Liberal blogs are worked up this morning over a Politico item claiming that John McCain doesn't know how many homes his family owns. The offending quote reads as follows:

"I think -- I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you."

So, does that mean McCain is an out-of-touch, senile, aristocratic pol unfit for the presidency? That's been the general response from the lefty sphere today. But there are some deficiencies in their assumptions. First, look no further than the next graph in the Politico story:

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

Actually, I believe that means the "correct answer" is that Politico and Newsweek don't know how many homes the McCains own either. Where McCain appeared confused was whether a merged pair of condos he and his wife own count as one or two properties. Matthew Yglesias has been mocking McCain over the story, but his own findings actually add credibility to the point that determining the number of properties McCain "owns" may in fact be a complicated answer. AMERICAblog's John Aravosis also piles on, accusing McCain of being "cognitively impaired" with "an inconsistent mental state," saying it's "just scary" that he couldn't answer the question off the top of his head.

Well, Mr. Aravosis, what then do you make of this Las Vegas Review-Journal story about  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in which he confuses Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman. In addition, reporter Molly Ball writes:

During the hourlong colloquy, Reid also forgot the name of former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democratic Senate candidate, and the Title IX legislation giving women access to school sports programs.

By Aravosis' own standards, shouldn't that qualify Democrat Harry Reid as being "cognitively impaired" and unfit to lead the U.S. Senate?

Does John McCain risk losing the conservative base if he picks Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman to be his vice presidential running mate? Rich Lowry thinks the Ridge trial balloon last week may have been more than coincidence:

NR has learned that the McCain campaign has been calling key state GOP officials around the country the last couple of days and sounding them out about the consequences of a pro-choice VP pick.

While others have speculated that McCain would benefit with independent and women voters by choosing a pro-choice running mate. John Hawkins says Lieberman is too liberal, but Ridge might make sense if it appears he could put Pennsylvania into play.

I do think the dire warnings of a pro-choice VP selection are somewhat off. While there would almost certainly be backlash from conservative figures over a Ridge selection, those same figures didn't have much of an impact opposing McCain in the Republican primaries. What will matter more to evangelical voters is what sort of abortion policies McCain would have as president, and he forcefully addressed those questions over the weekend. Also, you'd have to assume Ridge would make a point of noting that his job as VP is to implement the policies of the president, not oppose them. And even though it's already been stated before, I do not think you can underestimate the value of Ridge as someone McCain has a personal connection to, and how important that is to maintaining McCain's authenticity on the stump.

It seems that expectations are so low for John McCain that his above-average showing at this weekend's Compassion Forum with pastor Rick Warren has set off conspiracy theories speculating that McCain knew the questions in advance.

McCain was presumed to have been in a "cone of silence" while Obama appeared before him. That way, even know McCain was being asked mostly the same questions, he wouldn't have the advantage of knowing what those questions were in advance. As it turns out, McCain was traveling to the event in his campaign motorcade while Obama was speaking. Warren himself told CNN last night that McCain did not violate the embargo:

Warren said, "I trust the integrity of both" candidates, and said he "knew they would abide by the rules." He joked McCain may not have been in the cone of silence, but "he was in the cone of a Secret Service motorcade".

AMERICAblog author John Aravosis calls Warren a "liar," and declares that McCain cheated:

That means that McCain and his staff were listening to Obama in order to prepare. McCain denies it. Well, then McCain really has lost his senses if he thinks that any politician running for office, if given the chance, wouldn't tune into the other guy answering the same questions he's about to get.

This sort of conspiracy mongering from the self-described "reality based community" reminds me of similar speculation in 2004 that President Bush had answers to debate answers fed to him through a mysterious "bulge" in the back of his suit.

The ads on CNN for this weekend's Compassion Forum with both John McCain and Barack Obama get you thinking about their upcoming debates, but it's more likely that character issues and leadership questions will be the theme when each candidate has their appearance with the pastor. Warren himself has already said:

I'm going to deal with their personal life - because character matters. Their personal life does matter as a leader. God says so.

Warren also recently commented on the John Edwards affair, saying he'd have difficulty voting for a candidate who has committed adultery. Those comments have lead some progressive bloggers to believe that Warren was making a subtle reference to McCain's affair with-then-girlfriend Cindy. AMERICAblog's John Aravosis says Warren's comments were "clearly aimed" at McCain and asks:

[W]ill the corporate media again choose to ignore McCain's adultery, even now that a top evangelical leader has said he'd have a problem voting for someone like McCain, i.e., an adulterer?

We don't know if Warren was talking about McCain, because he gave his answer to a question about John Edwards. But for the sake of argument, let's say he was talking about McCain. In his answer, Warren talks about the differences between "forgiveness" and "trust," with the latter taking greater time to be earned. In other words, even if he did hold McCain's earlier adultery against him, it would seem the more than two decades of marriage would go some ways towards the "trust," column, versus the very current status of the Edwards adultery story.

Sure, the latest McCain "celeb" web ad against Obama isn't as well-produced as its predecessors, but does that make it racist? The "Fan Club" ad, posted to You Tube yesterday, sticks with the theme that Obama is popular around the world, but isn't ready to lead at home. The ad itself contains only one substantive attack against Obama, accusing him of voting to raise taxes on anyone making more than $42,000/year. The rest of the ad is more effective as media criticism, showing how local and national media often swoon over the candidate.





But Talking Points Memo's Erik Kleefeld sees a more sinister message in the ad:

"We know he doesn't have much experience, and isn't ready to lead, but that doesn't mean he isn't dreamy," says the announcer, followed by footage of two women at rallies -- both of whom are white, mind you -- complimenting Obama's looks. How long until "Barack, call me" ends up in a McCain paid TV ad?

So, what would happen if the McCain campaign had only used video of black men and women voicing their support for Obama? Would that also be "evidence" that Republicans are trying to scare the electorate by portraying Obama as a purveyor of racial identity politics? This seems like another sad case of some Obama supporters taking any opposition to his candidacy as de facto racism.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first or only time TPM readers and authors have overreached in recent weeks to accuse McCain of fanning the racist flames. More recent examples here, here, here, here and here.

Jake Tapper also sees racial implications in the McCain ad.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder resists the racist clarion calls as well, both from factual and strategic points of origin:

Well, the view that McCain hasn't gone there is shared by Barack Obama, for one. And those who see racial imagery in these web ads (black woman, white man, older white woman, younger white woman, white woman, white woman, white man, Wayne and Garth)  are racializing the web ads and drawing attention to them.

Both conservative and liberal bloggers seem to accept that the McCain campaign is taking better advantage of the crisis in Georgia than Obama is. But much as with McCain's "celeb" ad attack, when he's getting a lot of attention, plenty of it will be negative.

CQ Politics' Taegan Goddard analyzes McCain's comments today on the crisis and finds that at least three of McCain's comments about Georgia appear to be sourced from Wikipedia without attribution. As Taegan notes, Wikipedia is free information, but a citation is required for material taken verbatim. However, Open Left's Chris Bowers brings up what is arguable the larger point: McCain's campaign may have been cribbing notes on a global crisis from Wikipedia:

If McCain becomes President, we all need to make sure that wikipedia is carefully updated, since it will apparently inform our government on how to handle an international crisis. A properly updated wikipedia could end up determining the fate of the world. 

Meanwhile, other influential progressive blogs are convinced that neoconservative voices, whom they see as playing an increasingly influential role within the McCain campaign, are using the crisis to push for a more aggressive stance towards Russia.

John McCain leads in most polls asking which candidate the voters trust most to be an effective commander-in-chief. So, the conventional wisdom would lead one to believe that McCain would benefit from an international crisis involving Russia. In fact, McCain got a lot of free airtime on the cable news networks this morning, when they cut to his press conference on the conflict.

But is the conflict coincidence or part of a more sinister strategy? The Huffington Post's Blake Fleetwood, a former correspondent for The New York Times, takes the conspiracy theory route, noting that McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann has also served as an adviser to Georgia's government:

Can't your just imagine what happened. Randy lets it be known to the Georgian President that this would be a good time for Georgian troops to invade South Ossetia, which had been an autonomous territory for more than a decade. The Georgians didn't take much persuading, as they had been wanting to crack down with their troops for a long time. And with American/Republican support, what a better time to act?

Meanwhile Bush is conveniently meeting with Putin at the Olympics in Beijing and lets it be known that if Georgia attacks Ossetia, the US will not "mind" -- Wink Wink -- an aggressive response from Russia. Oh, we will talk tough, but we are not going to do anything..... And this mini crisis will be good for the Republicans in the 08 Presidential Election. Classic Machiavellian maneuvers as adapted by Cheney and Rove.

The McCain and Obama campaigns have traded allegations of "playing the race card," but we may be seeing an entirely new dimension of political attacks. One of McCain's recent ads, "The One," seeks to highlight what conservatives see as arrogant comments from Obama. When the ad first came out, some critics questioned the effectiveness of using a side-by-side comparison of Obama and Moses to attack Obama. But now that the ad has become quite popular, with more than a million You Tube views, new allegations are falling from the sky.

First, the video:





Steve Waldman highlights on a memo from the Democratic Eleison Group, alleging that the McCain ad compares Obama to the Antichrist:

This is the use of religion at its very worst in politics because it is an attempt to subtly and perhaps even subconsciously play on some of the deepest fears of millions of evangelical Americans.

Amy Sullivan, who covers religious issues, writes in Time that there are parallels between the ad and the Left Behind series:

It's not hard to see how some Obama-haters might be tempted to make the comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech.

Over at National Review, Mark Hemingway writes:

That's right, after the racist charges didn't stick and then their ridiculous Nazi accusations  were ignored, there was only one other place they could go. Obama's defenders are now accusing McCain of using his campaign ads to call Obama theanti-Christ. Marvel for a second at the absurdity of that.

Andrew Sullivan's biggest splash of the past year has been his much-discussed Atlantic feature on his belief in Barack Obama's ability to transcend the politics of yesterday, "Goodbye to All That." Sullivan continued the theme in a post over the weekend about John McCain's "celeb" ad attacking Obama.

Sullivan entitled the post, "Hell To All That Again," and wrote:

For all McCain's personal qualities, we're learning that the machine behind the GOP simply re-makes the campaign in its own Coulterite image.

I don't see the ad as necessarily "ugly," and I certainly don't think it's racist by any stretch of the imagination. But it is fair to say the ad taps into the conventional practice of attacking an opponent's "character," which I do think contradicts McCain's image and public expectations. However, I do think Obama, and certainly his supporters have played the game too: "100 years in Iraq," subtle references to McCain's age, and referring to his possible election as a "third Bush term."

And today, Sullivan himself happily ponders how Karl Rove would run a campaign against McCain were Rove a Democrat:

He'd put together an ad simply clipping those moments - and they're not rare - when McCain pauses, searches for words, blinks heavily and seems out of it. He'd play the age card as brutally as some Republicans play the race card. Then he'd put together a temper ad, throw in a little "bomb, bomb Iran" footage, and craft an LBJ daisy ad, raising fears about McCain's eagerness to start a nother war in the Middle East.

Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat looks at new poll numbers in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, seeing a race that still favors Barack Obama but that is closer than it should be. And much of the blame is placed on what is seen as Obama's "refusal" to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate. 

While the Quinnipiac numbers show Obama leading in all three states, BTD argues that McCain will ultimately win FL and OH because of state demographics, i.e. male and white voters, which aren't correctly tabulated in the survey:

Obama still wins the election because he will flip Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado for sure. But there is no reason why it should be this close. His stubborn refusal to pick Hillary Clinton, his insistence in causing political trouble for himself with the VP pick, will make this a closer election than it should be. The political obtuseness on this critical decision is amazing to me.

Hillary Clinton has been publicly supporting Barack Obama since she excited the race for the Democratic nomination. But the Moderate Voice's Tony Campbell is hearing rumors that Clinton supporters are still actively pressuring delegates to switch their votes from Obama to Clinton:

I talked to a Clinton delegate here in Maryland and he told me that they have been instructed to vote for Hillary on the first ballot. To make things more interesting, there is a movement to swing 160 delegates from Obama to Clinton. If that occurs, Clinton could re-establish her campaign and face John McCain in the fall.

Honestly, a floor vote for Clinton seems far-fetched, let alone an effort to swing more than 100 delegates her way. If Obama's candidacy were flailing, that scenario would have some plausibility. But what would such an effort, almost certainly guaranteed to fail, do to Clinton's reputation within the party? I'm guessing it would leave the entire Clinton legacy in tatters. If Obama held off the mutinous effort and won the general election, the Clinton's would be outcasts. But if Obama actually lost the election, HRC would be seen as nothing short of a Judas.

A blog post by Ilan Goldenberg is getting a lot of attention today over at Democracy Arsenal. It's about John McCain's possibly false understanding of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq. Goldenberg uses a series of examples, (Katie Couric/CBS, NY Times, Foreign Affairs magazing and fellow blogger Spencer Ackerman) including quotes from Col. Sean McFarland, stating that the awakening happened before President Bush first announced the surge.

Also, The Jed Report has put together this video which adds some information from a Keith Olbermann segment on the same story. For what it's worth, Olbermann doesn't hat tip either, at least not in the video provided.







Several high-profile bloggers, including Marc Ambinder and Atrios, have cited CBS and the Obama campaign instead of Democracy Arsenal. So, it's not an argument that Democracy Arsenal "broke" the story. But during his show last night, Anderson Cooper did a segment on the story that paraphrased Golodenberg's post, while using several of the same sources (CBS, Foreign Affairs, NY Times) without citing Goldenberg. They're even cited in the same sequence. It's all public information, so this isn't an accusation of content theft. But shouldn't Cooper or the AC360 producers at least given a hat-tip?

You can compare/contrast the post vs. Cooper's script after the jump...

National Review endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican primary and hasn't been a big fan of John McCain since his 2000 primary run against then-Gov. Bush. Nonetheless, editors Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru offer some strategic vision to the main campaign. The main lesson: Copy the Hillary Clinton from the second half of the Democratic primaries and go after Obama hard. To Some extent, I think the McCain campaign has already warmed up to this message and is incorporating it into their strategy. Nonetheless, Lowry/Ponnuru say the hard-hitting strategy might work better for McCain than it did for Clinton:

McCain is in a better position to use this strategy against Obama than Clinton was. She was never wholly convincing in her adopted role as a working-class warrior. McCain, on the other hand, has the warrior part of the persona in his genes. Nor does McCain face the constraints Clinton did. Going negative in a primary makes party loyalists deeply nervous, and explicitly attacking cultural liberalism in a Democratic primary is unthinkable. Obama has more evident weaknesses than he did when the Democratic primaries started and he was freshly on the scene. His core audience, finally, is a smaller proportion of the general than of the Democratic-primary electorate.

Over at Talk Left, Big Tent Democrat actually agrees with Lowry/Ponnuru's advice, but still isn't shaken:

The good news is that McCain is an inept campaigner and his campaign is also inept. The other good news is that the Media does not want to play along. ... It is because McCain is so weak a campaigner that Obama seems a shoo in to me. A better Republican candidate could have a chance. McCain is not that candidate.

UPDATE: I'll be on Sirius Satellite Radio at 5:30pm EST tonight on "Make it Plain with Mark Thompson," discussing Obama's overseas trip.

Josh Marshall says John McCain is "adopting Obama's position" on Afghanistan. That's about as intellectually honest as conservatives saying over the past two weeks that Obama was shifting his Iraq position to match McCain's. Which is to say, it's not true.

Hilzoy joins in on calling "gotcha!" by compiling past McCain statements on Afghanistan, and finds:

Until yesterday, McCain has only advocated sending NATO troops. This may be because as long as we stay in Iraq, we have no additional troops to send. 

I think this demonstrates one of the many failures of looking at national security (or any other long term national interest) through the prism of a blogger's mentality. Just because McCain is now more open to sending additional troops to Afghanistan does not mean he is "adopting" the opposing candidate's strategy. If so, Hilzoy and Marshall should have been calling Obama a hypocrite for saying he would "refine" his Iraq strategy after meeting with U.S. military leaders and for his softer criticism of the surge in recent weeks. Both of these movements by the respective candidates represent pragmatic leadership over the course of an 18 month campaign. At the end of the day, what matters most is who has the best judgment and the best plans to succeed, not who comes up with each specific policy proposal first.

The New York Daily News catapulted to the top of Memeorandum's blog chatter this afternoon with a story about how Barack Obama's campaign removed Obama's critique of the Iraq surge from its campaign website:

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence.

The story has been largely ignored by the progressive blogosphere, but is running wild on conservative outlets and in some mainstream media sites. Robert Stacy McCain calls the move "Orwellian," while Townhall's Matt Lewis says the move shows a "more sinister, secretive Obama." Jim Gergaghty and the NRO team highlight what they call the "glaring contradictions" in Obama's war statements.

However, there are two problems with these critiques. First, campaign websites are not typically held to the same rules as independent blogs, who often frown on revising pages or deleting errors/mistakes without prior acknowledgment. Second, in the same, very brief Daily News story, we get an explanation from the Obama campaign:

Campaign aide Wendy Morigi said Obama is "not softening his criticism of the surge. We regularly update the Web site to reflect changes in current events."

Just yesterday, Obama penned an op-ed for The New York Times detailing that while the surge has been successful, it doesn't change his overall view of the war:

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda -- greatly weakening its effectiveness. But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. 

There are plenty of areas worthy of criticism when it comes to Obama's Iraq policy. But to say his campaign's removal of outdated statements reflects an attempt to rewrite history or shift his position into alignment with John McCain is just not accurate.

Bonus: Gateway Pundit provides the previous and current versions for compare and contrast

Charles Krauthammer continues the conservative line on Obama's policy shifts and says:

By the time he's finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.

So, is creating a negative Obama/Clinton association the new way for conservatives to attack Obama, or is it more a media creation? Salon's Joan Walsh says the media may have fairly criticized Bill Clinton during the primaries, but should back off:

Clinton has finally listened to his critics, left the spotlight to his wife, and nursed his grievances in private -- and he's still getting criticized!

Over at the Commentary magazine blog, Max Boot argues that Iraq will need a large American military presence for many years to come. He uses the comparison of U.S. troops stationed in Geramny and Japan to make his case, while allowing:

Granted, the enemies that Iraq faces aren't as formidable as the enemies that West Germany faced for so many decades, but Al Qaeda, Iran, and its various proxies are dangerous enough, and Iraq isn't nearly as strong as West Germany was.

No doubt Boot was looking for a fight when he entitled his post, "Klein and Sullivan." Sure enough, Andrew Sullivan and Joe Klein have responded, arguing that Boot is comparing  "apples helium balloons," by measuring Iraq against post WWII Germany. That's certainly a legitimate line of criticism,  but isn't it also a bit shortsighted to assume that any American presence in Iraq will be rejected by its populace and manifested in the form of continued insurgent attacks?

While all three men are well-versed in Middle East politics, none know exactly what is going to happen. But from an outside point of view, it seems to me equally unlikely that any U.S. presence in Iraq will result in permanent war, as does the assumption that a longterm presence in the country will be warmly received. What I'm guessing John McCain, and even to a less extent, Barack Obama, are aiming for is that point at which a drop in troops levels and a corresponding drop in violence intersect.

Barack Obama has come under scrutiny from the media and conservative bloggers for what they see as hypocrisy from a candidate who has attacked John McCain for his ties to lobbyists. That's because two of the three people (Jim Johnson, Eric Holder) working to screen Obama's possible running mates have close ties to the industry and the "old style" politics Obama frequently attacks.

As I've often noted here, a candidate's perceived strengths often become targeted weaknesses in the heat of a campaign. The best, most recent example being John McCain, who has largely risen to prominence for his passionate opposition to George Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries, but is now tagged by Obama and other Democrats as running for Bush's "third term."

There's little evidence to suggest that either Johnson or Holder are corrupt or that Obama is ill-served by employing their talents in his VP vetting process. But conservative bloggers are  nonetheless scoring points in their attacks for two reasons. First, highlighting Obama's alleged hypocrisy on the issue pressures the mainstream media to cover the issue. The specific details may not resonate with independent or Democratic voters, but for vulnerable Republicans, any dents in the Obama armor are seen as significant victories.

But the second, and arguably stronger "victory," came in Obama's explanation of Johnson and Holder's role. Obama appeared unprepared and somewhat uncomfortable standing up to the scrutiny, which is making several conservatives optimistic, like Red State diarist "Moe," writes that Obama isn't nearly as impressive in impromptu settings:

I'm laughing too hard at the sight of watching someone who is supposed to be the second incarnation of Demosthenes fumbling his way through an explanation of how you can get somebody to do your VP pick for you while still not having them actually work for you.

UPDATE: That didn't take long. Johnson has stepped down from the VP committee.

The Huffington Post talks to a few anonymous GOP "insiders" and pulls public quotes from a few other disgruntled movement conservatives about John McCain's chances in the fall. The post has generated more than 700 diggs, but there's really not much there. Why should it be news that McCain is viewed as both unpredictable and vulnerable in a general election against Obama? That unpredictability is what has been McCain's biggest liability with fellow Republicans for nearly a decade. And those same Republicans who dislike McCain have created the conditions which made his election all the more of an uphill climb.

The most accurate assessment in the piece comes not from author Thomas Edsall, but from conservative columnist Bay Buchanan who is quoted in this piece. Buchanan makes a point that is starting to gain traction in conservative circles: for whatever strengths and/or weaknesses McCain possesses, this election is about Barack Obama. That worked well for President Bush in 2004 when his strategists succeeding in making the election about John Kerry. But there's no guarantee that past success equals a winning formula for Republican candidates. Buchanan:

[I]n reality there is only one candidate.  Barack Obama.  In November he will win or he will lose.  John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama.

My CQ Politics blogging colleague David Nather brought first news yesterday of Barack Obama and Joe Lieberman chatting in the Senate chamber yesterday. We still don't know the exact details of the conversation (Iran?) but we're learning a little more about the tone:

Using forceful, but not angry, hand gestures, Obama literally backed up Lieberman against the wall, leaned in very close at times, and appeared to be trying to dominate the conversation, as the two talked over each other in a few instances.

Joe Gandelman says that even though most Democrats now despise Lieberman, his support of McCain and criticism of Obama could have an effect on Jewish voters:

with Lieberman attacking him, essentially taking on the role of the Zell Miller of 2008, it could hurt Obama's efforts to make inroads with Jewish voters.

Many bloggers were waiting with great anticipation this morning for Larry Johnson's No Quarter site to post alleged video of Michelle Obama making racially charged comments, referring to "whitey," at a Trinity United Church meeting with Louis Farrakhan. Instead, the No Quarter blog's server appears to be overwhelmed with traffic while the video in question is nowhere to be found.

Progressive blogger Booman Tribune, a friend of Johnson's threatening to end that friendship if the video is posted, says the actual transcript will show Mrs. Obama saying:

Why'd he cut folks off medicaid?

Why'd he let New Orleans drown?

Why'd he do nothing about Jena?

Why'd he put us in Iraq for no reason?

Conservative bloggers, who you'd think would be most interested in a controversial Michelle Obama video if it existed, aren't impressed. Outside the Belway's James Joyner:

My BS detector, already pegged like a pony on this one, is about to melt. That "Republicans who have seen the tape of Michelle Obama ranting about 'whitey' describe it as "STUNNING" does not ease my worried mind.

More responses after the jump...

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new tell-all book, "What Happened," about his time in the Bush administration is receiving all kinds of attention from liberal bloggers. Most point to McClellan's assertion that the WH used propaganda to sell the war in Iraq and that McClellan felt he often gave "misleading" information to the public. But these political diatribes should always be put in proper context. Is McClellan heroic, or even brave, for trashing administration at a time when the president has record-low approval ratings? McClellan seems more opportunistic than anything, finally swinging back at officials who made him their fall guy and cashing in on an increasingly unpopular former boss. If he were truly brave, he would have resigned while the events chronicled in his book were happening, ala Paul O'Neill.

After the jump are the top five responses to the McClellan story from liberal bloggers:

Blog news aggregator Memeorandum's two leading stories this morning are Joe Lieberman's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal going after Democrats and Barack Obama on foreign policy, and Sam Stein's piece in the Huffington Post on how Chuck Hagel has been praising Obama while criticizing fellow Republican John McCain.

Neither Lieberman or Hagel have been shy about crossing party lines or attacking their own. Lieberman has special reason to go after Obama, the Dem frontrunner endorsed Ned Lamont, Lieberman's challenger in the 2006 Connecticut primary.

Blog P.I. looks at the two pieces and sees a disparity between conservative and liberal bloggers' focus:

I see conservative bloggers supporting the Lieberman op-ed, and liberal bloggers criticizing it. Meanwhile, there are plenty of liberal bloggers supporting the article about Hagel, but no right-leaning bloggers weighing in on the same.

That does seem about right to me. The left's approach to things they don't like about the other side is to engage - usually with anger, counter-research, and occasionally reporting. The right's approach is to ignore things about its own party or movement they don't find appealing, i.e. Hagel. They tend to reserve their passion for things they dislike that explicitly emerge from the political left.

Liberal bloggers are striking out against John McCain on two fronts today, pointing out contradictions in his own words and attacking the Republican establishment voices that are promoting his candidacy. In today's New York Times Bill Kristol writes of McCain's "exceptionalism," i.e. his potential to succeed despite the Republican dirge taking place nationally. Close followers of Kristol and his Weekly Standard magazine may note the dual meaning of "exceptionalism" here. Along with having the potential to be an electorally viable candidate this fall, McCain has long been a symbolic supporter of neo-conservative "American greatness," i.e. "exceptionalism," that Kristol and his magazine have long promoted.

The second line of attack comes from Glen Greenwald, who has unveiled the "Real McCain 2," a video montage of apparent policy contradictions from McCain that Greenwald says the "corporate media" refuses to report on. MyDD's Todd Beeton agrees:

Doesn't it sometimes seem as though John McCain is his own worst enemy? I mean, the guy says stuff and you gotta think, does he realize a camera's on? Does he realize he'll be held accountable for saying that? Unfortunately, however, many in the media (aka, McCain's base) don't feel terribly compelled to question McCain's inconsistencies and hypocrisies -- doing their job is hard!

One problem with that assertion: he uses NBC DC Bureau Chief Tim Russert calling out McCain on a contradiction as one of his strongest points of evidence in the video. But you can judge the rest of the video's value here:

Earlier I posted on how liberal bloggers have not deviated from their long held position that Barack Obama has effectively won the nomination. Many of those same bloggers are conducting a sobering conversation on how Obama overcomes his apparent electoral weaknesses in the face of Hillary Clinton's continued success in states like West Virginia, even if most analysts don't think the wins really "count."

The "how does Obama win the white vote?" may be the most pressing and practical, but at least of equal value in terms of intellectual curiosity is, "Why hasn't Clinton conceded yet?" The theories range from the benign assumption that she simply wants to ride it out, to conspiratorial notions that she wants to destroy the Democratic Party.

CQ Politics' own David Corn and the Huffington Post's Thomas Edsall both look at the possibility that Clinton is staying in the race to best set herself up for a 2012 run should Obama lose to John McCain.

The thing I've been wondering is, are there really Clinton supporters who, thinking rationally, would support a scenario in which she loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate count, but "wins" the nomination by capturing a necessary amount of superdelegates?

Taylor Marsh argues for just such a scenario:

It's time for superdelegates to think long and hard about who can win in November. Clinton keeps winning states Democrats need against John McCain. Obama's way to victory in November depends on reinventing the electoral map. It's risky at best.

Jerome Armstrong, a Clinton supporter, doesn't quite call on superdelegates to overturn the election, but does seem to make a VP argument by highlighting Obama's "serious problem" with voters:

Obama may not even break 30 percent, despite being practically anointed with the nomination?!?! Look, this is a partisan blog. Nearly everyone will come around to supporting the nominee here, but if Obama doesn't recognize the serious problem this presents in the world offline, and his supporters as well, I am speechless (which may not be a bad thing considering).

While much of the media declared Barack Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, progressive bloggers have been declaring the death of Hillary Clinton's campaign for two months. As Liberal Values' Ron Chusid says today:

Clinton's only remaining strategy is to keep trying to move the goal posts, but the referees from the DNC and the superdelegates are not buying it.

Nonetheless, her blowout win last night in West Virginia has much of the media once again discussing far-fetched scenarios in which Clinton takes the nomination. However, bloggers remain convinced the race is over, but are looking forward to how Obama can close what they see as his very real problems with white, "working class," voters. After all, one thing that seems lost in the post-primary analysis is that not only did Clinton hold her projected 30-point victory, she actually built on it. That's both out of character based on past primary victories and especially troubling for Obama supporters that it comes a week after their candidate was all-but-anointed the nominee.

Looking at how Obama has faired with white voters in past primary states, Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat finds:

West Virginia is not an anomaly. Obama's white working class problem is EAST of the Mississippi. It is not just Appalachia. It MUST be addressed. Calling West Virginia names is not going to solve the problem.

Obama has already begun to address this weakness. While Clinton was giving her West Virginia victory speech, Obama was in Missouri talking to swing state voters. The Moderate Voice notices this trend and advises:

The bottom line: it is an Obama vulnerability and if the Obama team is smart they'll make wooing blue collar workers an ongoing project. It is a weaknesss the GOP has most assuredly noticed.

Libertarians want their ideas, and to a lesser extent, their candidates, to be taken seriously. Ex-Rep. Bob Barr's entrance into the Libertarian Party primary will gin up some attention for the former lawmaker and get a small amount of press today, but he's not the candidate to carry libertarians into the position of being America's influential third party. However, the far more pressing question is whether he can steal enough votes to derail John McCain's chances in November? As I noted last month, Barr lacks the necessary qualities to be a viable presidential candidate.

Tech President also thinks Barr will have a tough time duplicating the enthusiasm of Ron Paul. And let's not forget that for all the money and rallies raised in Paul's honor, he's never been an electorally competitive candidate:

It’s unlikely that Barr will be able to replicate the successes of Ron Paul without a strong endorsement from Paul and a passing-of-the-torch moment. Paul supporters remain deeply loyal to their candidate, and seem gung ho in their efforts to transform the Republican Party through aggressive (some say annoying) means.

As Tech President notes, Barr's announcement comes at the same time Ron Paul's supporters are stating their intent to not give up on his campaign even if he cant' win the Republican Party's nomination. The Los Angeles Times looks into how Ron Paul supporters plan to disrupt the Republican convention.

Last month, Allahpundit downplayed the threat of Barr run, with one exception:

The only potential trouble spot is Georgia, where Barr is from and where Obama did surprisingly well among young white voters. He could factor into a close race there and knock a lean-McCain state into toss-up, but Georgia’s got a Republican governor and two Republican senators available to campaign if things get hairy. Where exactly is the threat here?

Hillary Clinton brought her case to USA Today arguing that she has the better general election demographics to take on John McCain in the general election:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

Since liberal bloggers have proclaimed the end of her campaign en masse, it's not surprising they are treating her latest effort as less than helpful. It's actually irrelevant whether her comments rise (or fall) to the level of racism. They will be interpreted as such by enough Democrats to be damaging to her cause. Of course, exactly what that cuase is at this point remains strikingly unclear.

John Aravosis says Clinton's "race baiting" could hurt African American turnout for Democrats in the fall:

There sure is a pattern emerging here. The Clintons are using racism to try to win the nomination against a black man. And our party leaders are okay with it. (Well, in all fairness, our congressional leaders said that Hillary had better not adopt a "negative tone." They never said she couldn't adopt a racist one.) Is it any wonder blacks aren't voting for Hillary? They shouldn't vote for Hillary, ever again. If our party continues to give a thumbs-up to race-baiting in American politics in the year 2008, race-baiting in our own party, I'd be very surprised if blacks came out for us in November. Nor should they.

Clinton has so enraged the blogging class that she turns even cool headed writers like Reason's Matt Welch into name-calling "Hitlery" bomb throwers. Although, being the reasoned voice that he is, Welch does offer a tantalizing prospect for those who dislike Clinton and are having trouble measuring that personal distaste against what is a fair argument for her staying in the race:

I sincerely hope Hillary takes it all the way to the convention, even if that means I won't be able to watch cable TV for a few months. Few prospects would delight me more than seeing the Clintons stand up on a national stage in front of the political party they've long dominated and then get showered with richly deserved boos.

Even Jennifer Rubin at the conservative Commentary website seems a bit shocked by it all:

All those suspicions about her preference for a potential one-term McCain presidency rather than a two-term Obama one are only going to increase with comments like this.

The liberal blogosphere has been discussing the presumed end of the Democratic primary for nearly two months. And now that the media has "caught up" with their analysis, bloggers are largely reveling in their own perceived insights, with many pointing to this video of NBC's Tim Russert declaring the primary over:







 
Open Left's Chris Bowers:

Even though she has some good states left--West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico--it is extremely hard to see how Clinton catches up now. Obama's overwhelming advantages should start to sink in with the media now, especially given that he beat expectations despite Wright and arugula and whatever. Those attacks are not working.

The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen says that by enduring the extended primary, it is Obama who has come out as the "fighter":

Oddly enough, it’s now Obama who can make use of Clinton’s talking points. He’s the one who can persevere. He’s the one who keeps fighting, even after having been knocked down. He’s the durable candidate who bounces back from adversity.

MyDD's Todd Beeton, a Clinton supporters, says it's time to recognize that Clinton cannot win:

I no longer see a real path to victory for Hillary Clinton and I now believe Barack Obama will be the nominee of our party.

Now this isn't in any way to suggest that Senator Clinton should drop out -- you know where I stand on whether this primary has been good or bad for the party -- it's only to say that I now believe that she will. I saw it on Bill Clinton's face as he stood behind Hillary during her speech tonight. I come to this realization with no small amount of disappointment but I'm left hopeful as well. I've seen a new man emerge in Barack Obama over the past few days.

The Drudge Report provides two links this morning to Republican primary results in North Carolina and Indiana. In headlines meant to convey intra-party dissatisfaction with John McCain, Drudge declares:

27% OF REPUBLICAN VOTERS AGAINST MCCAIN IN NORTH CAROLINA...

23% GO AGAINST MCCAIN IN INDIANA...

A similarly gleeful tone was taken against McCain by liberal bloggers and some in the media after the Pennsylvania primary, in which McCain received 73 percent of the vote, compared to 16 percent for Ron Paul and 11 percent for Mike Huckabee.

Even though Huckabee has technically withdrawn from the race, his name remains on the ballot and allows evangelical voters to state their preference for a candidate running on "Christian convictions," whether they specifically support Huckabee or not. And Ron Paul has not stopped running, despite acknowledging he can't become president.

Even though McCain has wrapped up his party's nomination, he's still facing two "opponents" on each primary ballot. And Mitt Romney made a return appearance on Indiana's primary last night, taking home 5 percent.

But the question is, are his primary results really that different compared to what George W. Bush received after effectively wrapping up the nomination against McCain in 2000? Bush was considered extremely well-liked by the party's base, and was the frontrunner going back at least till 1999, up through when McCain officially withdrew on March 9, 2000.

So, what happened in the primaries after that? Results from the Associated Press show that Bush's numbers in 2000 are largely comparable to McCain's in 2008. For example, even in the June 6th South Dakota primary, Bush fails to cross the 80 percent threshold. In fact, Bush rarely crossed the 80 percent threshold despite having effectively wrapped up the nomination after Super Tuesday. Some highlights:

Colorado: March 10, 2000
Bush: 64.71
McCain: 27.12
Keyes: 6.57
33.69 percent vote against Bush

Illinois: March 21, 2000
Bush: 67.40
McCain: 21.45
Keyes: 8.96
30.41 percent vote against Bush

Pennsylvania: April 4, 2000
Bush: 72.47
McCain: 22.36
Forbes/Bauer/Keyes: 4.92
27.28 vote against Bush

District of Columbia: May 2, 2000
Bush: 72.79
McCain: 24.37

North Carolina: May 2, 2000
Bush: 78.60
McCain: 10.86
Keyes: 7.85

Nebraska: May 9, 2000
Bush: 78.15
McCain: 15.11

Arkansas: May 23, 2000
Bush: 80.22
Keyes: 19.77

Idaho: May 23, 2000
Bush: 73.45
Keyes: 19.10
None of the Above: 7.45
26.55 vote against Bush

Montana: June 6, 2000
Bush: 77.59
Keyes: 18.32

New Jersey: June 6, 2000
Bush: 83.56
Keyes: 16.44

South Dakota: June 6, 2000
Bush: 78.22
McCain: 13.75
Keyes: 7.68

Pundits and bloggers almost unanimously agree this morning that the Democratic nomination battle is over and Barack Obama has won. But sometimes even when a match if effectively over, the opponents must nonetheless finish the game. And that's how Daily Kos' Markos looks at news that Clinton donated another $6 million of her own money to her campaign:

With $11.4 million of her own money invested in the race, and still likely facing campaign debts, this may compel her to stay in the race. She can raise money while spending little to win West Virginia comfortably. Of course, Bill could always do a couple of speeches to pay off that debt rather than have her small-dollar supporters foot the bill. Having made over $100 million the past eight years, and with unlimited earning potential, the Clintons could afford it.

With North Carolina already called for Obama, the media is so far treating tonight's primaries as a victory placing Obama even closer to an official clinch of the Democratic Party's nomination. The lingering question has been whether the extended primary season reveals Obama to be a flawed and weakened candidate heading into the general election. But exit polling from both Indiana and North Carolina show that the potential fallout may be the animosity between Clinton and Obama supporters.

Marc Ambinder:

Forget the horse race numbers for a moment: if the surveys are accurate, the polarization within the Democratic Party has reached critical levels.

Ambinder's analysis shows that nearly 60 percent of Obama supporters in Indiana says they would be "dissatisfied" if Clinton is the nominee, while "nearly two thirds" of Clinton supporters say the same thing about Obama.

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb:

Sounds to me like a best case scenario for McCain. Hillary probably isn't going to win this thing, and if she were to pull it off there's not much evidence that McCain could beat her in the fall. Right now she outpolls Obama across the board. So the hope is that the Democratic party becomes so divided that even in an atrocious year, a moderate and likable John McCain can steal the election. A split tonight pours $4.00 a gallon gasoline on that fire.

As Indiana and North Carolina voters head to the polls, most have their expectations set on narrow Clinton win in Indiana and a larger Obama victory in North Carolina. Does a 1-5 point Clinton win coupled with a 5-12 point Obama win increase the pressure on Clinton to dropout? Or, will any version of a split decision be enough for Clinton to continue?

The New Republic's Issac Chotiner says exit polls could affect how the media interpret the final results:

Remember, the night before Pennsylvania, many in the media were saying that a nine point Clinton win would not be so bad for Obama. Of course when the exit polls showed an even race at 5pm, all the pundits began to write Clinton off, only to later argue that Obama had disappointed.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey notes that the Clinton campaign is now 'lowering expectations" for North Carolina, saying a 15 point Obama victory is possible:

We can expect plenty of expectation-setting today, but this is ridiculous. If Hillary dropped seven points overnight, she will have some explaining to do, regardless of how she performs in Indiana.

And Big Tent Democrat says it will be nearly impossible for Obama to lose North Carolina but that such a loss would signal a sea change in the campaign:

I wrote that Barack Obama can win the nomination today by sweeping North Carolina and Indiana. But the reality is Obama can not lose in North Carolina. If he does, then he is in serious serious trouble. Why? Because in order to lose North Carolina, Obama will have to garner less than 30% of the white vote.

Most polls show Hillary Clinton holding onto a slim advantage in Indiana's upcoming primary, and Barack Obama maintaining a double-digit lead in North Carolina. But a new Insiders Advantage poll now shows Clinton leading Obama by two points in North Carolina. The results do come with major caveats: her lead is within the poll's margin of error and it could be an anomaly, as even Insider Advantage polls from earlier this week show Obama with a double-digit lead. Nonetheless, what happens if Clinton does win both primaries next Tuesday? She is still unlikely to significantly narrow the pledged delegate gap, but two surprising victories would almost certainly help her with super delegates, or at least stop the bleeding. But her real argument then effectively becomes the increasing likelihood that she wins the popular vote and can add in the far less convincing point that the states she's won equate to more electoral college votes in a general election.

Marc Ambinder pours some cold water on the poll's findings:

AN OBVIOUS question about the Insider Advantage numbers is that Obama receives only 65% of the black vote in the sample; also, blacks tend to make up about 40% of the SC electorate - they're 37% of the early voters -- and yet they're 25% of the electorate in the IA poll.

TPM's Eric Kleefeld says the numbers are "demonstrating just how badly the latest controversies have hurt Barack Obama."

Conservatives bloggers have been rooting for Clinton lately and are jumping on the poll results. Ed Morrissey:

If Obama cannot hold North Carolina, it will likely have superdelegates questioning whether the damage has gone too deep for recovery

And The American Spectator's Philip Klein:

[I]f he were to lose Indiana and win North Carolina just narrowly, it would really cement doubts about his canidacy. And if somehow he manages to lose in both states, he could actually see ths nomination slip away.

Bob Herbert says Jeremiah Wright has come to "bury" Obama, but offers this bit of truth about how Obama found himself the victim of Wright's ego tirade to begin with:

This whole story is about Senator Obama’s run for the White House and absolutely nothing else. Barack Obama went to Rev. Wright’s church as a young man and was blessed with the Christian bona fides that would be absolutely essential for a high-profile political career.

I don't think this is what Herbert meant, but doesn't that mean on at least some level Obama is getting what he deserves? Or, that he's reaping what he's sewn, to employ some contextual language. But Herbert says the greater danger to Obama's candidacy is that supporters will view this episode as evidence he just isn't tough enough to be president. Commentary's Jennifer Rubin says Obama missed his chance to effectively break with Wright:

There is evidently nothing Wright can say that would cause Obama to break, once and for all, with him. And no explanation comes to mind to help us understand how Wright concealed his world view from Obama for so long.

Meanwhile, Digby says the media, citing Hardball host Chris Matthews in particular, is making an unfair connection between Wright and Obama:

I completely agree that this is an attempt to silence liberal voices and make them an automatic political problem. That's certainly what we saw yesterday.

Yesterday, the conservative and liberal corners of the blogosphere weighed in on Rev. Jeremiah Wright's speeches before the Detroit NAACP, and later, the National Press Club. Today, the mainstream columnists and pundits weigh in with their takes on how damaging the Wright fallout will be to Barack Obama both in the primary and, presumably, general election. And now, bloggers are giving their takes to the media interpretations of Wright's remarks.

Eugene Robinson says he's "had it" with Wright:

The problem is that Wright insists on being seen as something he's not: an archetypal representative of the African American church. In fact, he represents one twig of one branch of a very large tree.

National Review's Greg Pollowitz says Robinson and other "pundits on the left" defended Wright a few weeks ago and have enabled the same speeches they are now decrying:

In a way, it's actually the fault of pundits/columnists like Eugene Robinson, Rachael Maddow and Keith Olbermann that Wright is still anissue. They tried to spin the Wright problem as a distraction rather than face the reality that his ranting would be a factor for voters.

The New York Daily News' Errol Lewis discovers that the woman responsible for organizing Wright's Press Club talk, Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, is actually a Hillary Clinton supporters. He found several comments on her personal blog praising Clinton and criticizing elements of Obama's campaign:

I don't know if Reynolds' eagerness to help Wright stage a disastrous news conference with the national media was a way of trying to help Clinton - my queries to Reynolds by phone and e-mail weren't returned yesterday - but it's safe to say she didn't see any conflict between promoting Wright and supporting Clinton.

The reaction from liberal bloggers and columnists to Rev. Jeremiah's remarks to the Detroit NAACP and this morning's speech at the National Press Club has been more muted than that of conservative bloggers. That certainly makes sense, as both ends of the blogosphere divide tend to largely ignore debate of their own "problems," while seeking to highlight the missteps and challenges of their ideological opposition. That said, some progressive and center-left voices are speaking out today and their reaction hasn't been much more cheery than that of the blogging right.

Talk Left's Jeralyn says:

At this point, I'd say the question is not whether, but how much, Wright is hurting Obama's campaign.

Time columnist Joe Klein has a love/hate relationship with liberal bloggers, even if he's far closer to their world view than those on the right. Klein says Wright is now a defacto political enemy of Obama:

Wright's purpose now seems quite clear: to aggrandize himself--the guy is going to be a go-to mainstream media source for racial extremist spew, the next iteration of Al Sharpton--and destroy Barack Obama.

Clinton supporter Taylor Marsh doesn't revel in the troubles Wright is causing Obama. Instead, she sees deep troubles facing the likely Democratic nominee:

If Reverend Wright cared at all about the man he has mentored spiritually he wouldn't be up front and center giving speeches that insult people like John F. Kennedy.

Rooting for your opponents is never a clean task. Many conservative bloggers initially rooted for Barack Obama because they enjoyed seeing Hillary Clinton knocked down from her pedestal and because they enjoyed seeing the diminished stature of Bill Clinton. But now that Obama is the frontrunner for the nomination, many of those same conservatives have flipped back into Clinton's corner. Rush Limbaugh has been fairly consistent is his rooting for Clinton in that he simply wants the nomination battle to go on because it in theory hurts the Democrats' chances of winning the White House this fall. But what of the conservative bloggers who change their preference depending on which Democrat is up and which is down? If you're given two options of political poison, it's probably not wise to hope against hope that one poison will turn out to have an antidote.

McCain supporter John Hawkins notes his own uncomfortable shift on who should win the Democratic primary, but nonetheless gives his 10 reasons why the superdelegates should pick Clinton:

So, when the MSM essentially adopts the Obama campaign's position and argues that Hillary should get out now, even though she can still win, I feel the chivalrous urge, counter-productive though it may be, to defend her just a bit -- especially since Hillary Clinton does have a very strong case to make to the Democratic superdelegates who will decide the winner of the race.

The American Spectator's Philip Klein cautions against fellow conservatives rooting for Clinton:

There's been a lot of Clinton love among conservatives over the past several weeks, because she has been weakening Obama and attacking him from the right. But we should never lose sight of how adaptable Clinton is, and how she will literally say whatever suits her purposes at a given moment.

While most analysts agree that Barack Obama will eventually secure his party's presidential nomination, a heated discussion is now taking place in the blogosphere as to whether or not he is still the strongest candidate to go up against Hillary Clinton. Pro-Clinton bloggers are questioning Obama's ability to "close the deal," while conservative bloggers are hoping, and believing, that Obama's recent struggles have revealed him to be a "new Adlai Stevenson" who is popular with the base, but can't win a general election.

Pro-Clinton blogger Taylor Marsh questions whether Obama has the will to capture the nomination:

The biggest problem Obama has is that he just doesn't seem a tough enough campaigner to close it out. Sure, he can send around negative mailers and have his talking heads impugn Clinton in conference calls, which he does. But when it comes to weighing in himself, it doesn't seem he likes to have his own signature on the slime he's moving.

National Review's Mark Steyn calls Obama a "novelty candidate" and says Democratic superdelegates have no good option:

There are no good choices for superdelegates right now. But, if you survey the landscape via the pages of the Times, the Hillary option looks like it comes with more potential for blowback. The media's over-glamorization of and over-investment in a weak novelty candidate will influence more calculations than the grim demographic arithmetic of Pennsylvania.

Not surprisingly, a Wall Street Journal op-ed from Karl Rove in which he outlines what he sees as Obama's weaknesses as a candidate is drawing huge blogger reactions. In Rove's piece he concludes:

Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.

Reaction to the Rove piece after the jump...

Liberal bloggers often decry the "advice" of their conservative counterparts, sometimes making accusations of "concern trolls" lurking within their ranks. Today, conservative bloggers are enjoying the fact that the Democratic nomination battle will continue at least another two weeks. And sure enough, some of them are offering their own advice and takes concerning the left's ongoing fight.

NRO's Lisa Schiffren:

Finally — by what reckoning has this primary fight been so nasty? So dirty? So mean? We have all seen much worse.  If anything, until this past month the questions and the charges have been much too dainty. Barack Obama is a stranger to most of the electorate. It is just fine to question any and all of his associations and political views. Failure to do so is malfeasance; failure to highlight his weaknesses as a leader would be some kind of suicide pact for an opponent.

Ed Morrissey says Clinton's first post-victory interview with NBC's "Today" show was "almost pitch-perfect," including a rhetorical point stating that Clinton leads in the popular vote, if the Michigan and Florida primary votes are counted:

It’s almost a pitch-perfect response. She does sound an odd note by blaming Obama for running negative ads after the debate in almost the same breath in which she defends her own advertising as part of the normal electoral process, but her answer to the Gray Lady has the elegance of the obvious. If people keep voting for her more than they do for Obama, why should she stop?

And Red State diarist Dan McLaughlin shows a vote total chart of the past 60 days showing Clinton with 4,261,708 votes to 3,821,668 votes for Obama, a difference of 440,040 votes in Clinton's favor:

Obama can probably still run out the clock, but he's going to end with the worst run-up to the convention since Gerald Ford in 1976. And the real finish line, of course, is in November.

The big media watching last night's Pennsylvania returns see an outcome that will result in the two Democratic candidates more furiously attacking each other, and likely hurting their party's chances to win the White House this fall. As Slate's John Dickerson put it:

For those in the Democratic Party who are worried that the race has gotten too ugly, it looks like it's going to get even uglier.

And he has a valid point. The media threshold for a Clinton victory was 10 points, which she met exactly. But past performance dictates that Clinton would have continued her campaign had she won by a single vote, hence her campaign's "A Win is a win," stance of the past few days. But to truly change the dynamic of the race, she likely would have needed a blowout victory in the range of 20 points. So, if the probably mathematical outcome of the race hasn't been fundamentally altered, the remaining question is, "How much does this hurt Obama and the Democrats after he secures the nomination?"

The New York Times offers this editorial analysis:

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

But if voters are in fact getting tired of it, why did they come out in substantially higher numbers than 2004, and why did they give Clinton a double-digit victory? Even if many voters nationally are "getting tired of it," most of them (including New York) already had a chance to cast their vote for one of the candidates in one of the two major parties. Still, while most progressive bloggers are pushing for Clinton to exit the race, some continue to argue that the protracted battle won't hurt their party's chances in the general election.

In a post titled, "Democrats Are Going to Be Fine," Matt Stoller says:

Don't get distracted by noise.  It's fun to bite your nails and fret about how Democrats are tearing themselves apart, which of course I heard plenty of on the various cable shows.  But whatever.  Obama's probably going to take the nomination as Clinton doesn't have enough to win, and her annoyed supporters will move to Obama after she endorses him.

More blogger reactions after the jump...

Chris Bowers wants the Democratic primary to end, but gives six, detailed reasons why it won't: Debates, Obama is still attacking Clinton, Clinton still leads in several upcoming states, Clinton is still raising significant funds, uncertainty in Obama created by the Clinton campaign and the "media narrative" that the Democratic Party is divided. 

Yesterday's Washington Post's Michael Leahy had a lengthy, page 1 story on the history of John McCain's temperament, chronicling both alleged and confirmed events. The story is well-balanced and serves its role of seeking to inform the electorate by containing interviews with McCain detractors and supporters. It even has follow-up interviews with alleged victims of McCain's temper who nonetheless support his presidential campaign. But the piece is generating outrage from several conservative bloggers who view it as another attack on the presumptive Republican nominee from an increasingly adversarial press.

The story's fallout is likely a win-win situation for McCain. There isn't much, if any, evidence to suggest that voters will turn against McCain because of past stories about his temper. It would almost certainly take a current example during the campaign of McCain losing his temper in an unseemly fashion for true fallout to occur. It's also likely to make "base" conservatives more comfortable defending him, even as many of them are still going through an adjustment period of sorts with McCain.

I don't agree with Hugh Hewitt's view that the story is an example of "liberal media bias," but he's correct here:

McCain ought to send a thank-you to Leahy. There's nothing like a wave of agenda journalism attacks on the GOP nominee to rally conservatives to him.

More blogger reactions after the jump...

Former Washington Post sports writer Michael Tunison was fired by the paper on Wednesday after disclosing his identity, and publishing pictures of himself intoxicated, on the Kissing Suzy Kolber blog (warning: not family friendly).

Tunison's firing has generated the sympathy of some sports blogs, and an evasive reasoning from Tunison himself who argued:

Upon sacking, I was told that I brought “discredit to the paper” with my choosing to drink at bars in my free time. Any good journo knows to keep the flask in the desk

Of course, "choosing to drink at bars in my free time" has nothing to do with why Tunison was fired. Tunison and his supporters may not like it, but news publications like the WaPo have standards of conduct that are often more stringent than typical employers, especially when it comes to freelancing. This Editor and Publisher piece outlines the WaPo's rules explicitly:

The official Post stylebook includes the following references to freelance work and standards of behavior:

“This newspaper is pledged to avoid conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest, wherever and whenever possible. We have adopted stringent policies on these issues, conscious that they may be more restrictive than is customary in the world of private business. In particular:

•We work for no one except The Washington Post without permission from supervisors. Many outside activities and jobs are incompatible with the proper performance of work on an independent newspaper.

•Our private behavior as well as our professional behavior must not bring discredit to our profession or to The Post."

As a blogger/reporter, several of my friends were surprised that I chose to not defend Tunison's conduct. But this is not a case of his free speech being limited, or being punished for having "fun in his free time." Working for a publication like The Washington Post is an exceptional opportunity, not a constitutional right. Every professional publication I've worked for has had clear guidelines about freelance work and outside blogging.

I've turned down several opportunities to do fun, outside projects because of those guidelines, as I'm sure is the case with countless colleagues. But it's also true that every publication I've worked for has awarded me ample opportunity to engage in freelance activities that provided a creative outlet that did not compete with my primary work duties. The difference between Tunison's experience and the experience of someone like me, is that I always sought prior permission before engaging in said freelance activities. I also never posted posted pictures of myself drunk, or otherwise intoxicated, while simultaneously referring to my current employer as the arbiter of a "dying medium." Whether Tunison was being paid for his outside work is irrelevant. The WaPo was well-within its rights to fire him, even if Tunison or his sports blogging friends think it was an unnecessary move.

Bloggers are speculating as to whether this YouTube video of Barack Obama speaking at a Raleigh, N.C. event shows the senator giving Hillary Clinton "the finger," when discussing Washington-style politics.

From the L.A. Times blog:

Watch the video right then. The presidential candidate raises his right hand to seemingly scratch his cheek. He doesn't use his whole hand though. Just one finger. Briefly. A couple of strokes. He pauses. He smiles slyly as the crowd begins to mumble and then he tries, somewhat distracted, to continue his remarks, smiling as the buzz spreads through the crowd. He'll no doubt deny it later, but that mischievous smile seems to confirm plenty. And the crowd sure sees something.

Blogger reaction after the jump...

Most liberal bloggers want Hillary Clinton to drop out of the Democratic primary, while conservative bloggers remain divided over whether Clinton or Obama is the weaker candidate against John McCain. Obama supporters are now trying to portray a Clinton victory in Pennsylvania by 5-10 points as a victory for Obama. Meanwhile, Clinton supporters, like the state's Gov. Ed Rendell, now say such a victory would be great for Clinton. Of course, the spin-free take is that a relatively close outcome in Pennsylvania was always the most likely outcome, as it comports with Obama's ability to narrow the gap in large states where Clinton started with a large, institutional lead. There are only two ways that next week's results will significantly change the dynamic of the race: If Clinton loses, she is all-but-certain to quit the race. And if Clinton wins by more than 10 points, the media will push a "Clinton revived" storyline that could affect the results in Indiana, but isn't likely to shift North Carolina away from the Obama column.

Still, bloggers are busily interpreting new polls showing Obama remaining around that five point margin.

AMERICAblog goes with the "it was supposed to be a Clinton blowout" theme.

Eric Kleefeld says one pollster believes Obama's "bitter" comments may not yet have finished cycling through the electorate:

Pollster Terry Madonna thinks the "small town" flap has yet to fully play out with the voters: "With the new commercial and the San Francisco statements, can she push the lead back to double digits?"

Meanwhile, Hot Air says many of the undecided voters in the polls are women, which should bode well for Clinton.

Andrew Sullivan says that maybe it's only the media elites who think it matters that Barack Obama might be an elitist. He just may be right. But, just to be clear: A senior editor with the Atlantic Monthly, with two Harvard degrees, is decrying the elitism of the upper-crust media's observations on Barack Obama's perceived elitism:

I'm beginning to suspect that the only segment left in America that genuinely feels that elitism is a problem for Obama are ... the elites. How funny is that?

Of course, not everyone thinks it's so bad to be an elitist.

Conservative bloggers believe they have found another opening to attack Barack Obama as being out of touch with average Americans. It's still unclear as to whether or not Obama's small town America comments are hurting him electorally, but it's clear Republicans are embracing the attack line now in advance of a likely general election matchup against Obama. There's even a new Facebook group called "Barack Obama is an elitist," asking people to change their profile pictures to this:




WSJ.com columnist John Fund says Barack Obama represents a recurring theme in Democratic presidential nominees: a "rookie" candidate whom voters adore in the primary season but who doesn't hold up under the intense scrutiny of a general election:

With 81% of voters telling pollsters the country is on the "wrong track," no one disputes Democrats can win in November. Still, it should be a matter of concern to them that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama currently trail John McCain in general-election matchups. Democrats would be wise to have more debates and sharper exchanges in the remaining primaries. It may help minimize the surprises they are likely to encounter this fall.

Other conservatives are jumping on the Obama "elitist" meme as well, with George Will making unfavorable comparisons between Obama and Adlai Stevenson. Which leads Michelle Malkin to joke:

It’s a good little review of late-twentieth-century liberal intellectuals, but dude: George Will is now calling him a snob.

Although Commentary's Jennifer Rubin sees the tactic posing a potentially big risk for Hillary Clinton:

With Snob-gate dominating the news cycle, Clinton now runs a risk. Should she fail to win by a comfortable margin after taking her best shot in the best possible news environment, Obama will claim to have survived the final desperate attack of a dying campaign.

Conservative and liberal bloggers remain almost singularly focused today on Barack Obama's "bitter" comments about American small towns and whether those comments should be interpreted as "elitist" or simply poorly constructed, but nonetheless accurate.

The biggest blogger reactions are to the new Quinnipiac poll showing Clinton holding a 6 point lead in Pennsylvania.

Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat breaks down recent polls and comes away predicting a sizable Clinton victory.

As to whether Obama's comments have hurt him in the state, or are being ignored by voters, Todd Beeton says:

My suspicion is that the truth is somewhere in between, but the fact is, even before the current controversy, Clinton was re-asserting herself in the state. Of course, what we've learned this primary season is that 1 week is an eternity, so if Obama's comments did hurt him in the state, he certainly has plenty of time to reverse it.

Below the Beltway's Doug Mataconis agrees:

With a week to go before the voting actually begins, and given how this race has gone from the beginning, how this will turn out is anyone’s guess.

George Will writes in his Newsweek column on how former Bob Barr could be to John McCain what Ralph Nader was to Al Gore in 2000 if the former Georgia congressman wins the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. The notion of a Barr presidential run has been picking up steam in libertarian circles and some blogs, but I think the estimation of his potential impact is greatly exaggerated.

First, Will cites the past presidential runs of George Wallace and Nader, and notes the highly successful fundraising efforts of Ron Paul in this year's Republican primary. The comparison is flawed at best. As Will himself notes, Wallace had three things going for him that Barr does not:

Wallace had the three traits that, when combined, make a third-party candidate formidable. He had a burning issue (national disorder that he blamed on the civil-rights revolution), a regional base (the South) and a vivid personality.

When Nader ran in 2000 he was a nationally recognized figure with more than 30 years of public service, best-selling books, and had the benefit of competing against an Al Gore campaign that many viewed as subpar in an election many also thought didn't matter.

Ron Paul did in fact raise a lot of money over the past year, but he didn't win enough votes to affect the Republican primaries in meaningful way, like Mike Huckabee did. Also, it wasn't Paul's libertarian views that drew his large swaths of supporters and "money bombs," it was his anti-war sentiment. Barr may also oppose the war, but he won't appeal to liberal and anti-war constituencies in the same way Paul did and continues to do so. Paul also manged to fend off a recent challenge to his Texas congressional seat, while Barr lost his in 2002.

I think most libertarians know if they really wanted to run a strong Libertarian Party candidate this year, that candidate would be Ron Paul. And even then, his true electoral impact would be minimal. But the money he could raise for building up the LP, would be very significant. But Paul has already ruled out a second run on the Libertarian ticket (he was their nominee in 1988).

Reason's Dave Weigel looks more at what Barr's candidacy might mean for the Libertarian Party and Stacy McCain interviews Barr over at the American Spectator website.

Marc Ambinder places Joe Biden on the shortlist for Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate choices. The rationale:

Just to be provocative, I'll throw out Joe Biden's name. His hidden asset is his connection with white, working class voters. His obvious asset is his foreign policy experience.

For what it's worth, Condoleezza Rice does not make the list of Ambinder's prospective picks for McCain (Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty leads that list).

The Biden suggestion is being met with mixed reactions from liberal bloggers. Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum offers a well-thought rationale for why the Biden choice would work.

Once he leaves the cozy confines of a primary where the anti-war base is enough to win, Obama is going to enter the chillier territory of a general election where he'll need to draw a bunch of votes from the ranks of people who once supported the war. He needs a good way to signal these folks that he doesn't consider them tainted forever by their erstwhile support, and what better way than by choosing a moderately hawkish senator who once favored the war but has since changed his mind?

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias, who incidentally supported the war during its popular beginnings, must never want to be president himself. He says Obama must pick someone who was against the war from the beginning:

But putting someone who voted for the war, even someone who did so half-heartedly and after making a quasi-promising effort to restrain Bush, seems to muddy way too much of the argument Obama is making.

My take: Obama has several good options. Jim Webb offers a great counter-narrative, Hillary Clinton could help unite Democrats (although I think that concern is overrated) and Kansas' Kathleen Sebelius is popular. But Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano could be too enticing too pass up. Imagine the negative coverage if John McCain is forced to battle for his home state in an election season where he will already have a tough enough time getting used to being the media's second favorite candidate.

Despite his left-leaning stances on most issues, Barack Obama has had a difficult relationship with the LGBT community. However, he recently sat down for an extended interview with The Advocate to discuss various issues, including the military's "don't ask, don't tell," policy. The first question posed to Obama was why he hasn't done more media spots with the "gay press":

I don’t think it’s fair to say silence on gay issues. The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough love. But basically, all press feels that way at all times. Obviously, when you’ve got limited amount of time, you’ve got so many outlets. We tend not to do a whole bunch of specialized press. We try to do general press for a general readership.

Andrew Sullivan has become somewhat notorious in the blogosphere for defending Obama on nearly every point of criticism. But gay equality is probably the issue of greatest concern to Sullivan. Instead of addressing the criticisms directly, Sullivan again blames the criticism on the influence of the Clinton's and says Obama's youth may the LGBT's community's greatest asset in an Obama administration:

More pertinent: look at his age. The sooner this country's leadership shifts generations, the more equality gay and lesbian people will have.

Pam's House Blend also gives Obama credit, saying he "speaks frankly" in the interview.


However, Jeff Fecke goes after Obama on the issue in a lengthy post entitled, "No, No, No, No, No."

Quite bluntly, I don't trust you to deliver on LGBT rights. The only thing that has allowed me to support you thus far is that I don't fully trust your opponent on LGBT rights either.

Arguably, the greatest electoral victory for the netroots was the defeat of Joe Lieberman in his 2006 Senate primary against Ned Lamont. Lieberman went on to win the general election, but has retained the scorn of liberal bloggers. The day before the primary vote, Lieberman's campaign charged Lamont's campaign with crashing their campaign website. Now, an FBI investigation reveals that it was in fact Lieberman's own campaign who was responsible for crashing their own site:

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.

Needless to say, liberal bloggers are on the war path.

Daily Kos diarist Scout Finch:

Will Joe Lieberman publicly apologize to Ned Lamont?  And when exactly is the investigation going to begin into Lieberman's election tactics?

Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher:

Anyone who reported on this and doesn't want to give the same amount of time to re-evaluating this embarrassment, and what it reflects about our media system that this kind of thing could happen, should find themselves another profession.

Former CNN Internet reporter Jackie Schechner chimes in at the liberal AMERICAblog as well.

The liberal website Raw Story previews an upcoming anti-John McCain biography by highlighting an alleged personal insult McCain issued towards his wife while running for the Senate in 1992. The book's author, Cliff Schecter uses the incident to suggest McCain could not control his temper during diplomatic relations should he be elected president. Of course, that's a bit of a stretch. But if the incident is true, it could turn off some socially conservative and independent voters.

Several liberal blogs are having fun with the allegation, while AMERICAblog asks its readers to buy the book and help boost Schecter's Amazon rankings, where it's currently ranked # 8,691 in books.

Liberal bloggers are going after John McCain record on race, both real and perceived. Over the weekend, Matt Stoller accused McCain of "dog whistle politics" for delivering a speech that was 40 miles from the murder of a civil rights worker in 1964. It was a stretch at best, with no real supporting evidence. In fact, Stoller later updated his post to correct himself. Matthew Yglesias had his own strangely worded post on Tuesday essentially accusing McCain of highlighting his military record as a roundabout way of highlighting his status as a white mail. Or, as Yglesias put it, an "identity politics counter-narrative steeped in nostalgia." These are the kind of baseless accusations that can devalue real problematic incidents by desensitizing the public to charges of racism in general.

Of a more substantive nature, Markos Moulitsas links to video of McCain attempting to defend his record on voting against, then for, making Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a state holiday. McCain's reasoning is awkward and doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The harder truth is likely that many conservatives opposed making MLK's birthday an official holiday because he was not a traditional American icon, i.e. a war hero, politician, etc. While there is a fair limited government argument to be made here, it's also only fair to acknowledge that this reasoning was in fact likely "dog whistle" politics. At the very least, it seems insensitive and shortsighted in hindsight.



Hat Tip: James Taranto

Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat says John McCain will win Florida's 44 electoral votes this fall if national Democrats don't allow state Democrats to hold a binding do-over vote before June:

Let me say this, that if Obama and the Democratic Party force themselves to exclude Florida and Michigan from the Democratic Convention, as Howard Dean seems prepared to do (though I must add that Kos is absolutely wrong about Dean's position on FL and MI. Dean favored revotes - OBAMA blocked the revotes), kiss Florida and Michigan goodbye for November. Chalk up 44 electoral votes for John McCain right now. There is STILL time to fix this - with party run revotes.

Omar Fadhil on when, how and why Iraqis will be paying attention to the U.S. presidential election:

While I expect the silence of the media and politicians to last through the coming months, the average Iraqi will begin to get more and more interested in the subject. From previous experience, I believe this will become visible once there are only two candidates competing for the presidency. That’s when the clock will — finally — start ticking in Baghdad.

Alex Massie outlines a compelling case for Virginia's Jim Webb as Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate and concludes:

Perhaps it's the romantic in me that finds Jim Webb the most appropriate subordinate for Barack Obama - politically and historically. If circles are to be closed they might as well be closed properly and completely. And what better symbol could there be for a campaign largely predicated upon symbolism?

This new Rasmussen Reports poll showing McCain with a lead, albeit "statistically insignificant," over both Barack (46% to 45%) Obama and Hillary Clinton (45% to 42%) in Democratically-leaning New Jersey, should stoke sentiment that Clinton's continued presence in the race is only helping McCain.

From Blue Jersey:

One notable result is that the percentage of people who view McCain favorably is 61, Obama 58, and Clinton 50. Obama has been improving, Clinton falling, and McCain remaining the same.

TPM's Erik Kleefeld notes how the polling runs counter to Clinton's perceived strengths:

It's interesting to note that Hillary Clinton has a home-region advantage here, but is actually performing behind Barack Obama against McCain — potentially putting a dent in the Clinton camp's argument about being more electable in Democratic base states.

Red State looks at more Rasmussen polls showing positive traction for McCain.

There has been plenty of discussion in the blogosphere over the past week as to whether Hillary Clinton's continued presence in the Democratic primary is bad for the party. Part of that discussion is a debate over whether the discussion itself is being largely created and circulated by the media.

But today's story by Jackie Calmes in the Wall Street Journal (the most discussed political story this morning in the blogs and generating more than 700 Diggs) shows that whether or not the media has pressured Clinton and her surrogates, a snowball effect is beginning to take shape:

Slowly but steadily, a string of Democratic Party figures is taking Barack Obama's side in the presidential nominating race and raising the pressure on Hillary Clinton to give up.

Describing the Clinton campaign as being caught in a Catch 22, the Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman says:

Her campaign, in various news reports, has made it clear that it seeks to raise Obama’s negatives so that by election time he is unelectable. But the only way to do that is in a way that elicits howls of protest from Obama supporters, hardens party divisions — and raises Clinton’s OWN negatives. A nomination achieved by politically dismembering Obama would be a hallow one. And if she won the general election, she’d likely take office a polarizing figure.

 
 NRO's Jim Geraghty adds:

Obama's picking up speed among the Superdelegates, but Hillary thinks they can nickel and dime their way to narrowing the gap among regular delegates.

In a video posted over at Think Progress, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer tells Fox News that John McCain's talk about being more cooperative with foreign governments is really all about a "hidden agenda" to make the United Nations irrelevant. Does that really qualify as a conspiracy theory, or simply an assumed truth? After all, the U.N. has stood against most U.S. military ventures in recent times under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with the notable exceptions being the war in Afghanistan and the first Gulf War. Combine that with the diminished authority of NATO since the end of the Cold War and it makes sense for a candidate like McCain, who is not opposed to military interventionism to propose the creation of a league of democracies.

If Mike Bloomberg doesn't end up as Barack Obama's vice presidential candidate, he should certainly be appointed minister of propaganda by any future commander-in-chief. The man knows how to generate endless media excitement while doing virtually nothing. While there was no evidence of any actual grassroots enthusiasm for a Bloomberg presidential run, the national press remained taken with the notion until Bloomberg officially said he would not run last month.

And now, Marc Ambinder reports that the Obama campaign asked Bloomberg to introduce him before Obama's economic speech today in NYC and that Bloomberg accepted. That simple, careful introduction has ignited speculation on both the left and right blogosphere over what a Bloomberg vice presidential run would mean. In short, both sides largely agree it would be more meaningful than an independent Bloomberg presidential run.

Both conservative and liberal bloggers are having a field day with Hillary Clinton's false claim to have dodged sniper fire during a mid-90's visit to Bosnia in her former capacity as first lady. Aside from the many accusations that Clinton is simply a "fabulist," many other bloggers are dissecting just how much this will damage her already longshot chances at winning the nomination.

Steve Benen wonders why Clinton would push the issue in the first place:

To reiterate a point I raised over the weekend, this is a classic unforced error. This may seem excessive, but without any exaggerations at all, Clinton already has more foreign policy experience than five of the last six presidents (including her husband). She simply doesn’t need to embellish at all — her background is already sufficient for a credible presidential campaign.

Daily Kos raises questions about Clinton's potential competency as commander-in-chief:

If Hillary Clinton lied about snipers in Bosnia because of sleep deprivation (doubtful, given it's a lie she's said at least four times), then what will she do when she gets that call at 3 a.m.?

And on the right, the assessments aren't any less forgiving.

Michelle Malkin:

This is how a Clinton—take your pick: Hillary, Bill, or Chelsea–makes it through the day. Better living through self-delusion.

Strange and unexpected things can happen in presidential campaigns, particularly when it comes to a candidate's perceived strengths. In the past two weeks we've seen John McCain's foreign policy knowledge challenged, Hillary Clinton's experience called into question and Barack Obama's Christian background turned into a potential liability.

And now, we have liberal bloggers bemoaning the positive treatment John McCain receives from the media. Specifically, this Neal Gabler op-ed in the New York Times today, which suggests the media is unnaturally fond of McCain because of his "postmodern" ironic detachment. Seeing a Republican candidate for president favored by the media is sort of like seeing a Democrat endorsed by the NRA. Of course, McCain is not the first Republican presidential candidate to be treated favorably by the press. George W. Bush seemed to have it easier than Al Gore in 2000, and Ronald Reagan was nothing if not a master of image control. If you're a supporter of Hillary Clinton, you may have a legitimate argument to be made that she has been treated less fairly than the other candidates. But Barack Obama has received the most favorable coverage of any candidate running. And while the press certainly seemed to be rooting for McCain to win the Republican primary, we have yet to see how he'll be viewed when running against a Democrat. What should be really interesting is watching the national press corps forced to choose sides in an Obama/McCain matchup.

Ankle Biting Pundits author Patrick Hynes retains the McCain campaign as a client. So, any endorsement of his client's candidacy has to be viewed through that prism. Nonetheless, Hynes suggests that while Iraq remains an unpopular issue with much of the public, McCain is still seen as the most viable commander-in-chief because his stance is clear on the war, as opposed to his opponents:

[E]ven if they disagree with his position on Iraq: His position is clear and coherent. The Democrats’, especially Sen. Obama’s, isn’t. Americans will abide a competent leader with whom they disagree. They will not abide a politician whose position on a transcendent issue is a confused jumble at best.

Liberal bloggers have professed a previously undocumented fondness for the McClatchy Company's Washington bureau every since Bill Moyers' PBS special last year documenting that the news organization provided skeptical investigative reporting that was largely ignored during the run up to the war in Iraq.

Today, McClatchy offers evidence that the cease-fire between U.S. forces and Muqtada al Sadr is coming to an end. McClatchy's headlines places the word "success" in scare quotes when referencing the surge of U.S. forces. That's arguably responsible journalism, but also arguably seeking to editorialize against something that has to some extent become accepted as fact, even by many war opponents. But the larger question of intellectual consistency is: can anti-war bloggers herald a downturn in Iraqi security when they have previously rejected out of hand any evidence of the surge's possible success?

Lots of blogger discussion today concerning David Brooks' unscientific assertion that Hillary Clinton now has only a five percent chance of winning the Democratic Party's nomination:

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

TNR's Michael Crowley:

I think it's quite possible that Hillary simply doesn't think Obama is electable. (See Bill and "all that other stuff.") Now that may be a delusion. But if you believed it to be true, you would soldier ahead. She also does have quite a lot of passionate supporters cheering her on, and is roughly tied with Obama in national polls; that's not easy to ignore.

Ann Althouse rightly calls out the hypocrisy of Brooks' assertion that a continued Clinton campaign is the "audacity of hopelessness:

How is what's she's doing any different from what every other candidate does as long as there's a chance? To say it's "selfish" or "narcissistic" to think you're special is to criticize everyone who has what it takes to campaign for the presidency.

Ed Morrissey adds:

Beyond that, the Hillary-must-quit contingent seem to forget one thing: she’s still winning states, and people still want to vote for her. Obama hasn’t won the nomination, nor will he win it in the primaries. Why should she quit under those circumstances? By all indications, Hillary will likely win almost all of the upcoming contests, with just North Carolina as a potential exception.

And though I didn't get around to linking it yesterday, Marc Ambinder's fisking of the VandeHei/Allen piece on Clinton's fatalistic campaign is well worth reading.

The Newshoggers blog attempts to shoot down the notion that Hillary Clinton is staying in the Democratic primary in the hopes that Barack Obama will lose the general election to John McCain, thus setting up a Clinton rerun in 2012:

So the traditional response to a single iteration jackpot, single winner, complete losers game is to go all in for as long as one has the resources to play in the hopes that something shakes the right way for you just as the jackpot is declared.  The odds suck, but bad odds are better than zero odds.  So I don't think Clinton is playing for 2012 as that scenario does not make a whole lot of sense, she is playing for now with a good strategy given a horrendous prospect of success.

Not likely, but that doesn't stop Kara Swisher from offering up some anecdotal evidence suggesting a comparatively larger growth trend for the liberal website:

According to data from Nielsen Online, for example, the Huffington Post’s traffic–as measured by monthly unique visitors in the U.S., at home and work–has more than tripled since February of 2007, when it had about 1.1 million unique visitors; by February of 2008, unique visitors had risen to 3.7 million.

In that same month, the Drudge Report had 3.4 million (it had 2.75 million in February of 2007).

In a smart and detailed post, Chris Bowers explains how Obama can rebound from his recent drop in the polls, but still thinks his overall prospects aren't likely to completely bounce back:

Now, this isn't the first time Obama has taken a hit, and it is entirely possible that this current downturn is yet another in a series of entirely temporary negative stretches for his campaign. However, in this particular case, I think it is more likely that Obama has suffered some lasting electoral damage.

Obama supporters are also taking some criticism from Paul Starr at the American Prospect blog, Tapped, who argues that by not allowing a re-vote in Michigan, Obama supporters may be actually hurting their candidate in the long run:

[T]he burden for the failure falls clearly on Senator Obama’s supporters, who, perhaps understandably, didn’t want to risk the psychological impact of a defeat in Michigan at the end of the primary season.

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

Meanwhile, conservatives continue to salivate over Obama's recent drop in the polls in prospective match-ups against both Clinton and John McCain. Over at Red State, Erik Erickson theorizes that Democratic superdelegates will turn on Obama if they don't see an end to the drop in his poll numbers after the Jeremiah Wright story:

[B]ecause of the Clintons effective deployment of the race card within the Democratic Primary, super delegates are getting nervous. They know they were put in place to avoid the party going far left. And they are worried that Obama, the unknown quantity, could be painted as far left by the GOP. The Democrats want to win this year, and, at the end of the day, they'd rather go with the known quantity with a history of winning.

The criticism of John McCain's foreign policy knowledge, or lack thereof, was escalated to a new level today. Talking Points Memo curator Josh Marshall offers an editorial making the bold argument that the one remaining candidate with actual military experience is the least qualified to serve as commander-in-chief:

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain's qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

While liberals would almost certainly reject this comparison, their new attack line against McCain comes from one of Karl Rove's own strategies: attack an opposing candidate on his or her perceived greatest strength. Republicans have used that to great effect against Democratic veterans like John Kerry and Max Cleland. It's not that surprising that Democrats are getting comfortable attacking McCain on his foreign policy credentials. But it's still unclear whether the public at large will agree with that criticism. But so long as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama leave the more direct attacks to people like Marshall, there's a better chance of the attack line succeeding or at least helping to solidify Democratic voters, many of whom are not instinctively comfortable going after McCain on military issues.

To have your name, or story, mentioned on Rush Limbaugh's radio show is sort of like having it mentioned on the Drudge Report. If you're a conservative, you've likely produced something that aligns with their political leanings. If you're a liberal, it's probably because you've said something they found to be outrageous.

Nation correspondent Ari Melber was on C-SPAN earlier this week discussing what he believes was a dishonest, and potentially illegal, effort by Limbaugh ("Operation Rush,") to get Republicans to crossover in the Ohio Democratic primary to vote for Hillary Clinton. Word got back to Limbaugh, and he went after Melber during yesterday's broadcast.

Jonathan Martin talks to GOP strategists who say the Jeremiah Wright story has now created an opening for the GOP to effectively take down Barack Obama, something they admittedly struggled with until this point. Of course, getting strategists from one party to criticize another party's candidate isn't tough work, but the sentiment is resonating in the conservative blogosphere, especially with a new Reuters poll showing McCain leading both Obama and Clinton and outside the margin or error.

Michael Goldfarb:

Obama has been fatally wounded, and yet the Democratic party superdelegates, who exist solely to prevent such a catastrophe in a close primary battle, can do nothing about it. If they hand the nomination to Clinton, the party loses the black vote, and Clinton cannot win without those votes.

Fatally wounded? That's fatally wounded logic when we're still more than seven months away from the election. Obama may prove to be an Achilles, but he could also show a sustained ability to fight back from adversity.

Reason's David Weigel makes a similar point to one I've previously made here about the lack of depth to the "Obama isn't a patriot" meme. However, pointing out the logical failings of an argument by no means guarantees it won't resonate with voters:

Obama's own "anti-America" moments in this chain have been limited to not wearing a flag pin and not putting his hand on his heart while singing the the national anthem. (The photos that circulate over e-mail claim this was actually during the Pledge, which isn't true.) The dynamite evidence in United States v. Obama (2008) is the rhetoric of Obama's wife and his pastor.

Earlier today I was at the annual Take Back America conference, hosted by the Campaign for Americas Future. It's the liberal counterpart to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Today's agenda included a panel discussion by five leading voices in the online progressive community: Ari Melber, Chris Bowers, Tracy Russo, Digby, Terrance Heath and Pam Spaulding. Highlights after the jump...

The post's headline is intended sarcasm, but it also needs to be said as both sides of the blogosphere, and the media at large, remain breathless over the true meaning of Barack Obama's ties to his pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

There are silly rationalizations from the left, like Ezra Klein's defense of Wright arguing a double-standard for white and black political/religious extremism.

And there are countless silly examples from the right as well, stockpiling "evidence" that Obama is "toast," and not a true patriot because he doesn't wear flag lapel pins, and because his wife sometimes says ungracious things.

However, some other conservative bloggers are hitting a larger point that Obama himself has all but confessed: his association with the Trinity United Church of Christ was a calculated effort to gain credibility amongst inner-city blacks, with whom Obama would be working as an organizer. NRO's Lisa Schiffren often drifts off the deep end of political discourse, but her point here sticks:

[H]e must have come to understand that, to succeed in politics, it would help to acquire the trappings of being a good Christian — regardless of what he may or may not have personally believed. It is generally beyond the pale to question a public figure's personal religious commitment (Democrat's, anyway) —and I don't personally care whether he is a genuine Christian (whatever that may be) or not. But, if he was there to absorb the spiritual stuff, he can't have missed the political message, since they were pretty closely intertwined.

The point taken in that context makes Obama neither admirable nor abhorrent. What it does show is that he can be diminished in stature when it is revealed that for all his measurable gifts, he is still just another politician at the end of the day.

The Moderate Voice's Paul Silver says the media's intensified focus on Barack Obama's pastor is taking away from more important stories - like how a President Obama, McCain, or Clinton, would actually govern.

There's a new entry in what has been a long-standing feud between the readers of the conservative website Little Green Footballs and the netroots' standard bearer, Daily Kos.

LGF points to an entry by Kos diarist "professorfate," entitled, "The United States needs to be invaded - not just invaded - occupied," for Americans to give up their alleged colonial aspirations. From the post:

Unfortunately, America is at a point that to be able to really feel again, to regain that compassion, it needs to be invaded and occupied in the same way that we have invaded and occupied Iraq. Then there might be a greater chance that Americans will be more reluctant to accept the invasion of another country. Maybe seeing and feeling the same level of destruction that we have inflicted on Iraq, at least the American public will understand why invading another country is unconscionable except in the most dire circumstances - which means after that country has directly attacked the United States. And that has not happened since World War II.

Yes, it's a ridiculous post based on unsound reasoning. But what LGF failed to note is that he post only has 61 comments as of this posting (not very much for a Kos entry) and the majority of those are critical of the post. In fact, there are currently more than 200 posts at LGF commenting on the Daily Kos diarist's post. With its own mixed history of being on the receiving end of unfounded allegations, you'd think LGF might have shown a little more restraint on this one.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban likes to blog in his spare time. Or, maybe it's that he likes to run a NBA team in his spare time when he's not blogging. Either way, he has an insightful piece today on the dangers of mainstream publications starting, and attempting to brand, their own blogs. 

Before this becomes an exercise in solipsism, I'll just say that Cuban's points are largely correct, but there are exceptions. Marc Ambinder calls his site a blog and is widely respected in the grassroots blogosphere. Same for those Politico guys cited in my last post. If there's a more narrowly defined rule to follow it's probably this: media professional who blog for traditional publications have the best odds for success when they add substance to the blogger conversation instead of simply trying to interject themselves into that conversation. But here's Cuban's take:

If you feel that you must offer this product or service as a means of "keeping up" or as a checklist item that you must have for competitive reasons, then do everything possible to brand the product or service in a manner that segregates it from the masses. Perception is reality. If you can leverage your existing brand to create the perception that yours is different from the masses in some meaningful way, then you must do everything you can to do so.

Creating a perceived differentiation can take the form of promoting better execution or quality of the product or service, or it may be something as simple as just branding it with a different name than the mass product or service.

Failure to do so will pull your brand down to that of the masses or elevate the masses to a position of being better able to compete with you.

Former Democratic VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro has refused to back down after igniting controversy yesterday following her assertion that Barack Obama owes his political ascension to his race. In a follow-up interview with the Daily Breeze, Ferraro offers this take:

"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," Ferraro said. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Though the Democratic nomination fight has seemingly become a battle over which campaign has to fire the most advisers, it's hard to imagine how Clinton benefits from keeping Ferraro around. It certainly can't be to remind voters that the last woman on a presidential ticket was part of one of the larger losing landslides in history. And does Clinton really want to remind voters of her campaign's rocky relationship with black voters during this primary? Though maybe it's not African Americans she's trying to reach out to. Some bloggers believe Clinton's continued loyalty to Ferraro may be a signal to white voters.

Daily Kos diarist DHinMI:

Ferraro is trying to appeal to insecure white women who believe they've put in their time and now they're entitled to get their woman president, and nobody should be allowed to take away their presidency and give it to the Black guy who hasn't earned it.

The New Republic's Issac Chotiner:

Surely she had become an embarassment to the Clinton campaign, I thought; we won't be seeing her much anymore.

But wait, here she is on Good Morning America (according to Time's summary):

Said “every time someone opens their mouth” to speak about Obama they are accused of racism. Stood by the comments, and is “absolutely not” sorry she made them.

She stopped by CBS's Early Show, too; clearly the Clinton folks see some benefit in stirring up these issues.

While speculation continues to mount that Eliot Spitzer will resign, several liberal bloggers are turning their attention to the Bush administration's Justice Department, asking whether there were political motives in play concerning Spitzer's alleged involvement in a prostitution ring. Some liberal bloggers are acknowledging that Spitzer may have committed a crime, even if they don't like the way the alleged incident was investigated. But others are using the news as a chance to turn their focus instead to the White House.

Over at Open Left, Matt Stoller sees signs of political payback:

Spitzer is clearly one figure willing to stand up to Bush.  He is a arrogant and committed this petty crime, but I don't have a huge amount of confidence in the Bush DOJ. 

Jane Hamsher lists seven questions and points of contention about the investigation and concludes:

There are all kinds of things about this that just don't pass the smell test.

While Digby echoes the sentiments of many Democrats and progressives who believe the DOJ cannot be taken at its word:

Far be it for me to mistrust the Bush Justice department or think they might have partisan motives, but it might be worth asking whether there might be a little partisan prosecutorial hanky panky involved. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

Tonight's homework for yours truly: Right Wing News scribe John Hawkins outlines the habits of not very successful bloggers. The abbreviated version:

1. They're just not very good
2. They don't cover interesting material
3. They're not unique enough
4. They don't network
5. They don't promote their work
6. They're not consistent enough. They take days off.
7. Dong their initial promos too early
8. They don't link out enough
9. They don't post enough each day
10. They don't hang around long enough

Josh Marshall looks at this Globe and Mail piece which reports on the Obama/NAFTA flap. According the piece, Canadian Prime Minister's chief-of-staff Ian Brodie reportedly told journalists it was a Clinton staffer who called to reassure the Canadian government that promised changes to NAFTA in the Democratic primary were not to be taken seriously. Of course, the story coming out of that discussion originally claimed it was an Obama staffer who made the call, which the Obama campaign strenuously denied:

So was Hillary bashing Obama for what her own campaign had done? Did they both do it? Was it all a set up? I think the overarching story here is that friendly governments should not interfere in our elections.

NBC's First Read and the New York Post both raise the possibility of Al Gore entering the debate over Florida and Michigan's delegates in the Democratic primary. Since both states violated national party rules, their delegates are currently excluded from this summer's party convention. But with the primary battle dragging on, there is a growing debate over whether there should be a second, sanctioned vote in each state, allow the delegates to be seated, or leave things as is. It's not just an academic exercise. Clinton and Obama supporters will push their respective cases because the nomination could literally hang in the balance of what happens with these two states.

The Corner's John Derbyshire thinks Gore can't help but get involved:

He'll answer the call even if he doesn't much want to. And he does much want to.

But James Joyner pours cold water on any notion of Gore stepping in, not to help the party, but to make himself the nominee:

I tend to agree with Derbyshire that Gore would relish the idea of being the savior. He might well be able to get the nomination if there’s no clearcut winner after Pennsylvania and he’d get to avoid the mess of a long primary battle. But I’m not sure how this saves the party. Indeed, both Obama and Clinton supporters would rightly feel cheated if Gore swooped in and was handed the nomination.

Kevin Drum tells Democrats worried about a fractious and drawn out primary campaign to "chill out." As I've previously noted here, there's an argument to be made that a continued primary will leave Clinton or Obama battle-tested before the guaranteed Republican attacks officially begin:

Like a lot of people, I'm not very happy about the direction the Democratic campaign has taken, but the idea that it's going to wreck the eventual winner's chances in the fall seems pretty far fetched. It takes more than a few nasty exchanges to do that. And who knows? By keeping Dems in the spotlight, it might even help them. Stranger things have happened.

John Judis looks at what he considers Obama's weakness among certain sects of the Democratic electorate (poor whites, women, Hispanics and "older" voters):

Obama has to worry about the Reagan or Bush Democrats, white working class voters who used to be Democrats, but often back Republican presidential candidates. Bill Clinton won many of these voters back; but Al Gore lost them in 2000 and John Kerry lost them in 2004.

Ezra Klein largely agrees and adds:

This, then, is the worrying portent for Obama: Clinton's demonstrated strength in Ohio and her likely edge in Florida suggest that though most general election polls show Obama performing better against McCain, she may perform best where it matters.

And MyDD's Jonathan Singer wonders how much union endorsements are helping Obama:

I look forward to a post-mortem on the impact of the union organizations Obama is supposedly getting out of the many endorsements he's received. They just really don't seem to be delivering for him, although maybe the point is that the boots on the ground the endorsements have given him have allowed him to do as well as he is.

While the netroots continue to debate the pros and cons of an extended primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, conservative bloggers are all-but-unified in their hopes for a protracted contest on the left. Their hope is that the longer the two Democrats fight it out, the more diminished their chances are for the general election. Delaying the general election contest also gives presumptive Republican nominee John McCain more time to solidify his support on the right and to narrow the substantial fundraising gap.

NRO's Jim Geraghty says some of his Republican readers in Texas and Ohio are crossing party lines to support Clinton, and adds:

Rush is urging his listeners to vote Hillary, too. This letter contends it is because he wants the weakest candidate, but the bottom line is that the longer the Democratic primary goes on, the more Hillary and Obama spend their resources hitting each other instead of McCain.

 American Spectator's Philip Klein takes a nuanced view of the possible outcomes:

If Hillary wins both Ohio and Texas and stays in the race, the Democrats keep bludgeoning each other for another few months. If Obama knocks her out of the race tonight, the Clinton era is over. Sounds like a win win to me.

The conservative blog Just One Minute catches some of the traditional media in a bit of revisionism  that appears to benefit Obama. First, the material:

"Senator Clinton got it wrong. She didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate. Jay Rockefeller read it, but she didn't read it. I don't know what all that experience got her because I have enough experience to know that if you have a National Intelligence Estimate, and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, 'You should read this, this is why I'm voting against the war,' that you should probably read it," Mr. Obama said to thunderous applause.:

Seems innocuous, but...

But Mr. Rockefeller voted for the war. It was Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, now retired, who chaired the committee in 2002, urged colleagues to read the briefing paper and voted against the war.

Obama spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki insisted that "there was nothing intentionally misleading" about Mr. Obama's statement. The core issue, she said, was whether Mrs. Clinton made a correct and informed decision. "I don't think the people in the audience care who Jay Rockefeller is," she said.

That certainly seems believable enough. Presidential candidates give a lot of speeches and say a lot of things they must later correct. With John McCain, we've seen his verbal gaffes twisted out of context ("100 years in Iraq") and we've seen them simply treated with amusement for the harmless miscues they are ("I'm a conservative, liberal Republican'). 

But in this case, Just One Minute tracks the time line of how Obama's inaccuracy was treated by the media. First, the AP runs the initial telling as is. But in the Los Angeles Times' version, the inaccuracy is removed without providing proper context, with the New York Times following suit.

One more problem: Just One Minute additionally notes that even if Obama has used Graham's name, the anecdote would still be misleading. In Graham's own words, he voted against the Iraq war resolution because he didn't believe it went far enough:

Graham's basic theme was actually quite hawkish - he worried that the resolution did not include other terrorists groups and that the focus on Iraq was misdirected:

They say that passing this resolution is the equivalent of if the Alllies had declared war on Hitler. I disagree with that assessment of what this lesson of history means. In my judgment, passing this resolution tonight will be the equivalent of declaring war on Italy.

Hillary Clinton has a blog post up at The Huffington Post on child poverty. The most interesting part for once is the 700+ comments, which are decidedly mixed.
Some anti-Hillary comments accuse the positive comments as being Clinton staff plants, while others accuse her of only caring about the issue because she's running for president. Clinton has faced a serious disconnect from the liberal blogosphere since before she made her candidacy official. Now that it appears to be reaching its end, it's fair to ask if Hillary could have closed the netroots gap with a more concerted effort earlier in the campaign? Short of apologizing for her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, I'm guessing the answer is "no."

Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher has launched an email campaign directed to local and national newspapers against the Associated Press' Nedra Pickler, for her recent story documenting conservative attacks questioning Barack Obama's patriotism. Ultimately, I think Pickler's story was one worth reporting, but as TPM notes, the first source in her story is Roger Stone, a disgraced former GOP strategist who has been in the news lately for less-than-savory antics. It's also not the first time liberal bloggers have turned their sights on Pickler.

Hamsher opens by saying:

It was pretty much world-record speed with which the smears against Barack Obama's patriotism alley-ooped from the right wing attack machine into the pages of legitimate media, neatly laundered into the AP by Nedra Pickler.

And then directs her readers:

The AP probably doesn't care a whole lot about what you think, but it does care what the papers who subscribe to their wire service think. So we've set up a page where you can plug in your zip code and automatically send an email to the papers in your area who syndicate the AP and let them know this is beneath what you expect their coverage to be -- for this election cycle and beyond.

There's a fair debate going on now about whether the media is applying the appropriate level of scrutiny to Barack Obama and his presidential campaign. But it's equally fair to acknowledge the difference between genuine investigative journalism and desperate scare tactics.

Over at NRO, Lisa Schiffren takes the quality of discussion down a notch by calling for an investigation into whether Obama's parents were communists. An examination into Obama's own history is certainly appropriate and looking into his parental history adds context to that story. But in this case, Schiffren's analysis borders on racial demagogy:

Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics.

Full disclosure: A briefly worked at NRO a few years ago. During that time, I often received emails accusing the publication of having a racist past and harboring current biases against minorities. While I had several ideological differences with colleagues at the publication, these accusations always struck me as quite ridiculous. Differences in political leanings do not equate to racial prejudice. And there's the little factual nugget that some of the publication's most prominent voices come from a more diverse racial and gender background than most liberal and mainstream publications. Nonetheless, this post strikes me as pretty bad. Bad enough, that some of Schiffren's fellow Cornerites are calling foul:

Good grief, Lisa, I'm no fan of Obama, but I really think that 'investigating' the senator's background in the manner you suggest will be thoroughly counterproductive

Over at Bloggingheads.tv, Time's Ana Marie Cox and Jon Fine debate whether the press has done their job covering Obama and whether the media will be held accountable for getting so much so wrong during this campaign season.

Some bloggers apparently think Barack Obama is about to become the "Hey Ya!" of the 2008 election.Talk Left links to a Paul Krugman article and a Washington Monthly blog post contemplating, "when the 'Obamamania' bubble will burst."

Last time I checked, Obama has been both a media and grassroots darling going back to his July 24, 2004 Democratic National Convention speech in Boston. Obama critics like Krugman may be engaging in wishful thinking if they think his substantial popularity with liberals and many independents is a fluke. It's no guarantee he'll win the election, but a safe bet he will not suffer such a fate outlined by Kevin Drum:

This backlash meme is already widespread, and you can almost feel in the air that it's about to explode into a feeding frenzy.

Not really, of course. But Robert Bluey, one of Washington's leading conservative voices online, explains why he cast a vote for Barack Obama in today's Virginia Democratic primary. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Bluey sees Obama as a weaker general election opponent against John McCain than Hillary Clinton:

Although national polls give Obama a small advantage over John McCain in the general election, I firmly believe that McCain would handily defeat the inexperienced Obama. Secondly, I fear what the Clinton attack machine would do to McCain. Their ferocity would be worse than George W. Bush’s ugly attacks in 2000. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows how much I dislike negative campaigning, and a Clinton-McCain matchup would be just that.

Townhall's Mary Katherine Ham says,"unlike Rob, I feel much better about going up against Hillary in the general than Obama," but adds this comestible caveat:

It remains to be seen if I can cast a vote for a Clinton without throwing up a little bit in my mouth. I'll keep you posted.

Earlier in the presidential primary season I used to say that Fred Thompson was "the 48 percent solution," for the Republican base. In other words, core conservatives had already given up on their hopes of retaining the White House in 2008 and were instead looking for a candidate who could lose respectably and minimize the damage done in congressional races across the country.

Well, Thompson is long gone and his good friend John McCain is set to take the reins as his party's presumptive nominee. Balloon Juice's John Cole floats an unusual theory of his own: The base wants to "sabotage" McCain as the nominee because they know they're going to lose already and can blame the loss on the "outsider" McCain, instead of on themselves:

So here is why they are sabotaging McCain- they want him to lose, or at the very least are hedging their bets. They want and need to paint him as not conservative, not pure enough to really represent the wildly successful (in their minds) conservatism that makes up the Bush dead-enders. That way, when they are blown out of the water in 2008, they don’t have to do any reflection, they don’t have to assess, re-prioritize, or re-think their policies. They can simply pin it all on McCain, claim he lost because he didn’t offer the voters a “real” conservative alternative, and get back to championing the end of the “death tax” and other important issues without skipping a beat.

In other words, McCain is the fall guy, and they are just distancing themselves from him.

Interesting theory, but I just don't see the Lee Majors resemblance.