My hunch is that the passions--and acrimony--will cool down in the months ahead. But it's clear that there's been a messy patch of bad feelings generated on both sides of the black-versus-woman Democratic contest. (The Post recently reported on the blatant racism encountered by Obama campaign workers on the ground.) But these Democratic women who are disappointed that HRC will not become the breaker of the ultimate glass ceiling are going t have to get over it. The obvious point is, do they want to vote for a guy who will appoint Supreme Court justices likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, who recently voted against a bill that would remove restrictions on a woman's right to bring an equal pay lawsuit, and who will keep the Iraq war going and going and going?

And there's more. McCain has been disrespectful and misogynistic regarding Hillary Clinton, their champion. In an infamous incident during this campaign, he laughed along when a voter asked him, "How do we beat the bitch?" In fact, he replied, "That's an excellent question." See for yourself:

Ten years ago, he cracked a joke making fun of Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, and Janet Reno that the Post dubbed "too vicious to print." Other major news outfits also refused to print or broadcast the joke, thus doing a disservice to the public by failing to show this nasty side of McCain. In that pre-YouTube era in Salon, I published the gag:

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?

Because her father is Janet Reno.

Kinda crude, right?

I know it's tough to be rejected. Most of us have been at some time. And, no doubt, some voices in the media have lashed out at Clinton for the wrong reasons, treating her unfairly because she's a dame. So gals for Clinton have cause to be mad and discouraged--and Obama will have to gently court this bloc. Yet ultimately these spurned voters will have to dump the anger and come to terms with the reality that politics, like life, often presents you with let-downs and imperfect choices. Sure, that may be easy for a guy to say. But if these women settle for an old fellow who laughs when Clinton is called a bitch, they're going to end up stuck in a bad relationship.

Please, President Bush, please attack me some more.

That must be what Barack Obama is thinking after Bush's speech in Jerusalem, during which the president blasted those who want to talk to America's enemies as appeasers. Forget that the policy substance of Bush's speech was illogical--or idiotic: Bush's own administration talks to North Korea's tyrants; his defense secretary, Bob Gates, has discussed engagement with Iran; his lead military and diplomatic people in Iraq have spoken with Iranians; the government he supports in Baghdad is in close contact with Iran; and significant members of Israel's national security community support talking to Hamas. But just on the politics, the speech was a boneheaded move that ought to make John McCain howl.

Bush is about as unpopular as a president can be. If Barack Obama could run against him, he would probably win by 80 points (or maybe a few points less than that). Consider what happened when the Republicans sent Dick Cheney to Mississippi to campaign for a Republican candidate in a special House election this week. Not only did the GOPer lose in this Republican stronghold, turnout was down in GOP precincts. Bush and Cheney are a pair of lame albatrosses for any Republican candidate in 2008, including McCain. Which is why Obama and the Democrats want to depict McCain as running for Bush's third term.

Casting McCain as the Spawn of Bush is not a slam-dunk. Though McCain has become a Bush clone on Iraq and the economy, he is quite different in character and biography than W. and boasts far more personal appeal. McCain also has that supposed maverick-thing to cite (Look--omigod--a Republican talking seriously about global warming!) So a day like yesterday was a boon for Obama. While McCain was giving a speech about what his presidency would look like--that is, if he had a magic wand (victory in Iraq, prosperity at home, lower health care costs for all!)--Bush was stealing the thunder by implicitly bashing Obama as an appeaser before a foreign audience. Such a stunt is toxic and perfect fodder for cable news.

Bush probably thought, "Well, I showed him." But any Bush versus Obama narrative assists Obama tremendously. Most Americans clearly would relish voting against Bush, were they able to. If Bush makes it seem that a vote for Obama is a vote against Bush, McCain is screwed.

You'd think the White House would be aware of this. But recognizing reality has never been this bunch's strong suit. After all, the White House thought it was a good idea to dispatch Cheney to help that faltering Republican in Mississippi. One question is, will McCain ask Bush to knock if off and lay low? Another is, if McCain does, will Bush listen? Whether most Americans like it or not--and they don't--Bush is still the president. And he's probably not eager to leave the White House on all fours or through the back door. Obama ought to try to exploit that, anything to provoke Bush. Obama should be saying to Bush, "Bring 'em on."

It's getting harder and harder to take John McCain seriously. In April, he said,

To promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests, and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility. It is a failure of leadership.

On Thursday, he said in a speech that if he were elected,

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy.

That sure sounds like a promise to withdraw troops. Now, of course, McCain is asserting that his troop withdrawal will be the result of victory in Iraq. But how the hell can he make such a vow? In his speech--which lists all the wonderful things that will be achieved by 2013 if he becomes president--he doesn't say what he will do to attain this victory. Right now, it looks as if he's going to stick to the current policy. At least Richard Nixon, campaigning in 1968, indicated he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. And don't write in: I know Nixon never used the phrase "secret plan." A reporter devised the term, and Nixon never disabused the public of the notion. He, of course, had no such plan. And it's unclear whether McCain has a clue about what to do differently in Iraq in order to net different results than those already produced.

Meanwhile, at least one House Republican, looking to prevent a GOP electoral calamity in the fall, has said that the Republicans can't cling to Bush's Iraq war policy without being decimated in the coming congressional elections. After defeating a Republican primary opponent who had challenged his antiwar stance, Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina said it was time for his party to dump Bush on the war: "If this party does not look at options and figure out how to pursue those options, we're in real trouble."

McCain and his party are in a political quagmire. Forward-march rhetoric and hollow promises may not be enough to save them. As I've repeatedly said, the war will be back--as a political issue. And all indicators--including the GOP's three recent losses in congressional special elections held in Republican strongholds--now suggest that won't be to the Republicans' advantage.

What is she thinking?

That seems to be the question of the moment That is--even after her whopping (though irrelevant) win in West Virginia--why is Hillary Clinton fighting on after the bell has rung? And one new meme has developed: it's all about 2012.

Tom Edsall writes,

Under one scenario - Obama gets the nomination but loses to John McCain - Clinton could begin her 2012 campaign on November 5, 2008, as a vindicated politician, using the narrative that she was the better candidate.

And Charles Hurt of The New York Post notes:

With no hope of winning her party's nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton is running out the clock by laying the foundation for her political future, circa 2012. As she seems to float in and out of reality on the campaign trail, it is so easy to dismiss her as delusional. She is not.

I'm proud to be a founding member of this meme. Before Hurt and Edsall posted, I put up my own version of the this-is-all-about-2012 theory:

Why is Hillary Clinton still in the race?

....[C]ommentators have come up with several obvious explanations:

* She wants to remain in the hunt just in case something happens. (A video appears of Wright calling for armed revolution? Fox News produces Obama's Secret Muslim Membership card?)

* She is staying in for one last round of fundraising. (Her campaign is $20 million in debt and owes her $11 million.)

* She wants to end her historic campaign with a string of victories: West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. (Puerto Rico? She is a senator from New York.)

* And the most obvious of them all: she's not yet ready to face the music.

No doubt, a combo of these rationales is fueling Clinton's impossible ride. But let me add one more to the mix: Clinton is setting up the biggest I-told-you-so in recent American political history.

Assume Obama is the nominee and imagine that he loses to McCain in the fall. Where would that leave Clinton? She would be able to wag her finger at her party, and she wouldn't even have to say those haughty words. She and her die-hard confederates would be able to note simply and smugly, We did try to warn you. In the following four years, they would remind reporters, party leaders, Democratic voters, and everyone else, over and over, that they had said that Obama was unelectable, that they had said he could not win blue-collar (that is, white) voters. This Clinton chorus would not cease singing this song for a nanosecond. Can't you just see Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe lecturing cable news hosts on this point? Hiding their schadenfreude--just barely--they would note that they had won the fundamental argument of 2008: who understands American voters the best? And in this scenario, Hillary Clinton would be well-positioned for 2012. In fact, she would have such bragging rights as to be able to question any other Democrat's entry into the presidential contest. She might even expect the party this time to hand her the nomination on a platter--accompanied with one big apology.

....By staying in the race, Clinton has been--and will be--able to pocket more of those blue-collar voters. And with a decisive win in Puerto Rico on June 1, she could cut into Obama's edge in the popular vote. Even if she has no shot at coaxing superdelegates with her blue-collar argument, she will be bolstering her you-should've-listened-to-me argument, in case the voters in the general election send Obama packing.

So are the clever, cunning and never-say-die Clintons already calculating an alternative path to the White House, a course that will take another four and a half years? And is it an insult or a compliment to suggest they are? Such a plan--or is it a scheme?--would entail that Hillary Clinton not bloody Obama much more, for that would risk alienating certain Democratic voters (most notably, blacks) even more than they have been. And for this strategy to work, she will have to be seen--after an Obama defeat--as having done all she could for him in the general election.

The good news for Obama-lovers and Hillary-haters: her presidential ambitions (for 2012, not 2008) offer an incentive for her to be a gracious loser and an enthusiastic Obama supporter once she withdraws from the nomination race. The bad news? if her calculations are right, she may be out of the presidential race for only a few months and then back in for another four years.

Tell me what you think in the comments below. And read my full piece here.

Not every primary matters. Especially West Virginia.

Before Election Day had even arrived, Barack Obama gave an upbeat speech there in which he conceded that Hillary Clinton had more support in the state, and she appeared at a campaign rally and spoke of her win to come, but in not-so-jubilant terms. Yes, the loser was upbeat, the winner reserved. That's because the outcome was practically irrelevant. Up to now in the 2008 campaign, it seemed that just about each new primary was significant. First, there was the upset in Iowa. Then the comeback in New Hampshire. Next, Nevada and South Carolina and the states of Super Tuesday showed the race was competitive. After that, Obama tore through a winning streak that HRC did not slow until Ohio and Texas. This led to the battle of Pennsylvania. She won that contest, but her victory there ended up not meaning a lot when she failed to stomp Obama in Indiana and he creamed her in North Carolina.

A lot of states have played crucial roles in this nominating contest--far more so than in the Republican race--but the remaining primaries are unimportant. The results in these contests cannot change the fact that Obama has pocketed more voter-determined delegates than Clinton, and that fact apparently is pushing several superdelegates each day to declare their loyalty to Obama.

It's not unusual for a primary not to matter. In previous elections, candidates often skipped territory not deemed favorable to them. And late states often have had little impact. This year shows that it's hard to know in advance which states and which period will be crucial. Who'd thought that those medium-sized, in-the-middle-of-the-calendar states would be so important? But that was where and when Obama gathered momentum and vacuumed up a bunch of delegates.

So nothing against West Virginians, but, like voters in late states of previous contests, they don't have much of a say in who will be the Democratic nominee. And neither will Kentuckians, who next week are likely to tilt toward Clinton, while Oregonians near-coronate Obama. The Democratic primary, as red-hot as any recent primary contest, is petering out. Seemingly with a whimper, rather than a bang. Which is a good thing. Clinton at the moment seems to be coasting, not calculating how best to destroy Obama. After the intensity of the past few months, she may need an exit strategy that entails a gradual withdrawal and lets her retreat with a few more battlefield victories. As long as she doesn't use these weeks to scorch Obama, her continued presence in the race won't have any long-term impact.

It's true, as I've noted elsewhere, that her wins in the remaining primary only have consequence if she intends to mount a full-throttle campaign to persuade superdelegates to vote for her against the will of the primary and caucus voters. But her dream of triumphing via the insiders appears to be fading quickly. So West Virginia, Kentucky, and the few other primaries left--it's all for show. The only victories she can earn at this point are hollow ones.

In a speech scheduled for Monday afternoon, John McCain will essentially say, "President Bush screwed up on global warming." From the prepared text:

As president...I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears. I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges....The United States will lead and will lead with...an approach that speaks to the interests and obligations of every nation.

That sure sounds as if McCain thinks Bush was a shirker. Now did he say that during the GOP primaries? I don't recall him doing so. Wonder why he didn't blast Bush on global warming when he was courting Republican voters?

Now that McCain is fishing for independent and moderate voters in the general election, he's touting his global warming position, which is rather enlightened for a Republican. But as my colleague Jonathan Stein points out, McCain's environmental record is hardly all green. His lifetime voting record from the League of Conservation Voters: 24 percent.

A few weeks ago, I published a story that reported on how McCain sabotaged his own global warming bill in the Senate by attaching to it billions of dollars in tax subsidies for the nuclear energy industry. Even though many people--including his own environmental policy aide--warned him that doing so would do in his bill, the Senate's first attempt to redress global warming, McCain stubbornly insisted on the nuclear subsidies. Well, the warnings were right. The subsidies sank the bill. McCain's attempt to craft a legislative remedy for global warming fizzled. He then passed the buck to other senators. No doubt, he does feel strongly about the need to address climate change. Yet in that episode he was his own worst enemy. Read the full story here.

At least one conservative Republican has come out and said that John McCain ought to denounce the Reverend Rod Parsley for his extreme anti-Islam rhetoric, and that's James Pinkerton, with whom I regularly appear on Bloggingheads.tv. Pinkerton, who was a domestic policy adviser for the first President Bush and who advised Mike Huckabee during his recent GOP presidential primary contest, says that McCain should reject the endorsement he's accepted from Parsley, a pastor at an Ohio megachurch who has said that it is the historic mission of the United States to see the "false religion" of Islam "destroyed."

For more on Parsley's anti-Islam ranting and to see the reverend in his full anti-Islam glory, click here for the video of Parsley's attack on Islam that was produced by Mother Jones and Brave New Films.

Up to now, McCain has steadfastly refused to renounce Parsley, an influential political force in the swing state of Ohio. Doing so could seriously hurt McCain's chances in the Buckeye State. So Pinkerton shouldn't expect McCain to heed his advice. Here's Pinkerton and I discussing the matter:

This was first posted at MotherJones.com

Regular readers will know that I've been on top of John McCain for not renouncing the Reverend Rod Parsley, a fundamentalist preacher who has endorsed McCain and who has called on the United States to see the "false religion" of Islam "destroyed." I was the first reporter to note that Parsley was an anti-Islam extremist. I did so after finding harsh and derogatory statements about Islam in his 2005 book, Silent No More. But after Parsley's bigoted attacks on all Islam--not just Islamic extremists--were exposed, McCain refused to criticize Parsley or reject Parsley's endorsement. His campaign would not even take a phone call from me. It obviously wanted the matter to disappear, for Parsley is an important piece of the campaign's effort to win the key swing state of Ohio, where Parsley leads a megachurch and is an influential player who can drive tens of thousands of social conservatives to the polls. Before the Ohio primary, McCain and Parsley had campaigned together in Cincinnati. And the McCain campaign, no doubt, looked forward to doing the same during the general election. Thus, it was all mum on Parsley.

But there's more than Parsley's book excerpts for the campaign to dodge. I recently obtained from Parsley's church a DVD of a sermon he gave--titled, "Islam: The Deception of Allah"--in which he reiterated and amplified the anti-Islam rhetoric in his book. Joining up with Brave New Films, Mother Jones has produced a video showing Parsley in all his anti-Islam glory and McCain heaping praise on him at a campaign rally in February. Here it is:

This is not a game of gotcha politics. Consider this: what message does it send to the Muslim world if McCain requests and accepts the support of a fellow who wants to eradicate Islam and also praises him as a "moral compass," "great leader," and "spiritual guide"? It shouldn't be tough for McCain to repudiate Parsley and his statements. Yet apparently it is, for he is placing politics ahead of straight talk.

For more on Parsley's videotaped sermon, click here.

Here's a posting I put up at the Mother Jones blog:

The morning after, the Clinton crew was unbowed. As Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night was being creamed by Barack Obama in North Carolina and eking out a narrow victory in Indiana, pundits throughout Cable News Land were pronouncing her dead, dead, dead. Tim Russert said the race was over. But when a reporter on the campaign's morning conference call, asked Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, if there had been "any discussions about not going forward," he said, "No discussions." And he seemed to mean it.

On the call, Wolfson, deputy communications director Phil Singer, and chief strategist Geoff Garin were forward-looking. They claimed to be "happy" about the 1.8-percent win in Indiana--but without sounding at all jubilant about the squeaker. As for North Carolina--where she lost by 14 points--they claimed "progress" there and pointed to the fact that she beat Obama among white voters by 24 points (as if the increasing racial polarization within the Democratic primary electorate is something to celebrate). They acknowledged that Clinton had in recent weeks loaned her campaign nearly $6.5 million--and claimed it was a sign of her commitment to moving ahead and, of course, fighting for real people. They repeated the campaign's call to seat the disputed delegations of Florida and Michigan, and they indicated they were ready to rumble in the upcoming primaries. Voters in those states, Garin said, should be given the ability "to express their voice." He added, "All we are doing is suggesting the process ought to play out."

In other words, damn the pundits, full speed ahead. It appeared that Clinton--faced with three alternatives: fighting on as if nothing has changed, dropping out, or planning a graceful exit strategy--has for the time being settled on option one.

But the voyage got a lot rockier after Indiana and North Carolina. As the cable news analysts pointed out, it is now practically a mathematical certainty that Obama will end the primaries next month with a lead in pledged delegates and the popular vote, even if the results in Florida and Michigan are included. So Clinton has run out of metrics. The days of fuzzy math are over. There will be no measure by which she will be able to argue she is the voters' choice. All the campaign is left with is an opinion: Clinton can do better than Obama against John McCain in the fall. Clinton and her lieutenants do have stats to cite, notably her performance among working-class voters (meaning, white working-class voters). She has demonstrated, Wolfson maintained on the call, "a proven ability" to win over these voters, while Obama has not. This is, he added, "the crux of the argument" that the Clinton campaign will be making to the superdelegates. And in the next primary states--West Virginia (May 13), Kentucky (May 20), Oregon (May 20)--Clinton will try to show once more that she fares better among lunch-pail Democrats.

So now Clinton, who passionately insists that democracy demands that the Florida and Michigan contest be counted and that voters in the last few states be granted the opportunity to state their preferences, is left with nothing but the most elitist of strategies: she must convince party insiders--the 300 or so not-yet-committed superdelegates--to vote against the popular will of the voters who participated in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. On the conference call, I asked Garin whether his campaign is essentially stuck with a "nullification strategy." He disputed his campaign's game plan was anything like a "nullification strategy." All delegates--pledged delegates and superdelegates--have "equal moral weight in the process," he said, and the rules of the party "anticipate there will be delegates" who will make "good faith decisions."

That is so. But for Clinton to win, these superdelegates will have to say that they know better than the voters. It is certainly permissible under Democratic Party rules. But might such an action blow apart the party? There is no way for the Clinton campaign to orchestrate this strategy politely or calmly and wrap it up quickly after the primaries conclude on June 3. After all, no superdelegate commitment is solid until he or she actually votes at the convention. Even if Clinton is able to sway enough superdelegates and win the necessary number of commitments, Obama will not fold his tent and accept this as a deal done. He would fight for those superdelegates and, if need be, fight the process. There would be a bloody battle from early June until the first ballot at the convention in late August. Nullification cannot be accomplished neatly. Clinton and her crew must realize that.

I asked Garin if he foresaw any problem if the candidate with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes was not chosen at the convention. "When we get to June 3, we'll have a very close result," he said. "This might raise the question of how close is close." He didn't answer the question.

Right now, the Clintonites are saying they're not bailing. But in for a penny, in for a pound. The only way she can triumph is by first persuading superdelegates to vote against the wishes of primary voters and caucus-goers and by then mounting an ugly fight that will last for months until the convention--a fight that would likely create consequences that would resonate far beyond the convention.

It may be full speed ahead for Clinton and her gang, but that's only because her finger is on the button and she is considering pushing it.

"We now know who the Democratic nominee will be." That's what Tim Russert said shortly after midnight on Wednesday, even while telection-watchers all over the world were waiting for the final results in Indiana. He was writing off Hillary Clinton. Done. Finished. Kaput. Whether she knew it or not.

A close win or a loss in Indiana, coupled with a resounding defeat in North Carolina, indicates that Clinton, Queen of Pennsylvania, is now the candidate losing altitude. The recent polls all showed her ahead by a decent margin in Indiana and closing in North Carolina. If those polls were on target, then somehow Barack Obama managed a late surge in both states.

But are Russert and the other pundits penning Clinton's obit prematurely? Does she have no choice but to say good-bye? She and her campaign aides immediately went into huddle mode--she canceled her appearances on the morning shows--in order to decide what to do now, as their cable news surrogates continued to talk up her chances in the coming primaries.

Given that it is likely that Clinton and her crew have not yet reached any decisions, a reporter or pundit can only at this point hazard a guess. And I would not count her out so quickly. Not that she has a chance. As the cable news analysts pointed out repeatedly on Tuesday night, Obama was racking up more delegates and more popular votes--further undermining any argument Clinton might be able to make to the superdelegates. But as I've noted before, the lesson the Clintons learned during the impeachment episode was this: no matter how bad it gets, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and ignore those calling for you to quit. The Clintons have defied the pundits before. They may give it another stab.

Will Indiana and North Carolina decide anything? In all likelihood, no. If Barack Obama were to cream Hillary Clinton in both states, there would be more pressure on Clinton to quit. But (a) that electoral prospect does not seem likely, given the direction of the recent polls in each state and (b) Clinton would still not leave the race. She would keep on going, hoping for another Reverend Wright-like development that would cripple Obama.

And if Clinton manages to win each primary--and a victory for her in North Carolina is way against the odds--there's no way Obama, who will maintain a lead in pledged delegates--will bow out. If there's a split--the likeliest of the possibilities--nothing really changes. Obama will argue that the math (and the pledged delegate count) remains on his side; Clinton will argue that Obama did not close the deal with Indianans, so she must press on.

That is, Obama will continue to have the better argument. After all, if Clinton were to apply her campaign's spin on Obama to her own campaign, she would have to concede that she has not closed the deal with a greater number of voters in Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Clinton is also heading toward a profound contradiction. In recent weeks, she has tried to depict Obama as an elitist and position herself as a pro-democracy populist. On the gas tax holiday, she's down with the people, who are hurt by high gasoline prices, while Obama is in league with "elite opinion" and--egads!--economists, who all are, no doubt, driving around in limos and laughing at the plight of working people. (Pass the Grey Poupon!) She and her lieutenants also constantly call for seating the Michigan and Florida delegations so that the votes of the people in those states count. And they insist that it's good for democracy for Clinton to remain in the race, for the voters in the upcoming states with primaries (and Puerto Rico) deserve a chance to participate. She's Hillary of the people and for the people.

But her ultimate strategy is one of utter elitism. She hopes to be able to persuade the non-elected superdelegates to support her and provide her the edge that trumps Obama's lead in delegates determined by the voters. So who's the real populist here? The candidate who wants the nomination to be decided by the voters, or the candidate who prays party insiders will determine the race against the will of the actual voters? Clinton the Populist is all for empowering the voters of Michigan and Florida and those in the upcoming states--all to keep alive her prospects of winning over the party elite. Once the primaries are done, the people won't matter for her.

How will she make that pivot? No doubt, with confidence and vigor, and without acknowledging the pivot. Her campaign is not about adherence to consistent principles. It's about winning. And when the primaries are done--and one day, they will be done--she will have to decide how far she is willing to go to undo the votes of the people.

During a conference call with reporters on Sunday, Clinton officials kept whacking Barack Obama for opposing Clinton's proposed gas tax holiday, insisting this was evidence that Obama just doesn't get it and is out of touch with common Americans. Clinton herself on Sunday compared Obama's opposition to the gas tax suspension to the opposition emanating from "elite opinion"--in what seemed to be an attempt to ignite an intra-party class war: I'm with the people; he's with the elites. And on the conference call, Phil Singer, the deputy communications director for Hillary Clinton's campaign, said that Obama

is not connecting with working class voters, real people and we think that's a problem in this election but its also going to be a problem for him going forward if he is the nominee.

Wait-a-minute. Was Singer suggesting that those voters who have voted for Obama--Democrats, independents, and Republicans--are not "real people?" Was he putting down the 15 million or so voters who have cast their ballot for Obama?

Clinton has been credibly accused of once having said "screw 'em," in reference to working-class white voters. But now that her campaign in recent primaries has fared well among this bloc of voters, she is going all-out to woo 'em and to elevate them to the most important group of voters in the entire universe. At the same time, Hillary and her lieutenants are arguing that Obama is too elite (or effete?) to bond with these voters.

There's no doubt that blue-collar voters are important to the electoral prospects of Democrats. Ronald Reagan reigned because he was able to swipe these folks from the Democratic coalition. And Richard Nixon had his successful "Southern strategy," which depended on playing to the racial fears of white working-class voters. But this does not mean that the other parts of the coalition are not "real." Singer and the Clintonites are pushing GOP talking points (about "San Francisco Democrats" and the rest) when they suggest that only the blue-collar Dems are "real" people.

There are millions of Democrats--including many middle-class voters--who have supported Obama. And just as the Dems may not be able to win in November without blue-collar voters on their side, the same can be said about African-American voters. What if pissed-off black voters stay home in Cleveland and Philadelphia? Could a Democratic nominee win Ohio and Pennsylvania? Of course not. They're no less "real" than the Deerhunter voters of Pennsylvania.

Millions of Americans--millions of Democrats--see Obama as a leader and an inspiration. Clinton and her crew ought to be careful in dismissing them as not the real thing. If she somehow manages to win the nomination--which can only happen if she destroys Obama and then persuades superdelegates to overturn the primary and caucus results--she will need these not-so-real voters in the general election.

Elsewhere I recently wondered whether Barack Obama is slipping. And I observed that though recent poll numbers suggest bad news for him, it's hard to suss out the connection between the campaign narrative in the national news media (Reverend Wright! "Bitter" voters!) and how voters in Indiana and North Carolina decide for whom to vote.

No doubt realizing that a viewer of cable news shows might believe that Obama has lost altitude, the Obama campaign on Friday morning sent an email to political reporters (who tend to watch cable news shows) displaying various pages in Indiana that morning. Each newspaper presented stories that come across as favorable to Obama. Here they are:

Now there are few Indianans who read each of the four newspapers. But the overall impression one would get from these reports is that Obama ain't doing too bad. It's certainly a different take on the campaign than that presented within the national political media. And far more Indianans look at these front pages than watch Hardball.

But what about those tough polling numbers for Obama in Indiana? I suppose the best that can be said is that, one way or another, they won't matter after the votes are counted on Tuesday.

AN OSCAR FOR MOTHER JONES. Well not an Oscar, but an Ellie--which is the equivalent of an Oscar in the magazine business. On Thursday night, Mother Jones, my home base, won a National Magazine Award for general excellence. That's like picking up the Best Picture prize. My congratulations to editors-in-chief Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, publisher Jay Harris, and all the staffers who put in long hours to produce the magazine. Please remember to check out our daily website.

It's back to pander-politics. And unfortunately for Barack Obama, such tactics often pay off for pols.

There is little doubt that a federal gas tax holiday is bad policy. John McCain first proposed suspending the 18-cents-per-gallon tax for the summer months, and then Hillary Clinton jumped in, adding that oil companies should be slapped with a windfall profits tax to make up for the $9 billion in highway construction and maintenance funds that would be loss if the federal gas tax was waived for three months. Such a temporary measure would do nothing to address the fundamental energy problems of the nation. And Obama points out it will save the average American a mere $28 and, worse, it could cause prices to go up by encouraging more driving in a peak travel period and boosting the demand for gasoline. He's certainly right. It's no more than a Band-Aid--and, even then, not such a good stopgap measure.

But taking this egghead position has placed him in the middle, with Clinton and McCain shooting at him from different sides. Both are exploiting the moment to pound Obama further for being supposedly out of touch with common folks (i.e., voters). Clinton has been running television ads in Indiana slamming Obama for not supporting the gas tax proposal. The Republican National Committee has zapped out press releases blasting Obama for referring to McCain's gas tax plan as a "gimmick" and a "scheme."

So we're back to the perennial question: how mature are voters? Do they fall for the no-pain, quick-fix? Can they see through transparent pandering? The "First Read" gang at MSNBC had some interesting thoughts on this front:

Clinton is trying to harken back to the '90s and hammer home the "I feel your pain" aspect of the Clinton years that voters responded to so well back then. But the debate over the gas-tax holiday is an interesting one -- and it's a test of just how closely voters are following the campaign. Will voters respond simply on the pocketbook front and demand this gas tax holiday, despite all the downsides that many experts have outlined about the idea? It's the old "if it feels good, do it" (that Clinton and McCain have seen succeed for so long during times that pocketbook politics have dominated the debate) versus the intellectual argument Obama is trying to have (that usually is praised by, well, intellectuals but dismissed by rank-and-file voters who want their tax cut or gas prices cut). Clinton is trying to own this issue big time -- even running TV ads about it and constantly criticizing Obama for not supporting the gas-tax holiday. Obama's criticism of McCain's plan and Clinton's are accurate. The only problem is it leaves voters saying, "Ok, it's a gimmick; so what's your proposal? This feels like Clinton v. Tsongas '92. But the electorate acts as if its more informed than it was 16 years ago, and also could be a bit more distrustful of government handouts than in the past. Regardless, one could argue that the Clinton-Obama debate over this issue sums up their candidacies and potential presidencies. In this environment, which do voters prefer?

So as Obama has been tied up by the Wright business (and doing his best to respond to the recent Wright eruption), Clinton has been hoping to trump him in the I'm-more-like-you category. That is, like you, I'm damn pissed off by these freckin' high gas prices--can you believe what it costs to fill up?!!!--and I've got something to do about it right now. Her unsaid message: While Obama is dealing with all that black stuff, I'm fighting for you and am willing to kick the oil company in the teeth to save you a couple of bucks a week.

Will it work? Indianans and North Carolinians will tell us on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, John McCain's silly-named "Call to Action" tour hit health-care-land, and he traveled to Tampa to tout his Bush-like health care proposal. At the center of his plan is a proposal to provide tax credits to individuals ($2500) and families ($5000) that they can use to buy insurance.

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Edwards blasted McCain's plan for not covering preexisting conditions, including illnesses experienced by Edwards (breast cancer) and McCain himself (melanoma). McCain, in his remarks on Tuesday, tried to address Edwards' criticism:

Critics argue that when my proposed tax credit becomes available it would encourage people to purchase health insurance on the current individual market, while significant weaknesses in the market remain. They worry that Americans with preexisting conditions could still be denied insurance. Congress took the important step of providing some protection against the exclusion of preexisting conditions in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996. I supported that legislation, and nothing in my reforms will change the fact that if you remain employed and insured you will build protection against the cost of treating any preexisting condition. Even so, those without prior group coverage and those with preexisting conditions do have the most difficulty on the individual market, and we need to make sure they get the high-quality coverage they need. I will work tirelessly to address the problem. But I won't create another entitlement program that Washington will let get out of control. Nor will I saddle states with another unfunded mandate.

Translation: Edwards is right, and I now have no concrete proposal for addressing her criticism. Folks with preexisting conditions are just going to have to tough it out while McCain works "tirelessly."

What I'm curious about is how far those tax credits will go in helping individuals and families obtain decent coverage. Democrats routinely slam this level of assistance as insufficient. And that's what you'd expect them to say. What about a less partisan source? In February, on The Health Care Blog, Robert Laszweski, the president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates and former top executive at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company took a look at McCain's plan, and here's what he wrote about the tax credits:

The real question is, will McCain's plan give you enough to buy health insurance? With the average cost of employer-provided family health insurance at $12,000 a year a $5,000 tax credit will often come up way short--especially for higher age people and those who don't have the benefit of an employer contribution. High deductibles and [Health Savings Account] plans will help but families who don't have employer contributions should be prepared to pay at least a few thousand extra dollars.

He calls for the states to develop a "risk adjustment" bonus for high cost and low-income families to supplement tax credits and Medicaid funds. But just who will pay for this (the states alone?) and how it would close the cost gap is not explained....How will he deal with age rating, medical underwriting, and preexisting conditions? If McCain does not develop an individual health insurance market everyone can access, no matter how old they are or how sick they are, his scheme will fall way short.

In other words, no. McCain's plan offers too little for too many. So if your budget is tight or you've already been smacked by a bad disease, McCain's Call to Action tour will pass you by.

This past weekend, at a pre-party before the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, I spotted Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. As always--at least as always in public--he was in an upbeat mood and greeted me heartily. So, I asked, when does this end?

"June 15," he said without a nanosecond of hesitation.

Why then? I asked. The primaries finish on June 3, he noted, and after that there will be pressure on the uncommitted superdelegates (who now number about 300) to commit to one candidate or another. It should not take too long for these undecided insiders to make up their minds and declare their intentions--even if there are some who would rather not choose between the two.

So all done by June 15? You won't contend the nomination contest beyond then? I asked.

"Oh, I'm confident we'll be the nominee," he said, smiling.

But, I added, on the night of the Pennsylvania election, you said, "We're going all the way to Denver." That suggested, I noted, that Clinton would not yield any time before then. Remarks like that, I continued, raise the prospect of a Clinton backroom operation aimed at winning over both superdelegates and pledged delegates in the weeks and months after the primaries.

"What do you expect me to say?" McAuliffe retorted. "I'm chairman of the campaign." Well, I suggested, you could have said, "We're going on to the next primaries and we're going to keep on winning." He didn't have to use the D-word. He shrugged.

So, I asked, I have a promise? June 15? "June 15," he said. You keep it alive beyond that, I noted, and it could be a nuclear war within the party. (In fact, even if McAuliffe and Clinton succeed by winning enough superdelegates in the 12 days after the primaries to trump Barack Obama's lead in pledged delegates, there still could be an intra-party apocalypse.) He didn't take the bait. "June 15," he repeated.

"Talk to you on the 16th," I said.

Can't the superdelegates stop this?

Can't the Democratic candidates stop the ugliness?

Can't the media stop enabling this catfight?

In a word, no. Writing in The Huffington Post, Thomas Edsall, noted that it is the media that are keeping Hillary alive:

In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message -- that Obama is a likely loser in the general election -- that Hillary and her allies have been promoting for the past six weeks.

The new tenor of media coverage is visible almost everywhere, from Politico, Time and The New Republic to The Washington Post and The New York Times.

For Hillary, the shift is a potential lifesaver as she struggles to keep her head above water; without it, she would, metaphorically, drown.

I don't argue with Edsall's view that many in the commentariat have tilted toward Clinton--or, at least, against Obama. (He cites the recent work of John Judis and Joe Klein.) But besides the media, the superdelegates, and the candidates, there is someone else to blame for the messy Democratic race: those darn Democratic voters. The Clinton people keep saying, "Obama can't seal the deal" with Democratic voters. Clinton, of course, has sealed no such deal, either, since she trails in pledged delegates and popular votes. (And don't get me started about her argument that if you include Florida and Michigan she's received more votes than Obama. There was no campaigning in Florida, and Obama's name did not appear on the Michigan ballot. This sort of spin is infuriating.)

It's the Democratic voters who can't seal anything. As a group, they remain evenly split between Obama and Clinton. And a majority of them in Pennsylvania did not buy the case that Clinton is actually out of the running and that this increasingly bitter race must be brought to a swift close. What are you gonna do about voters like these? If they keep voting for Clinton, she will continue to claim the results as justification for staying in the race--even if the math is nearly impossible. And if Democratic voters in North Carolina and Indiana disappoint her on May 6, she probably will remain in the race, hoping that Democratic voters in West Virginia (May 13), Kentucky (May 20), and Puerto Rico (June 1) will provide her some protection (even if thin) against what could well be a rising cry from Democratic insiders for her to bail.

It sounds quaint, but at this moment it's the Democratic voters who are determining the shape of the race. Has Clinton been too rough in her attacks on Obama? If so, the Pennsylvania voters did not punish her. They rewarded her and cheered her on to the next contests.

At this point, many Democrats seemed resigned to six more weeks of nastiness. And most of the nearly 300 uncommitted superdelegates do not appear to be in a rush to declare a preference for either Obama or Clinton. The crunch point will come at the end of the primaries. Obama will likely be ahead in pledged delegates. And Clinton will then have to decide whether to continue a bloody campaign until the convention or admit defeat. My guess is she'll press on--almost no matter what. But what those pesky Democratic voters do between now and then will either bolster her case or weaken it. They have a big say in whether in the party goes through a wrenching (and possibly disastrous) post-primaries battle. How's that for democracy?

As part of his silly-named "Time for Action" tour, John McCain on Thursday hits New Orleans to discuss what still has to be done to help the residents of the area, which has yet to recover fully from Hurricane Katrina. In a long press release about the trip, McCain's campaign notes, "Recovery from Katrina has been a slow struggle." But the release--which details the history of New Orleans--does not note who's partly to blame for that struggle: George W. Bush and his administration. Nor does it mention the Bush administration's failure to respond adequately to the hurricane and flood. And while the press release hails the rise of charter schools in New Orleans and the establishment of an anti-crime coalition of various community groups, there is a another conspicuous absence: no mention of any action McCain has ever taken to help the people of New Orleans. Time for Action? Hasn't the time for action long passed. Rather than a history lesson about New Orleans, McCain ought to tell local residents what he has already done to assist them--if anything.

Though he might not want to remind them what he was doing the day the hurricane hit:

Yes, he was partying with Bush, holding a small celebration of McCain's 69th birthday in Phoenix. Instead of Time for Action on that horrific day, it was Time for Cake.

I told you the Pennsylvania primary would not settle anything. Not that that was such a daring prediction. Here is my insta-analysis, first posted at MotherJones.com. Feel free to share your views in the comments section.

The Democratic contest has been a 50-50 proposition for months now--more precisely, a 51-49 percent endeavor or maybe a 52-48-percent face-off in Barack Obama's favor, according to the pledged delegate count and the popular vote. Hillary Clinton's 9-point win in the Keystone State (which apparently did not net her a significant pickup in pledged delegates) does not change this. In fact, her Pennsylvania triumph does not change the fundamentals of the race. Obama is still on track to end the primaries with a slight edge in pledged delegates. And Clinton is still in the race, clinging tightly to her candidacy and reiterating rationales to stay in the hunt: I have more experience; I'm better prepared to be commander-in-chief; I've withstood the worst of the GOP attack machine; I've won the big states.

Bottom line: It's not over, and the contest is not likely to end anytime soon. At HRC HQ in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign manager, ebulliently declared, "She is taking this all the way to Denver." But many Democratic superdelegates and insiders are hardly enthusiastic about a bitterly fought campaign that trudges through the next nine primaries (which conclude in early June) and then continues, as a media-driven contest of Democrat-on-Democrat sniping, for three months until the convention in Denver at the end of August. The question is, will these Democrats be able to do anything about it?

If Clinton is committed to going the distance, she cannot be stopped. No one--not even those mighty superdelegates--can literally force her out. She cannot win the final primaries by margins large enough to erase Obama's lead in voter-determined delegates. Everyone knows that. But she can keep on challenging Obama, doing well enough--winning some contests or placing a strong second--to justify, at least to herself and her supporters, her continued presence in the race. During that time, she can hope something happens that does alter the landscape (look, evidence that Obama is indeed a secret Muslim!), and she can also lay the groundwork for a post-primaries effort to persuade superdelegates to overturn Obama's narrow victory among pledged delegates. Yet that project can only succeed with successful assaults on Obama. Her path to the nomination depends on one fuel: fierce attacks. She can win the nomination only by tearing down Obama after the voting is done and by threatening party unity.

Clinton is obviously fine with that--at this stage. But how far is she willing to go? Her shots at Obama may have helped her win in Pennsylvania. But they were not cost-free. According to the exit polls, 42 percent of the Pennsylvania Democratic voters consider Clinton untrustworthy. (Thirty percent said the same about Obama.) Sixty-seven percent said they believed she had attacked Obama unfairly. Only 49 percent said Obama had thrown low-blows. And Clinton did not redefine her standing among Democrats. Two-thirds of Pennsylvania's Democratic voters said Clinton was "in touch with people" like them. Yet two-thirds had the same assessment of Obama. Despite all the fuss about Obama's "bitter" remark, Clinton had no edge in the candidate-of-the-people category. And 51 percent of the voters said the candidate quality they consider most important was the ability to implement change. Among these voters, Obama attracted 70 percent.

With her Pennsylvania win, Clinton can raise funds--her campaign claimed millions of dollars poured in on Tuesday night--and she can proceed to Indiana and North Carolina (which hold primaries on May 6), staying alive because she insists she is alive. Remember the Monty Python "dead parrot" bit? As long as Clinton refuses to concede she cannot win, she remains a contender--or at least a force Obama and the Democratic Party must contend with. After all, the party has no official coroner who can pronounce her gone. And--no small matter--Democratic voters do keep turning out for her. In her victory speech in Philadelphia, she depicted herself as a politician who fights damn hard on the campaign trail for you and who will fight damn hard in the White House for you. Clearly, she was trying to turn what some superdelegates might perceive as an irritant or problem--her stubborn determination--into a reason why superdelegates ought to dump Obama for her.

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal--when many pundits and Clinton foes predicted Bill Clinton's demise--the Clintons learned a valuable lesson: sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving ahead, paying no heed to those who say you have no choice but to quit. They had their party--most of it--behind them during those days. And now Hillary Clinton, with significant voter support, is plodding ahead, stuck with a strategy that at his point leaves her only the nuclear option of nullifying Obama's primary and caucus victories. But, she can reason, if I am not dead, then I'm still alive--and still have a chance. Politically speaking, she is somewhere between dead and alive. The undead? The next primaries may nudge her closer to one of those poles. And, once again, they may not be decisive. But as of now, amid the glow of her Pennsylvania victory, it's up to Hillary Clinton to decide at what point might rest the bitter end.

Pennsylvania? Predictions? I don't do predictions. But I will hazard this guess: the race will not be over after the Pennsylvania results are posted. In fact, I think Hillary Clinton is in the race--no matter what--until at least the end of the primaries in early June. And perhaps longer. If she does not fare well in Pennsylvania and the next primaries, the call for her to quit will get louder within the Democratic Party. But my hunch is this: she won't listen. Now on to today's posting....

On Monday, John McCain tried to expropriate the glory of a civil rights hero. On Tuesday, he stuck his head in the sand.

As part of his so-called "Time for Action" speaking tour, McCain on Tuesday rolled into Youngstown, Ohio, to give a speech at a local university. In the address--according to a text released before the event by his campaign--McCain tried to empathize with the displaced workers of the Rust Belt:

We hear people talking a lot these days about new industries on the rise and new skills in demand. But they're not the industries you grew up with, and they're not the skills many workers have spent twenty or thirty years learning on the job. People in the know like to discourse about the new global economy -- it's always "global" this and "global" that. But sometimes it seems that the map of the world they are using has only capitals, financial centers, and port cities. And where are the places like Canton, and Lima, and Akron, and Youngstown? Where's the heartland, where men and women know how to make things, and how to do the job with pride?

So what's he gonna do? McCain talked about the usual Republican fare: cutting taxes. He also touted his plan to make health care "more portable and affordable with generous tax credits." (Jonathan Gruber, a professor of economics at M.I.T. says that McCain's proposal is "fine except for the poor and the sick.") And McCain hyped his modest plan for helping "responsible sub-prime borrowers who played by the rules." He declared he would cut wasteful government spending and go after corporate welfare. He mentioned reforming the unemployment insurance system and job training programs.

But he ignored one critical matter: trade. There was not one word in the speech about trade agreements. He tried to sound the populist, bashing those who use the word "global" without paying attention to Middle America. But McCain said nothing about job dislocation caused by trade deals. Nor did he say anything about outsourcing and runaway factories. There was little in his speech that would discomfort the corporate class. Sure, tax cuts and better job-training programs. Who's against that?

McCain's speech was artfully crafted. But when he has to go up against a Democrat who does recognize that trade deals, overseas outsourcing, and runaway factories are part of the problem, McCain, with this narrow approach, is going to look more like a corporate-class Republican than a heartland populist. One wonders why McCain even bothered trekking to Youngstown to woo "the men and women of Youngstown [who] know what it feels like to be counted out," if he counts out big chunks of the crisis they face.

On Monday morning, John McCain traveled to Selma, Alabama, to give a speech about patriotism and courage--that is, to expropriate the patriotism and courage of a Barack Obama supporter.

Speaking at the site of a critical civil rights clash. McCain described in detail that turning point in America's history:

Forty-three years ago, an army of more than five hundred marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge; an army that brought with them no weapons, which intended no destruction; that sought to conquer no people or land.

He went on to cite, in much detail, the heroic actions of John Lewis, who led that protest and who today is a Democratic congressman supporting Obama:

At the head of the column, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, tie and tan raincoat, marched a twenty-five year old son of Alabama sharecroppers, John Lewis. They had planned to march from Selma to Montgomery, but they knew they would never reach there. They had been warned they would be met with force, and at the crest of the bridge, they were. Until then, they had marched in silence, with dignity and resolve, men, women, children and old people. All was quiet, even the angry crowd that watched the marchers. But everything was alive with apprehension, with the expectation that something momentous and terrible was imminent.

On the other side of the bridge, row upon row of state troopers in blue uniforms and white helmets, many on horseback, prepared to charge and stop with violence the peaceful army, intent only on conquering injustice. John Lewis took the first blow, a baton thrust to the stomach that shoved him back on the marchers behind him. He took the second blow, too, a hard swung club to his head, leaving a permanent scar where it struck. Blood poured from the wound, darkening his raincoat. He tried to struggle to his feet, and then collapsed unconscious, his skull fractured.

McCain went on to note that millions of Americans "watched brave John Lewis fall." He referred to Lewis and his comrades as "the best kind of patriots." He quoted Lewis. ("When I care about something, I'm prepared to take the long, hard road.") He cited Lewis' adherence to Martin Luther King Jr.'s concept of the "beloved community."

All this was to make a political point for McCain: "I will be traveling to places in America that aren't enjoying the prosperity many other parts of America enjoy, but where people are walking a long, hard road to make sure that their children will know the opportunities that other American children possess." McCain noted he would listen to these Americans "and learn from them about what government is doing to help their efforts and what it does to hinder them."

But what about McCain's own ideas? He had nothing specific to say about what he would do to help these people. But he had more to say about Lewis:

In America, we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That's what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge. That's what he still believes; what he still fights to achieve: a better country than the one he inherited.

It was as if McCain was trying to wrap himself in the bloody shirt of John Lewis. McCain, of course, was not part of the civil rights movement. In fact, in 1983, he was one of 77 Republican House members to vote against the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. He has never been close to Lewis, according to an associate of Lewis. He did not tell Lewis he would be making this speech, and he did not invite Lewis to attend the event. Lewis learned about the speech from reporters. (And, as of this writing, Lewis has yet to comment on it.) Given Lewis' high-profile support of Obama, McCain's speech--which was far more about John Lewis than John McCain--was rather odd. After all, the "better country" that Lewis now fights for would be led by a President Obama.

Yet McCain dissed Obama:

Hope in America is not based in delusion, but in the faith that everything is possible in America. The time for pandering and false promises is over. It is time for action. It is time for change; the right kind of change; change that trusts in the strength of free people and free markets; change that doesn't return to policies that empower government to make our choices for us, but that works to ensure we have choices to make for ourselves.

That's hardly John Lewis' vision of America (let alone Obama's). By the way, the goal of Lewis' civil rights movement was to pass federal legislation to protect the rights of oppressed Americans--yes, to expand and empower government. So Selma is hardly the appropriate locale for McCain to be strutting his libertarian stuff.

Toward the end of his speech, McCain said,

I am here because it is a place where great Americans once fought to do just that, and I'm going to places where they are still fighting for change; to make us a better country. I am going to meet and learn from patriots.

Maybe he can learn a little history from them--and also learn that he ought to be selling his own exploits to bolster civil rights and social justice in the United States (if he has any), not exploiting those of others.

Tonight is the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner--an annual formal affair that is the cousin to the White House correspondents' dinner. And this reminds me of one of my (own) favorite columns, which came about four years ago when I attended the dinner and watched in amazement as George W. Bush made jokes about the missing WMDs in Iraq (that is, joked about the purported reason for which he had sent Americans to war and, for some, to death). But what was most amazing was that everyone around me was laughing at Bush's routine. And laughing. And laughing. Never in my two decades of working in Washington have I felt more alienated--and, perhaps, more angry. Of the thousands of people in the room--which included hundreds of working journalists--I was, I believe, the only one to immediately write a piece questioning Bush (and his audience). That episode remains one of the more telling and revealing moments of modern-day Washington. (Talk about elitism.) And I believe it should not be forgotten. So I've posted that column below.

And on the subject of misplaced humor, I recently suggested on NPR's Diane Rehm Show that in a decent world John McCain would have been disqualified for running for president when he answered a question on the campaign trail about Iran by jokingly singing, "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" (to the tune of the old hit "Barbara Ann") My point: anyone who would make light of launching a war--and killing people with bombs--should not be given the power to do so. As I made these comments, Tony Blankley, a PR man and columnist for The Washington Times leaned toward the microphone. Do you want to defend McCain's joke? I asked. Yes, he said, insisting that we had to allow for humor in politics.

Humor in politics? That's the job of Jon Stewart. Or Stephen Colbert. (Or me--to a much, much, much lesser extent when I do standup, once every year or two.) But laughing at a president or a presidential wannabe about wars they start or can start? That's truly amusing ourselves (and others) to death--to reference the late Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. I hope this time around--at the Radio and TV dinner--Bush sticks to less deadly fare when he tries to win giggles from the well-fed journalists and broadcasters in the room.
------

MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke
March 25, 2004

Only in Washington.

Last night I was at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner. It's a formal-and-fun affair where thousands of media folks assemble at the Hilton for a fancy dinner and fab pre- and post-parties. I'm not going to denigrate such soirees. I enjoy them. While bookers and producers jiggled and jostled on the dance floor and media and political celebs dissected the news du jour (this time it was Richard Clarke's dramatic appearance before the 9/11 commission), I was able to chat with former weapons hunter David Kay and learn about some troubling developments in the intelligence community (more on that down the road). And there was free sushi.

But an awful you're-all-alone moment came during George W. Bush's comments that followed the sit-down dinner. The current president is often the honored guest at this annual affair, and the audience toasts him in what is supposed to be a sign of communal and nonpartisan spirit. And the tradition is that the president has to be funny; he has to provide us with an amusing speech that pokes fun at himself and his political foes. After all, political journalists love to see politicians engage in self-deprecating humor. Bill Clinton was quite good at these performances. Bush seems to enjoy them less. Rather than do straight standup, he sometimes relies on a humorous slide show, and that was how he chose to entertain the media throng this time.

It's standard fare humor. Bush says he is preparing for a tough election fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."

The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

Disapproval must have registered upon my face, for one of my tablemates said, "Come on, David, this is funny." I wanted to reply, Over 500 Americans and literally countless Iraqis are dead because of a war that was supposedly fought to find weapons of mass destruction, and Bush is joking about it. Instead, I took a long drink of the lovely white wine that had come with our dinner. It's not as if I was in the middle of a talk-show debate and had to respond. This was certainly one of those occasions in which you either get it or don't. And I wasn't getting it. Or maybe my neighbor wasn't.

At the end of the slide show, Bush displayed two pictures of himself with troops and noted these were his favorites. The final photograph was a shot of special forces soldiers--with their faces blurred to protect their identities--who were posing in Afghanistan where they had buried a piece of 9/11 debris in a spot that had once been an al Qaeda camp. Bush spoke about the prayer the commander had said during the burial ceremony and noted he had this photograph hanging in his private study.

So what's wrong with this picture? Bush was somber about the sacrifice being made by U.S. troops overseas. But he obviously considered it fine to make fun of the reason he cited for sending Americans to war and to death. What an act of audacious spin. One poll recently showed that most Americans believe he either lied about Iraq's WMDs or deliberately exaggerated the case to justify the war. And it is undeniable that in seeking public support for the war he made many false assertions that went beyond quoting intelligence that turned out to be wrong. (I've written about this in many other places. If you still don't believe Bush mugged the truth, check out this short guide.) As the crowd was digesting the delicious surf-and-turf meal, Bush was transforming serious scandal into rim-shot comedy.

Few seemed to mind. His WMD gags did not prompt a how-can-you silence from the gathering. At the after-parties, I heard no complaints. Was I being too sensitive? I wondered what the spouse, child or parent of a soldier killed in Iraq would have felt if they had been watching C-SPAN and saw the commander-in-chief mocking the supposed justification for the war that claimed their loved ones. Bush told the nation that lives had to be sacrificed because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used (by terrorists) against the United States. That was not true. (And as Kay pointed out, the evidence so far shows these weapons were not there in the first place, not that they were hidden, destroyed or spirited away.) But rather than acknowledge he misinformed the public, Bush jokes about the absence of such weapons.

Even if Bush does not believe he lied to or misled the public, how can he make fun of the rationale for a war that has killed and maimed thousands? Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had joked about the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident that he deceitfully used as a rationale for U.S. military action in Vietnam: "Who knew that fish had torpedoes?" Or if Ronald Reagan appeared at a correspondents event following the truck-bombing at the Marines barracks in Beirut--which killed over 200 American servicemen--and said, "Guess we forgot to put in a stop light." Or if Clinton had come out after the bombing of Serbia--during which U.S. bombs errantly destroyed the Chinese embassy and killed several people there--and said, "The problem is, those embassies--they all look alike."

Yet there was Bush--apparently having a laugh at his own expense, but actually doing so on the graves of thousands. This was a callous and arrogant display. For Bush, the misinformation--or disinformation--he peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks. As the audience laughed along, he smiled. The false statements (or lies) that had launched a war had become merely another punchline in the nation's capital.

The bitter "bitter" debate is ridiculous. Days after the report came out that Barack Obama had said that blue-collar Pennsylvanians living in small towns that have experienced massive job flight are "bitter," the controversy is still the talk of the cable news shows. This is nuts. But it's nuts via design. As soon as Obama's remarks were reported, Hillary Clinton pounced, stating:

I saw in the media it's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard everyday for a better future, for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.

And Clinton surrogate Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, teed off on Obama's observation that these Pennsylvanians who "fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration" now "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Vilsack declared:

[Obama] suggests that in some way the faith of those who live in small towns is superficial. It's used as a crutch in a time of need. That's not what I know. What I know is that our faith is real and it is rooted. It is the foundation of our values system. It is what defines how we live our lives, and most importantly of all, how we raise our families. It is true. It is genuine. His comment about guns suggests that they are an instrument that we use somehow to protect ourselves from the outside world, to isolate ourselves from the outside world. When in fact, guns are a reflection of what we do with our family and our friends. It's how we pass on, through hunting, family traditions that are strong and how we form friendships that are lifelong.

Obama was simply stating what has been established dogma within the Democratic Party: when blue-collar voters' economic concerns and troubles are not addressed, they get pissed off and they vote on other issues, such as what's known in politics as the three Gs: Gods, guns, and gays. And nowadays, you can toss in illegal immigration and trade. With the exception of trade, all of this has helped the Republicans. Clinton and her people understand that.

To say one is "bitter" is no insult--especially when you affirm the reason for the anger (in this case, a government that has not responded to economic needs) and vow to make change. Clinton's equating Obama's recognition of justifiable bitterness with elitism is illogical. It's not elitism, it's empathy. Feeling their pain. Remember that? But she and her people saw an opportunity, and they went straight for the jugular. (You want an elitist remark? What about the gal who once said, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.") And Obama, despite Vilsack's braying, was not dismissing the basics of faith and gun ownership (what a combo!). He was merely referring to the passions and circumstances that drive working-class voters to place gun issues and social controversies (such as abortion) at the top of their list on Election Day. Vilsack knows that.

This campaign is becoming more churlish and childish by the hour. Each day the two campaigns shoot out to reporters emails that try to turn small matters into scandals. The Clinton people, in my view, are worse, but the Obama camp has not been able to stay above the fray. The pressures of the campaign do push political aides and strategists to resort to such measures. And for political reporters, any fight makes a good headline. So this dynamic ain't gonna change. The Democratic contest is just going to get more bitter--bitter through Wednesday's debate and perhaps bitter all the way to the convention.

Now it's back to the usual fun and games.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tried to look statesmanlike (or stateswoman-like) as each respectfully questioned General David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker. Neither senator provided much in the way of push-back to Petraeus' and Crocker's statements. Yes, they stuck to their overall criticisms of the war and their respective calls for withdrawing U.S. troops, but each had obviously calculated that the Petraeus hearings were not an occasion to raise a fuss or score points.

But today it was time to do so. At least for Clinton. At a campaign event, she said:

We need to be planning and preparing to start bringing our troops home, and I have committed to doing that within 60 days of my becoming president. Senator Obama, on the other hand, says he'll end the war, but his top foreign policy adviser said he won't necessarily follow the plan he's been talking about during this campaign. That the plan is "just words." Well, you can count on me to end the war safely and responsibly.

Once again, she was trying to depict Obama as a phony, indirectly citing remarks from ex-Obama adviser Samantha Power, who weeks ago had said that if Obama were to become president, his withdrawal plan would be reality-checked against the conditions of the time. That's logical. But the Clinton folks claimed Power had spilled a big secret: Obama didn't intend to stick by his vow to withdraw troops from Iraq. And they tried to make this a big to-do.

At the time, it didn't quite catch on as a campaign meme. (Reverend Wright came along.) But in this campaign, it seems, no allegation ever truly disappears. Clinton is trying to resurrect this charge.

The Obama campaign immediately fired back and released this statement:

Hillary Clinton's tired and discredited attack is just the same old politics that won't end this war that she voted to authorize, and won't change the fact that she has repeatedly misled the American people about her Iraq record. We're happy to have a debate with Hillary Clinton over who the American people trust to end this war, since Barack Obama is the only candidate who had the judgment to oppose the war from the very beginning, not just from the beginning of a campaign for President.

The Obama-Clinton bickering is getting old and annoying. In this round--as in many--her campaign is the more guilty party. But that aside, it's unfortunate for Democrats and war critics that these two candidates talk tougher about each other than they do about the front men for George W. Bush's war.

Mark Penn's departure from the Hillary Clinton campaign took a punch away from Barack Obama.

It's a punch that Obama had not yet used. But as the primary campaign has intensified, I've been waiting for the moment--at a debate or during a high-profile campaign speech--when Obama would turn to Clinton (literally or metaphorically) and say something like:

With all due respect, Senator, how can you say that you are a candidate who will fight the for change against the status quo of Washington and champion the interests of working Americans, when your chief strategist is an inside-the-Beltway consultant who makes millions of dollars a year helping union-busting firms, corporate polluters, various industries, foreign governments and special interests get what they want out of Washington at the expense of hard-working Americans? How can you place your campaign in the hands of a fellow who's day job is to assist corporate powers so they win special favors and special treatment? Do you not see the contradiction between your words and this action? Should voters not wonder about your close and important association with this Washington insider who rents out his influence--for millions of dollars--to corporate special interests?

Well, that's not going to happen now. The Clinton campaign tied Penn's exit--ouster?--to the recent news that he was working for the Government of Colombia, advising it on how to win support in Washington for a free-trade treaty that Clinton says she opposes. (Was this arrogant? Foolish? Dumb?) But top-level Clinton aides have been grumbling about Penn for months, with some rooting for his fall. So the Colombian connection was convenient ammo for those on the campaign who have blamed Penn's go-for-a-general-election-message strategy for HRC's troubles during the primary season. There are some happy campers in Hillaryland today--and Obama has lost an opportunity.

COUNTDOWN TO PETRAEUS: On Tuesday, General David Petraeus will again try to take Capitol Hill. I've already done a set-up (here and here). But I was thinking about last year's Petraeus show and remembered that he had a pretty easy time snowing Congress. Read this posting (of mine) from September:

Citing General David Petraeus, George W. Bush, in his so-called "wayforward in Iraq" speech declared on Thursday night, "The Iraqi army is becoming more capable."

For days, I've been carrying around with me page 13 of the 14-page slideshow Petraeus showed during his multiple appearances on Capitol Hill. (That's how nerdy I am!) And to anyone unfortunate to get stuck in an elevator with me, I've flashed this chart to show that according to Petraeus' own numbers, there has been no progress in the past year in fielding Iraqi security forces that can function on their own. Yes, I said no progress.

The chart--titled "Iraqi Security Forces Capabilities"--divides Iraqi troops into four groups: units that are fully independent (Level I); that can stage operations with support of U.S. forces (Level II); that can fight side by side with U.S. forces (Level III); that are still forming (Level IV). If you look at September 2006, you will see that there were 11,000 Level I troops and 86,000 Level II troops. Fast forward to September 2007, and the numbers are, Level I, 12,000 and Level II, 84,000. That's a slight drop in capabilities, if you combine Levels I and II.

So how can Bush--or anyone else--say that Iraqi troops are becoming more capable? For all the money and effort spent during the last year--when the Bush administration was claiming that the training of Iraqi troops was a top priority (remember, they stand up, we leave?)--there's been little, if any, return on the investment. By the way, the chart includes the national police--a force so rife with corruption and sectarianism that the Jones Commission recently recommended it be disbanded. Petraeus's chart is further evidence that the administration gameplan isn't working.

Back in September, reporters and legislators did not pay attention to this important portion of Petraeus' presentation. Will the scrutiny be tighter this time?

It's the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. What to say? A friend emailed me a link to what is one of the most poignant commentaries on his murder: Bobby Kennedy's remarks that night to a crowd that had come to hear him deliver a campaign speech but instead had to be informed by the Democratic presidential candidate that King had been shot and killed in Memphis.

Listening to this speech--in the middle of another hotly contested Democratic presidential campaign--it's difficult not to ask, who today sounds more like the RFK of that moment: HRC or BHO? It's not close.

Yesterday, I wondered aloud whether the members of the House and the Senate will give General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, much of a grilling when he testifies on Capitol Hill next week. After all, during his previous appearance in September, Petraeus was met only with a fusillade of softballs.

I asked a senior Democratic House aide if the questioning this time will be more vigorous. He responds: "Absolutely. The recent events seem to have confirmed everyone's suspicions about the “success” of the surge. Combined with the recent statements about retaining 140,000 troops, the McCain 100 year commitment, and the salience of the “cost of war” theme of the last few weeks, and the 4,000 death figure being reached, Members are ready to challenge assertions or predictions of success."

Such challenging is long past due. One question is, will it matter? The Democrats in the Senate and House have been completely stymied by George W. Bush. They have tried many times to force Bush to change direction in Iraq. He has said no. And they have declined to go nuclear: that is, vote against general funding for the war. The Democrats don't have the votes to win that battle. And many of them do not want to be placed in a position where Republicans and conservatives can accuse them of being responsible for what could be a nasty ending to the war. Their strategic aim has been to force Bush to clean up his own mess. He has refused.

So it's unlikely that any tough questioning of Petraeus will lead to policy change. But this remains an important moment. For the past year, there's not been much popular and media attention paid to the war. In recent months, it's barely been in the news. Occasionally, you see video of the aftermath of a market bomb-blast, but the war is usually off the screen.

The public certainly does not support the war. But what's the nature of this opposition? Last night, I attended a screening of Body of War, a gripping documentary directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue (yes, that Phil Donahue) that follows the story and travails of Tomas Young, an Iraq war vet who was shot while on patrol and paralyzed from the waist down. After the film was shown, Young spoke to the audience and noted that even though close to 70 percent of the American public say they oppose this war, this only means that these Americans are willing to pick up a phone and tell some pollster on the other end that they don't fancy this war. That's not passionate opposition. Are they willing to take any action to stop it? Not really. Public sentiment regarding the war is closer to alienation than anger. After all, the costs of the war are hidden (that is, not felt) by most Americans,

The upcoming Petraeus testimony is an opportunity. The national media, for at least a day or so, will focus on the war. The dominant media narrative of the war in recent months has been that the surge is working. Now war critics and skeptics in Congress will have a brief chance to rewrite (or at least challenge) that script. But that will only happen if they are forceful in questioning Petraeus. Too much deference will lose the day for them. And the point is...to make a point: the war is not going as well as Bush claims. Doing so will help the Democratic presidential candidate--whoever wins--do battle with John McCain, a cheerleader for the war, and also help the Democratic nominee, if he or she is elected, to begin disengagement from Iraq.

It may be weeks or months before the American public (and the media) next pays any intense attention to the war. The Democrats ought to make sure they don't blow this engagement.

In an interview CNN aired on Tuesday, John McCain was asked about his temper--that is, his famous temper. It's a question that is going to come up repeatedly in the campaign--or, at least, it should. He dismissed the topic as "a very, very minor thing." He pointed to his bipartisan efforts as evidence that he gets along with others and that his temper is no impediment. Moreover, he noted that the American people should "expect me to get angry when I see corruption." In other words, he only gets fist-slamming mad for you.

That's his spin. Let's look at what close McCain observers have said on this subject. In 1999, when McCain first ran for president, the Arizona Republic's editorial board wrote:

Arizona Sen. John McCain has staked much of his claim to the presidency on his character: his status as war hero; his service to his country; his commitment to a cause, his country, bigger than himself.

These are legitimate claims to support by McCain, and worthy of voter attention and consideration.

But there are other aspects of McCain's character, less flattering, also worthy of voter attention and consideration....Many Arizonans active in policymaking have been the victim of McCain's volcanic temper and his practice of surrounding himself with aides and allies who regard politics, in the words of his paid Arizona chairman, state House Speaker Jeff Groscost, as a "bloodsport."

...McCain often insults people and flies off the handle....If McCain is truly a serious contender for the presidency, it is time the rest of the nation learned about the John McCain we know in Arizona. There is much there to admire. After all, we have supported McCain in his past runs for office.

But the presidency is different. There is also reason to seriously question whether McCain has the temperament, and the political approach and skills, we want in the next president of the United States. [My bold]

That's some endorsement from the hometown paper. To be fair, the Republic did endorse McCain this year--and (suspiciously) without saying anything about his temper. But the tales of McCain's hotheadedness are legendary. And, of course, there's his "Bomb, Bomb Iran" moment. (In a more reasonable world, a candidate would be automatically disqualified if he or she joked about starting a war.) You can expect more on the McCain temper front, for here's a serious question: can he campaign for seven months without an explosion hitting YouTube?

I have to admit it: I'm not smart enough to follow Hillary Clinton's line of reasoning. In an interview on Saturday, she declared she was in the race until the convention. And in making this vow, she cited Florida and Michigan:

"We cannot go forward until Florida and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have the legitimacy that I think will haunt us," said the senator from New York. "I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we don't figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida."

Clinton and her spinners keep saying that Florida and Michigan could be lost to the Democrats in November if the Democratic National Committee does not accept the delegates elected in those states (in early primaries not approved by the national party) or if there is no do-over in those states (as now appears unlikely). But do they have any basis for saying this? Presumably, the Republicans and independents in Florida and Michigan won't give a damn that the Democrats (with help from Republicans in the legislatures) screwed up the primary elections in these two states. The Rs and Is who can be won over by either Barack Obama or Clinton (whoever is the nominee) are not likely to be swayed against the Democrat because Democratic delegates from their states were not recognized by the national party. What sort of ads can change that? ("Republicans, the Democratic Party doesn't care about Democratic voters in your state.")

As for the Democrats, HRC appears to be suggesting that if she is the nominee she will not be able to excite the Ds in Michigan and Florida--where she did well in the unapproved primaries. (Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan; and neither he nor Clinton campaigned in Florida.) Does she truly believe that Democrats eager to punish George W. Bush's Republican Party will vengefully vote for John McCain or stay home because of a procedural matter? Will they really respond to a GOP ad that says, "The Democratic Party did not want to count your vote, so you should vote for the Republicans"? Would that play with Democrats in, of all places, Florida, where GOPers shut down the 2000 recount? And if Clinton was not the nominee but campaigning hard for Obama, could she and Obama not rally the Democratic faithful in Michigan and Florida in the general election?

It seems that Clinton's argument is predicated on the assumption that Democratic voters are peevish, resentful grudge-holders willing to cut off their noses to spite the national party--and hand the White House back to the Republicans. Are they really sooooo sensitive and beyond the reach of the persuasive powers of Obama and/or Clinton? If Clinton believes she cannot win over the Democrats in Michigan and Florida in November, maybe she shouldn't be in the race.

I'm on the run today. Will be back with new postings next week. Remember, only 25 more mud-slinging days until the Pennsylvania primary....

Here's a good justification for war: you create the conditions for genocide and then you have to stick around to prevent that genocide. In a foreign policy speech on Wednesday, Senator John McCain said,

We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.

No one--that is, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama--are calling for a reckless withdrawal. But who advocated the war that has already caused "horrendous violence" and "ethnic cleansing" for millions of Iraqis? McCain, for one. About 4 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes. Scores of thousands of Iraqi civilians--perhaps hundreds of thousands--are dead due to the war. Where was McCain's concern for such tragedy earlier?

In any event, what McCain has to say about the war will have less impact on his electoral prospects than what Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has to say. In recent days, due to the actions of Shiite militias, George W. Bush's so-called surge--mistakenly hailed by pundits and war-backers as a success--doesn't look like such a complete success. The fighting in Iraq this week shows that the fundamental conflicts of Iraq have not been addressed by the surge. The Iraqi government remains hapless and corrupt. Most Iraqis still go without many essential services. Violence--until the last few days--had dipped, but only down to 2005 levels. That was hardly a cause for celebration.

No matter what happens in the Democratic contest, no matter whom McCain ends up facing, his chances in November are tied directly to the war. He has no room for maneuvering. As a laissez-faire Republican who has little to say about the current economic crises, he will not be able to campaign as a Mr. Fixit for the economy. (If the economy is tanking, will voters appreciate his tough-love talk and calls for letting the market work?) Advantage: Democrat. On national security, all McCain really has is Iraq. If the situation there is relatively calm in the fall, he will be able claim credit for having pushed policies that led to this relative calm. If not, well...

Sadr and his lieutenants have more sway over the ground reality than the senator from Arizona. McCain better hope--or pray--that the Iraqis find reasons of their own for tamping down the violence in the fall. Just one word from Sadr could put McCain in deep electoral peril.

Believe me, it does get tiring to write repeatedly about the anti-Obama excesses of the Clinton campaign; I wish her aides would spend as much time pushing her proposals for Afghanistan and the housing crisis. But every day there's more negative material. So here's a piece I just posted at MotherJones.com.

The Clinton campaign keeps insisting that Hillary Clinton is the victim of a sleazy Obama campaign--though it engages in nasty tactics to denigrate Barack Obama. The Clintonites, it now seems, will even make common cause with the rightwing Hilary-haters to do so.

As Marc Ambinder reports, the Clinton campaign has distributed an American Spectator article that claims that retired General Merrill McPeak, an Obama foreign policy adviser, is an anti-Semite and a drunk. An anti-Semite? Supposedly because he has noted that the Israel lobby in America influences Mideast policy and because he advocates Israel withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders. Of course, that definition of anti-Semitism is absurd. But for the Clinton campaign to turn to the American Spectator, a rightwing publication that led the Clinton witch-hunts of the 1990s (and which published stories by David Brock and others regarding Bill Clinton's personal life), shows a certain desperation--or a damn-history opportunism. The article argues that Obama is bad for the Jews. The Clintonites are disseminating it. That would be ugly enough. The source renders the episode damn ugly.

Meanwhile, Clinton herself cozied up to the Richard Mellon Scaife--the man who funded the "vast rightwing conspiracy" (which included the American Spectator) that tried to destroy the Clintons in the 1990s--in order to take a swipe at Obama. On Tuesday, Clinton met with editors and reporters of the archly conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which Scaife owns. At that session, she did what she could to keep the Jeremiah Wright controversy alive by saying, "He would not have been my pastor. You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend." In attendance was Scaife. ("Hell has officially frozen over," rightwing journalist Byron York commented.) So has Clinton no shame? No pride? Or merely a sharp sense of political calculation? Did she ponder the irony of using Scaife's platform (in the key state of Pennsylvania) to discredit a fellow Democrat?

All's fair in love, war, and hotly contested primaries? Maybe. But that doesn't make it right. Clinton might be willing to put aside her grudge against the American Spectator and Scaife because doing so helps her politically. But in the 1990s this band of Clinton-haters were out to ruin not merely her and her hubby but the entire progressive agenda. (They always believed the Clintons to be far more left than Bill and Hillary actually were.) But now, for Hillary Clinton, they're good enough to use against Obama.

On Monday, during a conference call with reporters, Phil Singer, a senior Clinton aide, expressed tremendous outrage that an Obama supporter in Iowa had blogged that a Bill Clinton remark (which may have been a poke at Obama's patriotism) was "a stain on [Bill Clinton's] legacy much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress." Singer went on about how this was proof the Obama camp was running a tawdry campaign reviving the rightwing Clinton hatred of the past. That was hyperbole, of course. But it was hypocritical hyperbole. If Clintonites can use an over-the-top American Spectator article to try to whip up trouble between Obama and Jewish voters and if she can sit politely next to Scaife because doing so affords her a good media opportunity for slamming Obama, her campaign has no basis for comparing criticism from the Obama camp to the misdeeds of Kenneth Starr and the Clinton pursuers of the 1990s. By legitimizing the "vast rightwing conspiracy" so she can put down Obama, Hillary Clinton may be confirming one of the Klinton Krazies perennial talking points about her and her husband: they will do anyting--anything!--to win.

The communications strategy of the Hillary Clinton campaign reminds me of the old gag about the kid who killed his parents and then begged the court for mercy because he was an orphan.

Howard Wolfson, please don't now say I'm comparing you and other Clinton aides to murderers.

On Monday's conference call, Wolfson and Phil Singer were in a huff. Though Clinton that day was giving a major address outlining her proposals for dealing with the housing credit crisis, her two top spinners were not hailing her initiatives. Instead, they were beating on the Obama camp for mounting what they claimed was a mega-negative campaign against their gal.

What had their tail feathers all ruffled this morning? Well, an Obama national security adviser, retired General Tony McPeak, had compared Bill Clinton to Joe McCarthy after Clinton had made a remark that some Obama-ites believed slighted Obama's patriotism and then Gordon Fischer, a leading Obama supporter in Iowa, wrote on his own blog that this Clinton comment was "a stain on his legacy much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress."

Fischer quickly apologized for the remark. But that didn't stop Wolfson and Singer from pointing to this one sentence as proof, yes proof, that the Obama crew was running a super-sleazy crusade against Clinton. By the way, in the same call, they noted that Obama has so far "failed" the commander in chief test. What's their basis for such a claim? He did not win a majority of the votes in Ohio and Texas. By that standard, Clinton has "failed' the commander in chief test in more states than Obama and with more Democratic voters than he has. But I digress.

The point is this: The Clintonites denigrate Obama on one of the most critical fronts of this campaign, with Clinton herself having gone so far as to suggest that John McCain would be a better C-in-C than Obama, but then they build up these tempests-in-a-blog to play the victim. On the conference call, Singer acted so outraged over Fischer's one sentence, saying it was too awful a "personal" remark to repeat. Reality check: Bill Clinton did stain that dress; he did have an affair with a subordinate in the White House; he did put at risk his presidency and the work of thousands of people who supported him, and he did lie about it. The stain is there. Even if the impeachment crusade of the self-righteous GOPers was misguided and excessive, that does not mean Bill Clinton should get a pass on all that.

As for McPeak's comment...so what? He thought Clinton was questioning Obama's patriotism. He fired back hard. It's not a big deal--especially when James Carville, a top Clinton supporter, has called Bill Richardson "Judas" for having endorsed Obama instead of HIllary Clinton. In human history, Judas outranks McCarthy in villainy.

As I write, there's another Clinton conference call scheduled in 30 minutes. I shudder to think what new offense against humanity the Clintonites will ascribe to the Obama campaign. For a gang that's willing to blast Obama with practically anything at any time, the Clintonites are far too sensitive about the incoming. Rather than hype controversies that barely exist, they ought to stick to promoting Clinton's proposed remedies for the economy--that is, provide more light and less smoke.

Updated with video below.

I'm not naive about how politicians use dramatic license to make a point. Earlier today, I noted that Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, went too far in slamming Hillary Clinton by claiming she supports "George Bush's policy of non-engagement." Though she helped to enable Bush's war in Iraq, this just ain't so.

But Plouffe's truth-stretching is nothing compared to the whopper that Hillary Clinton has been telling about a trip she took to Bosnia in 1996. Days ago, she described the visit this way:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.

The "Factchecker" column of The Washington Post examined this claim on Friday--and showed it to be an outright falsehood. As in completely made up. As in a lie?

The problem is, the trip was covered by dozens of reporters, including the Post's John Pomfret, and none of them saw anything like Clinton reported:

A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the First Lady. "As a former AP wire service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened," said Pomfret....

Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An eight-year-old Moslem girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, above, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss....

You can see CBS News footage of the arrival ceremony here. The footage shows Clinton walking calmly out of the back of the C-17 military transport plane that brought her from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

Others who were present--former Major General Bill Nash, comedian Sinbad--also recall that danger was not near during this event. And in her autobiography, Clinton did not mention such drama at Tuzla. The "Factchecker" awarded her four Pinocchio's for her claim. That's the most a politician can earn.

So why did Hillary Clinton make up such a tale? This is not an instance when a politician did not tell the truth in order to prevent disclosure of negative information. Such un-truthtelling--though not forgivable--are understandable. But to cook up a dramatic but easy-to-check story? There were scores of witnesses to the event. Did she think she could get away with her fiction?

This is different from saying (as Clinton has) that you were actually voting for diplomacy when you voted for the Iraq war resolution. That's spin. And what Plouffe said about Clinton in his fundraising letter was typical campaign BS. Clinton's Balkans tale, though, may be worse and even more troubling than such conventional political prevarication. Is she cracking under the pressure? Does she really believe what she said? Her supporters better hope not.

And here's the video:

Just so you know: my opinion is that between now and Election Day in November, we cannot obsess about Ohio enough. Can Barack Obama, a black guy (did you know that?), or Hillary Clinton, a woman with high negatives, win the White House against John McCain, an old white war hero? All either has to do is win every state that John Kerry bagged in 2004 and swing Ohio from red to blue. The latter seems particularly doable given that the Republican Party has imploded in the Buckeye state thanks to a series of scandals and now Ohio is ruled (so to speak) by Ted Strickland, a popular Democrat, who just might end up in the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket. And it does seem hard to envision a McCain victory without Ohio on his side.

So any Ohio-related news is national news. That's one reason why I thought it's important that McCain has campaigned in Ohio with a megachurch pastor who has literally called for the eradication of Islam. If this story comes to hurt McCain--and he has to disavow this pastor--it could damage his effort to turn out fundamentalist voters in Ohio. (I may have more on that story soon.)

Today the political news out of Ohio is that the top-ranking Republican in the state has called McCain a liar. Well, kind of. At a forum of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission on Wednesday, Senator George Voinovich said, "We're going to have to raise more money in this country. Did you hear me? We're going to have to increase taxes in order to do the job. Anyone that tells you that's not the case isn't being truthful with you. They're not being intellectually honest with you."

As the Ohio state Democratic party was lickety-split quick to point out, McCain has declared that under no circumstances will he increase any taxes if he is elected president. By Voinovich's standard, then, McCain is not being honest.

I doubt this disagreement will prevent Voinovich from campaigning for McCain in Ohio. But the anti-McCain ad writes itself: juxtapose Voinovich's declaration against McCain's. If Ohio is tight any issue could tip the national race one way or the other. This particular matter not end up the decisive one. But pay attention to each and every bump encountered by either party's nominee in Ohio--for any one of them may be what throws an entire train off the tracks.

I don't like it when people on television say things that are not accurate.

On Tuesday night, I appeared on PBS's Newshour, as part of a panel, to discuss Barack Obama's speech on race. I salute Newshour for playing extended excerpts of the speech and then hosting a long discussion of this address. It was refreshing to have the chance to dig deep into a substantial matter and not merely have to toss off competing soundbites.

Another member of the panel was Earl Hutchinson, a political analyst and an author of a book on race and politics. He was far less impressed with the speech than I was, dismissing it by saying, "Well, we have heard those speeches before. You know, politicians in the past, when forced to, have addressed race. However, they've done it in a very abbreviated and truncated way. As we well know, Bill Clinton, midway through his second term, he actually took a stab at it with a commission. And actually he made several speeches when he did candidly talk about race."

Hutchinson is entitled to an opinion--though he does Obama a disservice by comparing his speech (in which Obama dared to criticize his own community and dared to recognize the reasons for white racial resentments) to those of others, including Bill Clinton. Clinton did develop an initiative on race, but then it petered out. While president, he promised to write a book on race--and never got around to it. And as a candidate in 1992, he dealt with the issue primarily with his Sister Souljah moment--decrying a rap singer who had made controversial statements in what seemed a calculated effort to show white voters he could be independent of the Democratic Party's most loyal base.

If Hutchinson doesn't want to recognize these critical differences, so be it. But what was worse was that he then picked up the old talking points of Obama's political foes. From the transcript:

EARL HUTCHINSON: For the first time, you really heard him put his finger on three or four areas which have been of great concern. He talked about disparities in the criminal justice system. He talked about disparities in the education system, which I presume to mean failing inner-city public schools. And he also talked about disparities in the health care system. So all of these areas, people have asked over and over, "You know, Barack, you make great rhetorical speeches. You're very eloquent. They're very poetic. They're even moving and inspiring, like today. But we really want to know a little bit more to really understand who you are and where you're coming from and what we could expect if you get the nomination and perhaps even win the election." Namely, put some body. Let's see some initiatives. What can we expect, in terms of public policy changes? What are you going to put your political muscle in and behind if you're in the White House? These are things that people are asking, not only about race -- although that's there -- but also in other areas. But especially we hear that a lot from, under the table, not overtly, but from a number of those who are sympathetic toward Barack Obama. "We want to hear more. We want to know more. We want to know specifics."

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're saying he didn't do enough of that today?

EARL HUTCHINSON: No, I think what happens with Barack's speeches, you know -- and this has been pointed out many times before, not just by opponents, but also supporters....We need to have more details, more specifics in which to gauge and judge you, not only as a candidate, not only as a possible or the possible nominee, but also as a possible president.

It was as if Hutchinson was a spinner for the Clinton campaign, accusing Obama of being mostly talk, and ignoring details. This was so last summer. Did Hutchinson somehow miss the whole debate over the candidates' competing health care plans? That was details ad nauseam. And a quick trip to Obama's campaign site would yield Hutchinson a flood of policy proposals and specifics. Drug sentencing? Obama's site notes that he "believes the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated." He couldn't be much clearer than that. There are proposals for various education reforms. And like Clinton, Obama issued a platform of proposed economic initiatives. There's a heap of stuff for an analyst like Hutchinson to analyze. (Mother Jones did a piece comparing the top ten economic policies of Obama and Hillary Clinton.)

Obama's campaign has produced as much policy nitty-gritty as any. (Dems usually go overboard on this front.) What would cause Hutchinson to suggest Obama has not done so? I don't know. Perhaps he needs to spend more time at the keyboard.

It was not surprising to me that the first cable-news analysis of Barack Obama's speech on race--delivered on Tuesday morning in Philadelphia--focused almost entirely on what he had to say about Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. A good chunk of the speech was indeed devoted to Wright--but in a bigger context than gotcha journalism. Obama's speech was daring and unique. No modern-day presidential candidate has ever given such a speech and taken race so head-on--and, perhaps, dead-on. But it's not surprising that the larger accomplishment of the speech will be lost in the nitty-gritty of controversy-driven journalism.

Jay Rosen, press critic, immediately took CNN to task for this:

I was watching CNN for Obama's speech. Moments after it concluded Wolf Blitzer was asked to tell us what he heard in it. Wolf's ear is the big ear for the Best Political Team on Television, according to CNN. So he went first. And according to Blitzer, Obama's speech boils down to a “pre-emptive strike” against various attacks that are still to come, in the form of videos, ads, and news controversies that are sure to keep Reverend Jeremiah Wright and “race” in play as issues in the campaign. (I don't have his exact words; if someone has does, ping me.)

Wasn't the speech about that very pattern?

This is a style of analysis and a level of thought we have become utterly used to, especially from Blitzer but many others on TV: everything is a move in the game of getting elected, and it's our job in political television to explain to you, the slightly clueless viewer at home, what today's tactics are, then to estimate whether they will work.

That Blitzer, offered the first word on that speech, did the horse race thing tells you about his priorities (mistakenly “static,” as Obama said about Wright) and his imaginative range as an interpreter of politics (pretty close to zero.)

In fact it was a speech aimed right at him, at the best political team on television, and all the makers of our election year spectacle.

Obama had moments earlier told Blitzer. “You've scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.” And so he had- him as much as anyone on television.

Obama had just said to Blitzer, look: “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…” And so if the reactions you report on are reactions to your reporting and video looping how are you, the talent in political television, not an actor with me in this cycle?

I'm not sure that Blitzer deserves such harsh singling-out. But Obama's speech certainly deserves deeper treatment than cable news shows are accustomed to granting such events. Fortunately (for you, dear reader), I've done just that at MotherJones.com:

With racial sentiments swirling in the 2008 campaign--notably, Geraldine Ferraro's claim that Barack Obama is not much more than an affirmative action case and the controversy over his former pastor's over-the-top remarks-- Senator Obama on Tuesday morning responded to these recent fusses with a speech unlike any delivered by a major political figure in modern American history. While explaining--not excusing--Reverend Jeremiah Wright's remarks (which Obama had already criticized), he called on all Americans to recognize that even though the United States has experienced progress on the racial reconciliation front in recent decades (Exhibit A: Barack Obama), racial anger exists among both whites and blacks, and he said that this anger and its causes must be fully acknowledged before further progress can be achieved. Obama did this without displaying a trace of anger himself.

Speaking in Philadelphia, Obama celebrated his own racial heritage but also demonstrated his ability to view the black community with a measure of objectivity and, when necessary, criticism--caring criticism. But this was no Sister Souljah moment. He did not sacrifice Wright for political ends. He hailed the good deeds of his former minister, noting that Wright's claim that America continues to be a racist society is rooted in Wright's generational experiences. And Obama identified the sources of racial resentment held by whites without being judgmental. With this address, Obama was trying to show the nation a pathway to a society free of racial gridlock and denial. Moreover, he declared that bridging the very real racial divide of today is essential to forging the popular coalition necessary to transform America into a society with a universal and effective health care system, an education system that serves poor and rich children, and an economy that yields a decent-paying jobs for all. Obama was not playing the race card. He was shooting the moon.

Obama delivered his speech in a stiff manner. The melodious lilt and cascading tones that typically characterize his campaign addresses were not present. This was a speech in which the words--not the delivery--counted. He began with a predictable notion: slavery was the original sin of the glorious American project. Removing that stain has been the nation's burden ever since, and he tied his campaign to that long-running endeavor: "This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign--to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America." And he proclaimed that due to his own personal story--"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas"--he both recognizes the need to heal this divide and possesses an "unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people." Unlike the black leaders of recent years, Obama identified with both the winners and losers of America: "I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible." He is E Pluribus Unum.

You can read the rest here.

Might we have to wait until the first ballot at the Democratic convention at the end of August to know who will be the Democrats' presidential nominee?

It's already a much-noted mathematical fact that it is virtually impossible for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to win enough pledged delegates (via the primaries and the caucuses) to grab 2025 delegates, a majority of all the delegates (pledged delegates plus superdelegates). So the nearly 800 super Ds will be a decisive bloc.

The superdelegates, of course, do not have to say for whom they expect to vote at the convention, though they are free to do so. HRC has been faring better than Obama among the superdelegates who have committed publicly. But Obama has been steadily closing this gap, and Clinton leads 248 to 213 in the superdelegate race. Now that it seems possible--and probable--that this close Obama-Clinton race will continue on competitively through the final primaries in June, there is incentive for those 300-plus undeclared superdelegates to stay mum and see how the contest plays out.

Come the end of the primary and caucus season, even with the declared superdelegates factored in, neither candidate may have enough delegates to claim the prize. At that point, more undeclared superfolk may start proclaiming their preferences--or they may not. Which means that for June, July, and August--when the elections and debates are long done--the race may be shaped by the public and not-so-public hunt for superdelegates. The media will try to track the SDs, as the campaigns pursue them with vigor.

But remember that a committed superdelegate does not have to keep his or her word. They can flip. So even if one candidate claims a majority of delegates based on the public declarations of superdelegates, that will not mean that he or she has the nomination in his or her pocket. Life is change, right? External events--or internal deals--could intervene and cause committed superdelegates to reconsider for the best or worst of reasons. Whichever candidate is in second place in total delegates will have a strong incentive to remain in the race (as long as the gap is not so large) until the convention, just in case anything happens.

So prepare yourself for several months of waiting and jockeying and perhaps even....suspense at the Democratic convention. In a close race, it will be hard to call the contest on the basis of superdelegate pronouncements. A commitment is not a vote--especially for politicians.

I'm traveling today, so no new postings. But there's this update to the below item: I called McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker again on Friday morning--for the third day in a row--and was told she was unavailable. So as of yet no comment from the McCain camp on Parsley's call for the destruction of Islam.

Yesterday, I posted a piece at MotherJones.com that disclosed that a megachurch pastor whom John McCain has hailed as a "spiritual guide" has called for the destruction of the "false religion" of Islam. This fundamentalist televangelist, Rod Parsley, who is an important political ally of McCain in the all-important state of Ohio, means this quite literally. In a 2005 book, he writes that there is a "war between Islam and Christian civilization" and notes, "The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed."

Being a responsible reporter, I called both Parsley and the McCain campaign's communications director, Jill Hazelbaker, before posting the story. I had to leave a message for Parsley and didn't hear back from him. And I never got through to Hazelbaker, but I spoke to another communications aide at the campaign. I explained why I was calling: I was about to publish an article noting that a prominent McCain supporter, with whom McCain had campaigned in Ohio last month, advocates a holy war with the aim of eradicating Islam. "Oh," she said. Can I read you some of Parsley's quotes? I asked. Go ahead, she said reluctantly. I got through three sentences, and she said, "That's enough."

"There's a lot more," I told her. I hadn't gotten to the portions where Parsley calls Allah a "demon." I don't need any more, she said, and she asked, "Can you give me a few minutes to get a response?" Sure, I replied. She promised to call me within 15 to 20 minutes.

Twenty minutes went by. Nothing. I called after half an hour passed. This staffer, I was told, could not be reached. Another fifteen minutes. Nothing. I called again. Once more, I was told that this staffer could not come to the telephone. Hazelbaker, too, was unavailable. Yet another fifteen minutes--and another call from me to the McCain press office. I was now informed that the staffer who had promised a response was in a meeting. Would this meeting be over soon? I asked. We don't know, said the person on the phone. Can I get a message to her now? No, she's in a meeting. Can you find out if this meeting will last hours or minutes? No, I cannot. Is Jill Hazelbaker available? No.

I got the picture. Stonewall. No straight talk.

I posted the article and never heard from the McCain campaign. When I called this morning and asked for Hazelbaker, I was told she was "not available" and the person handling the phone in her office hung up before I could leave my cell number.

Nothing personal, I know. But shouldn't McCain have to answer questions about his endorsement of a fundamentalist who calls for holy war? Will McCain reject and denounce Parsley?

I am not on the campaign trail with McCain. If I were, I'd bird-dog him on this. But the reporters covering him ought to press him to respond. Imagine what the headlines would be if Obama campaigned with and praised a minister who called for destroying Judaism? How long could Obama go without having to deal with that?

McCain, what say you?

On Friday afternoon, the Clinton campaign took the unusual step of convening a second conference call of the day for reporters. And it was a sorry spectacle.

What had prompted the call was the report that Samantha Power, who that morning had resigned as a foreign policy aide to Barack Obama after a news story noted she had called Hillary Clinton a "monster," had told the BBC, during an interview, that Obama's withdrawal plan for Iraq was a "best-case scenario." In that interview, she said, Obama "will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator."

On the conference call, the Clintonites pounced on these comments. Retired General Wesley Clark said he found Power's remarks about Obama's Iraq policy "quite disturbing." Jamie Rubin, a Clinton foreign policy aide, derided Power as Obama's foreign policy "Svenagli or guru" and claimed her remarks about Iraq were proof that Obama cannot create an efficient and effective foreign policy team, calling the episode "amateur hour" for the Obama campaign. He claimed Power's comments showed that Obama's private position was different than his public posture on Iraq. Howard Wolfson, the campaign's communications direction, insisted that Power's statements meant that Obama's vow to withdraw troops from Iraq was nothing but a political promise. Also on the call for the Clinton campaign was Lee Feinstein, another foreign policy adviser to Clinton, and Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachussetts liberal and leading member of of the Out of Iraq caucus in the House.

This was overkill. During the BBC interview, Power had said that Obama, in removing troops from Iraq, "will rely upon a plan--an operational plan--that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think--it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, 'Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.'" In other words, a campaign proposal is just that: a proposal. And only a fool would think that a military plan would be applied to reality without change a year after it was devised.

But the Clintonites campaign saw an opportunity to go for the jugular. And they did--jumping up and down on Power's not-yet-cold dead (politically, that is) body. On the call, I wanted to ask, "Have you no decency?" I did inquire why the Clinton crowd was attacking Obama for a policy that in this regard mirrors Clinton's position. (Her plan for withdrawal: get into the White House, spend the next 60 days consulting with national security aides and Pentagon chiefs, and cook up a plan for a withdrawal that would aim to bring back one or two combat brigades a month.) Rubin and the others replied by emphasizing Power's statement that Obama's plan--and his call for a withdrawal within 16 months--was a "best-case scenario. They insisted this meant Obama was not committed to his deadline and was, consequently, misleading voters.

Their response was not persuasive--at least not to NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, who asked them to explain why this attack on Power and Obama was "fair."

It was an ugly moment. Power, a talented journalist, academic, and thinker who has done tremedous work regarding genocide, had been driven off the campaign, in part because the Clinton campaign had immediately called for her head after news hit of the "monster" remark. (A classier move for Clinton would have been for Clinton to have sent a note to Power saying, "Let's have lunch. You'll see I'm no monster.") Now on what was probably the worst day of Power's professional life, the Clinton camp was trying to use a comment of hers to undermine a key selling point of the Obama campaign. At the same time, Rubin kept saying how bad he felt for Power this afternoon.

The Democratic foreign policy gang is not that big. Everyone knows one another. (Think chess team in high school.) And Rubin and the others were doing all they could to slam Power, an important member of this group, for political gain. I've known Rubin and Feinstein for decades and have appreciated their hard work in the field of foreign policy wonkery. (I met Rubin in the early 1980s when he was working on arms control matters for a public interest outfit.) I was sorry to see them a part of this.

After the conference call, the Obama campaign sent out an interesting Washington Post clip from 2004. Headline: "Comments on Iraq War In Error, Says Kerry Aide." The article begins:

A top national security adviser to John F. Kerry said yesterday that he made a mistake when he said the Democratic nominee probably would have launched a military invasion to oust Saddam Hussein if he had been president during the past four years.

On Aug. 7, Jamie Rubin told The Washington Post that "in all probability" a Kerry administration would have waged war against Iraq by now if the Massachusetts Democrat were president.

The Bush campaign, eager to portray Kerry as holding the same position as the president after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, seized on Rubin's comments as evidence that the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates share similar views on the war, in retrospect. On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said the two candidates agreed about "sending our troops to war."

"To the extent that my own comments have contributed to misunderstanding on this issue....I never should have said the phrase 'in all probability' because that's not Kerry's position and he's never said it," Rubin said in a statement. "That was my mistake."

On the conference call, Rubin had been doing to Power and Obama what the Bush campaign had done to him and Kerry. For many Democrats, that is the big problem of the Clinton campaign.

Let me stipulate that the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign, like all campaigns, spin and do their best to present facts and assertions in the manner most advantageous to their candidates. But so far in the Democratic presidential contest, the Clintonites have pushed the envelope of spin further than the Obama crew. Their Ken Starr attack is the latest proof of this.

In the days leading up to the March 4 primaries, Clinton aides repeatedly blasted Barack Obama for his ties to Tony Rezko, a developer whose corruption trial began this week. They constantly prodded journalists to grill Obama about Rezko. Obama has not been accused of anything improper in the Rezko affair, except becoming involved in a personal real estate transaction with Rezko when Rezko was already under investigation. But his relationship with Rezko is certainly fair game for reporters, even if the Clinton spinners are suggesting Obama engaged in significant wrongdoing without being able to back up such allegations.

Even though Rezko was a prominent part of Hillary Clinton's "kitchen sink" attack on Obama before March 4, Clinton aides fiercely maintain that questions about Clinton's personal finances are out of bounds. Yesterday, her campaign hurled the ultimate insult at the Obama camp, complaining that it "mimics Ken Starr," the onetime independent counsel who holds a rather high spot on Democrats' list of Most Hated Republicans of All Time.

What caused the Clinton campaign to throw this ultimate insult at Obama? The Obama campaign, following the losses in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, raised the issue of Clinton's missing tax returns. For months, she has refused to release her tax returns. At one point, she said she would only make the records public if she were to become her party's nominee. Now her campaign's position is that the returns will be released sometime around April 15. Her tax returns could answer some intriguing questions about her husband's sources of incomes. (For example, is Bill Clinton receiving money from foreign individuals or entities that would be quite happy to have a First Lad in the White House?) While other past and present Democratic candidates (including Obama) have released their returns, HRC has been overly--some might say, suspiciously--reticent. She even recently complained she was too busy to do so. (She doesn't have an accountant?)

There is nothing wrong with the Obama crew making a fuss about this. (In the past, Clinton complained about a political rival who was not forthcoming on this front.) Still, the Clinton crowd responded with the over-the-top Starr comparison. It was an obvious ploy to immunize Clinton from any and all criticism from the Obama camp: Asking questions about the Clinton's business dealing. See? He's just as bad as that nasty Ken Starr.

How can the Clintonites justify tossing questions about Rezko at Obama but decrying his questions about her tax returns, equating his queries with Ken Starr's inquisition into Whitewater and Monicagate? Well, they don't have to justify this absurd contradiction. They can just keep spinning, throwing what they can at Obama and crying foul when anything is tossed their way. Presenting an honest, logical, fair, and consistent argument is not their aim; winning is.

In January I observed that Barack Obama had a problem:

If the Democratic presidential race is between him and Hillary Clinton--sorry, Senator Edwards--it boils down, in a way to this: Clinton says, believe in my resume; Obama says, believe in me.

Clinton is pitching herself as a woman of experience who can start working for you and our children on Day One. Look, 35 years of policy wonkery and advocacy. Look, a record of accomplishment. (Fill in the number of children in fill in the state have health insurance because of her.) Look, years of traveling overseas as First Lady, years of hard toil--including working with (gasp!) Republicans--in the Senate, and years of doing political battle in the trenches. All of this is measurable and confirmable. A voter can easily evaluate her case and judge whether she's right for the job.

Obama is selling himself as...himself. That is, Obama is insisting that he has the ability to create a new politics--a transformative, overcoming-the-divide politics--because of who he is, because of his character and considerable personal attributes. Sure, he points to his past as a community organizer and civil rights lawyers and to his work in the Illinois state senator and the U.S. Senate to bolster his argument that he possesses the right stuff. But his is not a campaign of resume-waving. He's running on his soul. And Obama goes further than asking voters to hire him as their advocate. He issues an invitation: join me in this grand cause to change politics, change government, and change the nation. He speaks of his campaign as a movement and compares it to the great social movements of America's past.

With Obama, it's not about his career highlights, it's about him. To buy his case, a voter must believe in him, have faith in him, place hope in him--must have (or feel) a connection with him. And this is where the problem kicks in.

I noted that given the short time available to Obama prior to the Super Tuesday contests of February 5, he would not have the opportunity to connect directly with enough voters because he would be busy hopscotching about the country. Now he has the opposite problem.

After the Wyoming caucus this Saturday and the Mississippi primary on Tuesday, there will be no caucus or election until the critical Pennsylvania primary on April 22. That means: five weeks of campaigning uninterrupted by actual events (i.e., elections). One question for Obama is, in this period of too-much time, can he sustain his pitch?

Clinton's selling point is a conventional one: I'm experienced, I know policy, I'm a fighter on pocketbook issues, I can do the heavy lifting. In other words, she wants voters to make a rational decision and hire her on the basis of her resume. Obama wants voters to feel a certain way about him, his campaign, politics, and the potential for change. He inspires. She PowerPoints.

Obama has demonstrated he can bond with voters and motivate them--even if he failed to do so with the majority of voters in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island. But the issue is, if he does connect with Pennsylvania voters, can he keep that up over a period of five weeks? Clinton's mundane argument for herself may lend itself better to repetitive recitation than Obama's unconventional case. If Obama does indeed succeed in stirring that intense feeling within Pennsylvania voters, will it be susceptible to fading over a long stretch of time. Put simply, what will wear least well: Obama's increasingly familiar rhetoric of hope, change, and new politics, or Clinton's prosaic policy pronouncements and resume-pushing?

There's no need to make a prediction. But Obama, this year's fresh candidate, may have a challenge keeping things not only real but fresh over the long pre-Pennsylvania slog. Clinton, for good or bad, has no such burden.

I was right about Pennsylvania, wasn't I?....Here's the dispatch on the March 4 election results I posted at MotherJones.com:

Now it's on to the Democratic death-march in Pennsylvania.

By winning decisively in Ohio and Rhode Island and narrowly in Texas, Senator Hillary Clinton managed to keep her presidential aspirations alive and guaranteed that the bitterly-fought Democratic contest will slog on for weeks, at least until April 22, when Pennsylvania (with its 188 delegates) votes. With these victories, Clinton put an end to Barack Obama's streak--though he still maintains a significant, if statistically slight, lead in the delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses. (Due to the rules governing Texas' odd joint primary-caucus, it seemed possible on Tuesday night, even probable, that Obama would pocket a majority of the delegates there, despite placing second in he popular vote.) More important, Clinton earned the right to claim that her case against Obama, which she and her aides sharpened in recent days, has been seconded by Democratic voters, including two important blocs for the party: blue-collar Dems in Ohio, a decisive state in general elections, and Latino Democrats in Texas. Obama netted his only primary win of the night in Vermont.

At long last, Clinton and her strategists seemed to have gained traction with their attacks on the candidate of hope. As Firewall Tuesday approached, the Clinton campaign did not introduce any new themes. But it did tinker with the mix and accused Obama of falling short on integrity, credibility and experience. This new mash-up was a success. Catching a break because the corruption trial of Obama's onetime friend and contributor Tony Rezko began this week, Clinton aides repeatedly clamed there were "unanswered questions" about Obama's relationship with Rezko. Obama's aides countered that there were no unanswered questions about this much-investigated episode. (Obama, accused of no wrongdoing in the Rezko matter, has acknowledged it was dumb for him to have entered into a real estate deal with Rezko, especially since the politically-wired developer was under investigation at the time.) Prodded by the Clintonites, reporters started grilling Obama anew about Rezko. And being asked about the dirty dealings of a former pal is never helpful to a candidate selling change and reform. Simultaneously, Obama came under fire--from the Clinton campaign--for falsely denying that a campaign adviser had met with Canadian officials and discussed Obama's position on NAFTA. (The aide denied press reports that he had told the Canadians that Obama's criticism of NAFTA was merely political posturing.) It looked as if Obama the Inspirer was not playing straight.

While casting Obama as just another shifty, sleaze-tainted pol, Clinton and her lieutenants pumped up the volume on their well-worn charge that he's not ready for prime time--that is, when the phone rings in the White House in the middle of the night because there's a crisis somewhere. The Obama camp quickly cooked up a clever retort--Clinton failed her red-phone moment by voting for George W. Bush's Iraq war measure--yet Clinton's heavy-handed commercial, if did not persuade any individual voter in Texas or Ohio, did define the discourse (and media coverage) in the days before these primaries. Experience, not hope, was the main subject of the debate. Advantage: Clinton.

On top of all this, Clinton succeeded where she had recently faltered: convincing working-class Democrats that she's their woman. In the contests after Super Tuesday, Obama penetrated into Clinton's base and coaxed away such voters, as he racked up eleven wins in a row. In Ohio on Tuesday, Obama fared well among Democrats who attended college (53 to 46 percent), but Clinton clobbered him among Democrats who did not (62 to 37 percent). She also walloped him in union households (54 to 45 percent). With the economy rated as the top concern of Democratic voters in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island (it tied with the Iraq war in Vermont), Clinton scored with her steady--if not always inspiring--insistence that she's a heavy-lifter when it comes to kitchen table issues. She also renewed her bonds with other core voters: women and the elderly.

In Texas, the Democratic electorate was more split. Clinton won 64 to 34 percent among Democrats over 65 years of age. Obama led narrowly in the under-64 group, 51 to 48 percent. In other words, the old folks kept Clinton competitive. So, too, did Latinos, who went for Clinton 63 to 35 percent. White Democrats in the Lone Star State favored Clinton by an 11-point margin. Voters with incomes over $50,000 supported Obama, 52 to 48 percent. Those earning less went with Clinton, 51 to 49 percent.

Clinton's advocates will now argue it's back to the pre-sweep days--when she won in New Hampshire, Nevada and several Super Tuesday states by assembling a coalition of classic Democrats--and the race is on. But the math doesn't change. As Obama's campaign aides have been maintaining for weeks, Clinton's triumphs in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas will not net her a significant pickup in delegates. "We have nearly the same delegate lead we had this morning," Obama told supporters at a rally in San Antonio, as the Texas results came in.

The Obama and Clinton spinners will bicker over the significance of the March 4 contests.....

You can read the rest here.

Get ready to get sick of Pennsylvania.

I m not making any predictions about what will happen in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island, but my hunch is that, whatever the final tallies will be, when the dust and rust settles, Hillary Clinton will still be in the race. Clintons don't quit. And she will not be forced out of the race short of a cataclysmic event (say, Bill endorses Barack Obama).

That means, Helllllloooooooo, Keystone State. The Pennsylvania primary--in which 188 delegates will be on the line, is not until April 22. Between March 5 and then, there are only two other contests: a caucus in Wyoming on March 8 (18 delegates) and a primary in Mississippi on March 11 (40 delegates). Otherwise, there's nothing but weeks and weeks of time before Pennsylvania. The campaigns will be able to camp out there and treat the big state almost like Iowa and New Hampshire. The candidates will load up on Philly steak sandwiches and overdo the Rocky metaphors, and the politerati (and viewers of cable news) will, by the time the primary occurs, know details of Pennsylvania counties (Hey, what's the unemployment rate in Lycoming? Who did the Susquehanna Shopper endorse?) they never expected they would care about.

With Pennsylvania looming large on the horizon, Clinton will have a mathematical (even if unlikely) possibility of gaining on Obama's pledged delegates lead. And she and her allies can use this possibility to justify prolonging the battle. Moreover, they would have six weeks to throw not only the kitchen sink but the kitchen cabinet, the hallway armoire, the bathroom bathtub, the bedroom chifforobe, and the rec room media unit at Barack Obama. A month and a half is quite a long time in a presidential race. (Ask John McCain.) With all that time to attempt all sorts of stratagems and raise all sorts of questions (real or trumped-up) about Obama, the contest is certainly not beyond hope (there's that word) for Clinton and her posse. And there's always the chance that external events will intervene in her favor. (Perhaps a news story will reveal that Obama once attended a meeting of community organizers at a--gasp!--mosque.)

So get accustomed to the Interstates 76 and 80 and pack your bags--literally or figuratively--for Pennsylvania. It may well be the Democratic contest's Gettysburg.

McCain's Nuclear Waste. John McCain is known as a Republican who has been a leader in the effort to redress climate change. But when it came to passing global warming legislation in the Senate, he sabotaged his own effort because he was gaga about nuclear power. I've posted a piece about this episode at MotherJones.com. It starts:

On January 9, 2003—five years before he would become the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee—Senator John McCain strode to the Senate floor and began a speech by citing the National Academy of Sciences: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." He then pointed to a host of scientific studies that had outlined the negative consequences of global warming. "The United States must do something," he proclaimed, announcing that he and Senator Joseph Lieberman were introducing legislation that day to establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a system for the trading of emissions credits.

Environmental groups endorsed the McCain-Lieberman bill, which compelled major industries to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The League of Conservation Voters called it "a relatively modest reduction" but an "important first step" that would "send an important signal to the global community." It was indeed the first serious attempt in the Senate to impose a cap on global warming emissions.

Ten months later, the bill was defeated by a relatively close margin, 55 to 43. (Then-Senator John Edwards, who missed the vote, had indicated he supported the bill.) Environmental advocates in Washington considered this a decent start considering that six years earlier the Senate had voted unanimously for a nonbinding resolution that signaled opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty. With this bill, McCain established himself as the undisputed Republican leader on climate change. Convinced that global warming had already led to more droughts and wildfires in his home state of Arizona, McCain vowed to keep fighting for the measure. But within a year and a half, McCain would lose ground and set back the effort to reduce emissions because of a profound political miscalculation, his own stubbornness, and, most of all, his deep attachment to nuclear power.

You can read the rest here.

Talk about generalizations!

In a front-page article on Saturday, the New York Times' Neela Banerjee examined Barack Obama's attempt to gather support among the Jewish electorate, "a cornerstone of the Democratic base." She reported that "in doing so," Obama is "navigating one of the more treacherous paths of Democratic politics."

To set up her piece, Banerjee wrote, "Winning the trust of Jewish Democratic voters is all the more difficult for Mr. Obama because of the tenuous relations between blacks and Jews." That's some declaration. She neither explains nor sources that assertion of fact. What blacks? Which Jews? She makes it seem like Jews and blacks fight more than Christians and blacks, or Latinos and Muslims. This sort of shortcut journalism simplifies a complex matter and lumps together all blacks and all Jews into enemy camps in a cultural war (or cold war). My hunch: a higher percentage of Jews have supported Obama in the Democratic primaries than white Southern Baptists. So maybe it's the white SBers who have "tenuous relations" with blacks?

Banerjee then goes on to make another error:

Other [Jewish-related] issues [Obama] faces arise from his newness to national politics. While his positions hew to mainstream Democratic views, some critics have expressed concerns that they are not heartfelt.

“His record is relatively sparse, so I want to look at the totality of influences that might bear on Senator Obama,” said Ed Lasky, news editor of the online magazine, American Thinker, whose criticisms of Mr. Obama for aligning himself with allegedly anti-Israel advocates have been widely circulated among Jewish voters.

Do you know who Ed Lasky is? Probably not. A quick Google search shows that he is a conservative and that his on-line magazine is conservative. Nothing wrong with that, right? But look at the article, he wrote in 2004 entitled Why American Jews must vote for Bush:

[T]he anachronistic tendency of American Jews to vote Democratic must end.

This is one tradition that Jews, a people united by their traditions, should put aside. They should refuse to vote for John Kerry for President. Bluntly speaking, his words and actions reveal a man who would imperil our community. Our concerns should not just be about Israel but for the future of the entire Jewish community. It is imperative that Jews understand that the hatred being promoted around the world is directed not just at Israel, but also at Jews as Jews.

Lasky is no honest broker trying to assess Obama. He's a fierce (and apparently religious) partisan who hopes to drive Jews from the Democratic Party into the GOP. He has an agenda--a stark one that obviously colors his approach to Obama. Yet the Times failed to note that. Instead, it cited Lasky as evidence that Obama may have a problem among Jewish Democrats. That would be like saying that McCain has a problem among Republican veterans because retired General Wesley Clark opposes him. Lasky wants to sink Obama because he wants to sink Democrats. His crusade against Obama says nothing about Obama's ability to attract Jewish Democrats.

All this goes to show that when it comes to covering the minefield of race, religion and politics, it's easy for the leading national newspaper to crash into the shoals.

In an earlier version, I referred to Neela Banerjee as a man. I'm told she's a she. My apologies.

John McCain is double-talking.

Campaigning in Texas, McCain was asked about his remark that it would be fine with him if U.S. troops stayed in Iraq for another 100 years. He said:

Of course, that comment of mine was distorted. Life isn't fair. I was talking about American presence after the war.

As the first journalist to report McCain's comment, allow me to note that his comment was not distorted--at least not by me. I wrote:

The United States military could stay in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years" and that "would be fine with me," John McCain told two hundred or so people at a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, on Thursday evening. Toward the end of this session, which was being held shortly before the Iowa caucuses were to start, McCain was confronted by Dave Tiffany, who calls himself a "full-time antiwar activist." In a heated exchange, Tiffany told McCain that he had looked at McCain's campaign website and had found no indication of how long McCain was willing to keep U.S. troops in Iraq. Arguing that George W. Bush's escalation of troops has led to a decline in U.S. casualties, McCain noted that the United States still maintains troops in South Korea and Japan. He said he had no objection to U.S. soldiers staying in Iraq for decades, "as long as Americans are not being injured, harmed or killed."

McCain did not specifically state this 100 years would be after the war. But he did compare what he had in mind to the decades-long presence of U.S. soldiers in South Korea, Japan and elsewhere. And afterward, when I questioned him about this comment--and politely afforded him the chance to pull back from it--he excitedly declared that U.S. troops could remain in Iraq for "a thousand years" or "a million years," explaining, "it's not American presence; it's American casualties." (I duly reported that.)

McCain's position has its logic. He does not equate victory in Iraq with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But logic is not the same as wisdom. While the United States has indeed kept soldiers in countries where it has fought wars (Japan, Germany, Bosnia), one can argue that Iraq is a different case--and that proclaiming that U.S. troops will stay there for one hundred to one million years sends the wrong signal to those in the world who fear or suspect the United States is pursuing imperial ambitions in the Middle East. That McCain does not understand how provocative his comment was--even when taken in context--is quite worrisome. No, make that frightening.

On my latest diavlog for Bloggingheads.tv--with Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard (my usual partner Jim Pinkerton is still lost in Huckabeeland)--I recount my encounter with McCain regarding the 100 years remark. Here it is:

Hillary Clinton is helping Barack Obama.

Let's say for the sake of argument--and only for the sake of argument--that Barack Obama is on his way to becoming the Democratic nominee. Weeks ago, when the GOP race basically ended and McCain became the presumed GOP nominee, pundits were suggesting that the Democrats would be at a disadvantage because their hard-fought nominee contest was going to continue for weeks, if not months. McCain and the Republicans, they said, would have extra months to prepare for the general election, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be left behind, punching and poking at each other.

Yet so far that prediction--like many this political season--has not come true. McCain has not reached cruising altitude. Instead, he has been drawn into intra-conservative squabbling. Prominent rightwingers continue to decry him. And this week, McCain got into a fight with a rightwing radio host in Cincinnati. Talk about a unpresidential sideshow. This battle previewed a problem McCain may well have throughout the general election: rightwingers with extreme views of the Democratic candidate--whether it is Clinton or Obama--will be mounting extreme assaults on the Democrat, and McCain may find himself repeatedly in the position of having to distance himself from such attacks. This will peeve his reluctant supporters on the right.

Meanwhile, Obama is contending with Clinton, a first-class and topflight rival. As Tuesday night's debate demonstrated, Obama is getting better as a debater and as a candidate. Competition often is good. In this case, it has pushed Obama to improve his performance in the debates. This was once a weak link in his chain. In earlier debates, he often was tentative and not all that persuasive. In the past two debates, though, he was firm, confident, smooth.

Being challenged by Clinton--in and out of the debates--has forced Obama to hone his already-attractive message. On Tuesday night, he had a good response to her (and others') claim that all his talk of hope and unity is naive:

I am absolutely clear that hope is not enough. And it is not going to be easy to pass health care. If it was, it would have already gotten done. It's not going to be easy to have a sensible energy policy in this country. ExxonMobil made $11 billion last quarter. They are not going to give up those profits easily.

But what I also believe is that the only way we are going to actually get this stuff done is, number one, we're going to have to mobilize and inspire the American people so that they're paying attention to what their government is doing. And that's what I've been doing in this campaign, and that's what I will do as president.

And there's nothing romantic or silly about that. If the American people are activated, that's how change is going to happen.

With this reply, Obama connected his hope-mongering to practical politics. It was an effective formulation of his general campaign pitch--one he will need if he wins the Democratic contest. All the trench warfare with Clinton has strengthened Obama. He will fare better against McCain--should it come to that--because of it.

BYE-BYE BLOOMBERG. I've repeatedly said that I doubted Michael Bloomberg would run for president (particularly because the billionaire apparently had nothing substantial to say about the Iraq war) and even chided my fellow CQ blogger Richard Whalen for pining for the New York City mayor. Recently, a Bloomberg associate told me that Bloomberg was utterly obsessed with running for president--that he talked about it incessantly, that he was poring over polling data and other information related to a possible presidential bid, that he really, really, really wanted to run. But the businessman has yielded to reality, and today, Bloomberg pulled the plug on his nonexistent presidential campaign. Richard, sorry, you'll have to find another dreamboat.

Here's a simple way of summing up Tuesday night's debate in Cleveland between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Minutes after Thursday night's debate in Austin ended, the Clinton campaign zapped out a triumphant email to reporters:

We saw in the final moments in that debate is why Hillary Clinton is the next President of the United States. Her strength, her life experience, her compassion. She's tested and ready. It was the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice.

That was spin. The Austin debate was no win for Clinton and, as subsequent polls showed, she did not retake the reins, shout giddyup, and ride the presidential race off into a victorious sunset. In fact, Obama, following that debate, continued to gain strength in the polls in the all-important states of Ohio and Texas. Still, Clinton's campaign aides at that moment believed it was not entirely unreasonable--or delusional--to try to claim victory.

No such email followed the conclusion of the Cleveland debate. About an hour after it finished--it took an hour?!--the Clinton campaign disseminated a statement from Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, a Clinton supporter:

Hillary Clinton showed Ohioans again tonight why she is uniquely qualified to be president and begin turning our economy around on her first day in office. Hillary is the fighter, the doer and the champion Ohio's working families need. No one is better prepared to deliver quality, affordable health care for every American and lead our country as commander in chief.

Note that there was no claim of victory. Another Clinton email cited positive insta-reviews in the media about Clinton. NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, for instance, had said that Clinton "came across very credibly, very strongly as a fighter." That was true. The problem was that Obama came across rather well, too. None of the quotes her campaign found useful described Clinton's overall performance as a game-changer. And that's the point. She did perform in a fine manner. But Obama, coming across as smooth, confident, smart, passionate, and poised, did at least as well, if not better. It was the Clinton camp that wanted more and more debates. But Obama keeps improving, while she long ago hit the ceiling (and it's a high ceiling) in terms of debate performance.

So the Clinton campaign was--finally--unable to spin a victory claim. That would be playing with reality too much. And when a presidential candidate's spinners cannot claim a debate win, that candidate is in trouble.

For my insta-review of the debate, posted at MotherJones.com, click here.

A posting of mine from the Mother Jones blog:

Another Democratic debate tonight? Enough already. Hillary Clinton has been pushing Barack Obama for more and more debates. But these debates have lost their utility. Do we really need to see the pair bicker once more over health care coverage mandates? That's the only major current policy difference that two have zeroed in on in their face-offs. They argue their points around and around in a circle like quarrelers in a bad marriage. And they're kinda both right.

If you want to achieve universal coverage at the most efficient price point, then you need as big a pool as possible. That's basic economics. So Hillary Clinton correctly notes that mandates are needed--especially to get into this pool those folks who may not need costly health care. Their premiums will help cover the cost of care for others. That's how insurance works: the more, the merrier.

But Obama has a point when he says that it would not be fair to force people to buy insurance they cannot afford and that may not meet their needs. I recently met someone from Massachusetts--where there now is a health insurance mandate--who complained that she and her husband could not afford the insurance they are mandated to purchase. And, she added, they make just enough money to be beyond qualifying for a subsidy. This couple is considering moving out of the state. Maybe they're over-reacting to the situation. But no one should be compelled to purchase substandard but costly coverage. Consequently, it seems fair to say, "Let's see the policy, before we accept the mandate." No doubt about it, Obama got somewhat trapped in all this. He put out a plan with limited mandates (only for parents regarding coverage for their kids) and was then raised (as in poker) by Clinton. At that point, Obama could not admit he had proposed an insufficient plan. He was forced into a corner--defending the absence of a comprehensive mandate in his plan--and this debate was born.

But there's this: if either of these Democrats are elected, he or she will pull together roughly the same band of policy experts and craft a plan with congressional leaders that will likely not match exactly what they are proposing now. They may have to deal with health care reform in increments (depending on the composition and mood of Congress). And mandates may or may not be part of that process at the start. Would Hillary Clinton trade away mandates to get the rest of her plan through Congress? You betcha. (If you truly care about the details of this difference, check out NPR's recent dissection here.)

So can we move on? Probably not. The candidates seem committed to pounding away on this point. In recent days, they have also tussled over Nafta. Clinton has been endeavoring to back away from the trade accord that is unpopular in Democratic circles (particularly among blue-collar Dems). And while Obama has been reminding people of her past support, the Clinton camp has been trying to dredge up old Obama quotes showing he once had at least a mixed view on Nafta. But on this front, Clinton, who is in second place, is in the weaker position. It's not to her advantage to do battle over Nafta. She seems to believe that the mandate issue offers her potent ammo. Blasting Obama on this topic hasn't yet paid off. But her campaign advisers must feel that there's no telling what will happen the 168th time she tries.

What's wrong with the following headline from the front page of Monday's Washington Post?

Clinton Tests Out Populist Approach

Answer: A true populist doesn't have to test out a populist approach. But this is what so often happens in the Democratic Party. A candidate finds himself or herself in the rough and they reach for the populist nine iron. Let me see if I can get out trouble with this club. Al Gore got all populist in the closing days of the 2000 presidential contest, noting he would fight for us against them--the drug companies, health insurance companies, and the like. (You know, all the folks who bought superboxes at the Democratic convention that year in the Staples Center.) Michael Dukakis veered similarly toward the end of his campaign against George H.W. Bush in 1988. Neither ended up in the White House.

It's not that populism is bad politics; it's that phony (or halfhearted or last-minute) populism is no guarantee of success. For Hillary Clinton to don the mantle of heavy-breathing populism a this stage is not all that convincing. She and her husband never were full-fledged members of that Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. In 1992, Bill, a leader of the conservative-leaning, pro-business Democratic Leadership Council, did run with a quasi-populist agenda of "Putting People First"--which he jettisoned after entering the White House in favor of a Fed-friendly close-the-deficit governing policy. With Hillary by his side, he pushed for Nafta--which was passionately opposed by populists within the party. (These days, Hillary Clinton tries disingenuously to distance herself from the treaty, maintaining it was negotiated by President George H.W. Bush--and not acknowledging that her husband led a major drive to get it passed in Congress over objections from labor unions and Democrats.) And when Hillary Clinton put together her health care reform package, she tried at first to co-opt or appease the health care industry, while other Dems advocated a more confrontational strategy. Her record as a populist is a slight bit thin.

The Post reports:

Eager to recapture the white, working-class voters who favored her in some of the early primaries but who have since shifted to Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton traded her usual wonky style this weekend for a fiery, populist tone in speeches in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.

Instead of giving precise policy details, she repeatedly pointed her finger skyward, declared that Americans "got shafted under President Bush" and cast herself as a fighter, as Edwards often described himself, promising to help most Americans, not just the "wealthy and the connected."

So a voter can fairly ask, where was all this anger before? Why now? Is there any way not to see this as a cynical ploy motivated by recent primary results and present polls?

The paper goes on:

In an appearance here Sunday afternoon, she mocked Obama's hopeful rhetoric, declaring that it is not the answer to fighting entrenched interests.

"I could stand up here and say, 'Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified, the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,' " she said, as people cheered and laughed. "You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear."

She wants to bash those special interests. Yet her campaign strategy has been crafted by Mark Penn, whose day job is to assist corporationsso they can game the system in Washington and elsewhere. Much more so than Barack Obama, Clinton has made use of lobbyists as fundraisers and staffers. Her aversion to corporate special interests was not that strong when she was organizing her campaign and looking forward to a front-runner's trot to victory in the Democratic contest.

Hillary Clinton clearly wants to regain the support of blue-collar Dems. In recent weeks, exit polls have showed that Obama has made dramatic inroads into this bloc, which did seem to be on Clinton's side earlier in the race. And, no doubt, she is still hoping to get a thumb's up from John Edwards, who has not endorsed either Clinton or Obama. (As I previously noted, Edwards will have a tough time awarding his seal of approval to Clinton over Obama after referring to her as a "corporate Democrat" and a force for the status quo.)

If Clinton wants to prove she's a populist, she could ask Penn and the corporate lobbyists who work for her to vacate the premises. But it's difficult to take her late conversion to populism seriously when the guy behind it is making millions of dollars working for the special interests she decries.

The talk on Friday morning was not about John and Vicki (that's McCain and Iseman, the lobbyist) but Barack and Hillary, and the closing moment of Thursday night's debate, when they shook hands and Clinton said she was "absolutely honored" to be by Obama's side in the debate. The Clinton campaign, as I've noted elsewhere immediately tried to spin this moment into proof she is more presidential than he is. But it looked to me that she might be tiring of fighting him--and fighting the tide.

Is pessimism setting in within the Clinton camp? Obama is closing in on Clinton in polls in both Texas and Ohio, and campaign trend lines seem to be holding in his favor. A few hours before the debate, I spoke to one of the more prominent Hillary boosters in Washington. This person said, "I'm pretty pessimistic. We're all trying to keep our heads up. Even if she did everything right from this point on and started to close the gap, it might not be enough. She's not going to become a young guy who's an inspirational speaker because it's a better strategy."

This Clintonite laughed sadly at his own quip and went on: "She has played to all of her strengths. But everything has gelled for Obama. He's a sanctimonious guy. But we can't make that case."

I wonder if this person's sentiment is widely shared--or spreading--through Clintonland. And if some Clinton people are now thinking in such terms, what will be their attitude should she fail to beat back Obama in Ohio and Texas? The Clintons are famous for their grit, for not yielding to defeat. Bill Clinton came back from a loss in Arkansas to retake the governor's office and, years later, refused to be driven out of the White House by one damn embarrassing scandal. She survived the Monica madness and won a Senate seat in an adopted state. In 1992, Bill famously told voters he would fight "until the last dog dies." Will that dog be barking--or whimpering--after Ohio and Texas?

Pay attention, young presidential candidates-to-be, this seems to be the lesson of the 2008 election so far: voters like winners.

Barack Obama's slam-dunk victory on Tuesday over Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin is the latest proof of this theory, for he's making Clinton look like Rudy Giuliani. Both the former NYC mayor and the current junior senator from New York state thought they could sit back and absorb a string of losses, just waiting for when the stars would align perfectly for them. Giuliani saw Florida as his electoral heaven. After Super Tuesday, Clinton gazed at the working-class neighborhoods of Ohio and the great plains of Texas and saw her Gettysburg. (She, of course, would be the North.) But the best-laid plans of mice and men and campaign strategists often go awry. By the time the Republican circus hit the Sunshine State, Giuliani looked like a loser; he had placed out of the money in all the previous contests--and Florida Republican voters validated that impression. And after losing eight straight contests to Obama after Super Tuesday, Clinton also had a big L on her forehead (and it doesn't stand for liberal).

One of the most interesting exit poll numbers from Wisconsin was this: of the Democratic voters who made up their minds in the four weeks prior to the election, Obama beat Clinton 62 to 37 percent. Of those who a month ago knew whom they would support, 50 percent chose Clinton over 49 percent for Obama. What changed in the past four weeks? Clinton and Obama were the same people they were in mid-January. Their resumes were the same. They each were making the same case for his or her candidacy. What had changed was that Obama had won a bunch of elections--and Wisconsin voters had gotten a chance to see him up and close and personal, given that there was plenty of time before this primary for Obama to campaign in the state.

This is--duh!--bad news for Clinton. You can't win by losing. And as the two move toward Ohio and Texas--which could end this race--Clinton has only lost more steam. (Obama also beat her in Hawaii on Tuesday.)

The morning after Wisconsin, a radio show host asked me, "What the heck can she do now?" I dunno. In Wisconsin, Hillary did it all. She went negative on Obama big-time, accusing him of plagiarism, charging him with cowardice for not adding an extra debate to the schedule, and blasting his plans for health care, Social Security, and the mortgage crisis. She went populist--which is right out of the Democratic playbook for candidates in trouble. She held events where she showed off her masterful command of policy details. And she made the same I've-got-more-experience-than-he-does case. That's everything she can do. And the voters said, No thank you.

With Ohio and Texas looming--the primaries are March 4--there's little room for improvement or change in her strategy. The cliche is that success breeds success. Success is the missing ingredient in her campaign. And there's not much she can do about that now.

To see my full report on Wisconsin for Mother Jones, click here.

In all the excitement of mini-mini-Super Tuesday--that is, the Potomac Primaries--George W. Bush's slam of Barack Obama seemed to slip by without much notice. And it wasn't just a slam, it was a lie.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday this past weekend, Bush was asked by moderator Chris Wallace about Obama. Here's the exchange:

WALLACE: Do you think there's a rush to judgment about Barack Obama? Do you think voters know enough about him and --

BUSH: I certainly don't know what he believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad, which -- I -- I think I commented that in a press conference when I was asked about that.

WALLACE: I hope not. But -- but -- (chuckles) -- so you don't think that we know enough about him or what he stands --

BUSH: Doesn't seem like it to me, but there's -- with campaigns, there's plenty of time for candidates to get defined. He (is yet ?) his party's nominee.

MR. WALLACE: So why do you think he's gotten this far, if people don't know what he stands for?

PRESIDENT BUSH: You -- you're the pundit. I'm just a simple president.

Embrace the Iranian president? Wallace could have forced the president to back up this statement by asking Bush, "where did you get that?" But he did not.

Of course, Obama has never said he would "embrace" Ahmadinejad. In on of the Democratic debates, he promised to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea during his first year in the White House, should he be elected president. At the time, I questioned whether Obama had gone too far in making such a vow. But leave it to Bush to turn an offer to talk with Iran into a big bear-hug for the thuggish Iranian leader. Bush was casting a false accusation. But at this point, no one seems to care much about what he says. I didn't see the Obama campaign take much offense. And imagine what the Obama people would have done, if Hillary or Bill Clinton had said it!

Bush's attack on Obama can be seen as a preview of the Republican assault that will come if Obama is the Democratic nominee. The real facts won't matter. They will be trumped by mischaracterization and misrepresentation. Nobody cares much now when Bush goes after Obama by mangling the truth. But if Obama does triumph in the Democratic contest, the Republican attack machine and the newest Swift Boaters will swing into high-gear. Such blasts will have to be countered quickly and effectively.

I'll be on a break until after President's Day. Enjoy contemplating the great leaders of our past.

Are Democratic voters in Ohio and Texas different from those in Virginia?

That's the working assumption--or prayer--of Hillary Clinton, especially now that she was embarrassed by Barack Obama in Virginia (wham: 29 points!), Maryland (bang: 27 points!), and the District of Columbia (pow: 51 points!). But is there any reason to believe that assumption is valid?

As I point out elsewhere, Obama won just about everybody's vote among the Democratic electorate in Virginia and Maryland: women, men, low-income people, the well-to-do, the young, the old, Latinos. Clinton only held on to white women. Ohio and Texas are made up of the same folks (with Latinos comprising more of the Lone Star State's population than in Virginia). Will they not react in a similar fashion to Obama and Clinton?

By the time Ohio and Texas roll around (March 4), Clinton will have no name-recognition advantage in either state. Obama will have plenty of time after next Tuesday's Wisconsin and Hawaii primaries--both of which he is expected to win--to work those two states. And so far in this campaign, whenever Obama has had the chance to spend time in a state, he has done rather well. The major disappointment for the Obama camp this year has been California. But one can argue that that in the short period between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, Obama did not have enough time to campaign in the Golden State and connect with its many voters. That won't be true for Ohio and Texas.

Then there's the money. Obama has opened up a fundraising lead. In Ohio and Texas, he will have more money than she will for ads and organization. And his staff appears to be working quite well these days, while Clinton has had to weather a staff shakeup amid a losing streak.

So does Clinton have a leg-up in these (possible) make-or-break states? Maybe not. Is there more affection for Clinton (or the Clintons) in Texas and Ohio than elsewhere? The playing field in each state seems pretty level to me. Each candidate will have a full opportunity to make his or her case.

Now imagine if Obama wins either. What happens to Clinton's rationale? It's blown apart on the prairie wind or it sinks in the Cuyahoga. Given that the Democratic Party awards delegates proportionally, if Obama does prevail in Ohio or Texas, the delegate count could still be close. At this point, it's essentially mathematically impossible for either candidate to win enough delegates through the primaries to reach the magic number. (Superdelegates will be needed by either to get over the top.) But should Obama end up winning more states than Clinton, bagging a big state or two, winning in swing states (such as he did in Missouri, Colorado and Virginia), and opening up a lead in pledged delegates, she will not have much of an argument left. (Except for maybe this one: the superdelegates really, really like me.)

Clinton could well be right: the race may turn on Ohio and Texas. But that could be her last stand. She should not forget a famous cry: Remember the Alamo!

Busy, busy voting today....Does Hillary Clinton have a chance at winning Virginia? That's one question, as the Potomac Primary occurs. And if you want to ponder the Maryland primary, where Barack Obama is expected to win, consider this: Clinton has the governor and his machine (such as it is) behind her. It might still not be enough for her. As for the District of Columbia primary, the big news before the voting started was that Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district's nonvoting House member, endorsed Obama. But she did so the night before Election Day, thus minimizing the impact of her endorsement. How to read this? She wanted to be with the predicted winner but did not want to aggravate the Clinton crew. In the meantime, the other political news is the so-called John Edwards primary. For MotherJones.com, I've examined whether Edwards really has a choice. The bottom line: no. Here's that article:

THE JOHN EDWARDS ENDORSEMENT: A LAST CHANCE TO PROVE HE'S NO PHONY
by David Corn
MotherJones.com

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an influential Hillary Clinton fundraiser. When the subject of John Edwards (still in the race at that time) came up, she started sputtering about his hypocrisy. His expensive hair cut, his big house--the guy's a phony, she exclaimed derisively, and his populist, anti-Washington, help-the-poor rhetoric was all just for show. He won't last.

She was right on that final point. As for his authenticity, that was a question that chased Edwards. During his six years in the U.S. Senate (1999 to 2005), Edwards was no working-class hero. He did not develop a reputation as a firebrand willing to take on the powerbrokers of the nation's capital. At that time, Senator Paul Wellstone was the populist champion in the Senate (until his tragic death in October 2002). Wellstone waged one fight after another against corporate interests, lobbying influence, and the sway of big-money. I don't recall Edwards standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him during all these uphill battles.

Yet on the campaign trail, Edwards became Joe Hill in a suit.

Wellstone once told me that you always have allow for redemption within politics. And perhaps Edwards' conversion was genuine. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt? His message was powerful and well-delivered--even if not embraced by a plurality of Democratic voters. But if Edwards wants to prove he was truly speaking his heart and mind, he has no choice when it comes to endorsing one of the remaining Democratic contenders. He cannot support Hillary Clinton.

During the campaign, as he called for ending poverty, Edwards pointed to Clinton as part of the problem. Let's roll the tape on a speech he gave in New Hampshire last summer:

The system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it's rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things....

Politicians who care more about their careers than their constituents go along to get elected. They make easy promises to voters instead of challenging them to take responsibility for our country. And then they compromise even those promises to keep the lobbyists happy and the contributions coming...

It's a game that never ends, but every American knows -- it's time to end the game. And it's time for the Democratic Party -- the party of the people -- to end it. The choice for our party could not be more clear. We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other. The American people deserve to know that their presidency is not for sale, the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent, and lobbyist money can no longer influence policy in the House or the Senate.

There is no way to read that passage as not a direct assault on Clinton. Edwards was calling her out as a "corporate Democrat" willing to benefit from the crooked politics of Washington. The reference to the renting of the Lincoln Bedroom was a sharp punctuation mark. (During the Bill Clinton presidency, big donors to his campaign were rewarded with overnights in the White House.)

This was not a solo blast. Campaigning in Iowa in November, Edwards made it explicit:

The presidential candidate who has raised the most money from Washington lobbyists is not a Republican. It's a Democrat. The candidate who has raised the most money from the health industry--insurance companies and drug companies--is not a Republican. It is a Democrat…. And the candidate who has raised the most money from the defense industry, is not a Republican. It is a Democrat. And all those descriptions fit the same candidate. They're all Senator Clinton.

At the debate before the New Hampshire primary, Edwards slammed Clinton for being aligned with "the forces of status quo" dead-set on blocking change in Washington.

Those were some charges. Did Edwards mean what he was saying about Clinton? Did he mean it when he proclaimed that poverty eradication was the cause of his life?

In the past few days, Edwards has met with Clinton, and he's due to see Barack Obama, presumably to figure out if he should endorse either. If Clinton ends up the Democratic nominee, it will not be hypocritical for Edwards to campaign for her. He can reasonably argue she will be a better president than John McCain. But if the choice is Obama or Clinton, he is stuck. Were Edwards to pick her over him, he would be endorsing a "corporate Democratic" fronting for the status quo over the fellow whom he approvingly cited as an advocate for change. If Edwards pulled such a move, all those powerful words he left behind on the campaign trail would have no meaning....

You can read the rest here.

The fish rots from the head.

That's a not-so-polite way of saying that the person to blame whenever a campaign is not zipping along is the candidate, not his or her staff. Today, Patty Solis Doyle is the scapegoat for a Hillary Clinton campaign mired in a losing streak. On Sunday, she was dumped as HRC's campaign manager and replaced by Maggie Williams, who in 1990s served as chief of staff to First Lady Clinton.

Whether or not it was Solis' doing, the Clinton campaign is in the middle of a dangerous stretch. After splitting Super Tuesday with Barack Obama, the campaign is conceding a series of contests to Barack Obama (including two of the three February 12 primaries: Maryland and Washington, DC). The Clinton camp is allowing Obama to rack up the wins, while it prepares to put him down on March 4 in Ohio and Texas, two delegate-rich states. This reminds me of that familiar action movie device: let the enemy hordes take one position after another right before you spring a lethal trap on them. You know the scene. As the bad guys draw nearer, the hero-protagonist keeps saying, "Wait for it, wait for it." Those of lesser stout are in near-panic and want to pull the trigger too soon. "No, no," the all-wise, against-the-odds hero says. "Just wait for it." Then--Ka-boom!--the evil ones are dispatched.

Hillary as King Leonidas leading 300 Spartans at Thermopylae against the evil Obama-ites? Well, that may be stretching it. But this strategy must have some of her people chewing up their fingernails. My colleague Jonathan Stein dubs this plan "Rudy 2.0." As the Clinton clan waits, Obama is getting Big Mo on his side; he will truly have bragging and front-runner rights should he bag Virginia on Tuesday and sweep the Potomac Primaries. Between this clump and the Ohio/Texas shootout, there are only two other matches: Hawaii and Wisconsin on February 19. Both of those are good territory for Obama. (He grew up in Hawaii.)

Back to Solis. If she was the one who cooked up the wait-until-Ohio-and-Texas plan, HRC went along with it. Same with any strategic decisions that contributed to the Iowa loss, which got the ball rolling for the Barackians. Now it could well be that Solis has not managed the campaign well. There are 500 or so staffers to coordinate. She has to supervise a bevy of strategists, communicators, and planners. That's a tough job--especially when you're dealing with big egos.

Ever since Iowa, there's been grumbling from Clinton aides about the management team. But much of this complaining was directed at Mark Penn, the chief strategist. On Election Day afternoon in New Hampshire, a senior Clinton adviser told me that she was looking forward to what she assumed would be a loss, for it would cause a much-need shakeup in the campaign staff and force Penn out. When I spotted this aide celebrating Clinton's victory that night, I mentioned that the win probably had saved Penn's job. "I hope not," she snapped. "That would be the wrong lesson learned." More recently, another longtime Clinton aide said that she, too, would be delighted to see Penn depart. "He can't win Democratic primaries," she said. "And that's a drawback when you're in a Democratic primary."

A candidate not pleased with a campaign manager cannot freeze out the manager or lessen her or his authority without putting the campaign's entire management at risk. But a candidate can nudge a strategist aside. A Clinton insider tells me that Penn's influence has been waning and that these days he's more desk-bound--that is, confined to his office--than he has been during the previous months. Could it be that the real shakeup is not the Williams-for-Solis substitution but a decline in Penn's influence?

Still, I come back to my first point. A candidate's fault always lies not in his advisers but in himself. After John Kerry's 2004 defeat, there was much harrumphing about Bob Shrum, who has a string of high-profile losses on his resume. But if Kerry took bad advice from Shrum, he's the one to blame. Hillary Clinton chose Solis, made the decision to compete in Iowa (which some of her aides wanted to skip), and embraced Penn, a corporate consultant whose company aids and abets union-busting businesses, as her strategy guru. She got what she paid for. (Penn made over $4 million last year working for the Clinton campaign.) And now she's left with the need to stop Obama in two big states. Sure she could lose each--Remember the Alamo!--and still remain in the delegate hunt. But the race would be tougher for her; she would be left with only one more fallback position: Pennsylvania on April 22. And even King Leonidas--with the best strategic and management advice--would have a tough time defeating Luke Skywalker.

I'm Ronald Reagan, and John McCain's not.

That was Mitt Romney's not-so-implicit message, as he announced the suspension of his presidential campaign on Thursday before the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference. In a fiery speech, Romney hammered the point that he's a rock-hard conservative when it comes to all three legs of the great stool of the GOP: social issues, economic issues, and national security issues. At least now he is. He decried "government welfare" as a "threat to our culture." He essentially called Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama surrender-monkeys in the fight against radical jiihadism. He denounced regulations that choke businesses and called for lower taxes. The crowd lapped it up.

Romney knew that in a few hours McCain would appear before the same audience and try to appease those conservative activists who consider McCain an ideological turncoat. (How dare he care about global warming!) Though Romney was departing the race, he seized the moment to present himself as the real thing. Perhaps McCain will eventually be able to reach a detente with some of the conservatives who despise him (even if Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and James Dobson don't sign any peace treaty). Regardless of that, Romney was attempting to position himself as the true leader of the movement.

Which caused me to wonder: maybe Romney doesn't want McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, to win in November.

Look at Reagan In 1976, he challenged President Gerald Ford in the Republican contest and argued that Ford was not sufficiently conservative (mainly on foreign policy matters). It was a close race. By the time of the Republican convention, it was not clear who would be the nominee. Ford edged out Reagan--due to some last-minute strategic missteps committed by the Reagan campaign--and went on to lose the election to Jimmy Carter. Reagan emerged as the conservative champion in the party. Four years later, he roared back, won the nomination, and gained the presidency.

Whether or not McCain loses in November, Romney will remain the heartthrob of many conservative activists. But should McCain fail, Romney could become the de facto opposition leader--that is, if he's not chosen to be McCain's running-mate. And Romney would be able to use those millions of dollars he didn't spend on this campaign to bolster the conservative movement's infrastructure and further endear himself to the rightwing establishment. (Mike Huckabee might develop a Christian right following that sticks with him after the campaign, but his stool will be lopsided.) Romney would be well-positioned for the next campaign.

Republican losers often come back and succeed. Not only did Reagan do it, so did the first George Bush (who lost to Reagan in the 1980 Republican race) and Richard Nixon.

If McCain does end up as president, it will make life messy for conservatives. They will support him on some fronts and (if Democrats are lucky) detest him on others. There likely won't be ideological clarity. And Romney, like others, will have to navigate those shoals. But given McCain's age, that period might last no longer than one term. If Clinton or Obama triumph, Romney will be able to lead the rightwing charge against the culture-destroyer and surrender-chicken in the White House. Won't that be a lot of fun for him?

So Romney may not have to wait so long to have another shot. In 2012, he'll be 65 years old. Reagan was 69 when he reached the White House.

Is Hillary the new Mitt?

Yesterday's news that she had to loan her campaign $5 million (while her top staffers work have agreed to work without pay) sure was surprising. While Barack Obama gathered $32 million in the month of January--and $7 million following Super Tuesday's split decision--Clinton, the onetime powerhouse candidate, has hit hard times, though on Thursday the campaign said it had pulled in $4 million in Internet contributions since Tuesday. Money matters much in politics. And the candidates who have more usually do better (not always; though; ask Howard Dean). But self-financing pols often risk being accused of mounting a vanity production. Certainly, Clinton is no bored millionaire trying to buy herself a new job. But if Obama continues to soar not only in rhetoric but in contributions, while she remains in the red (financially), that could come to be seen as an indicator that she has flat-lined.

Yes, the only number that really counts from this point on is the delegate count. But that figure is not unrelated to cash-on-hand. On Wednesday, her chief strategist, Mark Penn, said, "We will have funds to compete. But we're likely to be outspent again." Hillary as underdog? How will that play?

Meanwhile, today, Dean, the Democratic Party chief, said he will do what he can to prevent a brokered convention:

The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario....I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don't, then we're going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement....Because I don't think we can afford to have a brokered convention -- that would not be good news for either party.

It's unclear what Dean and others could do to force a deal. But in such a scenario, an underfunded candidate will not be negotiating from a position of strength. Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's top moneyman, better start squeezing harder. His problem is that most of the Clinton donors have maxed out and cannot give more. So at this late stage--when Clinton is not in such a commanding position--he has to recruit new Clinton contributors. It won't be easy.

On the right, the news of the day is the mudwrestle between John McCain and the big-mouths of the right. Here's a piece I posted on the subject at Mother Jones.com:

Yesterday, John McCain asked his foes on the right to "just calm down a little." He was talking about Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and other conservative big-mouths who in recent days have pumped up the volume of their anti-McCain crusade. Just the day before, James Dobson, a leading social conservative who heads Focus n the Family, declared, "I am convinced Senator McCain is not a conservative, and in fact has gone out of is way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are." (Last year, Dobson also accused Fred Thompson of not being a real Christian.)

As the Republican Establishment swings behind McCain--each day his campaign sends out several emails noting this or that endorsement from a GOP figure--the conservative ideologues are holding firm. This is setting up a dramatic split between the GOP elite and the conservative movement's leading influentials. The ideologues hate McCain for several reasons. He has pushed bipartisan, Democratic-backed legislation on campaign finance reform, global warming, and, worse, immigration reform. He never got on his knees before the conservatives--particularly the religious right. In 2000, he blasted Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for exerting too much influence over his party. And--egads!--he has been a favorite of Washington journalists, that band of well-known, America-hating liberals. The fact that McCain has been a prominent champion of the Iraq war--the number one issue for most of his detractors--means nothing to these ingrates.

Today, McCain is appearing at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering of hundreds, if not thousands, of rightwing activists. Imagine John Kerry speaking to a convention of Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. [Note: I'd be at CPAC for this, if I weren't out of town.] But if McCain believes he can make nice with the rightwing talkers, he's kidding himself. This group--especially Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter--have no incentive to be pragmatic. They each earn much money by being provocative. Their first loyalty is to their audience, which expects hard-edged ideological warfare from them. They go soft--or reasonable--and they risk their reputations....

Read the rest here.

I've been in Chicago covering Supersaturated Tuesday from the Obama election night celebration. Here's the report I filed for MotherJones.com:

By the time that Super Tuesday finally arrived, the mystery was long gone. The day that had loomed for so long had lost its melodramatic make-or-break status for the Democrats. Hours before the vote-counting began, the top strategists for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were pitching the same line: the results would not be decisive and whoever ended up the winner would walk away with merely a small edge in delegates. And as the vote tallies started to come in, both campaigns declared non-defeat. That is, they each claimed to have done well. "En