It's become almost a daily ritual in the White House press briefing room. Reporters ask press secretary Robert Gibbs what President Obama will fight for regarding the health care reform bill now under construction in Congress, and Gibbs refuses to discuss details. Will Obama oppose a move to tax employee-based tax health care benefits, per his campaign position? Gibbs won't say. What does Obama want to see in a public health insurance option? Gibbs won't say.

At Wednesday's briefing, NBC's Chuck Todd tried to push Gibbs on the taxing benefits issues. Gibbs wouldn't give. Then Todd asked, when it comes to the health care bill, what is Obama "inflexible on?" Gibbs replied,

Is Hillary Clinton playing Barack Obama? Does she have a secret political plan? Are the Clintons up to anything? We discussed this all on Tuesday night on Hardball:

You can follow my postings and media appearances via Twitter by clicking here.

How's this for not building confidence?

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama met with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a surprise appearance at the daily White House briefing to discuss the trilateral talks under way. Consider this one exchange:

Q Madam Secretary, senior administration officials in recent weeks have swung between fairly sharp criticism and praise of the Afghan and Pakistani governments. You, yourself, said that the Pakistani government was at risk of abdicating to the Taliban. First, do you still believe that is the case? And do you see a risk of sending a mixed message to these partners at a time when both their cooperation are needed in combating the resurgent Taliban?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special envoy Richard Holbrooke were in the Hague on Tuesday to discuss aid to Afghanistan with European countries and other nations. (Holbrooke even finessed an "informal" conversation with an Iranian official.) But as is vogue these days, the word "smart" needs to be added to aid, particularly when the subject is Afghanistan. The United States in recent years has not engaged in "smart aid" in war-torn Afghanistan; it has squandered some of the $7 billion it has spent on Afghanistan development from 2002 through 2008. A new report by Oxfam, based on interviews with aid workers and officials in Afghanistan (private and public, Afghan and western), found that much of the money has been wasted or used ineffectively:

A number of interviewees felt USAID had neglected certain crucial sectors, especially agriculture and rural trade, on which a majority of Afghans depend for their means of earning a living. Aside from alternative livelihood programs (linked to counternarcotics efforts), USAID's support for agriculture has been less than 5 percent of its assistance since 2001.

Interviewees also believed that the US relies too much on the potential of free market and private sector solutions without creating an environment that enables those markets to work equitably, and without taking sufficient account of the weak economic and commercial infrastructure, low level of literacy and professional skills, and spreading insecurity.

The report adds:

I understand the argument against Caroline Kennedy. It's basically this: what makes her so special other than her DNA? She's done good work, raising money for private-public partnerships that benefit public schools. She's written about the Constitution. And she's been classy--at least in the sense of never being an embarrassing celebrity. Is this enough to be a senator?

I am sympathetic to those who decry dynastic politics and who yearn for some semblance of a meritocracy in this nation. After all, this nation was founded in part in opposition to royalty. And is born-to-play much better than pay-to-play?

Still, I can't get that worked up about the possibility that New York Governor David Paterson will tap the daughter of JFK to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. The drift of today's stories seem to indicate that she might be closer to obtaining the position once held by her uncle Bobby. Why no outrage on my part? Maybe because with two wars and a collapsed economy, I'm experiencing outrage exhaustion this holiday season. But my colleague Nick Baumann made a decent case for her:

In the past few weeks, I've been repeatedly asked by friends and acquaintances, "Well, what do you think of Obama's first appointments?" These various inquisitions gave me a chance to organize conflicting thoughts--which was fortunate, for The Washington Post's "Outlook" section asked me to contribute a piece on this question. The article will appear on the front page of the section on Sunday. But it's already been posted--old media meets new media--and here are some excerpts:

The more things change, the more they stay . . . well, you know. And looking at President-elect Barack Obama's top appointments, it's easy to wonder whether convention has triumphed over change -- and centrists over progressives.

A quick run-down: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who supported the Iraq war until she initiated her presidential bid, has been handed the Cabinet's big plum: secretary of state. And Bush's second defense secretary, Robert Gates, will become Obama's first defense secretary. The Obama foreign policy adviser regarded as the most liberal in his inner circle, Susan E. Rice, has been picked for the U.N. ambassador slot. Obama is elevating this job to Cabinet rank, but he's still sending Rice to New York -- and in politics and policy, proximity to power matters. For national security adviser, Obama has picked James L. Jones. The retired four-star general was not hawkish on the Iraq war and seems to be a non-ideologue who possesses the right experience for the job. But he probably would have ended up in a McCain administration, and his selection has not heartened progressives.

Obama's economic team isn't particularly liberal, either. Lawrence H. Summers, who as President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary opposed regulating the new-fangled financial instruments that greased the way to the subprime meltdown, will chair Obama's National Economic Council. To head Treasury, Obama has tapped Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who helped oversee the financial system as it collapsed. Each is close to Robert Rubin, another former Clinton Treasury secretary, a director of bailed-out Citigroup and a poster boy for both the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and discredited Big Finance. Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board will be guided by Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman whose controversial tight-money policies ended the stagflation crisis of the 1970s but led to a nasty recession. (A genuinely progressive economist, Jared Bernstein, will receive a less prominent White House job: chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.)

It's no surprise that many progressives are -- depending on whom you ask -- disappointed, irritated or fit to be tied. Sure, Obama's appointments do represent change -- that is, change from the widely unpopular Bush-Cheney status quo. But do these appointments amount to the kind of change that progressives, who were an essential part of Obama's political base during the campaign, can really believe in?

Perhaps Obama is trying to pull off something subtle -- a sort of stealth liberalism draped in bipartisan centrism. But it's understandable that progressives are worried....

So with these hawkish, Rubin-esque, middle-of-the-road picks, has Obama abandoned the folks who brought him to the dance?

My hunch is that Obama has made a calculation. In constructing his administration, he has decided not to create a (liberal) Washington counter-establishment. Instead, he's fashioning a bipartisan, centrist-loaded version of the Washington establishment to carry out his policies, which do tilt to the left. (And good news for the establishmentarians: Having screwed up on Iraq or the economy is no disqualification.) When asked at a Nov. 26 news conference whether his appointments of old Washington hands indicated that his administration was not going to be a festival of change, Obama replied, "What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the -- the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me." His job, he added, was to "make sure . . . that my team is implementing" his policies. In other words, la change, c'est moi.....

For the moment, the watchword for progressives ought to be a version of an old Reagan trope: hope, but verify....

You can read the conclusion and the entire piece here.

All the talk is Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. As President-elect Barack Obama announced his national security team on Monday morning, the headliner was indeed the junior senator from New York State. While this move remains a surprise and perhaps even a gamble--I've had my say on this--it could be that the more important pick of the day is retired General James Jones to be Barack Obama's national security adviser.

One of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's many accomplishments was to wreck the national security apparatus of the United States government--with key assists from Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. For years, Foggy Bottom and the CIA were at war with the Pentagon and the White House, while the national security adviser (that would be Rice) became not a policy broker (as the job requires) but an enabler. She allowed ideologues to run wild and to trump expertise. She made sure that dissenting opinions were not placed front and center before the president. Foreign policy became the territory of a small band of arrogant know-it-alls who, it turned out, did not know nearly enough.

On Bush and Cheney's watch, the system broke down--by design. It's imperative that the foreign policy machinery of the US government be revived and restored. There needs to be a working balance between the intelligence community, the military, and the diplomats. There needs to be a free flow of ideas. The views of true experts inside and outside the government ought to be factored into major decision-making. And it is the job of the national security adviser to ensure this happens.

That mission will fall to Jones. At a press conference on Monday morning, Obama said that Jones

At a Washington dinner party I attended recently, much of the evening was consumed by a discussion concerning why President-elect Barack Obama has apparently chosen Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state. No one had a good answer. Team of Rivals run amok? Had there been a deal between the two of them: I support you, and you give me state? That doesn't make sense, given that Hillary Clinton had in the past few weeks been trying to negotiate some sort of position for herself in the Senate leadership. One (absurd) possibility was heading up a special Senate task force on health care reform. Why would she be shopping for a Senate leadership post if she had cut a deal with Obama earlier?

When I ran into a television news anchor over the weekend, I asked her what she thought was behind the Clinton pick. This TV person who is in the mix of all political stories. She shrugged her shoulder and said, "I have no clue." And she meant it.

Frustrated that I had no good inside lead on what had prompted this action, I called a person who is close to Joe Biden. I assumed that this person had spoken about the pending Clinton appointment to Biden about the Clinton appointment--or at least to people around Biden. Certainly, the Biden camp would be in the know, right? After all, Biden has a big interest in who becomes secretary of state.

Barack Obama wins. Mitch McConnell is talking nice about the president-elect. And Henry Waxman bounces John Dingell from the chairmanship of the all-powerful House energy and commerce committee.

It's a good time to be a liberal in Washington.

Sure, Clintonites are scoring well in the Obama administration sweepstakes, and the Clinton years are remembered by liberals for the exasperating triangulations of Bill, Hill and their crew. But the combo of Obama's triumph and the far-from-over economic meltdown has provided liberals with their best opening since the days of the Great Society, or even the New Deal. Forget--for the moment, only for the moment, I promise--Hillary Clinton's possible appointment as secretary of state. There's something larger going on and it's truly a fundamental change: the market is dead. It cannot even take care of itself. So how can anyone rely on--or call for--market-driven solutions for the challenges that face the nation: the economy, the health care crisis, and global warming?

All the talk--and melodrama--about Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state continues. On Tuesday, I noted that a good argument against her was her management--or mismanagement--of her presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton did a lousy job of putting together a team that could work cooperatively and competently. She veered from one tactic to the next. She engaged in spin above and beyond the call of duty. Her campaign was a mess. Could she do better at State--which desperately needs to be revived after having been kicked in the teeth for eight years by the Bush-Cheney White House?

But here's another reason to ponder. Consider how smoothly the Obama campaign ran. Were there many leaks? Signs of internal disputes? Short answer: no. It was a disciplined shop. Disagreements were worked out in private. No one ran to reporters to play the usual game of leaking. Now consider what has happened in the past week. There has been a flood of leaks about Hillary Clinton and the State Department post. Where are they coming from? The best guess is, the Clinton side. And that side is bifurcated between Bill's people and Hillary's people, who don't always get along. If Obama places Hillary in his cabinet, it's likely such behind-the-scenes scheming and leaking will continue. Imagine if there are any disagreements between State and the National Security Council or the Pentagon. Won't the Clinton ops go into their usual take-no-prisoners-and-leak-away mode? Does Obama want to bring the Clinton circus into his Big Tent?

The more this drama plays out, the more curious it appears. What's Obama thinking on this front? I don't see any leaks about that.

Meanwhile, this morning, I appeared on Democracy Now to discuss Obama's transition team and the initial appointments to his administration.

I know everyone is waiting for me to weigh in on the big question of the week: Hillary to State, yea or nay? Well, I offered some thoughts on this matter at MotherJones.com. And here they are:

I was agnostic on the matter of Hillary Clinton's possible appointment as secretary of state--until last night.

If Barack Obama, the president-elect, wanted to pull a Team of Rivals play, that had seemed fine to me. And placing Clinton in Foggy Bottom would remove her from the dicey business of passing health care reform. Would it unite the party? Well, judging from the election results, the party is pretty darn united already. Despite the griping of a few Hillaryites at the Democratic convention, her voters certainly swung behind Obama in the general election (see Pennsylvania), after HRC and WJC campaigned for BHO in the fall. Unless an explicit deal was made between Obama and Hillary Clinton, it did not seem that Obama, after bypassing her for veep, had to appoint her anything for the party's sake. Still, if Obama and his savvy band of advisers thought that handing her one of the best jobs in the Cabinet would generate political benefits they could use to advance their agenda, I, as a non-fan of Hillary Clinton, was willing to say, okay--for what that was worth.

But then this happened: the presidential transition of no-drama Obama became infected by the never-ending soap opera of the Clintons. And it really is time to turn that program off. There are plenty of policy and political reasons for a progressive not to fancy Hillary. She served on the Wal-Mart board when the mega-firm was fighting unions; she screwed up health care reform for almost a generation; she voted wrong on the Iraq war and then refused to acknowledge she had erred. But, worst of all, as the cliché goes, with the Clintons, it always does seem to be about the Clintons.

So we've had a week of will-she-or-won't-she and what-about-him. Couldn't this have been handled with a little more grace? Maybe not, since it involves the Clintons.

I don't know how the Obama camp approached the issue. But before Obama met last week with Hillary to talk about this, his team should have done a pre-vetting of Bill. And then Obama, at this meeting, ought to have said something like this to her:

Too much Clintons at the convention?

There will be a lot--perhaps more than needed. On Tuesday, Senator Hillary Clinton will have her time at the podium. But first, reportedly, convention-goers (and viewers at home) will be treated to a film about her, presumably in the style of the Man From Hope biopic shown at the 1992 convention. Then she will speak. No doubt, she will talk about her historic run for the presidency. The question for a Clinton-cynic is how much of her address will be about her and how much will be about Barack Obama?

This will be her night--which she deserves. But then the Clintons get a second night. On Wednesday, Bill Clinton will get his turn. He is supposedly disappointed that he has been relegated to "Securing America's Future" night, when speakers are supposed to tout Obama's potential as commander in chief. Clinton would rather speak on a wider range of issues. I can understand the Obama camp's concern. Remember his convention speech in 1988? (Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's communications director during her campaign, argues that the Obama campaign still must soothe the hurt feelings Bill Clinton has after the campaign. What is this? High school? Wolfson adds, "President Clinton has his part to play as well. He needs to offer a strong argument in favor of Barack Obama's candidacy on Wednesday night, and remind everyone why he is one of the most gifted campaigners in our generation between now and November.")

Also on Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton will again be in the spotlight, when her name is placed into nomination, thanks to the munificence of the Obama campaign. So of the four nights of the convention, the Clintons will have major roles on two. Not bad for the second-place finisher. Even though Hillary Clinton racked up a lot of votes, pundits can--and will--wonder if this is excessive, given that the whole point of the convention is to move forward with Obama. Wouldn't one night have sufficed? Start with a film on HRC. When it's done, the lights go up and...there's Bill Clinton. He introduces her. And then she comes on. A nice package--all in one. Then for the next two nights, the convention would concentrate on Joe Biden and Obama.

That's not how it's going to be. Perhaps all this Clinton programming will help ease the resentment of the Hillary Hold-ons (whom I wrote about here.) If so, it will be worth it. But is it possible those die-hards cannot be satisfied and that a Clinton-drenched convention will deliver a less-than-consistent message (Obama, Obama, Obama)? Your guess--or calculation--is as good as mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?

Because her father is Janet Reno.

Kinda crude, right?

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

What is she thinking?

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

Tom Edsall writes,

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

And Charles Hurt of The New York Post notes:

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

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

Why is Hillary Clinton still in the race?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not every primary matters. Especially West Virginia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick--name an official task that was Hillary Clinton's responsibility last time she was in the White House? The answer is obvious: health care. It was a top priority for the Bill Clinton administration in the first years of his presidency. And he handed the mission to his two-for-the-price-of-one First Lady.

What happened next? We all know: an unmitigated disaster that set the cause of health care reform back for years. Hillary Clinton and her top advisers--in proceedings marked by secrecy and we-know-best arrogance--cooked up a plan that no one could understand. They bent over backward to accommodate the corporate community and miscalculated: Big Business ended up opposing the plan. And the common folks who the plan was supposed to help couldn't comprehend it--which meant they (and their elected representatives) could not fight effectively for it.

Flash forward to 2008. Clinton is fighting for her political life in a fierce battle with Barack Obama. She's pandering on gas prices, she's suggesting that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief, she's pouncing on a remark he made to suggest he's an elitist, she's making a big deal out of his past relationship with a onetime 70s radical, she's accusing him of not being committed to withdrawing from Iraq, she's pushing reporters to dwell upon Obama's friendship with a developer indicted on corruption charges, she's pondering how to game the delegate system. And her latest ad in North Carolina, which holds an important primary on Tuesday, she repeats her claim that she is the candidate who can make change happen.

In the ad, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, a Clinton supporter, says:

These are tough times in America and I think that Hillary is the one we can count on to get the job done. She's going to turn the economy around, she's going bring new jobs, she's going to get some tax cuts for the middle class for a change. She's going to make health care available to everybody in this country, and she's going to do everything she can to help every child reach their full potential. She is so resilient, so determined. She knows how to deliver.

To which anyone with a skeptical view (and a memory) might say, "Hillarycare." Sure, she's racked up a few accomplishments as a senator. But she failed miserably on the biggest task she has ever assumed. She didn't get that job done; she botched it. True, it was a tough assignment, and the odds were against her. But if she's making promises now, her first attempt to "make health care available to everybody in this country" is relevant. (More relevant than the issue of her laugh.) Well, maybe she can get the job done on the second time around. Older and wiser, and all that. But her early-90s failure was one reason why health care disappeared as a political issue for so long. That's a reality that present-day campaign rhetoric can be measured against.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can't the superdelegates stop this?

Can't the Democratic candidates stop the ugliness?

Can't the media stop enabling this catfight?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Democratic primary contest has been "relatively mild." So said Hillary Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday morning. But in the same call, he and Phil Singer, another campaign aide, continued to whack Obama for making remarks that they blasted "as elitist and condescending." Singer added that Obama is "somewhat detached" from American voters. And Wolfson noted that the whole fuss over Obama's "bitter" comments is "an important issue." But it's a fuss fueled by the Clinton campaign, which yesterday put up an ad in which supposed Clinton supporters--average Joes and Josephines in Pennsylvania--gripe about Obama's remarks.

"It just shows how out of touch Barack Obama is," says Man 1 in the ad. (That's how the campaign identified the fellow in an email to reporters.) "I was insulted by Barack Obama," says Woman 1. And in the spot--the first negative ad in the Obama-Clinton contest that attacks an opponent by name--Woman 2 says, "I'm not clinging to my faith out of frustration and bitterness. I find my faith is very uplifting." [Correction: Howard Wolfson emails to say, "This is not the first ad that mentions an opponent by name -- we ran ads in WI urging him to debate -- he responded by saying we would say anything or do anything to win."]

Gal No. 2 gets to the heart of this non-issue. At that now-infamous San Francisco fundraiser, Obama, referring to middle-class voters in areas hit by massive job loss, said,

So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Obama's foes--in the Clinton camp and the John McCain camp--have accused him of saying people "cling" to guns and faith only because they are bitter. That's not exactly what Obama said. He noted that people in hard-pressed areas become bitter because they see the system failing them and they cling to their belief in gun rights and/or God (as well as other beliefs, such as opposition to immigrants or gay rights). Obama obviously knows that these beliefs--the good and the bad--were already deeply held before the mill jobs disappeared. Such beliefs, though, are presumably further embraced in difficult times. And given that some of these beliefs (gun rights, opposition to abortion and gay rights) tend to cut against candidates perceived as liberals, it can make things tougher for certain Democrats. This ain't in much dispute.

No doubt, Obama was trying to express what passes for a sophisticated point in our culture of debate-by-soundbites, yet he did so in a clunky manner that offered his opponents the chance to assert that he believes that faith and a love of guns come only out of frustration. There may be an argument for such a proposition. But I doubt Obama would accept it. As a former community organizer and longtime churchgoer (we all know that he goes to church), he hardly fits the bill as a secularist elitist. Yet the Clinton campaign pounced on these words to claim that the man whom they have already decried as not able to protect America as commander in chief is out of touch with real Americans. What a "mild" attack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Obama campaign immediately fired back and released this statement:

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

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

On Monday, I noted that when General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, testified before Congress last September he wielded a chart entitled "Iraqi Security Forces Capabilities." That graphic aid hardly backed up the argument that the Iraqi forces were on the march. It showed that the level of Iraqi troops that were fully independent or that could stage operations of their own with the support of U.S. forces had dipped slightly between September 2006 and September 2007. That indicated that over the course of a year, according to Petraeus' own numbers, there had been no progress--none--in fielding Iraqi security forces that could function on their own. That seemed a rather strong indicator.

So on Tuesday morning, as I watched Petraeus' testimony before the Senate armed services committee, I waited to get his handouts to see what had happened on this front in the past seven months. As soon as he began testifying, the committee made his charts available. And--whaddayaknow?--this time he had no version of this chart. There was one chart indicating that more Iraqi battalions were now taking the lead in military operations than in January 2007. But this point was challenged by Senator Carl Levin, the committee chairman. Levin said that he was recently informed that of 110 joint U.S.-Iraqi operations of company size or greater in Iraq in the first three months of 2008, Iraqi forces assumed the lead in only ten of these missions. Still, Petraeus testified that the Iraqi forces have "grown significantly" since September, but he did not provide information on their capabilities that would allow an observer to compare current numbers to those he presented to Congress in September. Anyone care to guess why?

During his testimony, Petraeus said what was expected: the so-called surge is working, progress is real if fragile. And he said that there should be no reduction of troops beyond a return to the pre-surge levels. At the same time, the Democratic war critics on the committee missed a chance to present a cohesive and extensive challenge to Bush's war. I suss it all out here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Democrats in Congress have been rolled on the Iraq war. That's no news flash. Given that they long ago decided not to pull the trigger and defund the war, they were left with the option of trying to force George W. Bush to change course. He stood firm. They blinked. And when General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, testified before Congress last September, the Democrats greeted him with softball questions. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wimped out when they had a chance to grill Petraeus. Bottom-line: Bush won political space for the war, and the meme was established that the surge was working and the war was going better. That narrative, though, had a hole in it, for a successful surge (if that is what it was) was not equivalent to a successful war. Sure, pouring 30,000 extra troops into the hotspots of Iraq would certainly cause some of the violence to decline. But that did not mean that the roots of the conflict(s) in Iraq were being addressed--let alone addressed effectively. Yet Petraeus, generally unchallenged by the Dems (who were scared to be associated with MoveOn's anti-Petraeus campaign), was able to sell the surge.

Now that sales job is wearing thin. The recent fighting between the Iraqi government and the militia of Moqtadar al-Sadr suggests that the problem in Iraq is civil war rather than insurgency. Or, at least, maybe both. Here we have the government trying to crack down on what is, as journalist Patrick Cockburn calls it, "the only mass movement in Iraqi politics." Say what you want about Sadr, he ain't no insurgent. What's our dog in this fight? What does any of this have to do with combating al Qaeda (which seems to be a small slice of the challenge in Iraq, Bush's pronouncements to the contrary)? Why back the inept and corrupt regime of Nouri al-Maliki?

The surge was supposed to create space for national reconciliation. But even Petraeus has recognized that this opportunity has been squandered. And if one Shi'ite bloc (the government) is fighting another Shi'ite bloc (Sadr and his followers), what does that tell us about progress on this front? Meanwhile, top U.S. military officials told Congress on Tuesday that the surge in Iraq and deployments in Afghanistan have stressed out the military so much that it may not be able to handle other conflicts. This assessment comes just as Petraeus is expected to tell Congress next week--when he comes back for a return engagement--that he wants to delay any de-surging.

So it's a mess. The surge may not be the temporary move Bush had promised when he announced it in January 2007. The violence is increasing. Four million Iraqis remain dislocated and displaced. The Sunnis have been armed to beat back al Qaeda in Iraq--but those arms can be put to other use. And civil war between the Shi'ites is but a flashpoint away--and only prevented recently due to the intervention of Iran, which helped cool down the clash between the government and Sadr and which seems to have more influence in Iraq than the United States.

Will members of Congress--Democratic and Republican--grill Petraeus about all this? Or let themselves once again be dazzled by charts, graphs, and confident assertions of progress. This is a good time for a surge in oversight. And if the Democrats need any help, I've prepared a list of questions that national security experts would like to see posed to Petraeus. (See it here.) But I am sure they can come up with their own queries. One only needs to read the papers and to wonder, what the hell is going on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updated with video below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here's the video:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wasn't the speech about that very pattern?

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

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

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

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

Obama had just said to Blitzer, look: “If all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way…” And so if the reactions you report on are reactions to your reporting and video looping how are you, the talent in political television, not an actor with me in this cycle?

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

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

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

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

You can read the rest here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

During a conference call on Wednesday morning, David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Barack Obama, pointed to what he called a "warning sign" for Democrats: the exit polls from Mississippi, where Obama on Tuesday beat Hillary Clinton 61 to 37 percent. Plouffe noted that when Democratic voters who participated in this primary were asked "which candidate do you think is honest and trustworthy," 50 percent said Clinton was not. Seventy percent of the Democrats polled said Obama was honest and trustworthy. That's a 20-point integrity gap--and its among Democrats. Certainly, many Democrats elsewhere--such as in states where Clinton won big--do not share this distrust of Clinton. But Plouffe is right: numbers like these ought to give Democrats, be they voters or super-delegates, pause.

Another interesting factoid from the exit polls: who's the more vicious candidate. The exit pollsters asked Democrats in Mississippi if either Obama or Clinton has attacked "the other unfairly." Sixty-one percent said that Clinton has; 39 percent said that Obama has. So in addition to the integrity gap, there was a 22-point nasty gap. Again, Democratic voters in states that went for Clinton may not see this the same way. And given that the Mississippi Democratic electorate included many African Americans, this number may reflect a sentiment held more by black Democrats than white Democrats. (Remember South Carolina?) Nevertheless, all this is food for thought for Democrats: do they want a presidential candidate that many voters within their own ranks consider unfair and not honest?

For more of a breakdown of the Mississippi vote--particularly the racial component (short answer: Clinton won whites; Obama won blacks)--see my colleague Jonathan Stein's posting at MotherJones.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In January I observed that Barack Obama had a problem:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read the rest here.

Get ready to get sick of Pennsylvania.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read the rest here.

Hillary Clinton is helping Barack Obama.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A posting of mine from the Mother Jones blog:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clinton Tests Out Populist Approach

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

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

The Post reports:

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

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

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

The paper goes on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read the rest here.

The fish rots from the head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Hillary the new Mitt?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the rest here.

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

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

The two campaigns had plenty of data to spin as the results materialized. Clinton triumphed in California (by an overwhelming margin), Massachusetts (where a big turnout in women negated that Kennedy magic), Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Obama won in Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah, Idaho, and Missouri. Last-minute deciders, Penn said, went for Clinton. "Momentum is turning," he insisted. Plouffe noted that Obama was competitive in regions across the nation, that he won the caucus states (showing the campaign's organizational talent), and that he captured states that did not permit independents to vote (Delaware and Connecticut). Clinton was the Queen of California. Obama was the Master of Missouri.

But all that really mattered was the final delegate count (which was not easy to calculate in the hours after the polls shut down but was likely to be close)--and the fact that neither candidate was knocked out of the race. Despite the wipeout in California, Obama's senior aides appeared pleased, as they spoke with reporters at his election night celebration in Chicago. Pre-election polls had shown him trailing in most Super Tuesday states, and their goal had been to survive the day. They did. "The nominating battle will continue well past today's voting," Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, told reporters. Only weeks ago, Clinton strategists were hoping this mega-primary day would end the race in their favor. Now they were talking about the coming slog, as if it had always been inevitable.

Super Tuesday did not live up to its do-or-die reputation because the Democratic field had been downsized to two strong contenders who push rather different memes. Clinton presents herself as the tried-and-tested hard-worker who can get stuff done. Obama offers himself as a transformative figure who can--due to his power to inspire--bring about change. It's math versus music. And after seven years of George W. Bush--during which the music was awful and the math was bad--Democrats crave both proven competence and uplifting inspiration. For many voters, it's a tough either/or. Super Tuesday demonstrated there is no consensus position within the party among its voters.....

You can read the rest here.

It's quiet out there....Too quiet?

Usually there's not much news on Election Day--until the returns come in. Campaigns tend to do all they can in the final days before an election not to screw up. So there was not much news yesterday, either. I was on a conference call with Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson of the Clinton campaign, and they had little report. They said they expected to win a majority of the delegates and that the race would continue on. "Many of us are making reservations for Texas and Ohio," Wolfson remarked. John Edwards' voters--the few there are--were in "flux," Penn added. Stop the presses! Oh, they did have one piece of news: Jack Nicholson had endorsed Hillary Clinton. Earlier in the day, Robert De Niro had campaigned for Barack Obama. Score that a tie?

All across CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC on Monday night, there was much coverage of Super Tuesday, but not much for my fellow pundits to discuss--other than the polls in each state. Just as the candidates were respectful and well-tempered in last Thursday's debate, the campaigns fired off no last-minute shots at the other. It appears that both will live past Supersaturated Tuesday to campaign another day. And the delegate count will determine how each plays from here.

Other than the final numbers, what else might be telling? Well, Missouri and Colorado could be bellwether states. If Obama wins or almost wins either of those--which are somewhat neutral territory in the Obama-Clinton battle--that will be quite encouraging for his camp. As I and several thousand other commentators have noted, after Tuesday, Obama can focus on individual or small clumps of states. When voters have seen more of him--as in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina--he has fared well. Not that he spent a great deal of time in either Missouri or Colorado, but if he's competitive in those states, it will be an indicator the Obama magic is still alive, Then again, winning California would signify the same. Sorry, on Election Day, the obvious analysis is king. Once the dust settles, there will be plenty of new twists and turns to ponder and, of course, more campaign news.

A few weeks ago, I declared that Barack Obama has a big problem: Super Tuesday. I noted that with a playing field so large, it would be rather tough for him to connect with voters, and that since he was asking voters to join him in a transformative crusade, it was essential for him to forge a tight bond with voters. That's a difficult goal to manage while hop-scotching through 20 or so states in a week.

I stand by that analysis, but now it seems that Obama may do well enough to survive the Super Tuesday challenge. He doesn't have to win the day, he merely has to stay close to Hillary Clinton. The way the delegates are awarded, a strong second-placer can do quite well. And after Tuesday, the schedule shifts to a more drawn-out series of contests. (Jonathan Stein explains here.) Thus, Obama will get his chance to work his magic in more direct fashion--should he survive. And in the race so far, when Obama gets up-close-and-personal with voters, he is rather competitive.

Given that Obama was quite the gentleman at the debate last Thursday night, my hunch is that his campaign's goal is to take whatever punch comes on Tuesday and then get on with a contest-by-contest campaign. Sure, half of the delegates will be selected on Tuesday, and if polls are any guide (no giggling, please), Hillary Clinton is better positioned to vacuum up a majority. But the key question of the day will be whether Clinton opens a lead in the delegate race that he has a chance of overcoming one primary after another in the following weeks. Obama needs the slog.

That's all for me today, I'm traveling today.

Why is it that Hillary Clinton never talks about the Rose Law Firm, the Arkansan corporate powerhouse she worked at for years?

During Thursday night's Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama made a point of his progressive career path:

I started off as a community organizer, working on the streets of Chicago, providing job training and after-school programs and economic development for neighborhoods that have been devastated by steel plants that had closed. I worked as a civil rights attorney, turning down lucrative corporate jobs to provide justice for those who had been denied on the job on at the ballot box. I worked as a state legislator for years, providing health care to people who did not have it, reforming a death penalty system that was broken, providing tax relief to those who needed it. And in the United States Senate, I worked on everything from nuclear proliferation to issues of alternative energy.

Note the reference to "corporate jobs."

Clinton, when she next had the chance to speak, noted:

I really spent a great deal of my early adulthood, you know, bringing people together to help solve the problems of those who were without a voice and were certainly powerless. I was honored to be appointed by President Carter to the Legal Services Corporation, which I chaired, and we grew that corporation from 100 million to 300 million. It is the primary vehicle by which people are given access to our courts when they have civil problems that need to be taken care of.

It is true that Clinton, after graduating from Yale Law in 1973, worked at the Children's Defense Fund and the Carnegie Council on Children. (And in 1974, she worked for the House judiciary committee then considering the impeachment of Richard Nixon.) But by 1977--after having married Bill Clinton and having moved to Arkansas--she signed up with Rose Law Firm. She continued to do public-interest advocacy work, and as First Lady of Arkansas, she was an advocate for education and children's issues. But she was also a corporate lawyer. And in the mid-1980s, she became a member of the board of the anti-union Wal-Mart. At board meetings, she remained silent, as the company mounted a campaign against unions seeking to organize Wal-Mart workers. (Though ABC News had just broken a story related to Clinton's Wal-Mart connection, no one asked her about it at the debate.)

Clinton doesn't have the progressive street cred that Obama has. She tries to match him, but to do so she has to slice out part of that vaunted resume she is always brandishing. He never answered the call of the corporate sirens. She did, while also working the other side--the progressive policy side--of the street. She's happy to discuss that do-gooding, but not her entire past.

For a good take on the debate, see my colleague Jonathan Stein's report here.

I attended the American University event on Monday, where Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama, with Caroline and Patrick Kennedy joining in. After hearing Kennedy's remarks, I read them. the second time around, they seemed much more a warning to the Clintons than they had in person. Maybe that's because the volume was too low on the microphones used by the Kennedys and Obama. Kennedy's speech does seem to set up a clash between the two main families of the Democratic Party. (Drop in your own Sopranos allusion here.) And within the Kennedy clan, there is a split, with several Kennedys siding against the Godfather (sorry, couldn't resist) and backing Hillary Clinton. Will this all blow over after a nominee is chosen. I dunno. But I don't see Chelsea Clinton taking on a Michael Corleone-like role. But enough of that. Below is a report I filed for MotherJones.com on the Kennedy event. And check out my colleague John Stein's assessment of the EMK endorsement.:

Democrats don't come much more traditional than Teddy Kennedy, the grand man of the Democratic Party. So his endorsement of Barack Obama--implicitly an anti-endorsement of Hillary Clinton--has punch. Endorsements routinely don't matter much in presidential campaigns--with a few exceptions. A politician who controls a machine--say, a governor--can come in quite handy on Election Day. In this case, Kennedy brings two piping hot dishes to the Obama potluck.

By awarding him the Kennedy Seal of Approval--with Caroline Kennedy (daughter of John) and Representative Patrick Kennedy (son of Ted) chiming in--Kennedy makes it official: Obama is the Next Generation leader of the Democratic Party and, in that role, has a lock on the vision thing. And by pledging to campaign arduously for Obama in the coming days, Kennedy will be assisting Obama's efforts to reach out to traditional Democratic voters: working-class Dems. Clinton has been faring better among that core demographic chunk of the Democratic electorate. Kennedy is no white knight who will rescue Obama on this front. But if Kennedy pulls a few votes here and there, it could be significant--only if Obama on his own can close the gap between him and Clinton on blue-collar Democrats and Latinos. It is too late for any candidate--or any set of endorsements--to change the fundamentals of the presidential race in time for Supersaturated Tuesday on February 5. And Ted Kennedy on the campaign trail is no match for Hillary Clinton's hit man: her husband. Yet any bit of Kennedy magic dust the Massachusetts senator sprinkles for Obama can only help.

Kennedy's endorsement speech--held before an enthusiastic crowd at an auditorium at American University--was a roar. He noted that Clinton and John Edwards were fine people and his friends. "But I believe," he said, "there is one candidate who has extraordinary gifts of leadership and character, matched to the extraordinary demands of this moment in history." He completely adopted Obama's own arguments: "He is a leader who sees the world clearly without being cynical. He is a fighter who cares passionately about the causes he believes in, without demonizing those who hold a different view." That last line, an echo of a remark Obama made on Saturday night after winning the South Carolina primary, was a dig at the Clinton camp.

Other digs followed: "We know the true record of Barack Obama. There is the courage he showed when so many others were silent or simply went along. From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth." The Clinton crew has been trying to undermine Obama's natural advantage on the war. (He opposed voting for it: she did not.) Kennedy was calling them out on this matter and essentially telling them to shut up.

And then Kennedy passed the torch:

With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign--a campaign not just about himself, but about all of us. A campaign about the country we will become, if we can rise above the old politics that parses us into separate groups and puts us at odds with one another.

I remember another such time, in the 1960s, when I came to the Senate at the age of 30. We had a new president who inspired the nation, especially the young, to seek a new frontier. Those inspired young people marched, sat in at lunch counters, protested the war in Vietnam and served honorably in that war even when they opposed it.

Obama can be the new Kennedy--John or Robert, take your pick. Who says so? Their brother. Such rhetoric might be easily dismissed by the cynical, but it is heady stuff. And Kennedy probably did not make the decision to anoint Obama in this manner lightly. He compared Obama to Clinton and found one inspiring, the other merely commendable. "What counts in our leadership," Kennedy thundered, "is not the length of years in Washington, but the reach of our vision, the strength of our beliefs, and that rare quality of mind and spirit that can call forth the best in our country and our people. With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion."

Kennedy's red-hot endorsement can be read as something of a pushback to the Clinton gang's assault on the junior senator from Illinois. "Let us reject the counsels of doubt and calculation," Kennedy said loudly before the American University crowd. Whose doubt and calculation? The Clintons', of course. And he was not indirect.....

You can read the rest here.

UPDATE: After Barack Obama's trouncing of Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, will the Clinton Attack Machine--starring Bill Clinton!--continue to fire away? I ponder this point here.

During a conference call on Friday with Clinton aides--who were again blasting Barack Obama for having noted that the Republican Party developed a reputation as "the party of ideas" in the 1990s--I asked whether the Clinton camp was stepping over the line (you know, that line of respectability and accuracy) in its attacks on Hillary Clinton's chief rival. As one example, I cited a remark Representative Barney Frank, a Clinton backer, had made at the start of the call.

Referring to Obama's "party of ideas" comments, Frank said that Obama had been "wrong to say Ronald Reagan was right about government getting too big." But did Obama really endorse Reagan's signature gripe? I'll post and you can decide. Here's the relevant passage:

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

Do these words add up to an endorsement of Reagan's antigovernment rhetoric?...Since you asked, they don't for me. I read the remark to be a stab at historical analysis, with Obama characterizing (rightly or wrongly) popular opinion during the 1980s. But in response to my question, Frank argued that Obama's reference implied approval.

I'm sure not looking to pick a fight with Frank, the sharpest wit on Capitol Hill. But let me point out that on January 27, 1996, then-President Bill Clinton gave a radio address and said:

These are the seven challenges I set forth Tuesday night -- to strengthen our families, to renew our schools and expand educational opportunity, to help every American who's willing to work for it achieve economic security, to take our streets back from crime, to protect our environment, to reinvent our government so that it serves better and costs less, and to keep America the leading force for peace and freedom throughout the world. We will meet these challenges, not through big government. The era of big government is over, but we can't go back to a time when our citizens were just left to fend for themselves. [My bold.]

The era of big government is over. How's that for a grand Reaganesque declaration? It's certainly a much clearer endorsement of Reagan's view of the world than anything Obama said. Will Frank now ask Hillary to disavow Bill?

I'm waiting to get on a conference call with Clinton campaign officials, who, no doubt, will again defend their attacks on Barack Obama by claiming they have no choice but to respond to his criticisms of Hillary and Bill Clinton. But many of their attacks have been disingenuous. On a similar call yesterday, Mark Penn, her chief strategist, blasted Obama for saying as a candidate for the Senate in 2003 that he would not vote for Iraq war funding and then doing so after he entered the Senate. But there's a problem with that shot: as a candidate, Obama never said he would never vote for Iraq war funding; he said he opposed the war spending bill then pending for several reasons. The Clinton camp has legitimate criticism it could toss at Obama. The experience issue is a real one. But the Clinton crowd continues to mix real and phony attacks, pissing off some Democrats but succeeding strategically by keeping Obama bogged down in an acrimonious mudwrestle. I wonder what they'll come up with next. Meanwhile, allow me to cross-post my take on the recent GOP debate, which first appeared on MotherJones.com. Bottom line: they were nice to each other but, boy, did they mug the truth.

At Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, the GOP contenders did their best not to make any news. No one attacked anyone; no one disagreed on any major policy matter--except regarding a proposal to establish a national catastrophic insurance fund that would back up private insurance firms. (Rudy Giuliani, playing to Florida homeowners, voiced his support for it; Mitt Romney supported the general notion; John McCain attacked legislation that would set up such a fund as a $200 billion boondoggle.) Generally, the candidates made up a chorus for tax cuts and fighting--make that, winning--the Iraq war. (Then there was Ron Paul.) At times, the candidates hailed their rivals. It was so.... un-Democratic. No nastiness--even though McCain and Romney, essentially tied for first place in the Florida polls, have been hurling negative ads at each other. (A Romney ad assails McCain for flip-flopping on tax cuts; a McCain spot blasts Romney for...flip-flopping on tax cuts. McCain is actually comparing Romney to John Kerry.)

If you were forced to pick a winner--and in the absence of policy disputes, the debate was all about the horse race--you'd probably have to choose Romney, who seemed quasi-commanding and who this night, for some reason, looked more like Hollywood's idea of a president than usual. But no candidate hurt his own prospects. That doesn't mean, though, they didn't come out with some whoppers. Here's a sampling:

* Moderator Tim Russert asked McCain about a comment McCain had supposedly made--"I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated"--and McCain shot back, "I don't know where you got that quote from; I'm very well-versed in economics." Well, McCain did tell the Baltimore Sun, "The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should." So much for being "well-versed."

* Asked whether it was un-American for U.S. banks to seek infusions of billions of dollars in capital from foreign sources, Giuliani said there was nothing wrong with that as long as "they're transparent." Giuliani, though, still refuses to be transparent about his own multi-million-dollar business dealings, declining to release information about the clients and foreign officials he has worked with as a consultant.

* McCain said that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein was "hell-bent on acquiring" weapons of mass destruction. Actually, he wasn't. Saddam might have desired WMDs. But for years prior to the invasion, the Iraqi dictator had suspended his WMD program and done nothing to pursue WMDs, according to the final report of Charles Duelfer and his Iraq Survey Group.

* Mike Huckabee, voicing his support for Bush's invasion of Iraq, said that just because the United States didn't find WMDs in Iraq that "doesn't mean it wasn't there." The aforementioned Duelfer report--and Duelfer took over the Iraq Survey Group as a hawk who had believed Saddam possessed WMDs--made it clear that Saddam not only had no weapons in the years leading up to the war, he had no WMD program. In other words, there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq--period.

* Romney praised Bush for mounting the Iraq war and making sure al Qaeda could not gain "a safe haven" in Iraq "for launching attacks against us." That was certainly not an issue prior to the invasion. Saddam had no operational ties with al Qaeda. And now there's little, if any chance, that the small and unpopular al Qaeda outfit in Iraq could take over Iraq, pushing aside the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.

* Romney claimed that under Hillary Clinton's universal health care proposal, everybody will get their coverage "from the government." Here's how Clinton describes it: "If you have a plan you like, you keep it. If you want to change plans or aren't currently covered, you can choose from dozens of the same plans available to members of Congress, or you can opt into a public plan option like Medicare." That's not a government-only plan.

* Huckabee said that Americans "ought to be able to respect people who don't have any [faith]." Yet in a book he co-wrote in 1998, Huckabee huffed, "Men who have rejected God and do not walk in faith are more often than not immoral, impure, and improvident (Gal. 5:19-21). They are prone to extreme and destructive behavior, indulging in perverse vices and dissipating sensuality (1 Cor. 6:9-10)." That just doesn't come across as a respectful attitude regarding people who don't have faith.

But the candidates sure did behave nicely.

Is there a mini-neo-quasi-backlash setting in against the Clintons for their attacks on Barack Obama?

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that some Democratic leaders were getting mighty peeved at the Clintons--especially him for unfairly assailing Barack Obama. (I've reported several times on how the Clinton camp has made false accusations against Obama regarding his position on the Iraq war. See here.)

And there's a rather compelling video in which the former president of Chicago NOW says she has switched from supporting Hillary Clinton to backing Barack Obama because the Clinton campaign has disingenuously assailed Obama's record on abortion rights. It's powerful evidence for those who claim the Clintons are going beyond acceptable politics into the realm of slime and smears. Here it is:

Will this nascent backlash matter? Well, there's not that much time between now and Supersaturated Tuesday on February 5. It's hard to see a full-scale Democratic rebellion against the Clintons emerging. Meanwhile, all this sniping is keeping Obama pinned down. That is, it's working for the Clintons. Their calculation is obvious: the heat is worth the gain.

John Edwards is moaning that Hillary Clinton isn't spending much time in South Carolina. Why should she? Clinton showed in New Hampshire that she can take a punch (Iowa) and keep on going. She may not win South Carolina on Saturday, but she doesn't need the Palmetto State as much as Barack Obama and John Edwards do. So she's already on to Supersaturated Tuesday, campaigning this week in California, New Mexico, and New Jersey.

This is giving her a leg up on Obama. He's pinned down in South Carolina, hoping to round up the votes many folks already presume he has (African American votes). If he cannot clobber Clinton there, he will certainly have a tough time going into the February 5 states.

His campaign announced on Wednesday that it will begin airing ads in various 2/5 states. The ads are...fine: positive spots that highlight his personal tale, his policies (end the war, end tax breaks for outsourcing corporations, begin universal health care), and his call for change. They do not redefine political advertising the way Obama is trying to redefine politics. And it's fair to wonder if they will be enough to best Clinton, who in Nevada and New Hampshire demonstrated an ability to win over traditional Democrats. Most of the big-state Democratic primaries on February 5 are closed to independent voters--but not California--and that means the traditional Dems will count the most.

Thus, while Clinton skips South Carolina, leaving the Big Dawg (a.k.a. Mr. Clinton) to stump the Palmetto State for her (and continue the mudwrestle with Obama), and while she starts her February 5 campaigning, Obama is working for a win in South Carolina that the Clintonites are already dismissing. (After all, shouldn't he triumph in a state where half the voters are African Americans?) At the same time, he is depending on short spots to convey his large message to millions of voters elsewhere. It's not the best position to be in.

Obama needs a definitional moment. That doesn't mean he should cry on the campaign trail. (And the politerati will debate for years whether that did the trick for Clinton in New Hampshire.) But he has to cut through the clutter--the sniping, the jockeying, the sideshow stories--in a bold manner that brings it all home for those 2/5 voters who might only now be thinking seriously about whom to choose. Now if I knew how to engineer such a move, I'd be rich. This ain't easy. But reaching so many people at once, as I've said before, is a mighty challenge. Winning South Carolina won't be enough.

The conventional take is that neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton came out well during Monday night's joint-slam of a debate. And on Tuesday, the cat-fight continued, with HRC belittling Obama and claiming he "was looking for a fight" because of his recent primary losses. As he did on Monday night, John Edwards called on the leading contenders to knock it off.

Bicker, bicker, bicker. It does make the face-off between Obama and Clinton look petty. And that is to Clinton's advantage.

She's once again in the lead. In New Hampshire and Nevada, she beat back Obama's politics of hope. Trench warfare has served her well. As I noted recently, Obama's challenge is to bond with voters in the upcoming primaries and to connect them to his unconventional and transformative brand of politics. It's one helluva tough assignment--especially given the size of the playing field for Supersaturated Tuesday on February 5. Clinton merely has to succeed in her conventional task: selling herself as the better-qualified candidate. If Obama gets tied up in schoolyard-style back-and-forth with Clinton, he will become bogged down. He will not soar. He needs to. She does not.

On Sunday, Obama delivered a triumphant speech at Martin Luther King Jr.'s church in Atlanta. (Watch it here; read it here.) Forget the budget deficit or the trade deficit, he said, the nation has a "a moral deficit...an empathy deficit." He explained; "I'm talking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brothers keeper; we are our sister's keep; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny."

He defended the importance of inspiring rhetoric:

That is how Dr. King led this country through the wilderness. He did it with words--words that he spoke not just to the children of slaves, but the children of slave owners. Words that inspired not just black but also white; not just the Christian but the Jew; not just the Southerner but also the Northerner.

He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.

It was Obama at his best. And it was the sort of material upon which he should be judged as a presidential candidate--far more important than the nanny-nah-nah exchanges between him and Clinton.

So if Clinton can keep Obama engaged in spitball-slinging, she will be doing herself a favor. He is the candidate who needs the space to make an unconventional case. Clutter is her friend. A mudwrestle helps her, not him. Don't be surprised if the Clinton camp keeps squabbling alive.

LEAVING ALREADY? I weigh in on Fred Thompson's departure from the Republican race here.

Barack Obama has a big problem.

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

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

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

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

In the small and early states, a presidential candidates can forge a connection with voters. There are direct interactions: meet-and-greets, town hall gatherings, rallies. Word of mouth can spread. And the media in the early states devote extensive coverage; even couch potatoes come into regular contact with the contenders. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama was able to create a bond with a great number of voters--many of whom had been able to interact closely with him or his campaign. They could hear him speak. They could look him in the eye. They could experience Obama--in real time, in real life.

After Nevada and South Carolina, that's going to change. The election will be shaped by Supersaturated Tuesday, February 5, when two dozen states, including some of the largest in the union, will hold primaries or caucuses. No candidate will be able to reach large number of voters in an up-close-and-personal manner. There will be big rallies in California and elsewhere. But the people who show up will be a minuscule fraction of the electorate, and these events may not receive extensive local media coverage--absent Oprah or a newsworthy mishap. (California television news is notorious for shortchanging political coverage. There are, after all, so many car chases to chase after.)

At this stage, the candidates will be reaching voters mainly through commercials. A television spot is a fine medium for a candidate to share his or her resume, to list his or her accomplishments. It is much tougher to convey the intangibles of hope, faith, and transcendence in a 30- or 60-second spot. The bottom line: advantage to Clinton.

In the mad scramble that will ensue after the South Carolina Democratic primary on January 26--with the candidates flying back and forth across the country in an intense nine-day dash--Obama may find it difficult to connect directly with voters in the fashion he needs to. He proclaims, let me lead you in a noble cause, and many Democrats are already sold. They have been inspired. They are part of his crusade. But others might need to feel the buzz viscerally before jumping on the Obama Express. Can Obama jazz them up from a distance--when he's hopscotching from one state to the other, responding to Clinton's criticisms (or attacks), and keeping it all together?

Prior to the primaries, Obama did move thousands of Democrats, who flocked to his website and donated generously. He did not shake the hand of each one. He did not have to. And the enthusiasm he generated set him up well for Iowa and New Hampshire. But as New Hampshire demonstrated, he needs to expand beyond that base. And that means reaching voters who have not yet felt the Obama magic. How to convince them from afar is a profound challenge. (To be clear: I'm not predicting he will fail. I'm not predicting anything at all about this election. Not anymore. I'm merely noting Obama has much unique heavy-lifting to do in the next three weeks.)

When Supersized Tuesday first materialized, political observers made the obvious observation that it would favor any candidate with big bucks, extensive organization, and/or establishment backing. But it also gives an advantage to any candidate with a conventional (and, thus, easy-to-convey) message. And that isn't Barack Obama.

I'll be out of town for a few days. See you next week--after Nevada.

John McCain, the war ain't helping you. That is, all the war advocates who have recently been mouthing happy talk about the Iraq war are not doing McCain any favors. And he can include himself in that group.

Look at the Michigan primary. Mitt Romney finally won a gold medal last night and whooped McCain by 9 points. Half the voters in Michigan said that the economy was the No. 1 issue. Only one-fifth pointed to Iraq. Among those who cited the economy, Romney bested McCain 41 to 29 percent. Of course, Michigan is in a near-depression, and it comes as no surprise that GOP voters there are looking more for an economic savior than a military commander who can keep Iraqi insurgents from coming over here to attack our malls. And during the campaign Romney did his best to pander to Michiganders, promising to bring back the golden age of automobile manufacturing. McCain, though, told 'em to suck it up and get with Plan B (retraining and education for non-automaking jobs). Thus, the candidate of national security was trounced by the candidate of economic miracles.

McCain and his strategists can dismiss the Michigan loss as inevitably due to the specific circumstances of the Michigan economy. But that might be whistling past the shutdown factory. The meta-narrative these days is this: the war is going well, the U.S. economy is rushing toward a recession. It doesn't matter whether this is an accurate depiction of reality. After all, the war in Iraq has hardly turned the corner, and even the recent passage of a de-Baathification law in the Iraqi parliament was not much of a true success. (Almost a half of the body didn't turn up for the vote, and its passage pissed off Sunnis and Shias alike, with many of the former remaining unconvinced this legislation will change much for them.) But if GOP voters believe--or hear repeatedly--that the surge is working, they have less reason to fret about the war, and less reason to feel a need for McCain.

What other issue is McCain known for these days? Maybe pork-busting. But he's never had much of a profile on grand economic matters. Conservatives still hold a grudge against him for not being a passionate tax-cutter. So if the pending--or already-arrived--recession is now the worry of the moment for GOP voters, McCain doesn't meet the demand. Enter Romney, Mr. CEO. The guy who gave us Staples and cheap paper clips. In Michigan, his economy-first message triumphed. Could he do the same elsewhere?

For months, McCain has been proclaiming that the surge is succeeding. And with such pronouncements filling the media, Iraq has become a less salient issue for voters in both parties. McCain might end up a victim of his own success.

DEMS DO NEVADA. It was a rather low-key debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday night for the Democratic presidential contenders. They all played nice. They all looked exhausted. Here's my report from MotherJones.com:

What did the umpteenth Democratic presidential debate, held in Nevada on Tuesday night, demonstrate? That Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton each need a nap. The trio looked worn out. Perhaps that was why few punches were thrown. The Iraq war, the politics of race, tears (or near tears)--the Democratic contest had become rather heated in recent days. Clinton, using misleading information, had accused Obama of being a disingenuous hypocrite regarding the war. Obama's camp had seized on a comment Clinton had made to Fox News and assailed her for supposedly dissing Martin Luther King Jr. And Edwards had snidely insinuated Clinton might not be strong enough to be president (after she became emotional at a campaign stop in New Hampshire). It was getting nasty.

But in Las Vegas, there was relative calm. And no one hit the jackpot. Sure, there were a few pokes. Clinton declined to state that Obama and Edwards are prepared to be president. Edwards noted that Clinton and Obama had pocketed campaign contributions from corporate executives. Obama suggested that Clinton was using the specter of a future terrorist attack to scare people into voting for her. Overall, though, the three stuck to their positive scripts. Obama: I can inspire, mobilize, and bring together a divided nation. Clinton: I have the experience to be ready on Day One to solve problems for you and your children. Edwards: I will fight to my last breath for middle-class and low-income Americans. (Clinton did have a Clintonian moment when she acknowledged that she had voted for the anti-consumer bankruptcy bill of 2001 but "was happy that it never became law." In other words, I voted for it but didn't inhale.)

The major clash of the night came over...energy policy....

You can read the rest here.

I've been tough on Hillary Clinton lately for speaking falsely about Barack Obama and his record on the Iraq war. (See here and here.) But I have to say this: Clinton and her allies are right about Nevada. They have been blasting the process that will be used in the January 19 caucus. Clinton has groused about caucuses in general, complaining that because caucus meetings occur at a specific time, many voters (say, those who have to be at work) miss out and are disenfranchised. All that is true--though I doubt Clinton would have adopted the role of Ms. Empowerment if Iowa and Nevada were good states for her. In Nevada, though, one step implemented in response to that criticism may end up hurting her. But whether or not it's bad for Clinton, this reform still warrants second thoughts.

In Nevada, Clinton is at a disadvantage because the major Democratic political player with street muscle--the Culinary Workers Union--endorsed Obama last week. This union has tens of thousands of members it can bus, shove, or escort to the caucuses. And the union won't have to push or guide them too far, for the state Democratic Party has arranged to hold caucuses in nine of Las Vegas's biggest unionized casinos.

On one level, you can say, isn't this great? It will be so much easier for blackjack dealers, cocktail waitresses, bellhops, cabbies and others to participate. But there is something a little creepy about a setup in which a union drives its members to a room at the workplace and then these members have to vote in public. (Remember, in a caucus, you don't go into a voting booth; you stand in a corner of a room.) Presumably union leaders will be there watching whom stands where. Certainly, the same dynamic might have been at play in some caucus sites in Iowa, but not in as an intense manner.

You can't blame the Obama campaign for accepting the support of the dominant union and deriving the benefits of a system set up by the state party. (One amusing note: many casino execs are Clinton supporters, and the pro-Obama union is using their casinos to help Obama.) And the caucusing-in-the-casino arrangement was cooked up long before CWU's endorsement of Obama in order to boost participation--not to benefit any specific candidate. Yet it's not a good deal for democracy. Not that I expect there will be union goons present enforcing the Obama endorsement. But people ought to be able to vote free of any concern--real or imagined.

This makes me sympathetic to the argument that caucuses ought to be abolished in favor of elections--but not sympathetic to the lawsuit filed by the Nevada State Education Association, which has gone to court to shut down the casino caucuses. (The group has not endorsed Clinton but several of its leaders support her.) It's hard not to suspect that politics, rather than principle, propelled that union to try to thwart what could be a big day for Obama.

It's no surprise that politics in Las Vegas has become a whirl of wheeling and dealing. The Clintonites are entitled to be pissed off about the casino caucuses, but that does not place them on the moral high ground. Such real estate is quite difficult to find in Sin City.

Like everyone else in New Hampshire--reporters, campaign workers for Hillary Clinton and for Barack Obama, and ski lift operators--I thought Obama was schussing toward victory (perhaps even a double-digit--victory) in the Live Free or Die state. Howard Kurtz slaps the media silly today for calling the race so wrong. (Sometimes, Kurtz really has it easy.) But to explain--not excuse--let me note that on Election Day, all the Clinton folks in New Hampshire had the look of death on their faces. They were telling reporters that the campaign was not working. They were saying that it would have to be retooled. We were all fooled by the data that was available: the polls, the obvious passion and attendance gap between Obama's events and Clinton's. The media's big error was not misreading this information, though that was a mistake; it was overhyping the collective conventional wisdom. But that's what the media tend to do in order to win attention. Will a cable talk show host who plays it calm and cool ("we don't really know what's going to happen; the front-runner could win again; then again, another candidate might triumph") bag a bigger audience than one who bangs a drum loudly, playing up the drama and sharing sharp opinions? The same goes for bloggers and the tabloids.

In any event, I wonder how much--if at all--the media coverage of the race affected the results. Did Iowa voters decide who to vote for on the basis of what was said on Fox News or MSNBC? Did those legendary independent-minded voters of New Hampshire take their cues from the political coverage of The New York Times, Washington Post, or the New York Post? In both states, voters can obtain their information and impressions directly from the candidates. I doubt media coverage was a significant factor--though some analysts now wonder if anti-Clinton coverage motivated female voters to come to the rescue of this damsel in distress. (That is, blame Chris Matthews.)

Now for my own mea culpa. I was carried away by hope. I try not to make political predictions and mostly resisted the urge this week. But when asked, I did say a double-digit victory was possible, if not likely, for Obama. Whoops. I should have stuck to my previous, pre-Iowa skepticism. Months ago, I did the math. Women, I noted, tend to vote in greater numbers than men. If Hillary could lock up a decent-sized majority (or plurality) of the women vote, she could be unstoppable. The math was simply overwhelming--particularly in a race involving her and multiple male candidates. Obama was facing a double gender-gap: more Democratic women voting in general, and more of those women supporting Clinton. I repeated this back-of-the-envelope analysis to Obama fans. No, I was told, hope will win out.

It did in Iowa. Obama did play well there among women. But then the women came home. Why? Partly because the Clinton campaign mounted an efficient get-out-the-gals organizing campaign in New Hampshire and made sure their appeal was just right for Democratic women. And perhaps because Democratic women did not want to see Hillary Clinton, the first woman with a shot of becoming president, so easily dispatched. (I'm not going to try to factor in--or out--the near-crying episode.)

To understand Clinton's appeal to Democratic women, several male reporters I know have turned to a very particular focus group: their mothers. Several colleagues have told me that they have heard from their moms on the subject of Clinton, usually with the mother sharing a positive view of the candidate. (In other words, treat her fairly!) After the results came in on Tuesday night, my mother weighed in. She emailed me, "I sort of wanted Obama to win, but was happy that she won." But Ma was also pleased that Clinton had not won "by a landslide." See the conflict? Democratic women do have a tough choice: between that reliable warhorse (of whom they may have mixed feelings) and that inspirational new guy. In South Carolina, African-American woman will be confronted by the same--and maybe more so.

Earlier in the race, it did seem rather noteworthy that the Democratic contest could produce either the first female nominee or the first black nominee of a major party. While that remains true, the contest appears to have hit the shoals of identity politics. And, boy, there's not much more than race and gender matters that commentators and pundits like to chew on (except, of course, sex). So in the next few weeks, as gender and racial politics overtly shape and perhaps define the presidential race on the Democratic side, there ought to be plenty of opportunity for us journalists (particularly us white-guy journalists) to get something wrong again.

In politics, nothing beats hope like a good ground game and negative campaigning. Is that the lesson of New Hampshire? The dust is still settling. One longtime New Hampshire Democrat--at 2:00 am--was telling me that she believes the explanation is simple: race. Perhaps. But the Clinton camp sure turned out the dames, according to the exit polls. And the indie guys seemed to have gone with John McCain. In any event, those damn polls sure were damn wrong. They had Obama up by 4 to 13 points--"I'm just praying the spread is 9.9 percent," one top Clinton adviser said to me on Election Day afternoon--and he lost by two. The funny thing is, the same polls were right about McCain's victory over Mitt Romney. Which brings some of us back to race. Black candidates tend to do less well in voting booths than in polls. Is that what happened in New Hampshire, which, I'm told, was the last state to recognize Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday? I dunno. And I wonder if Clinton's unfair slams on Obama made a difference. In any event, here's the piece I posted for MotherJones.com from Obama's "victory" celebration in Nashua.

HILLARY RISING: EXPERIENCE AND CONVENTIONAL POLITICS TRIUMPH IN NH

The empire strikes back.

Throughout the morning, afternoon, and early evening of Election Day in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton aides looked grim and gloomily moaned about a campaign that appeared to have been derailed, if not defeated. Expecting to lose by perhaps over 10 points, they wondered aloud what could be done to stop Barack Obama, the self-proclaimed "hope-monger," who only days earlier had seemingly rewritten modern American politics. Then the actual results started coming in, and Clinton was reborn. After being trounced in Iowa, the wife of the "comeback kid" of 1992 had managed a resurrection far more impressive than her spouse had achieved sixteen years earlier. He had merely overcome news of an extramarital affair; she had beaten back a new brand of politics.

Her surprising win--based partly on a strong performance among women and working-class voters--came after she had spent days decrying Obama's lack of experience (a legitimate point) and denouncing him as a hypocrite (not a legitimate point). With Clinton's victory, the main question of the Democratic race returns to what it had been prior to Iowa: can he beat her? But the small 3-percent margin in her favor suggested that the battle between her conventional politics and his unconventional politics has not been definitively resolved.

Throughout the campaign, Obama and Clinton have been operating on two different levels. Her playbook has been by-the-numbers: bash the Bush administration, offer red-meat policy proposals, sell her experience, talents, and strength--and, of course, raise tons of money and assemble a powerhouse organization. Obama has done all of that but within a different context. At the start, he and his advisers took one big step back and tried to envision what the electorate would be yearning for in 2008--not just the Democrats but also independents and those Republicans who did not fancy the taste of the Bush-Cheney Kool-Aid.

Clinton was practicing standard supply-side politics: push the candidate. Obama was looking at the demand side. He and his aides believed there was a desire for a break from politics-as-usual. After all, there had been a decade-and-a-half of bitter politics, as well as several years of governmental incompetence (and worse), care of the Bush administration. Opinion polls suggested deep popular dissatisfaction with the state and future of the country. The Iraq war--and its unending fallout--had soured many independents and some Republicans. And the current regime was not doing much for anyone worried about economic security, health care, or global warming. So for many Americans, the government wasn't working, and the political system was broken. They wanted change. For a potential national candidate, what was the answer? A candidacy that offered solutions and leadership that would transcend the same-old/same-old. That was Obama's theory: give 'em both a platform and, yes, hope.

In Iowa, it worked. Obama attracted newcomers to politics. He persuaded people that he had character, root principles, and the desire (if not the ability) to rise above the bickering of Washington to accomplish grand goals--that by electing him the voters themselves could be implementers of profound change. (A President Obama certainly would represent more change than a second President Clinton.) He offered them not merely a choice but the chance to be part of a cause.

In New Hampshire, his crusade crashed into prosaic political reality. Though the state--with its high percentage of upscale and well-educated voters--seemed ready-made for another Obama triumph, the Clintons had deep roots there (which was not the case in Iowa). And after being upset in Iowa, the Clinton campaign focused on its core supporters. "At Clinton headquarters, It was all women all the time," said one Democratic official. And exit polls showed that women made up 57 percent of the Democratic vote and broke dramatically for Clinton.

At campaign stops, Obama audaciously compared his campaign to great periods in U.S. history: the fight for independence, the abolition of slavery, the defeat of fascism in World War II, the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement. "There's a moment in the life of every generation," Obama told the New Hampshire voters who flooded his events, "if it is to make a mark on history, when that spirit of hopefulness must come through....This is our moment."

Clinton aides and supporters dismissed and derided all his talk of hope and change as hokey. The day before the election, Bill Clinton called Obama's pitch "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." Again and again--in New Hampshire bars, restaurants and hotel lobbies, at campaign events--the Clintonistas voiced the mantra: Obama's a fine young man, but she has the experience, she has been vetted. Their frustration was palpable: why don't those damn voters get it. In the backroom of an Irish pub in Manchester, retired General Wesley Clark said to me that he wished Democratic voters "would show some guts," that he believed they were scared to vote for Clinton because they feared Republicans would mount a vicious anti-Hillary campaign should she be nominated. Democratic voters, he said, needed to suck it up and get behind Hillary Clinton, because she was the only candidate with deep experience. "Democrats," he complained, "fall in love. Republicans fall in line."

Working to get those Democrats into line behind her, Clinton asked voters to hire her as their champion, noting that due to her work in the White House, 7000 kids in New Hampshire had health insurance and that New Hampshire National Guard members had health care thanks to her toils in the Senate. She held campaign events--not always so well attended--where she answered long series of questions to show her command of policy details She cried--or nearly cried--at one campaign stop when discussing why she was driven to run for president. (Tons of analysis--before and after her win--focused on whether this had helped her.) And as Election Day neared, Clinton and her campaign ops went further than questioning Obama's readiness; they denigrated him as a talker, not a doer, and, worse, as a disingenuous hypocrite. Their evidence for the second half of this argument was weak--more spin than substance. (For one example, see here.)

Reporters laughed off the Clinton oppo attacks, some telling me that the campaign had been peddling (unsuccessfully) the same thin stuff to reporters for months. There's no telling--at this time--whether those cheap shots helped her. But they certainly didn't hurt. And the hypocrisy of Clinton's blasts never backfired against her. The Clinton campaign hammered Obama for slamming lobbyists but naming a (state) lobbyist for a drug company as co-chair his New Hampshire campaign. A fair point--but her campaign's chief strategist is Mark Penn, a corporate consultant who has worked for drug companies and other favorite Democratic targets. The Clintonites did not allow themselves to be inconvenienced by such contradictions. And virtually no one called them on it.

In the meantime, the Clinton campaign's get-out-the-gals ground game plodded ahead--even though on Election Day, Clinton people did not appear to have much faith in it. "This is not working," Elizabeth Bagley, a Clinton adviser and fundraiser, said at mid-day. "There obviously has to be a retooling of the campaign." And talk swirled that the Clinton campaign was about to undergo a dramatic shakeup. ("We're always adding new people to the team," a not-so-cheerful-looking Terry McAuliffe, the campaign chairman, told me.) The politerati pondered whether or not Clinton would pull out of Nevada, which holds a first-time caucus on January 19, and South Carolina, which has a primary election on January 26, and make her final stand on Super-Duper Tuesday, February 5, when 24 states will hold primaries or caucuses. "We need a time-out," said a Clinton adviser, "something to stop the momentum, so we can have a reality check." Clinton got much more than a stop-in-play.

With his lofty calls for change and his invitation to voters to join him in a grand political experiment, Obama, in Iowa, flipped the script. "We shook up every political assumption," he said while campaigning in New Hampshire. But now Clinton--even though she won by only a few thousand votes--has flipped it back. And the new narrative is again the old narrative. Their Election Night speeches reflected the fundamental divide of the race. Obama declared, "The reason our campaign has always been different...is because it's not just about what I will do as president....It's about what you can do to change" the nation. Clinton proclaimed, "It's time we had a president who stands up for all of you." He was still selling a movement; she was still selling herself. The primaries ahead will show who has a better sense of the market--and, just as important (as New Hampshire reminded all), who has a better delivery system.

Like you, I'm waiting to see what those so-important New Hampshire voters are going to do. After chasing the candidates--all of them!--around the state for nearly a week, today is a day of calm. The candidates tend to do little, other than visit polling places and shake hands. There won't be any speeches, there will be few press releases blasting an opponent. No one wants to make any last-minute mistake. There's often an eerie calm on Election Day. So below are some reflections first posted on MotherJones.com on what a loss might mean for Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions.

ELECTION DAY IN NH: HILLARY'S LAST HURRAH?

Last night, at a rally near the Manchester airport, Hillary Clinton packed 'em in. A thousand or so people listened to her deliver a long speech outlining virtually every policy position she has ever mentioned during the campaign. On one level, it was an impressive performance. She demonstrated a command of policy and facts. She spoke passionately about her intellectual passions. On another level, it was, perhaps, too much too late. As at least two reporters in the room --including Mickey Kaus--quipped, it seemed she was delivering a State of the Union speech, particularly the sort that her husband use to give. Remember how he would go over a long laundry list of policy proposals? One of the biggest cheers of the night came when she said that if elected president she would make sure the federal student aide form wouldn't be too long.

This was as good as she gets. The crowd was pumped--though it did lose some energy as she went on and on. (And on Election Day eve, you don't want to tire out supporters who have to get up early the next morning and start working for you.) She pointed out that she was the candidate who was strong enough and experienced enough to deliver the change that the American electorate yearns for. But she took no pot shots at her opponents. "Time to tell her story," a Clinton aide said to me.

It's not such a bad story. And did the size of the crowd indicate she might just be able to pull out a win in New Hampshire? Once upon a time--that would be sixteen years ago--another Clinton became the self-proclaimed "comeback kid" of New Hampshire. (That was after placing second in New Hampshire. Talk about chutzpah!) There's no reporter in New Hampshire I've spoken to who thinks that HRC can pull it out. Instead, we discuss how big Barack Obama's win will be--and what the point spread will mean. Some political commentators claim that if Clinton can hold him to a 6-point or less win, she can claim a moral victory. I dunno. Seems to me that whatever the win is, as long as it's more than a close call, the important statistic will be this: 2 for 2.

At their morning and afternoon events yesterday, Obama continued to soar, preaching his politics of hope, and Clinton continued to blast away at him, using weak ammo. His events were jammed. Hers (until the evening rally) were not. At a gym in Dover, there was an embarrassingly small crowd, and a Politico reporter spent an hour trying to find young pro-Clinton voters in the room. She failed. At the opera house in Rochester, hundreds of people waited in the cold for Obama, and then many did not get in.

I'm not making any prediction. But I would be stunned if Obama does not end this day with a commanding lead. And the key question of the Democratic race will only become sharper: what is she to do? I keep saying this: he's selling vision, she's selling vegetables. You can't beat vision by saying my vegetables are better yours--especially if the consumers are in the mood for vision.

And where can she stop him? In Nevada, which will hold a caucus on January 19? That caucus--a first-time event in the state--will likely be quite small. And the one political powerhouse in the state--the culinary workers union--seems poised to endorse Obama. (That endorsement could come on Wednesday.) Nevada might easily become Obama's third in a row. So South Carolina? It's hard to envision the dominant African-American vote in that state not flowing to a sweeping Obama. Some pundits floating about New Hampshire are saying Clinton ought to pull out of South Carolina. If she did, she would appear weak. But if she looses there, she would appear weak. She has no good choices in South Carolina.

That leaves Super Duper Tuesday on February 5 as the place for Clinton to make her final stand, if the Obama wave doesn't crash on its own. That's a long way off. Then again, it's in less than a month. In a way, she's being forced into a Rudy Giuliani strategy: loose all the initial bouts and then shoot the moon in the near-national primary. It's a tough model for success. Will she be able to beat back Obama in California, the key prize of February 5?

Politics is a fluid business. But things, at the moment, do seem grim for the Clinton gang. So maybe Kaus was right, and last night Clinton delivered her fantasy State of the Union speech because she realizes she might never get to do it for real.

I've been dashing around New Hampshire, chasing candidates (large and small). Is anything happening in the world south of Nashua? So while I'm on the run, allow me to repurpose--as they say--a report I filed for MotherJones.com. Here it is:

The morning after, it got nasty.

At Saturday night's Democratic debate in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton served notice she was looking to tear down Barack Obama with two charges: he's a flip-flopper and he's all talk and no action. And moments after the debate ended, her aides trotted out to the so-called spin room to hammer home these points.

Consequently, it was no surprise that on Sunday morning, she began a day of campaign events in which she declared that New Hampshire voters should elect "a doer, not a talker" and that it was time to distinguish "rhetoric from reality." Her campaign released a statement emphasizing this line of attack that was headlined, "Rhetoric vs. Results, Talk vs. Action." It was not subtle:

At the debate last night it was clear when opponents were asked what change they had made:

Instead of telling New Hamphsire voters what he had done for them, Barack Obama defended rhetoric and talk and cited legislation that bans sit-down meals with lobbyists but allows them to stand up and eat together.

Obama talked about government reform, but denied that the co-chair of his New Hampshire campaign is a lobbyist. He talked about energy reform but couldn't defend his vote in favor of Dick Cheney's energy plan that gave the big oil companies billions in tax breaks. He talked about his speech against the war, but didn't explain why he voted for $300 billion in funding for the war and why he said as late as 2004 that he didn't know how he would have voted on the war.

The Clinton campaign was doing its best to stretch the little oppo research it has been able to dig up on Obama. When Obama voted for the energy bill--which passed the Senate on an 85 to 12 vote--he said that the measure had fallen short of what was necessary to achieve U.S. energy independence. Environmentalists did not fancy the bill, but over half of the Democrats in the Senate supported the legislation. Most of them came from states that would benefit from the subsidies in the bill--as did Obama. This vote was not a shining moment for Obama, but it represented a conventional political decision (help your state), not hypocrisy. As for the Iraq war funding issue, Obama, like other Democratic senators opposing the war (including Clinton), has voted for bills financing the war. Regarding Obama's New Hampshire co-chair, Jim Demers, the Clinton gang did have a point. He is a lobbyist for drug interests and other groups--but in New Hampshire, not Washington, the Obama campaign say. Still, he is an influence-peddler of the sort Obama has decried.

All told, though, the Clinton campaign did not present a strong case. Then came the robo-call charge.

On Sunday afternoon, the Clinton campaign zapped out an email to reporters accusing Obama of conducting illegal campaign activities. The press release said that the Clinton campaign had received reports from New Hampshire voters who were on the do-not-call list but who had received prerecorded calls from the Obama campaign. Under New Hampshire law, it is illegal to robo-call people on the do-not-call registry, and state law requires a prerecorded call to identify its sponsor within 30 seconds. This particular call did not do so for 38 seconds. (The call contained a message from a Planned Parenthood official who said that Obama has a "100 percent pro-choice record." The Clinton campaign has slammed Obama for voting present--neither yea or nay--on seven abortion-related bills during his years as an Illinois state senator.) The Obama campaign, the Clinton crew asserted, "appears" to have violated the law.

The Clinton campaign arranged a conference call for reporters to discuss this pressing matter. During the call, Kathy Sullivan, a co-chair of the Clinton effort in New Hampshire, denounced Obama for the robo-calls. But when a reporter asked how many instances she could cite of a person on the do-not-call list being bothered by one of these messages, she replied, two. That's not a lot.

The Clinton campaign is clearly in the throw-whatever-we-have mode and is hoping that something--anything!---sticks. During this conference call, I questioned Howard Wolfson, the campaign's communications director, about the charge that Obama had been inconsistent on the Iraq war. Hillary Clinton, I noted, now opposes the war, but she, too, has voted to fund it. Isn't it a bit unfair, I asked, for her to slap Obama for doing the same? But Obama, Wolfson countered, "said one thing when he was running for the Senate and then changed his mind."

Obama's campaign says that when he was campaigning for the Senate he opposed the $87 billion funding bill under consideration at the time because it included unnecessary spending. (He then voted for other war funding legislation when he became a senator.) So I asked Wolfson if Clinton was attacking Obama the same way that George W. Bush's campaign had assailed Senator John Kerry, who first supported the $87 billion package but then opposed it after Bush and the Republicans refused to suspend tax cuts for the wealthy to pay for it. Wolfson acknowledged that "there certainly could be...a change of policy, a change of circumstance" that caused Obama to shift his view regarding war funding legislation. But he went on to claim that Obama had changed his approach toward health care, gun control, and mandatory minimum sentences for criminal convictions. "In the case of Senator Obama," he said, "you see a pattern....This is important information for people to know." And, he implied, we're damn sure going to get it to them.

The Obama campaign was preparing itself for the last-minute onslaught. And on Sunday afternoon, David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, was punching back. Concerning Clinton's charge that Obama is all poetry and no production, he told me, "I don't know where she was when he passed the single biggest ethics reform since Watergate as well as significant arms control legislation. Maybe she wasn't there when he passed the Google bill, which would put the federal budget on line. I know she's not familiar with what he did in Illinois, where he passed legislation on health care reform and death penalty reform. She must be unfamiliar, or there's another possibility: she is willfully distorting the truth." Axelrod said he is expecting more of the same: "She has failed to convince the people of New Hampshire that she should be president. She will spend her time now trying to convince them Barack Obama shouldn't be."

At a Sunday rally in Derry, New Hampshire, Barack Obama, speaking to a large crowd, indirectly replied to Clinton's get-Obama strategy. "Being against something--that's easy," he said, adding, "the reason why people came out in Iowa is because they want to be for something." With new polls showing Obama leading Clinton by up to 13 points, there's not much time for the Clinton campaign's nicks to draw signficant blood. But each day, the attacks (well-founded or not) get sharper. The question is whether they are relevant to the dynamics of the Democratic race--which have been defined so far by Obama's message not Clinton's. As I noted earlier, he's selling vision, she's selling vegetables. Those voters yearning for the former may not be persuadable by the conventional (and occasionally petty) attacks mounted in conventional style by the conventional campaign of Hillary Clinton. Tuesday will show whether Obama's soaring politics of hope can be brought to Earth by Clinton's ground fire. If it cannot be, what else will--or can--she try?

At Milly's Tavern in Manchester, New Hampshire--where Barack Obama campaign workers had assembled to watch the Iowa caucus results on Thursday night--there was only one question on the mind of the few reporters in the room: what is Hillary Clinton to do now?

By trouncing Clinton by 8 points, Obama shifted the political landscape. If he had won by merely a few points and Clinton and John Edwards had finished close, the race in New Hampshire probably would have been just a continuation of the Iowa contest, with the candidates sticking to their basic gameplans and messages. Finishing (as of this writing) in third place and losing by a significant amount, Clinton and her strategists cannot look at New Hampshire and say, "We just have to do what we've been doing better and hope it will play better before a different audience of Democrats and independents." No, you lose by 8 points, you have to make some changes.

But what changes?

Hillary Clinton has four days to try something else--and two of those days are the weekend. And for it to work, it will have to be big and be bold, so that New Hampshire voters truly notice. One obvious option: go nuclear on Obama. Clinton could, for instance, attempt to frighten--really frighten--voters about his lack of experience.

But when Clinton has attacked Obama in the past, it hasn't done her much good. She fell in the polls after tearing into him. As one Clinton adviser told me a few weeks ago, Clinton plays better as victim than attacker. What else could she do? Let Bill loose? He was ably deployed in Iowa, and that didn't do the trick. Are there other surrogates she could call on who could have an impact in New Hampshire?

Moreover, any dramatic move she might make at this point has the potential of casting her as desperate. Voters, like dogs, can smell fear. She's in a tough fix.

Despite the beer that was flowing at Milly's, none of us reporters cooked up any good ideas for HRC. She's on her own. Iowa was one damn big siren-screaming warning for the Clintonites. Young voters, independents, women and others turned out for Obama, endorsing his message of change and embracing him as the messenger. During his eloquent victory speech, Obama seemed to be riding a wave of history. (Talk about peaking at the right moment.)

In the heat of the moment--especially at Milly's--it's easy to overemphasize Iowa and even, perhaps, New Hampshire. There are other contests after the Granite State, and Clinton has plenty of money to keep her campaign fueled all the way to Super Duper Tuesday on February 5. She could opt to hang tight and hope to best Obama in later rounds. But Obama's triumph in Iowa does suggest that what Clinton has been doing ain't working. To win, she, too, might have to embrace change.

McCAIN'S 1000-YEAR WAR. At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Thursday night, John McCain told me that he wouldn't mind if U.S. troops stay in Iraq for a "thousand" years, as long as American casualties are declining. Read my report on this here.

Don't be fooled by the headline, for only a fool would make real predictions about the coming caucuses and primaries. I'm heading out of town (and off-line) for a week on a trip that was booked long before Iowa decided to ruin the holiday season by scheduling its caucuses for January 3 (and New Hampshire compounded the inconvenience by setting its primary for January 8). But before I grab the tanning butter and skedaddle, I thought I'd offer one possible headline:

Obama Has Won Iowa

Note the verb tense. This is not a prediction but a statement of fact. What I mean is that Obama has already done in Iowa what he needed to do: show he's competitive with Hillary Clinton. Certainly, if on January 3 he can actually attract more votes there than Clinton or John Edwards, he will truly be in a strong position. But even if he loses in a close race to Clinton by a few points, he will be firmly in the hunt. By drawing close to her--and surpassing her in the polls--in Iowa, Obama has demonstrated he can get within reach of winning.

Earlier this year, Obama was stuck in poll after poll far behind Clinton. That led to talk that he better win in Iowa...or else. Now that "or else" is gone. If he is not blown away by her in the final results, he will be able to carry on. Both Obama and Clinton have plenty of money. And campaigns tend to peter out only when the well gets dry. So Clinton and Obama will continue on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Duper Tuesday, a.k.a February 5, when 20-plus states will have primaries or caucuses.

The race could turn into a real slugfest. (Think of one of those Rocky movies.) Usually in politics, as in much of life, when chips fall, they fall in the same direction. There are prevailing winds, after all. But is it possible for the chips to split. If that comes to pass in this contest, the Democrats will have a delegate-counting race. And if it's close enough, the so-called super-delegates--party officials awarded delegateship--could end up playing a decisive role in the nomination.

Yes, all this horse-race what-iffing is a bit fanciful. John Edwards still has a shot in Iowa. And who knows what might happen to Joe Biden if he vaults into fourth place in the Hawkeye State? But let's congratulate Obama for having already succeeded in Iowa. He can take the rest of the week off.

Earlier this year, the conventional wisdom was that Iowa might not matter as much as it has in the past. Some candidates--most notably, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani--were not mounting major productions there. There were new early states for campaigns--and pundits--to worry about: South Carolina and Nevada. And several big states, looking for a piece of the action, were moving their primaries up to February 5 and creating an early Super-Duper Tuesday. So with all that front-loaded action, Iowa, it seemed, could become merely a throat-clearing exercise.

Then there was a shift. After months of campaigning, Barack Obama could not seem to close the gap between himself and Hillary Clinton in national and state polls. In some surveys, HRC was posting a 20-plus point lead. Obama had star power and dino-dollars, but Clinton maintained what at times looked like an unassailable advantage. Her strategists were running her campaign as if she was already in the general election. Her supporters talked of inevitability. Under these conditions, Iowa became crucial--for Obama. In order to stop the Clinton Express from shooting straight to the convention, he would have to slow her in Iowa and demonstrate that he could turn all that cash and charisma into caucus votes. It would be his first and probably only chance. Iowa was all.

Then there was another shift. As Obama surged ahead of Clinton in the Iowa polls, the state became the battleground where Clinton had to win to prove her electability. If she fell her, members of the politerati wondered, would she crash and burn?

Now I'm predicting another shift: Iowa's hype is exceeding its significance. Iowa is obviously critical, with the polls showing a neck-and-neck race there between Clinton, Obama, and John Edwards. But it's now possible to see either Clinton or Obama losing Iowa and still snagging the nomination. (Not so for Edwards.) One key reason: they both have plenty of cash, enough to keep their campaign machines humming along. I ran into a prominent Clinton fundraiser the other day and asked if s/he was worried about Iowa. "Not as much as you might think," the cash-chaser said. "This campaign is going to go on long past Iowa. Why? Because we and they can afford to. Campaigns end when you run out of money. And that's not going to happen to either one of us." And while Obama once had to prove his competitiveness, the fact that he has put Clinton on the ropes in Iowa demonstrates that he can be a contender.

So Iowa might not matter--as long as neither Clinton nor Obama end up on the wrong side of a blowout. "This is going all the way to February 5," the Clinton fundraiser said. "And maybe beyond." In other words, Iowa, you're just the warm-up.

Yesterday I asked how far Hillary Clinton will go in attacking Barack Obama or John Edwards to win in Iowa or elsewhere. Today, let's flip the pic. How harsh will Edwards or Obama get to deny the national front-runner her coronation?

The answer (as of now) appears to be, as far as they have already. Two days ago, Edwards said candidates ought to be talking about the voters and their needs, not engaging in self-centered sniping at rivals. At the same time, though, the Edwards campaign was releasing an ad in which he says,

We can say as long as we get Democrats in, everything's gonna be okay. It's a lie. It is not the truth. Do you really believe if we replace a crowd of corporate Republicans with a crowd of corporate Democrats that anything meaningful's going to change? This has to stop. It's that simple.

No secret, he was busting on Clinton. And it's a criticism that has merit. Her campaign is fueled by cash and guided by strategy from corporate lobbyists and consultants who are Democrats. There's no denying her policies would differ from those of a Republican president. But she sure isn't for toppling the system in Washington.

So Edwards has a good point (even if he was no tear-down-the-wall populist when he served in the Senate). But can he persuade enough Iowa voters by playing it cute? Eschewing attack politics but assailing Clinton, even if not in name? If he's really fighting for the little guys and gals out there--and not just his campaign--then he might have to be more direct and confrontational in his crusade against Clinton and the corporate Democrats. Name names, that is. Who's the Democratic crowd he wants to keep out of power? Who's its leaders? Talk the talk.

Meanwhile, Obama's latest ad has its own dig at Clinton. It features a clip from his impressive Jefferson Jackson Day speech in Iowa, in which he declares,

We are in a defining moment in our history. Our nation is at war. The planet is in peril. The dream that so many generations fought for feels as if it's slowly slipping away. And that is why the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won't do. That's why telling the American people what we think they want to hear, instead of telling the American people what they need to hear, just won't do. America, our moment is now. I don't wanna spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don't wanna pit Red America against Blue America. I wanna be the President of the UNITED States of America.

Message: Clinton is too divisive or too distracting. But Obama does not sharpen his critique of Clinton with this ad. And that's interesting. He seems to be doing just fine--if you believe the polls--with his medium-strength, intermittent jabs at Hillary Clinton. This may say more about Clinton than about Obama. Glass of jaw? Feet of clay? She seems to have hit a tough patch without receiving all that much incoming. She had one major slip-up in a debate (when she could not talk straight about the proposal to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in New York State) and--boom!--she's fighting for her life in Iowa, even though Obama botched a question on that same topic in the following debate. For most of this year, Obama-ites were saying that Clinton's support was fragile and that pundits shouldn't be too influenced by the polls showing her with large leads over their man. Maybe they were right.

IN MY MIND..... Speaking of polls, a new poll in South Carolina shows HRC with just a 2-point edge over Obama in that key state: Clinton, 36 percent; Obama, 34 percent; and Edwards, 13 percent. A month ago, Clinton had a 10-point lead. Yesterday, I speculated that South Carolina might be the spot where the Clintonites will have to stop Obama and noted that might be difficult, given Obama's not-too-secret weapon: Oprah. So here's a question to consider: if Obama manages to rack up wins in the three main early contests, could Clinton beat him back on February 5, Super Duper Tuesday, when 20 or so states, including California, will hold contests and about half of the delegates will be selected?

INTELLIGENCE COINCIDENCE? Anyone else notice that on the same day the news broke that the CIA destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the waterboarding of al Qaeda operatives during interrogation sessions, the Senate intelligence committee produced a bipartisan measure that would ban waterboarding? The bill would do so by applying the Army Field Manual's interrogation standards (which forbids waterboarding) to all interrogations conducted by U.S. intelligence personnel.

In a statement released Thursday, CIA chief Michael Hayden, who took over the job in 2006, said,

The press has learned that back in 2002, during the initial stage of our terrorist detention program, CIA videotaped interrogations, and destroyed the tapes in 2005. I understand that the Agency did so only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries--including the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

The decision to destroy the tapes was made within CIA itself. The leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the videos years ago and of the Agency's intention to dispose of the material. Our oversight committees also have been told that the videos were, in fact, destroyed.

No longer of value? Isn't that what's usually said when someone destroys evidence? And the oversight committees, once informed of the pending destruction, did nothing to preserve these tapes? This sure smells funny. Doesn't the CIA have a vault with a really, really good lock on it where the videos could have been kept?

For the moment, it seems that the question of the Democratic horserace is this: how negative will Hillary Clinton go?

A prominent Clinton campaign adviser tells me that the Hillaryites are worried about the calendar--and worried enough that her attacks on Barack Obama may well get sharper. If--just if--Obama wins in Iowa, this Dem says, the five days between the caucus and the New Hampshire primary might not be enough time for Clinton to derail Obama. Then a nightmare (for Hillary) scenario is possible. Independents and Republicans (who want to hurt Hillary Clinton) turn out to vote for Obama in the New Hampshire open primary. Then the next place truly to stop Obama will be South Carolina on January 26 (a week after the Nevada caucuses). But one word about South Carolina: Oprah. In the Palmetto State, the fight will be for African-American voters. Clinton has done well there so far, according to the polls, and she has racked up critical endorsements from African American leaders in the state. But if the Diva of All Entertainment tours with Obama in South Carolina, she could win the black vote for him. Imagine the impact it might have if she appears at rallies with Obama and simply remarks, "Finally." She wouldn't have to say much more. And if South Carolina falls....

This sort of what-iffing is a sport for the politerati. But it's what campaign planners have to do. "We once thought he had to win Iowa to stay alive," this Clintonite says. "We now think that we might have to win to stay alive." Will the fight get even more nasty as Iowa approaches? "There's still plenty of time for that," this person says. "And that's how things go in politics. There may be no choice."

No doubt, the Obama campaign is gaming out the possibilities and calculating how far to go in slamming Clinton, as is the Edwards camp. Yesterday Edwards, who weeks ago was slashing away at Clinton, disparaged candidate-on-candidate sniping, complaining that such political discourse ignores the problems of real folks. Perhaps he has concluded his best shot is to try to sprint past the carnage created by a Clinton-Obama battle. Given the short space between Iowa and New Hampshire--last time there was eight days in between--there will be no time for any campaign to try a series of different tactics. They will have to be ready to roll on January 4 with whatever strategy they have cooked up for what will likely be the five most intense days in modern political campaigning.

So will Hillary, should she come up short in Iowa, continue to blast away at Obama (or denounce Edwards if he manages a surprise win in Iowa)? A former top Clinton White House official, unaffiliated with any current campaign, points out that one thing that Hillary Clinton does not do well is attack: "She's much better when she's being attacked." This person's advice for Clinton if she happen to lose in Iowa: "She should flirt. She can charm. I've seen her do it. Not like Bill. But she should not get her back up. She should be gracious. She doesn't do sarcasm well. She looked bad when she mocked Obama for saying he had gotten foreign policy experience by being a kid in Indonesia. That's something a surrogate should do, not her. She should resist the urge." Can she? "Well," this former Clintonista says, "that may depend on whether it's a 2-point loss in Iowa or a 5-point loss."

That new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran--the one that says Iran halted work on a nuclear weapons program since 2003--will really put a damper on Iran war fever. Just ask neocon legend Norman Podhoretz, who has been the lead advocate for bombing Tehran right away. He writes that the NIE:

has just dealt a serious blow to the argument some of us have been making that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons and that neither diplomacy nor sanctions can prevent it from succeeding.

Yep, it sure is gonna be hard for the hawks to whip up support at home and abroad for blasting Iran after the U.S. intelligence community has concluded the reason for such a blasting does not exist.

But what about the really important question: what does this mean for Hillary Clinton? My hunch: it helps. Until now, the only pressing foreign policy matter on which the leading Democratic presidential candidates disagreed was the recent legislation that declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist outfit. Clinton voted for it; Barack Obama, who missed the vote, and John Edwards, who no longer gets to vote in the Senate, have slammed her for that, claiming that a vote the measure was the equivalent of giving the Bush administration a greenlight for attacking in Iran. That is a somewhat dramatic reading of the legislation. But the measure did call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a "proliferator" of weapons of mass destruction--which certainly could be a cause for military action against Iran.

At a debate on Tuesday held by NPR in Iowa, Steve Inskeep asked Clinton about that part of the measure:

Senator Clinton, as some of your opponents have noted, in September you voted on a resolution involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which, among other things, called them proliferators of mass destruction. In view of this latest intelligence estimate, which says Iran's nuclear program was stopped in 2003, do you believe that's still true?

She ducked the question. Inskeep asked again. She ducked once more. She looked (or sounded, that is) dodgy.

But while the NIE pulls the (Persian?) rug out from under anyone who voted for that bill and those who have been walking on the hawkish side, it also does something else. As Pod the Elder noted, it takes the steam out of the Iran controversy. And that helps Clinton. With a military attack on Iran less likely now, Obama's and Edwards' criticism of HRC's vote will have less sting. They can argue her vote was wrong and that it shows she's not willing to stand up to Bush and the hawks. At the debate, Senator Joe Biden made a strong argument that Clinton's vote for this measure was damn foolish. Yet after the release of this NIE, it now seems that stopping a war with Iran is not going to be on the top of the to-do list of the next Democratic nominee. So a vulnerability that Clinton had, due to a true policy difference, will likely fade. Her campaign ought to send a thank-you card to the administration for releasing a declassified version of the report.

A NEW NEOCON CONSPIRACY. The neocons tend to be great fans of conspiracies. Before the Iraq war, some embraced the nutty idea that Saddam Hussein was the hidden hand behind al Qaeda. And some have claimed that the intelligence community actively sought to bring down the Bush administration. Picking up on that theme, Podhoretz suspects that the NIE was a dirty trick mounted by the spooks against the White House. He writes:

I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about "a halt to Iran's entire nuclear weapons program"--especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE's own euphemistic formulation, "with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways."

Want to know how crazy this is? Pop quiz: how many intelligence agencies are there in the intelligence community? Sixteen. The NIE was produced by the National Intelligence Council, which includes analysts from these agencies. Rigging a high-profile, long-in-the-making NIE would entail the cooperation of many different bureaucracies. Only someone unfamiliar with the workings of government in general (and the intelligence establishment, in particular) could believe such a conspiracy is possible. Perhaps the NIC got it wrong. It's certainly capable of that. But it's hardly capable of pulling off a disinformation operation of this magnitude. Podhoretz's paranoid imagination far surpasses the abilities of intellcrats.

ON BOB GATES' NIGHT TABLE. Defense Secretary Bob Gates has been telling friends and colleagues to read Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace by my pal Mark Perry, a longtime author and military historian. Why is this interesting? Perry's book, which shows how Marshall and Ike worked together to win the war and then win the peace, notes that the pair lived by three rules:

1. Never go to war unless it is absolutely necessary.

2. Never go to war alone.

3. Never go to war for too long.

Seems that Gates has learned the lessons of Iraq. It's a positive sign that Perry's book is flying off the shelves of the Pentagon book shop.

Hillary on the attack.

That's the narrative of the Democratic contest this week, and it may be the dominant theme until the January 3 Democratic caucus in Iowa. (See here and here.) Sliding in the polls in Iowa--and falling behind Senator Barack Obama--Senator Clinton has begun to swing hard at the Illinoisan. Not just at his ideas, but at him, at his character. Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson said the other day, "Senator Obama is a fabulous orator, but we need more than words. We don't need someone who says one thing and does another, somebody who talks a good game but doesn't have the courage of their convictions. And on issue after issue, Senator Obama says one thing and does another." The Clinton campaign sent out an email on Monday calling Obama Karl Rove's preferred Democratic (ouch!) and blasting Obama for supposedly not understanding his own health care proposal, for lying when he has said he has not harbored presidential ambitions for years, and for allegedly running a slush fund (meaning a leadership political action committee, which he manages in the same manner Clinton runs her own leadership PAC). In other words, the fellow who has inspired thousands--if not millions--is a sleazy, hypocritical, incompetent sham.

On Monday, Clinton called Obama a "talker" not a "doer" and a purveyor of "false hopes." She mocked his candidacy: ""How did running for president become a qualification for being president?" On Tuesday, the Clinton campaign suggested that Obama's campaign was mounting dirty tricks against Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire.

This is much tougher an attack than anything Obama has hurled at her--and he has been critical of Clinton. (The first negative ad against Clinton has gone up, and it's being pushed not by Obama but by a liberal advocacy group.) And it shows--take your pick--either the meanness or toughness of Clinton and her posse. I lean toward characterizing it as the former.

When talking to Clintonites in recent days, I've noticed that they've come to despise Obama. I suppose that may be natural in the final weeks of a competitive campaign when much is at stake. But these people don't need any prompting in private conversations to decry Obama as a dishonest poser. They're not spinning for strategic purposes. They truly believe it. And other Democrats in Washington report encountering the same when speaking with Clinton campaign people. "They really, really hate Obama," one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. "They can't stand him. They talk about him as if he's worse than Bush." What do they hate about him? After all, there aren't a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn't gone for the jugular during the campaign. "It's his presumptuousness," this operative says. "That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?" You mean, he's, uh, uppity? "Yes." A senior House Democratic aide notes, "The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible."

That is, the Clintonites--and the campaign--may be overreacting. Will Democratic voters really buy the Clinton argument that Obama is an inauthentic and a dissembling scoundrel? Until the caucus-goers of Iowa speak, there is no way to know if Clinton's DEFCON-1 assault on Obama will succeed or backfire. But the Clinton attacks do say something about Hillary Clinton. She's adopting a whatever-it-takes strategy, mixing legitimate criticisms with truth-stretching blasts. And her campaign aides have adopted a we-must-destroy-him mindset that they justify by viewing Obama as a political lowlife.

Whatever-it-takes often works in political campaigns. But we all know that hatred can be blinding. Clinton is, as has been noted, running the risk of alienating those kindhearted souls of Iowa by slamming the lovable, likable and inspiring Barack Obama. She could end up looking a bit desperate. Candidates are always responsible for their campaigns, and they can be judged accordingly. If the Clinton campaign throws anything it can against Obama--with little regard for accuracy or decency--that will reflect her own character and values. It could, to turn her words against her, be a disqualification for the job.

Clinton is playing with fire. In explaining to reporters that she will be tougher on Obama, she said, "Now the fun part starts." That was tasteless. It's a remark that certainly can--and will be--used against her. And some Democratic voters might worry that the comment reveals too much desire for (political) blood.

In politics, there can be a thin line between tough and mean. (Ask Rudy Giuliani.) The future of Clinton's campaign--and perhaps the future of the United States--will be determined by how this woman navigates the difference.

ROVE'S LATEST UNTRUTHS. If you want to see how Karl Rove pulled a fast one on Charlie Rose regarding the CIA leak case, check out my story here. Or if you're interested in reading about how Rove has apparently been mis-citing an article I wrote in 2002 to justify his (false) contention that congressional Democrats, not the White House, rushed toward a vote on the Iraq war, click here.

Can you say "firewall"?

You, meaning Hillary Clinton.

It's not too early for the Clinton machine to be pondering how and where to construct a Great Wall that can repel the hordes of Obama. Remember the 2000 Republican nomination battle? The George W. Bush, Inc. campaign designated South Carolina as the place to make its stand. Insurgent (then, not now) John McCain had beaten W. in New Hampshire. The Palmetto State became a cage death match, with the Bushies and their secret gnomes doing whatever they could to smear the former POW. (Faxes circulated claiming McCain had been brainwashed in Vietnam, had fathered a nonwhite child out of wedlock, and so on). It worked. The McCain firestorm was doused, and eventually this lion of a maverick was tamed and put on pathetic display in the Bush's three-ring circus.

I'm not predicting a Democratic version of that scenario. But with Barack Obama taking a 4-point lead over Clinton in the latest Iowa poll, the Clintonites have to have a plan for shutting the Illinois senator down should he win on the field of corn. Could they do so in New Hampshire, which will have its primary on January 8, a mere five days after the Iowa caucuses? In the most recent polls there, Clinton has maintained a healthy 14- to 15-point lead over Obama. But, as Howard Kurtz notes today, the winners of Iowa will get a big boost of MSM-generated momentum. That tide might carry the victors of Iowa quite far in New Hampshire. While the Clinton crew will look to slow him down in Live Free or Die land, they cannot count on doing so.

So where to smite? Michigan (January 15)? Nevada (January 19)? Clinton is clobbering Obama in the polls in these states. But most of the major Democratic candidates (except Clinton) have pulled their names from the Michigan ballot to protest the state Democratic party's defiance of Democratic Party rules. Michigan is a big state, but its primary results may not be viewed as all that significant. As for Nevada, its a newcomer to the early round of primaries. Perhaps a Clinton win there would appear as a major blow to Obama. But it might not.

Which brings us back to South Carolina, which will hold its Democratic primary on January 26, a week after its GOP primary. (Florida is scheduled to hold its disputed primary on January 26, too.) Will South Carolina do for HRC what it did for W.? Clinton has maintained a commanding lead in the South Carolina polls, and there have been many news stories reporting that black voters there are torn between Clinton, who is married to the "first black" president, and Obama, who would be the first black president (no quotation marks needed), with many tilting toward the missus. But imagine if Obama wins Iowa, gets on a roll, and it looks as if there's a real chance of a black guy becoming the Democratic nominee. How might on-the-fence black voters in South Carolina respond to that?

Of course, even if Obama were to win in South Carolina, there would be bigger battles to come, particularly on Super-Duper Tuesday--February 5--when California, New York, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah will hold primaries or caucuses. Could the deep-pocketed Clinton campaign wait that long to smother the Obama challenge? The answer: perhaps.

All this what-ifing is fanciful (and it does leave John Edwards out of the speculation). There's still plenty of time for HRCers to unleash a tornado in Iowa that blows Obama away. Remember, her campaign people tend to be meaner and more experienced than his. But if--if, if, if--Obama catches fire in Iowa and the flames start to spread, the whatever-it-takes operatives of the Clinton campaign will mount a whatever-it-takes line of defense somewhere. No doubt, the maps are already on the wall.

Two days ago, I wrote:

The GOP race is turning into a circular firing squad. There are several in-the-hunt contenders, and the dynamics of the race keep shifting. Remember when a guy named John McCain was the favorite? For a while, the main action seemed to be the mudwrestle between the Giuliani and Romney camps. Now Huckabee is fielding the most hits. Last week, the politerati (myself included) wondered how nasty Barack Obama and John Edwards would get in taking on Hillary Clinton. The answer provided by last Thursday's debate: not as nasty as anticipated. Expect the Republicans to get more down and dirty (and desperate) in the days--and debates--ahead.

Well, the Dems, it seems, are trying to keep up. On Tuesday, ABC News and The Washington Post released a poll showing that Barack Obama was ahead of Hillary Clinton in Iowa by 4 points, with John Edwards trailing Clinton by four points. This was the first time the junior senator from Illinois beat Clinton in an Iowa survey--or, as far as I can recall, any survey.

No wonder then at 3:18 p.m. on Tuesday, Clinton's campaign sent out an email to reporters highlighting one brief passage of a speech she had delivered that day:

I have traveled the world on behalf of our country -- first in the White House with my husband and now as a Senator. I've met with countless world leaders and know many of them personally. I went to Beijing in 1995 and stood up to the Chinese government on human rights and women's rights. I have fought for our men and women in uniform to make sure they have the equipment they need in battle and are treated with dignity when they return home.

Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face. I think we need a President with more experience than that. Someone the rest of the world knows, looks up to, and has confidence in. I don't think this is the time for on the job training on our economy or on foreign policy.

Ouch. The previous day, Obama, at an Iowa campaign stop, had cited his experience growing up in Asia and his family's Kenyan background as factors that bolstered his foreign policy judgment. Clinton was mocking him.

Fifty-two minutes after the Clinton campaign zapped out its email, John Edwards came rushing to Obama's rescue, with his communications director, Chris Kofinis, issuing a statement defining "mudslinging"--which Hillary Clinton in the last debate had accused John Edwards of engaging in--as when a candidate uses "insults and accusations, esp. unjust ones, with the aim of damaging the reputation of an opponent." Example A: Clinton's ridiculing of Obama. "Now we know what Senator Clinton meant when she talked about 'throwing mud' in the last debate," Kofinis said. "Like so many other things, when it comes to mud, Hillary Clinton says one thing and throws another."

Edwards was both circulating Clinton's slur and excoriating her for it. A twofer? Is he hoping Clinton and Obama will clobber each other, ignore him for a while, and he can slip by? Do his internal polls show that Clinton is still his major obstacle in Iowa? Or does he want to help drive her numbers lower before targeting Obama. This triangle at the top of the Democratic field will lead to interesting and perhaps ever-shifting dynamics in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, Obama fired back at Clinton. Referring to her boasting of hobnobbing with global leaders, he quipped, "I was wondering which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq." Credit him with half-a-zinger. Problem is, most Democrats have decided not to hold the Iraq vote against prominent Democrats. After all, Democratic voters supported John Kerry in 2004, and he, just like Hillary Clinton, voted to give George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq whenever Bush wanted. But whatever Obama is doing seems to be working, according to that latest poll. With the freshman senator taking the lead, one can assume the Clinton machine will do more than fight back with sarcasm. This will get rough. Hillary Clinton has made no promises to advance hope or change the bloody, mean-spirited nature of modern-day politics (as Obama has). She has only vowed to fight for you. And before she can do that, she will fight for herself.

Have a good Thanksgiving. I'll see you next week, when the food fight on each side will be approaching Animal House proportions.

Yesterday, I noted that John Edwards' recent swings at Hillary Clinton had a whiff of silliness and/or desperation to them. He has equated her position on the Iraq war (create a plan for troops withdrawal once elected) with support for continuing the war, and Edwards blasted her for laughing at the economic dislocation caused by Nafta when she had merely chuckled at a reference to a quasi-infamous debate on Nafta between billionaire Ross Perot and then-Vice President Al Gore. But this is not to say that there is no argument for Edwards to make. Yesterday, he summed up his case against HRC:

I saw that Senator Clinton gave a speech that talked about change versus status quo, and I agree that that's what this election will be about. But I believe if you defend the system in Washington as Senator Clinton does, you're for the status quo. If you want to continue the occupation in Iraq, you're for the status quo. If you're not willing to stand up to Bush and Cheney on Iran, then you're for the status quo.

We need change very badly. When I'm president, I will shake things up and end the corruption in Washington and say no to donations from federal lobbyists. I will end the U.S. occupation of Iraq. We need a leader with the strength to stand up and refuse to go along with the Bush Administration's aggressions against Iran. And as much as Senator Clinton attempts to blur the lines with this talk of change, I believe at the end of the day the American people understand the fundamental differences between the system she has chosen to defend and the change I will bring to America.

Aside from the reference to Clinton's alleged support for occupation in Iraq, this ain't a bad argument. And I take Edwards at his word when he says he's for overhauling Washington--and, as he has declared elsewhere, for addressing poverty in America.

But Edwards does have a problem. During his relatively short stint in public life--the six years he spent as a senator--he did not legislate or agitate as a full-throated, populist-minded agent of change. He was no Paul Wellstone. And when he was on the ticket in 2004 as John Kerry's veep choice, he did not rage against the Washington machine in such a manner. As a trial attorney, he indeed confronted powerful corporations in courtrooms. Yet his Washington career was not that of a rabble-rouser.

So he's caught on the wrong side of a fundamental political rule: it's better to show than tell. He now has to tell potential voters what sort of leader he will be if elected, when he did not as a senator show voters this.

The fellow who would have a better shot at presenting this sort of case would be Senator Barack Obama. Though he's been in the Senate only a short while, he has pushed for reform that would diminish the influence of lobbyists. And his past experience as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, and reformist state legislator is more in sync with a throw-the-rascals-out cry.

Like Edwards, Obama has made lobbyist-bashing a part of his Clinton critique. But given that he rose to prominence as a preacher of the politics of hope, he can only go so far in slamming any political target--whether it be Hillary Clinton or the moneychangers of Washington. In fact, he keeps talking about how he will bring folks together if elected president. So while Obama's personal history is more in tune with a populist change theme, his personality and preferred political positioning prevents him from being the firebrand Edwards is campaigning as.

And there's another factor. One question in this election is, can a black man become president? Another related query is, could an angry black man become president? Obama has succeeded (so far) by not coming across as a mad-as-hell black political leader. Whether a matter of political strategy or personal temperament, he depicts himself as "fired up," but not angry.

Obama with Edwards' message? Edwards with Obama's past? Hollywood would solve this problem by having the two men wake up one day inside the skin of the other. But even though the two men do have overlapping messages of reform, their respective cases are self-hindered. And who benefits from that? The gentle-lady from New York.

The political news of the moment, of course, is Thursday night's Democratic debate. The morning-after front-page headline in The Washington Post blared, "Democratic Contenders Step Up Attacks in Debate." But they really didn't--not much. Edwards and Obama mostly stuck to the same critique they had been making of the former First Lady. Each only took a few stabs at the front-runner and then moved on to other matters as it became clear that (a) she was going to give as good as she got, and (b) the audience, which booed several of the attacks, was in no mood to watch Dem-on-Dem violence. It was Clinton who truly intensified her assaults on her key rivals, hurling specific charges at them on policy issues (particularly health care). Previously, she ignored those in her shadow. But with the most recent Iowa poll depicting the race in Iowa as practically a three-way tie, Clinton indeed had to "turn up the heat"---not, as she usually says, on Republicans but on Obama and Edwards.

I scored the Las Vegas debate a draw--no KO's (though fellow CQer Craig Crawford awards Clinton a TKO). And this is good news for Clinton because she certainly needed to stop her slide in the polls. I explain it all here.

But while we're talking about Clinton, a few words about the Other Clinton. It now seems rather amusing that earlier in the year, the politerati were wondering whether Bill would be an asset or liability for Hillary. Would he outshine or upstage her? Would the Clinton campaign have to keep the old wolf at bay? Maybe send him to central Africa for six months. Well, such thinking, in retrospect, was plenty silly.

BC remains quite popular, particularly among Democratic voters who think of the pre-W days as a glorious era of peace, prosperity, wine, roses, milk, and honey--and a time when Democrats (Bill and Hill) bravely stood their ground against evil Republicans (when they weren't busy triangulating). So he's a great and, better yet, popular pitchman for his wife. And since she has generally performed strongly as a candidate, she has not looked small compared to the Big Man.

He appears to be willing to do what it takes to get her elected. (It's a helluva way to get out of the doghouse.) Look at the ad the Clinton campaign released yesterday. It opens with Bill in sweats on a treadmill watching a television set showing a commercial for a succulent, juicy hamburger. The screen freezes and the words appear: "Exercising is hard." The spot goes on to feature former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack trying to dance in a disco ("Dancing is hard") and Hillary mugging "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a ball game ("Singing is hard") before proclaiming that attending the Iowa caucus (to vote for Hillary) will be easy. At the end of the ad, there's a shot of an empty treadmill. Cut to Clinton eating that burger, with a look of extreme satisfaction on his face.

Is there a not-too-hidden message in the ad when moments later it shows a white-haired couple, with the woman saying, "Being married is hard, caucusing is easy"? I don't know. But the ad is the latest evidence that Bill is quite the willing asset for Hillary. He recently defended her after she ran into trouble at a debate. He has campaigned solo for her in Iowa, and he presumably will do more stumping for her as the all-important caucuses approaches. I imagine her strategists see him as the big gun to deploy if she slips any further in the polls.

Yesterday, Post columnist David Broder claimed that there were two "paramount issues" in the Democratic race: immigration and "the prospect of a dual [Clinton] presidency." He's wrong on both counts. At last night's debate, the candidates did split on the question of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, but they mostly agreed on the big picture: the need to increase border security and to create a pathway for citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already here. There was--perhaps surprisingly--little demagoguery on this front.

As for Broder's worry that the public cannot stomach the Clinton's "two-headed campaign," what's the evidence? He writes that the possibility of the Clinton couple back in the White House

will test the tolerance of the American people far more severely than the possibility of the first female president -- or, for that matter, the first black president.

Oy, he screams (or sort of screams), this has never happened before. And he quotes a "friend from the Clinton administration" who says, "There is nothing in American constitutional or political theory to account for the role of a former president, still energetic and active and full of ideas, occupying the White House with the current president." A constitutional crisis in the making? Quick, let's get an opinion from Harriet Miers.

It may be presumptuous to challenge Broder's "friend"--and I do so as no partisan for Hillary--but I assume that Clinton's well-financed campaign has focus-grouped and test-polled Bill's impact on the race and has discovered that Democratic primary voters do not share Broder's fear. It may even be that after the past seven years of incompetence and, at times, idiocy in the White House, general election voters might not be all that anxious about having two smart people residing in the White House, whatever Bill's role might be. And put it this way: if the general election ends up pitting Hillary Clinton against Rudy Giuliani, would voters rather see Bill Clinton advising the next president or Judith Giuliani? End of issue. Mr. Broder, you are free to fret about other matters.

NIXON ON REAGAN. What did Tricky Dick and Henry Kissinger think of Ronald Reagan in 1971? According to a new transcript of one of the Nixon tapes, it wasn't very flattering. I have the exclusive here.

Last spring, I was chatting with a top Barack Obama strategist. The junior senator from Illinois running for the Democratic presidential nomination had been on quite the streak: record fundraising, crowds of thousands. But he trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls and, perhaps more important, he had not signaled how he could surpass her. When would he take Clinton on? I asked the Obama-ite. I wasn't inquiring when he would start hurling mudballs at her, but when he would explicitly argue that he was better than her and start saying things (about policy, about politics, about life) that she could--or would--not. It's coming, the Obama aide said, it's coming; we hear you, and it's coming.

Summer arrived and departed, and it didn't come. A series of Democratic presidential debates transpired and one-third of the fall passed, and it didn't come. But now the time has...well, come. Last week, Obama told two New York Times reporters he would start confronting Clinton more forcefully and more directly. He made this declaration when the Iowa caucus--moved up to January 3--was a mere ten weeks in the future.

Too late? Perhaps. Obama's people have argued for months that there was sufficient time. But in that period, Clinton became a better candidate and solidified her lead in the national polls and in surveys of Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire. The timing matter aside, Obama's new initiative against HRC was curious for what he chose as his opening salvo: Social Security.

On Sunday, the Obama campaign released a television ad that focused on Social Security. In it, he tells a group of Iowans, "I don't want to just put my finger out to the wind and see what the polls say. I want to bring the country together to solve a problem." This was an attack on Clinton, whom Obama has accused of "ducking the issue" of Social Security by not saying what she would do as president to preserve and protect the retirement program. Her approach, Obama charged at one campaign event, is to "hedge, dodge and spin, but at all costs, don't answer." Indeed, Clinton has not detailed what she would do about Social Security, vowing that she would convene a bipartisan commission before making any decisions. Though Obama does not refer to Clinton by name in his ad, he essentially calls her out for not having the guts to deal forthrightly with what he depicts as a looming Social Security crisis.

There are two problems here--one political, the other policy. First, the political: will Democratic voters believe there is such a difference on Social Security between Obama and Clinton that they will choose him over her? They certainly do not see Hillary Clinton as a rabid privatizer who ought to be feared. And what Obama proposes for Social Security--protect benefits, prevent privatization, remove the cap on Social Security taxes for the wealthy--is a mainstream Democratic position. It's John Edwards' position. With his ad, Obama was attacking Clinton not for having a lousy position but for not having proposed a Social Security plan. While this could win him a few Clinton-leaners, it's not a definitional blow.

As for policy, by assailing Clinton in this fashion, Obama was, in a way, aiding Republicans and conservatives who have hyped the problems with Social Security to pave the way for privatization. I'll let Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, a liberal outfit that led the successful opposition to George W. Bush's partial privatization of Social Security, explain. He tells me:

Obama and his advisers have chosen to attack Hillary on Social Security from the right and the left at same time. He makes a big issue of the looming retirement of the baby boom in the same way right wingers do. And then he makes a big deal about how he won't solve the problem in a conservative way. It might work in a general election, but it doesn't impress Democratic voters in primaries. He might consider attacking on issues that the primary voters care about -- like the war or energy policy.

Hickey is right. Democratic voters do not seem to be clamoring for Social Security change (even if some changes are needed to deal with projected shortfalls in the coming decades).

During Tuesday night's face-off of the Democratic presidential candidates, Obama's assault on Clinton's Social Security stance (or lack thereof) was a matter of debate. At the start of the night, Obama challenged HRC's credibility, accusing her of flip-flopping on Nafta, the use of torture, and the Iraq war. He did not mention Social Security. But when he was later asked about his recent Social Security poke at Clinton, he said that Hillary Clinton has not been truthful or clear about her Social Security position. (He was referring to published reports saying she had privately voiced support for raising the cap on Social Security taxes paid by the wealthy.) Clinton, ready with a reply, countered that there are no real policy distinctions between her and her chief Democratic rivals on this front. This was no knockout punch for Obama, for he was slamming her for basically agreeing with him (and with Edwards) while declining to say so in public.

At the Philadelphia debate, John Edwards landed better punches on Clinton, saying that she was a candidate of "double-talk" and incapable of taking on and fixing the broken and corrupt system of Washington. Several times when Obama jabbed at her, he seemed tentative and even stammered.

Back to Social Security: many Democrats believe Bush tried to create a phony Social Security crisis to serve ideological and corporate interests. They are probably not yearning for a candidate who will talk tough about Social Security. Obama needs to move on. And, once again, he needs to do better in the next debate.

BTW, Jonathan Stein, my colleague at Mother Jones recently took a look at what Obama has to do to distinguish himself from Clinton. After last night's debate, that need remains.

FYI. This week, I officially began as head of Mother Jones's new seven-person Washington bureau. As my first official act, I ordered a teamwork-building exercise, instructing the staff to form pairs and assemble bookshelves, with no one allowed to use his or her dominant hand. The team that completed the task first won a poster proclaiming there's no "I" in "Team." Seriously, ladies and gentlemen, I've been dealing with logistics (new computer, new phone, moving 20 years of files) but will soon be producing articles as I did at The Nation. In the meantime, I will be contributing postings to our group blog, MoJo Blog. Please check it out.

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