Newshoggers.com

Flipping the Exurbs

By Fester:

I spent a good chunk of yesterday meeting with some relatives and driving through the Washington D.C. exurbs.  And this is an area that is in trouble beneath the veneer of new construction, fresh paint and large neon-signs.  It is also an area that has historically voted Republican for economic grounds as it is an extraordinarily anti-urban and local educational arbitrage environment.  This is a Republican base area. 

Yet it is an area that is looking to flip because the pain is too high. 

We drove through my hosts' subdivision and it was massive but incomplete.  Almost one thousand houses at price points from the mid 200Ks in the New Urbanist portion of the 'village' to million dollar large single family detached houses with three and four car garages are in this project.  All of these houses were built in the past five years, and everyone had been on the HELOC treadmill of drawing out equity to finance current consumption.  However the project lies incomplete as the developers' financing for the next round failed.  The Home Owners Association can not afford a second pool, so there is a massive muddy hole in the ground where construction has stopped.  Seventy houses were foreclosed in the past year.  Many more are somewhere in the foreclosure process.  All of these homes have decreased in value from both the general market drop and the local negative externality of having an empty house nearby. 

The pain is widespread and real, and the second order impacts will be as large or larger than the first order impacts as the entire local/basic economy was structured on new construction with high costs that could only be justified by an increasing population with increasing incomes.  That population is not coming as the next wave of houses will not be built for another decade.  The franchises are high end franchises that are only viable once their consumer bases have taken care of their fixed costs, their quasi-fixed discretionary costs (braces for the kids, swimming lessons etc) and their core discretionary spending is satisfied.  The franchises are based on capturing the truly disposable income of the area.  The combination of fifty mile commutes in a $4.11/gallon environment, and job uncertainty has dramatically decreased local unattached disposable income.

The decline of the minor local business community and the concurrent decline in housing values will devalue the local educational arbitage of having a 'superior' sclhool district just a little bit further out.  This will be an escalating and viscious cycle.

When I had lunch with my relatives who are base Republican voters (white, middle age, self-identifying as Christian), they brought up politics and asked if I was working for any candidate this cycle as they know I had done that work in the past.  They asked how Democrats and liberals saw the primary process and what I thought about Obama and Clinton and then one announced their vote for Obama, a first time Democratic primary voter in over a decade because the pain had been too bad, and something different was needed.

I can see a lot of people coming to that conclusion in the exurbs.  Something different is needed to resolve their problems and the superstructure in which those macro problems reside.  I don't think Obama is that solution they are seeking, but in the short term, this need for something different could swing the exurbs from a dominant Republican territory with attendant massive margins that somewhat offset the urban advantages Democrats enjoy into mildly Republican districts that are insufficient to offset the waves coming out of the cities.  People are in pain, or they see enough of their social networks in pain to want to try something different.  And it is that tropism that could provide for a blowout this fall. 

Barack answers FISA critics

By Libby

Obama posted a statement on his website in response to the group there that is organizing in protest of his current position on the FISA capititulation bill. I thought it pretty much stunk. He says he'll "work with" Dodd and Bingaman to strike the telecom immunity, whatever that means, but otherwise he's just repeating the same misguided justifications he's been giving all week.

The Inspectors General report also provides a real mechanism for accountability and should not be discounted. It will allow a close look at past misconduct without hurdles that would exist in federal court because of classification issues. The recent investigation uncovering the illegal politicization of Justice Department hiring sets a strong example of the accountability that can come from a tough and thorough IG report.

And what exactly will come of that? It may well have exposed wrongdoing but it's not accountability. There's no consequence outside of temporary embarrassment and the perps just deny everything and go on their merry malfeasant way to continue to flaunt the law. He also repeats this canard.

The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention -- once I’m sworn in as President -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

For the love of God, somebody send the man Glenn Greenwald's URL so he can grasp that we know this is not true and so should he. It's difficult to believe he doesn't know he's selling a load of BS. Judging from as far as I got in the comments, the true believers are buying it. But the few netrooters that weighed in that section aren't and note well that he won't lose our vote over it, but he is losing our respect and our enthusiasm. As one commenter put it so succinctly, we don't want a lesser of two evils candidate. We want to be proud to cast our vote for the next president.

I'll give him props for answering his critics directly but he's not making me proud right now. I'm withholding the campaign donation I intended to make from my stimulus check -- which I just received. Looking around the netroots I'm not the only one. I see even Kos is withholding money on the same premise. No one is feeling keen to reward bad behavior.

McCain tanking in Connecticut

By Libby

Having grown up in Connecticut, I always thought of it as a state with a rather conservative population. That may have changed in the forty years since I've lived there but it's clear that in the present day the Republican brand is mud.

A Quinnipiac University poll released today shows Democrat Barack Obama maintaining his wide lead over Republican John McCain among likely Connecticut voters for president. [...]

"Obama is winning among the demographic groups where he seemed to be having problems when he faced Sen. Clinton: white voters, especially whites with less than a college degree," said Douglas Schwartz, the poll's director.

As for McCain's new BFF, Joe Lieberman is clearly more an albatross than an asset.

Thirty-two percent of voters say they would be less likely to vote for McCain if Lieberman is his running mate, while only 14 percent said that including the Connecticut senator would make them more likely to support McCain.

It's also interesting to note that Clinton wouldn't add any apparent value to Obama's ticket.

Clinton is not as risky a choice for Obama in Connecticut as Lieberman would be for McCain. Twenty-five percent of voters say they would be less likely to vote for Obama with the New York senator on the ticket, while 18 percent were more likely.

Looking at these stats makes Obama's recent embrace of GOP rhetoric all the more puzzling. It could hardly be more apparent that the voters are ready for change and the more Barack shifts toward the Republican/media definition of center, the more he undermines the hope of the electorate that he will be the agent of it.

It was this message that built the momentum that won him the nomination in the first place. He's polling well now, but every step he takes back from the bold ground he staked out in the primaries, is a step towards the status quo that the electorate is rejecting.

Faith based federal funding

By Libby

I gagged on my coffee this morning when I read the initial, and unsurprisingly incorrect AP report on Obama's embrace of the Bush administration's faith-based initiative program, which of course you know was little more than thinly disguised funding for fundie-based quasi-PACs for the GOP . I was relieved to see the opposite was true. While Obama is willing to keep faith based organizations within the federal grant system, his approach is mindful of the separation of church and state.

That's what it will be when I'm President. I'll establish a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The new name will reflect a new commitment. This Council will not just be another name on the White House organization chart - it will be a critical part of my administration. Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea - so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them - or against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work. With these principles as a guide, my Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will strengthen faith-based groups by making sure they know the opportunities open to them to build on their good works.

While many may find any funding of faith-based groups objectionable, Steve Benen reminds us that our government has been funding projects for church programs that address poverty issues for many decades without blurring the separation clause. I see no compelling reason our tax dollars shouldn't be alloted to a program that serves the needy just because it's housed and staffed by members of a particular religious group as long as religious conversion is not a requirement of receiving the aid, nor of obtaining employment in such programs.

Churches often donate their space and their members donate their time to such things as homeless shelters and soup kitchens and churches are subject to the same economic pressures as any secular organization providing the same services. To deny them funding solely because of their religious beliefs would be just as discriminatory as denying funding to a secular organization because of its political position. In this case, I think Obama is right is reaching out to everyone and anyone who is willing to assist in humanitarian programs that fill a vital need of our ever growing numbers of impoverished citizens.

One step forward two steps back

By Ron Beasley

I'm not really surprised that Obama is not  the agent of change he tried to convince us he was during the nomination process.  The corporate media would not have let him past the starting line if he was.  Steve Soto looks at Obama and asks a very good question - Where's The Change:

Over the weekend, two major newspapers came to roughly the same conclusion about Barack Obama’s behavior since he vanquished Hillary Clinton as a new kind of change candidate: he’s moving to the center, or beyond. Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post took a look at Obama’s recent comments on last week’s Supreme Court decisions, his FISA flip-flop, his NAFTA-won’t-be-changed flip-flop, and concluded that rather than being a “change we can believe in” candidate, he is redefining himself as a safe centrist candidate.

Matt Stoller did an outstanding job Saturday pointing out that despite the rhetoric, Obama isn’t really an outsider running as a change candidate progressive, but rather as a front person for Beltway Democrats from K Street. I’ll go a step further: there are two major camps in the party, the Clinton wing and the anti-Clintons. Neither camp is progressive, and Obama is simply the salesman for the anti-Clinton, Daschle status quo. Yet he has taken over the party, leaving progressivism dead in the water.

Steve concludes with this:

I suspect that after another month of Obama’s jettisoning of anything looking like progressive change, there will be more and more people like me whose vote for him this November is really just a vote against Bush's third term.

I'm not sure I'm even ready to go that far.  In the comments section of Steve's post I wrote:

Maybe a third Bush term is what it will take. I may just sit this one out even if it means McCain wins.

In reality I may consider voting for Bob Barr.  I disagree with the Libertarians on many issues but on what I consider the two most important issues they and Bob Barr are the only ones who get it right.  The first of the issues is the occupation of Iraq but even more important is the erosion of civil liberties and the slide into a totalitarian state.  If we continue to move in the direction of a Soviet style police state the other issues won't really matter and Obama has given me no reason to trust him on this issue and I never did trust Hillary.

Bob Barr understands the politics of the two party system.  He has been asked by Republicans to not run and he had this to say:

"What they say is, 'It's not that we disagree with what you're doing, Barr. It's not that we don't understand. We do understand, and we actually agree with what you're saying, but we don't want to vote against a Republican because that might help the Democrat,' " Barr said of the talks he has had with those who want him to quit.

"It's all about partisan politics. It's not about substance. It's not about principles, which is what I and the Libertarian Party stand for. It's all about partisan politics. That's what has to change and that's one of the reasons I'm running."

That applies equally to both parties and I for one am not going to play that game anymore.  The Democratic nominee will have to prove to me he will be different than the Republican.  Obama is moving in the wrong direction.

Obama shifts off-center

By Libby

I'm beginning to think I misjudged Obama. His recent swing to a Republican appeasing campaign style is leaving me thinking he's not as savvy as I thought he was. Perhaps he's forgotten that a large number of Clinton supporters defected to him because they were unhappy with Hillary's embrace of GOP style tactics and rhetoric? As usual, Glenn articulates well the problem with his "shift to center."

Beyond its obsolescence, this "move-to-the-center" cliché ignores the extraordinary political climate prevailing in this country, in which more than 8 out of 10 Americans believe the Government is fundamentally on the wrong track and the current President is one of the most unpopular in American history, if not the most unpopular. The very idea that Bush/Cheney policies are the "center," or that one must move towards their approach in order to succeed, ignores the extreme shifts in public opinion generally regarding how our country has been governed over the last seven years.

The most distinctive and potent -- one could even say exciting -- aspect of Obama's campaign had been his aggressive refusal to accept GOP pieties on National Security, his insistence that the GOP would lose -- and should lose -- debates over who is "stronger" and more "patriotic" and who will keep us more safe. The widely-celebrated foreign policy memo written by Obama's adviser, Samantha Power, heaped scorn on Washington's national security "conventional wisdom," emphasizing how weak and vulnerable it has made the U.S. When Obama took that approach, he appeared to be, and in fact was, resolute and unapologetic in defending his own views -- the very attributes that define "strength."

One of the biggest reasons I voted for Obama was because he had energized so many young people and new voters and I believed he would be able to keep them engaged through the general. Glenn is right. The reason he was so appealing to this demo was because he was willing to push back against the false memes. That apparent courage to defy the media narrative and redefine the middle was the embodiment of the "change they could believe in."

People like me will still vote for him, but the more Obama shrinks back from his former boldness and embraces the same old conventions, the more likely it becomes that he will lose the enthusiasm of those new voters. That's not what they signed up for and they may well just keep their wallets in their pockets and sit it out in November.

Obama fails completely on FISA

By Libby

Considering all the political costs involved, I was willing to give Obama something of a pass on not leading the fight against the FISA capitulation but now he's gone too far in promoting the false narrative to excuse this destruction of the rule of law.

"The bill has changed. So I don't think the security threats have changed, I think the security threats are similar. My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people."

What a steaming crock. This bill has not changed for the better and he specifically promised to support a filibuster. It's beyond insulting that he seeks to justify his walk back on that promise by spewing the same fear mongering talking points the White House has used to justify every constitutional breach of the last seven years. Since I'm late to the party and John Cole and I have been pretty much in sync on this all week, I'll just quote his post.

Before, when he accepted the compromise but promised to fight for removing immunity, it was one thing. This is a total collapse and a rapid abandonment of principle. From a voting perspective, nothing really changes. McCain is for it, Hillary would have been, now Obama is. Obama is still the better of the three on a wider range of issues.

As to whether I like it, no. I could understand the politics of supporting the filibuster and voting for the bill, but I don’t understand or accept getting out in front of this piece of shit and giving us more of the same “You can’t handle the truth.” It is a craven capitulation, and failure to support the filibuster tomorrow really is deciding the politics of fear trump “change.” We all know there are threats- the question is one of constitutionality and the executive Presidency. We are against it.

This was a test, and Obama is failing. It is of little solace that McCain refuse to show up and Clinton would have, too.

Avedon adds another important point.

Obama doesn't understand that the 4th Amendment is national security, and he's prepared to throw it out for some illusory Republican-defined "toughness" because he hasn't got the guts to actually be tough in defense of our country. When it comes to pushing Overton's Window back into some less distorted position, Obama is not your guy. (Yes, you still should vote for the Democratic nominee, but you should put all of your other efforts into doing things like getting people into Congress who will try to keep him in line - and doing things to make them want to keep him from these continuous forays into right-wing territory. You were always going to have to do that, no matter who the nominee was.)

And NTodd puts it into historical context and reminds us that total destruction of the rule of law that served us well for almost two and half centuries is just as devastating when it happens incrementally.

This nation survived an invasion of a superpower in the early 19th century when the country was young and rather defenseless. It survived a civil war that killed more Americans than every other war we've fought. It survived the War to End All Wars. It survived the most destructive conflict this planet has ever seen. It survived the Cold War and all its attendant small wars. And now, when faced with box cutters, we decide that our civil liberties are a burden, that the Constitution is a scrap of paper, that our ideals are quaint?

As Cernig noted earlier, FDL has a list of the 15 Senators who voted against cloture and explains the procedural machinations that will make it possible for the remaining turncoats to appear to vote no on the bill when in fact they already endorsed it with this vote. It appears our only hope is for Reid to keep it off the floor and that may be worth pursuing, though unlikely to succeed. Also, for those who want talking points in order to convey the importance of this issue, for whatever it's worth at this point, Avedon has a good post explaining FISA in simple terms.

Ultimately, we've been had by the Democrats again and we're left in a bad place for November. There is no other viable choice but to vote for Obama no matter how badly he disappoints us. The alternatives are simply too horrible to contemplate. It appears he doesn't care and will be pursuing the 50 plus one percent option in trying to woo over the pee-stained pants crowd to gain the White House. That may work for him, but he pursues it at his peril. The young people and progressives who enthusiastically supported him are not so easily fooled and he will lose more of that enthusiasm every time he sells us out to pander to the so-called center. I know he's lost mine. I'll still vote for him but I'm not going to put the energy into promoting him that I would have, had he only shown some real courage here.

However, we can and should make a point of turning our energies to the down ticket races. We need to oust every one of those 80 imbeciles who find political expedience more important than the health of our republic. The only way we're going to get a change we can believe in, is to change who's running the show. If we manage to unseat enough of them, the rest will take us more seriously in the next fight.

Red Guy In A Blue State

By Ron Beasley

Here in Oregon we have Republican Senator Gordon Smith.  Now most of the time Smith is a wingnut - he voted with Bush and the Republicans 98% of the time.  But every six years he attempts a temporary color change.  This election cycle is no different.  After the Democrat's win in 2006 he suddenly found that he opposed the occupation of Iraq after supporting it for four years.  He is John McCain's campaign manager in Oregon.  A couple of weeks ago he started running an ad with to Democrats who said they support him and one of those is a black state legislator.  Ben Smith reports that he is now trying to associate himself with Obama.

A fairly stunning new ad from Oregon's Republican senator Gordon Smith leaves little doubt as to which way the wind is blowing there.

In the ad, Smith, running hard away from Bush, associates himself at length and explicitly with Obama.

"Who says Gordon Smith helped lead the fight for better gas mileage and a cleaner environment?" the female narrator asks. "Barack Obama."

The ad shows Obama's face and an image of his website.

"I approve working together across party lines and this ad," Smith closes.

Obama is having no part of it however:

Barack Obama has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment and we appreciate that it is respected by his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate. But in this race, Oregonians should know that Barack Obama supports Jeff Merkley for Senate. Merkley will help Obama bring about the fundamental change we need in Washington.

Jeff Merkley will have a tough time beating Smith even this year.  Very conservative Smith is a political slim ball with a lot of money and the support of Oregon's largest Newspaper which is constantly trying to pass him off as a moderate.  If you have any spare change Merkley would be a good investment.

More on Smith and Iraq can be found here and his history of dirty politics and history with The Oregonian here.

"A Very Tightly Wrapped Message"

By Cernig

I'm with John Cole - the way that Obama's campaign is eschewing contact with Muslim supporters in any way whatsoever speaks volumes about their submission to rightwing narratives in pursuit of his election. That Keith Ellison could be told Obama's campaign didn't want him showing his face because it might compromise their "very tightly wrapped message" speaks even louder.

I keep feeling I'm living in deja-vu land. I've lived through all this before,as I've said ever since Obama announced his candidacy. After the Thatcher rape of Britain came a greyer cloned version, Major, and a man who promised change, Blair, who thus took over his party on a wave of popularity secured by the knowledge that any alternatives were worse. But the change Blair was most interested in turned out to be only change that put him in the driving seat - change that purged his party's leadership of any who weren't loyal to him before party - and Blair went on to be almost as bad as a Thatcherite conservative would have been. But that "almost' was enough for over a decade. The dynamic has only changed, now, as the conservatives have disowned Thatcher and turned towards the center.

Several years ago, Rove read a book on Thatcher's reign and decided to model his candidate, George W. Bush, after her. The rest - Obama, McCain and all - follows as inevitably as night follows day. However, in the main Americans aren't interested in seeing the parallels and what they portend for the next decade or so of US politics, if only because all that Brit stuff "didn't happen here."

But yet again, the "progressive" candidate for change is turning out to be a wolf in sheeps clothing only better by degree from his party rivals and his opposite number, rather than kind. That difference is still enough, but it leaves a stale taste in the mouth even so.

Much ado about public financing

By Libby

I've been offline for the better part of the last couple of days so I'm just catching up on the news. Most of it is more than a little depressing but I found the shirt rending over the demise of the public financing system of presidential campaigns rather amusing. The NYT practically accused Obama of single handedly murdering the system.

Glaringly missing in the prevailing narrative was any mention of McCain's ongoing and illegal gaming of the system. For those who haven't been following along TPM has a short video explanation about how McCain pulled a fast one, opting in when his campaign was broke, and then allegedly opting out when he didn't need the money. The problem with the latter is the FEC hasn't authorized the opt-out so McCain may well have been breaking the law for months now and the media offers little more than a collective yawn. Guess they're too busy figuring out ways to spin McSame's ongoing gaffes on policy as 'straight talk' instead of pure cluelessness.

The other prevailing talking point is accusing Obama of reneging on 'his promise' to opt in on public financing. McCain's favorite news outlet Politico publishes what they appear to consider some kind of damning timeline that includes the entry: "Obama again vows to “aggressively pursue” a publicly financed campaign." That's a far cry from signing a blood oath that he would take public campaign funds from the system and really, considering his huge success in amassing a war chest derived largely from small donations from ordinary citizens, isn't he actually keeping that pledge? Effectively, Obama is using public finance in its purest form. He just cut out the middleman, in this case being the government. I'm not seeing how that's such a bad thing.

Besides, does anybody believe there's a politician alive that would opt into a system that restricts their spending if they came up with a more successful model of fundraising as Obama has created? It's not like we've seen restricted spending as a result of the govenment backed system. In the 2000 campaign Bush spent $186 million to win his first term in 2000, while Gore spent $120 million and in 2004 Bush spent a total of $306.3 million while Kerry spent $241.7 million. "These figures do not include spending by the political parties or advocacy groups on the presidential election."

Public financing is a good idea that has so far been rather badly executed. Insofar as it establishes limits on deep pocket contributions, it should be continued but it's got a long way to go before it becomes an effective tool in limiting the influence of special interests on our politicians or their campaigns. If Obama is somehow responsible for its demise in its current form, I don't really see it as great cause for mourning, much less condemnation.

Obama Backs FISA Cave

By Cernig

Here's Obama's statement, courtesy of TPM.

"Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

"It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people."

He'll work  "to remove this provision" and promises going forward that there will be full accounatbility if only we turn Bush's spy apparatus over to him? That's not good enough. There are a lot of unhappy activists out there.

Greg Sargent:

To be clear, I'm not even talking about whether opposing this would or wouldn't have carried political peril. It really doesn't matter. Because if there were ever anything that would have tested his operating premise throughout this campaign -- that you can win arguments with Republicans about national security -- it was this legislation. If ever there were anything that deserved to test this premise, it was this legislation.

And this time, he abandoned that premise.

DDay at Hullabaloo:

"Work to remove" telecom immunity should be rewritten to "maybe show up to vote on some amendment that will surely be struck down and then whimper away." What a colossal failure of leadership.

Obama earns a Wanker of the Day from Atrios. And it's well-deserved. I thought he'd issue some vague statement of disapproval and then miss the vote. This endorsement of a X'ing out the Fourth Amendment is waaaay out of bounds.

John Amato at C & L wonders what happened to the Obama who was willing to fillibuster any immunity provision while Glenn Greenwald writes:

Telling Americans that we have to give up basic constitutional rights -- and allow rampant lawbreaking -- if we want to save ourselves from "the grave threats we face" sounds awfully familiar. He says he will work to remove amnesty from the bill, but once that fails, will vote for the "compromise." Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states.

Cernig at Newshoggers? If anyone asks (they won't), remind them that I said, repeatedly, that we all must keep asking the damn question: Will you, if elected, pledge to roll back the Bush vision of total Presidential executive power? To keep asking it over and over until each candidate was so committed to one answer that they couldn't back out of their answer without destroying their own credibility. And we didn't, and I too was fooled, because I wanted so badly to believe it could be different.

It's not. Obama (or Hillary, had she won the nomination) would still be better than the trainwreck continuation of the Bush years that McCain represents, but it's a difference of a small degree, not of kind.

No more fooling ourselves, eh?

Update: Jack Balkin:

So, let's sum up: Congress gives the President new powers that Obama can use. Great. (This is change we can believe in). Obama doesn't have to expend any political capital to get these new powers. Also great. Finally, Obama can score points with his base by criticizing the retroactive immunity provisions, which is less important to him going forward than the new powers. Just dandy.

It should now be clear why the Obama campaign has taken the position it has taken. And given what I have just said, Obama's supporters should be pressing him less on the immunity provisions and more on the first part of the bill which completely rewrites FISA. Because, if he becomes president, he'll be the one applying and enforcing its provisions.

If you really care about civil liberties in the National Surveillance State, you have to recognize that both parties will be constructing its institutions. The next President will be a major player in its construction, as important if not more important than George W. Bush ever was. That President will want more authority to engage in surveillance, and he'll be delighted for Congress to give it to him officially.

Nunn-sense

By Libby

By now you've probably heard that Obama released a list of new hires for the national campaign and most notable was Hillary's former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who will be acting as chief of staff for the as yet unnamed VP candidate. I saw a lot of speculation about what it all means in terms of Hillary's chance at being asked to fill that slot on the ticket. I'm in the camp that thinks this hire pretty much rules that out and judging by the reaction from the Clinton loyalists, who are not happy campers, it would appear we're correct in that assessment.

As regular readers know, I didn't think Obama/Clinton would be a good ticket, so I'm not unhappy to see this development. Otherwise, I haven't had strong feelings about it, until I read Chris Bowers post. Chris makes a pretty good case on why he thinks Sam Nunn is now becoming a serious contender. I hope he's wrong. It would be a disaster as Chris sums up well himself.

Putting a 70-year old, white, southern, corporate dude on the ticket would almost entirely wipe away any notion that Obama is a "change" candidate. Sam Nunn is more status quo than David Broder. He is the least "change" candidate one can find.

I find it difficult to believe Obama wouldn't realize that as well, so I'm reserving my panic. I'm betting on Obama ignoring the speculation, along with the billions of bytes of free advice currently clogging the intertubes and naming someone that no one expected.

Tea With The Queen, Or Filling Sandbags?

By Cernig

Bush is in London taking tea with the Queen and trying to salvage his legacy. McCain? Who knows -- probably playing golf.

Obama is filling sandbags in Southern Illinois as part of flood relief efforts.

What was that about conservatives being nicer?

And Libby says it in pictures far louder than words - what a contrast with Bush's Katrina response.

Now that's leadership.

Obama never left the center

By Libby

Are there really that many Obama supporters that believed the GOP narrative that Obama is some kind of radical liberal? I think it's been rather clear right along, that Obama is a centrist who is unwilling to embrace a truly liberal agenda. That's one reason it took me so long to get on board for him. He was far from my first choice when the primaries started. In fact both he and Hillary were my last choices.

One of the reasons I finally went with Obama is that I think he's about as centrist as Hillary is, but I'm hoping he will be less willing to triangulate in favor of the conservative agenda, as I thought Bill Clinton did way too much during his tenure and expected Hillary to continue. At worst, at least he comes into power with less predetermined conceptions by dint of his youth and lesser tenure and will cast fresh eyes on our old unsolved problems. I'll admit it's not much of a hope, but at least it's a hope for change.

McCain, Hallucinations and Allegheny County

By Fester:

Watching the John McCain strategy briefing for victory is painful.  It sounds like a senior class project where the student has a predetermined result in mind and is trying to be agile enough to get the right arguments into place even if they don't make sense.  The one thing that lept out at me was the following map from Ohio and Pennsylvania ( about 8:13 in).  I have modified the map a little bit by adding a couple of geographic pointers:

In 2000, Allegheny County was about 6% more Democratic than the nation as a whole, and in 2004, Allegheny County was about 9% more Democratic than the nation as a whole.  And yet this map is projecting that it will flip to McCain, or at least it is implicitly arguing that due to the color schema.  This is not the only type of flip that the McCain camp is projecting.  Erie County is about 4% more Democratic than the nation as a whole, and it is projected to flip.  Beaver and Washington counties were even splits.  The only SW Pa county that went overwhelmingly for Bush and has a significant population was Westmoreland.  Allegheny County floods out the region due to its population and mobilization rates.  A lot of trees and coal mines are in the probable McCain counties, but not a lot of voters.

Ouch, this is just a painful distortion of reality that the McCain campaign wants to persuade its supporters that they can see an effective ten point swing in their favor compared to Bush in Allegheny County.  Their best hope is keeping the margin close but that is an unlikely hope.  Sad....   

Reclaiming narrative

By Fester:

James Joyner has an interesting recap of the changes that Defense Secratary Gates is imposing upon the Air Force; namely he wants the Air Force to focus on its actual mission and not on the expensive, fun and operationally less important fighter bomber things that its culture venerates and values.  The new Chief of Staff is a transport/logistics/special ops guy and the new AF Secretary is a logistics guy.  Neither of them flew fighters which is a significant break from the past.  And these are good moves on both an operational level and a budgetary level.  However I have to disagree with James' hope for Gate's future career in a potential Obama administration:

Unfortunately, time’s running out on Gates, unless he’s kept on by the next administration.

The problem is optics.  A functioning and healthy democracy needs multiple parties that are seen as credible on defense policy.  The liberals and Democrats ceded defense thinking and policy to conservatives and Republicans for most of my life and implicitly accepted the framing that Democrats can not and should not be trusted on national defense policy.  Bill Clinton reinforced this frame by bringing in Republican Bill Cohen as his SecDef in his second term. 

The Republican defense policy bench is split between the crazies, nationalists, neocons, pragmatists and realists.  Gates belongs to the combined pragamatist/realist faction.  This is a good thing and he has done good work.  And if McCain was to win the general election, I hope that Gates would be the SecDef.

However the Repbulican foreign and defense policy establishment is bundled with the Republican Party and the colossal screw-ups of Iraq and the failures in Afghanistan.  Obama selecting Gates as SecDef implicitly concedes that even with these expensive and unpopular failures, Republicans are still superior to Democrats on national security issues.    And that is not acceptable.  I have no problem with Obama creating a cabinet with Republicans in it; but those Republicans should stay in second and third tier departments or on special assignments such as nuclear non-proliferation work if possible, but not at one of the three premier posts (AG, SecState, SecDef).   

Obama really is the Magical Unity Pony!

By BJ

Because magic is about the only explanation I could come up with for this when I read it. John Cole, today:

Should we set up an ActBlue account to try to offset some of the debt, or will that not go to retiring the debt? Does anyone know? If it does, maybe if we start an ActBlue account, perhaps others will follow. It certainly seems like Clinton has been acting in very good faith, and we should as well. If anyone can definitively state that money donated today will pay down her debt, I will set one up ASAP.

I can’t believe I am contemplating fund-raising for the Clinton campaign.

You can't believe it? I'm still trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for the folks at work for why my chin was dragging on the floor all afternoon!

I mean, this is the guy who, when "bittergate" broke, ran a not inconsiderable number of posts with some variation of "F--K Hillary" in the title!

This is the guy who said things like:

I will say this one more time. All the times over the past few years when the Republicans would repeat their mantra that the “Democrats are worse,” they were not talking about the Democrats, they were talking about the Clinton family.

And they were probably right.

And

As a personal aside, I found that the self-immolation of the most narcissistic campaign ever washes down really fucking well with a Pinot Noir. Fuck off and good riddance.

And

Obama is giving mad praise to Hillary. Good thing he is the nominee and not me, because I would wave a giant foam middle finger and then moon her.

That last all of a week ago, as part of an entire category he created for the purpose: I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Clinton Campaign.

Now, Cernig pointed me to a site where they'll exchange old Clinton signs for new Obama ones, which is a nice little gesture, and part of what I see as numerous attempts to reach out to Clinton supporters to help unify the party behind Obama, a decidedly large task. As Will Durst puts it:

Unifying Democrats is like trying to herd a clew of worms over a chicken wire walkway onto an electric waffle iron. Like nailing lime Jell- O with carrot shreds to a tree. Reconstituting the original ingredients of a bouillabaisse. Unburning a bridge.

What Cole is suggesting here goes far beyond that, though. He's not suggesting ways to reach out to Hillary's supporters, he's actually looking to help out Hillary herself, the main source of much of the anger and rage he and others have spewed across the intertubes these last few months, myself included. (Seriously. Looking through the buildasign site above, I saw "wooden stakes" under accessories and my first thought was, "For Clinton?" I've apparently some ways to go before I'm over the primaries.)

Given recent history, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Cole has come under some fire from his comments section, (My personal favourite so far, "Are you trying to cure your CDS by taking part in some new drug experiment?"), though not nearly as bad as I might have thought. While more than a few have less than sympathetic comments regarding Clinton, the biggest stumbling block seems to be the possibility that Mark Penn might benefit, a sentiment I can't disagree with. For the rest, Cole had this to say:

. . . a lot of you have laughed when I pointed to pro-Hillary bloggers and noted that they have a lot of work to do walking their bloggers back from the cliff. Apparently that is a two-way street. I don’t like a lot of the stunts Camp Clinton pulled in the primary (and I hate Mark Penn), but it is over. She is on the right side now. If helping her pay off her campaign debt quickly gets her out there stumping for Obama every day, I will be the first one to chuck in 50 bucks. Paying down her debt now is not a validation of her campaign tactics- the loss invalidated them.

Something for you to think about when you lash out- you look to Clinton supporters much like the weirdos in the Taylor Marsh comment section look to us.

Nothing less than the truth, and it is going to take a fair bit more time before many of these people remember that they're on the same side again. I think this sort of gesture should help considerably.

Elizabeth Edwards on board with Obama

By Libby

Well I'm feeling better about our prospects for change already. In an aside during his speech at an invite only event in Raleigh, Obama announced he would be partinering with Elizabeth to work on a national health insurance plan. Good on a lot of levels. It's a big step for party unity; Elizabeth is really smart on policy and it demonstrates that Obama is commited to bringing women into his inner circle.

He said a lot more in that speech that the AP didn't cover. The local paper quotes it extensively. Here's a couple I liked.

Obama called for the immediate creation of a $10 billion Foreclosure Prevention Fund to provide direct relief to victims of the housing crisis. He said he'll also help those who are facing foreclosure refinance their mortgages so they can stay in their homes at rates they can afford. And he pledged a tax credit to low- and middle-income Americans that would cover 10 percent of their mortgage interest payment every year.

"The principle is simple - if the government can bail out investment banks on Wall Street, we can extend a hand to folks who are struggling on Main Street," he said.

--Eliminate income taxes for any retiree making less than $50,000 per year. He said he will not privatize Social Security.

--Reform bankruptcy laws to help those in debt and make sure CEOs can't "dump your pension with one hand while they collect a bonus with the other."

I know you can't put campaign talk in the bank, but the idea of focusing the relief funding on those who need it the most strikes me as being right on the money.

A 50-State Presidential Election?

By BJ

As the focus shifts to the general election campaign and the strategies being laid out, the Obama camp in particular is looking to vastly expand the map of battleground states.

Senator Barack Obama’s general election plan calls for broadening the electoral map by challenging Senator John McCain in typically Republican states — from North Carolina to Missouri to Montana — as Mr. Obama seeks to take advantage of voter turnout operations built in nearly 50 states in the long Democratic nomination battle, aides said.

“Nearly 50” thanks to the FUBAR of Florida and Michigan, where they will have to play catch-up. For all of the hoopla centered on seating the delegates, it is this fact that is most likely to do harm to the Democrats in those two states come November.

On Monday, Mr. Obama will travel to North Carolina — a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 32 years — to start a two-week tour of speeches, town hall forums and other appearances intended to highlight differences with Mr. McCain on the economy. From there, he heads to Missouri, which last voted for a Democrat in 1996. His first campaign swing after securing the Democratic presidential nomination last week was to Virginia, which last voted Democratic in 1964.

. . .

While the lengthy, contentious Democratic primary fight against Mrs. Clinton exposed vulnerabilities in Mr. Obama that the Republicans will no doubt seek to exploit, it also allowed him to build a nearly nationwide network of volunteers and professional organizers. While early assertions by presidential campaigns that they intend to expand the playing field are often little more than feints intended to force opponents to spend time and money defending states that they should have locked up, Mr. Obama’s fund-raising success gives his campaign more flexibility than most to play in more places.

Mr. Obama’s aides said some states where they intend to campaign — like Georgia, Missouri, Montana and North Carolina — might ultimately be too red to turn blue. But the result of making an effort there could force Mr. McCain to spend money or send him to campaign in what should be safe ground, rather than using those resources in states like Ohio.

Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said that the primary contest had left the campaign with strong get-out-the-vote operations in Republican states that were small enough that better-than-usual turnout could make a difference in the general election. Among those he pointed to was Alaska, which last voted for a Democrat in 1964.

“Do we have to win any of those to get to 270?” Mr. Plouffe said, referring to the number of electoral votes needed to win the election. “No. Do we have reason to think we can be competitive there? Yes. Do we have organizations in those states to be competitive? Yes. This is where the primary was really helpful to us now.”

Mr. Plouffe also pointed to Oregon and Washington, states that have traditionally been competitive and where Mr. Obama defeated Mrs. Clinton, as places the campaign could have significant advantages .

Still, the Republican Party has a history of out-hustling and out-organizing the Democratic Party in national elections. The question is whether the more organically grown game plans that carried Mr. Obama to victory in Democratic primaries and caucuses can match the well-oiled organizations Republicans have put together.

To some extent, this is a carry-over of the strategy that allowed Obama to defeat Clinton in the primaries. The math is different in the general though, where coming close in a state doesn’t offer any proportional advantage. Despite that, there are advantages to running such a broad-based campaign, and Matt Yglesias noted one of the major ones.

Bush talked in 2000 about the problems of poor minority children in school not so much because he thought he was going to get huge numbers of black people to vote for him, but to signal to voters everywhere that he was “a different kind of Republican,” caring, etc. Even if Obama doesn’t have any realistic prospect of winning North Carolina or Montana he certainly wants to win in places like Minnesota and Virginia and parts of Minnesota are like Montana, parts of Virginia are like North Carolina and an image as a broad-minded person who campaigns everywhere can be helpful. After all, Obama’s eruption onto the national stage was a critique of the red/blue politics of cultural division, so it’s good to dramatize that by running a nationwide campaign.

Beyond that, the more places you campaign the more places you’re in a position to take advantage of unexpected good fortune. If for some reason McCain commits some kind of horrible gaffe that alienates the people of the big empty square states, it’s good to have laid the groundwork to take advantage of that. Or maybe Bob Barr will catch fire in the Deep South. In a narrowcast campaign, you need to guess in advance how things will unfold over the next several months and that’s just difficult to do. If you have the cash to run a wide-focus campaign, then you can simply try to respond competently to events as they unfold however they unfold.

The other major advantage of a broad-based national campaign is that such a focus should give a boost to many of the down-ticket Dems fighting for House and Senate seats. As Fester noted a little while ago, both the Republican brand, and even more so their ideas, are in the toilet, and that means the Democrats are poised for some major pick-ups.

It is this kind of strategic thinking that I’ve always liked about the Obama-Dean style of organization. Of course, that only works if Obama wins, in which case he and Dean are organizational geniuses. If they lose, they’ll be pilloried for wasting resources in states they couldn’t win.

At the Presidential level, so long as the focus is one just McCain and Obama, the likelihood of a blow-out is slim, but if the campaign turns into a national referendum on the policies of the Republicans over the last eight years, we may yet see a serious pummeling.

Racism In America

By Ron Beasley

Paul Krugman writes today:

Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.

Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago. It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.

I have seen this happen in my lifetime.  When I graduated from high school in Portland, Oregon in 1964 the city was still segregated.  The blacks lived in North and Northeast Portland.  My west side high school had virtually no black students.  A few years later I had moved from the city and was raising a family and working in the suburbs.  I was working next to and sometimes for the blacks I had not seen when I was growing up.  It went even deeper out there in the burbs - I had black neighbors and my son's best friend was black.  Krugman claims the transition that took place in the US was the result of a lowering urban crime rate.  I think that simplifies that issue.  I think the most important reason is that the races got to know each other and came to realize we weren't that different. 

Krugman is correct - this is bad news for what now passes as the conservative movement.  Through Lee Attwater and Karl Rove the Republican Party converted bigotry into political success.   But racism is not dead in America.  Obama will probably not carry Appalachia.  There are still people who will vote against a black man even if he better represents their interests.

This brings us to Larry Johnson and his hate filled band at No Quarter.  Hillary has thrown her support to Obama and even Taylor Marsh and other Clinton supporters have said they will do the same.  But not Johnson and the rest of the crew at No Quarter.  Someone asked the other day: "can we call them racists yet?" about the No Quarter crew.  Good question!

Update

Via John Cole - Even Laura Bush has more integrity than Larry Johnson.

Michelle Obama has a new defender from those who say she isn’t patriotic enough — First Lady Laura Bush. In an interview with ABC News, Bush said that Obama’s February remark that she was proud of the United States “for the first time in my adult life” was misconstrued.

“I think she probably meant ‘I’m more proud.’ That’s what she really meant,” Bush said from Afghanistan.

“You have to be really careful in what you say because everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued,” she said.

To the victor, goes the decision

By Libby

Respect was a word thrown around a lot in the last few months of this bitterly contested primary and I'd agree it was sorely lacking in much of the discourse. I'm not pointing any fingers because everyone was guilty to some degree, including myself. Much of that was mitigated yesterday by the positive response to Hillary's concession speech. Even her harshest critics mostly managed to choke out an acknowledgement of her acheivements and those less emotionally invested in the outcome offered up some truly warm praise.

However, now that the this race is finally over I'm finding the demanding tone of some supporters that Hillary be offered the VP slot -- or else -- to be somewhat disrespectful of Obama's accomplishments, and indeed rather dismissive of the reality that he in fact, won the contest. I'm almost equally puzzled by Obama's supporters who are demanding he doesn't offer her the position. I mean, either you trust your candidate to make a good choice, or you don't.

Leaving aside whether or not Hillary even wants to be VP, this is choice that rightly belongs to Obama, and no one else. While speculation over the possible choice and lobbying for preferred candidates is inevitable, I can't recall another election where so many apparently feel entitled to dictate the decision.

All that being said, I of course have an opinion not so much on who Obama should choose as who he shouldn't. I think Hillary would be the wrong choice for a number of reasons, mainly one that Avedon touches on here.

Natasha Chart finds someone recommending another completely inappropriate conservative* to get Obama's VP slot - Blanche Lincoln. No, no, no. Putting an anti-choice woman on the ballot just because she's female would be an incredible insult. And to be honest, I'm not really comfortable with most of this talk about finding some other woman to be on the ticket "instead of" Clinton. Don't turn this into The Minority Ticket, please.

We've already made history by nominating a black man. Let's not get greedy and try to get a two-fer out of it by adding a woman to the ticket. Although this is a favorable year for Democrats and we have an extraordinarily charismatic candidate, Obama will have enough to overcome in winning over that demographic of white Americans who find a brown man alien and scary. While it might feel good to break down all the barriers at once with a minority ticket, the end goal is to win the White House and this would only complicate the contest in a way that would benefit McCain.

On a purely pragmatic basis it would make sense for Obama to offer the VP to a white man and if he does so, his decision should be accepted by all Democrats with the kind of grace and respect that acknowledges he earned the right to make his own choice.

[*quote edited to reflect changes in the original]

Signs of the Unity "Bounce" Begin

By BJ

Gallup's Daily tracking poll puts Obama 2 points ahead of McCain, 46% to 44%, which is statistically insignificant. The significant point comes when you read the analysis:

Within the current five-day rolling average, Obama has exceeded McCain by a fair margin in each of the last three individual nights of Gallup polling, all conducted since Hillary Clinton announced she would be ending her bid for the Democratic nomination. It appears that her exit decision had the immediate effect of releasing some of her supporters to back Obama in the general election. If this continues in interviews conducted Sunday, Obama should have a clear lead over McCain in Monday's release.

I figure it will take at least a couple of weeks to see how many of the Hillary supporters who were saying they'd support McCain if Hillary didn't win actually meant it. It is a safe bet that some of them did, but it is nice to see that at least some of those are starting to rally around the Democratic nominee.

Mexican Standoff?

By BJ

Because I simply can't resist mucking around with the topic a bit more.

During the private negotiations between Obama and Clinton, which do you think was the more significant bargaining chip:

1. Clinton being less than helpful with Obama's general election campaign? or

2. Obama being less than helpful with Clinton's $30 million campaign debt?

And I am a bad person for thinking that such a mutual blackmail/self-interest scheme would actually take place?

Change for the better

By Libby

Hilzoy posts on the historic import of Obama's candidacy and in reading it I realized how removed I was emotionally from the historic aspects of both Democratic candidates. Race and gender had absolutely no bearing on my decisions. Not unusual for me. I've never weighed my interactions with people on the basis of social status or on any external factors. My only criteria in choosing friends and associates is on their honesty and compassion for their fellow humans.

The full import of this long awaited outcome finally hit me this morning. In a coutry where only a few decades ago, a person of color couldn't even use the same drinking fountain as white folk, it seems likely our next president will be a black man. I can only imagine what it feels like to the black community but even for me, this is huge.

After seven long years of watching the GOP and the Bush administration chip away at the civil rights we all fought so hard for in the sixties, it feels like we've finally taken a step back towards sanity and humanity again. It feels good.

Problems with prediction markets

By Fester:

I have some significant issues with political prediction markets in that they are good aggregators of conventional wisdom among a small, illiquid, and thinly trading sector of actors.  They are a useful tool, a one-stop aggregator of opinion, but they are not infallible and they are not fully efficient.  They should be a complement to polling, demographic and issue analysis and other political analytical techniques. 

For instance, the AP called Obama clinched the nomination early yesterday afternoon.  Delegate counters had projected that even in worse case scenario situations --- double digit losses for Obama in both Montana and South Dakota, he would pick up a sufficient number of pledged delegates to push him over the top once they were added to the new superdelegate committments he was getting.  And these projections were occurring early yesterday or on Monday.  No one was saying anything new as we knew this was a highly likely scenario since at least March 5 when Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island ended up as a net delegate wash for Clinton. 

And yet, as Matt Yglesias notes, the Intrade prediction market still was giving someone other than Obama a more than 5% probability of being the nominee.  Given his age & health, death or disability is a very low probability event so the mechanism would most likely be a political mechanism of several hundred Democratic superdelegates flipping in the next eight weeks.  I think that is amazingly unlikely.  I think 5% is an order of magnitude too high to describe that probability. 

An efficient market would arbitage that problem away, but these markets are too thin and unsophisticated to do that. 

End of the Beginning

By BJ Bjornson

Today, Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. Hillary is . . . taking a deep breath before any decisions are made.

She wasn't exactly conciliatory, but in my opinion not entirely flame-worthy. (An opinion my co-bloggers apparently don't agree with.) I commented somewhere that tonight's speech was going to leave people grumbling. I certainly wasn't wrong there.

Early Tuesday, Mark Halperin wrote about a number of things both candidates were underestimating. For Obama, the number one thing was this:

The intensely loyal feelings many of Clinton’s supporters have about her – and the intensely negative feelings they have about him.

I don't know if Obama truly underestimates this, but I'm pretty sure many of his supporters do. For the most part, I don't think many of them can even understand it. Over the last few months, I have taken frequent strolls through the comments section of Talkleft, Corrente, and a few other clearly pro-Clinton blogs. There, even more than in the posts themselves, I see an alternate reality that I simply don't recognize from what I've seen and experienced over the last six months.

And from this post, I know I'm not alone, but that there may be more to the story than I can understand.

For the life of me ,I simply cannot see this rampant, bludgeoning sexism that Ferraro and her ilk keep spewing about. Sexist incidents, yes. Sexist columnists and sexist commentators and some idiot with a shirt - yes. But some kind of wholesale, bloodthirsty sexist take down of Clinton? No. One condoned, snickeringly, by Obama and his crew? No, no, no. (And I won't even address Ferraro's laughable charge that white working-class folks can't relate to Obama and his wife because of their education but somehow can relate to Bill and Hillary, who apparently attended community college on 4-H scholarships. As far as I know.) And so, not seeing it, my inclination is to brush the dirt off my shoulders and say to Ferraro and all those other Angry White Women out there: Get a frickin' grip.

What stops me is only this: Too often I have stood in that painful place where all around you people (white people, mostly, in my case) insist that your interpretation of your own experience is incorrect. You're too sensitive, you're overreacting, yeah, that's what I said, but it's not what I meant, you just don't understand. I know as well as anyone that just because a huge and particular swath of humanity does not "see" something doesn't mean it does not exist. As Tim Wise points out, in this point-by-point essay on white denial, even in the early 1960s—a time at which America still operated under homegrown apartheid—most white Americans insisted racism did not exist or was not a major factor in the lives of black folks. Gallup polls show that nearly two-thirds claimed to believe blacks were treated the same as whites in their communities, while 85 percent said black children had just as good a chance as white children to get a good education.

The power of human beings to block out what they do not wish to see is astonishing.

I can't argue with that. So while I don't see or understand much of the narrative expressed by the die-hard Clinton supporters, I don't discount the power such a narrative has. It won't be easy to bring them back into the fold precisely because the narrative they've experienced is often diametrically opposed to the narrative Obama's supporters have.

For all that, I'm agreeing with BooMan:

I'm willing to be reconciled, but I am not willing to stop fighting until I see a white flag and an acknowledgment that Barack Obama won this contest fair and square and according to the rules. When I see Hillary Clinton stand up and admit that she lost and that Obama's victory is 100% legitimate, then I will stop fighting back. I hope to see it soon. And then, I hope, the Clinton supporters in the Blogosphere will stop peddling in hate and unsubstantiated innuendo. We all understand hardball tactics, even if we don't always respect them. But this contest is coming to a close. And anyone that keeps up the fight against Obama after today is working for McCain. And that includes Hillary Clinton.

And fellow Canuck Prole puts it far blunter.

The important thing right now though, is that Obama has won, and while it has been a bruising campaign, how and why he won bodes well for the fall.

Looking back, he won first and foremost because he knows how to look ahead. Neil Sinhababu pointed it out about his Iraq speech in 2002. It wasn't just that he came down on the right side of the Iraq debate when it was politically unpopular to do so, it's that he clearly foresaw the major problems with it. It was this foresight, along with Clinton's refusal to acknowledge her poor judgement on the issue, that gave Obama the opening he needed to topple her in the first place.

From there, it was Obama who had the right plan to win, by knowing and using the party delegate rules to ensure he would come out on top. Again it was foresight, combined with extensive planning, that allowed him to succeed.

And of course, there was his ability to inspire and get his message across, and to damp down controversies when they reared their heads. Great speeches form politicians these days are rare. For Obama, they're almost the norm. From tonight's examples, it looks like that skill will hold him in good stead for the contest against McCain. Head-to-head, Obama does quite well.

Of course, Hillary is already giving the McCain campaign a hand. It should prove interesting to see how she walks this kind of stuff back, if she ever does.

Quote Of The Day

By Ron Beasley

Our own Cernig was disgusted but not as disgusted as Sully:

The speech tonight was a remarkable one for a candidate who has lost the nomination, though not remarkable for a Clinton. It was an assertion that she had won the nomination and a refusal to concede anything to her opponent. Classless, graceless, shameless, relentless. Pure Clinton.

But he wasn't finished with quote of the day:

Her narcissism requires that she deprive her opponent of a night, or a second, of gratification or attention. And she has now won, in her Bush-like version of reality, 18 million votes. Her invitation for her supporters to email their suggestions to her website is pure theater, a way of keeping herself in the spotlight and maneuvering her delegates to demand a second spot on the ticket. The way she is now doing this - by an implicit threat, backed by McCain, to claim that Obama is an illegitimate nominee if she does not get her way - is designed to humiliate the nominee sufficiently to wound him enough to lose the election.

Either way, she is clearly intent on getting Obama defeated this fall if she is not offered the vice-presidency. And if she gets the veep nod, the way she has gotten it will allow her to argue that a November loss was not her loss. It was his. And she will run again in 2012.

It's not and shouldn't work.  She could have gotten a cabinet position or even Senate Majority Leader but after tonight she deserves zip.  Obama will win in November without her so nothing for Hillary and Bill but a failed legacy.  Perhaps there is some land available near Crawford.

Bonus Quote

The bonus quote comes from Bill at On My Mind

All of this is business as usual in Clintonland. She is going out with power plays, dictating terms under which she is willing to play her role in reuniting the party. “I have my loyal voters,” she is saying, in effect, “and if you want them back in November here’s what you have to do for me, because this is still about me.”

Are we there yet...

By Fester:

I'm just about ready for this primary season to be done.  I finally put the increasingly childish calvinball fundraising e-mails from HillaryClinton.com into my spam filter as junk and I am hoping that the massive cache of stockpiled superdelegates that Obama reputedly has in his vest pocket actually exists as they have been rumored to have existed since at least before Texas on March 4. 

BJ and I have been talking about whether or not this primary process has been good for the Democrats as we have both been worried about the probability or possibility of Hillary Clinton taking the Sampson Option of destroying the party to destroy her primary opponent.  Given the flood of rumors that are coming out, combined with the neutral to positive campaign messaging she has employed since any plausible path of winning ended with Indiana being a draw and North Carolina being an Obama blow-out, the Sampson Option looks like it will have been averted, especially if Wesley Clark is offered either the VP or SecState slot as a visible peace gesture between multiple Democratic factions. 

Overall I think this primary season has been a significant net positive as voter registration, GOTV organization, message sharpening and sucking up all of the available media oxygen has been real and positive for Democrats.  The significant negative is that John McCain is entering June with minimal counter-definition work having been done against him.  However given the generic issue and political environment, this is a flaw but not a fatal flaw in my opinion as I believe that as Obama consolidates his support among Democrats in the national polls, he should begin to open up a significant lead in the national vote share and projected electoral vote shares.

Looking forward to the next contested Democratic primary cycle, hopefully in 2016, I agree with Publius at Obsidian Wings that several significant reforms need to be undertaken including rationalization of the calendar, increased superdelegate transparency or the elimination of most/all superdelegates, and reducing the value of jurisdictions that do not have any electoral votes.  This process has been a net positive while being a massive stress test on the Democratic Party.  There are significant but non-fatal flaws that will need to be addressed in the near future.  But finally, it seems like things are over. 

Some Good Advice

By Ron Beasley

We all know that the so called fact finding trips to Iraq by politicians are little more than taxpayer funded photo ops at a dog and pony show.  That said it appears that Barack Obama may be forced to make such a trip to shut up John McCain.  Juan Cole has some excellent advise on how to turn it into a real fact finding mission and at the same time make it backfire on McCain and the neocons.

See if a meeting can be set up with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani has enormous moral authority in Iraq and is known for his support for national unity. No one could slam Obama for meeting with the Grand Ayatollah. Paul Bremer corresponded with him. He is not a radical and is well respected by the US military. And, when Obama comes to debate McCain, the Grand Ayatollah would give him a trump card. "Senator McCain speaks of having US bases in Iraq for a hundred years. Grand Ayatollah Sistani and other key Iraqi leaders told me to my face that any such plans are completely unacceptable to them. How likely is it that the McCain fatwa can be more popular or legitimate in Iraq than the Sistani fatwa?"

Sistani doesn't meet many foreigners. But he has met UN special envoys and a wide range of politicians. It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that he would meet Obama. Providing security in Najaf could be done. US Ambassador Ryan Crocker was in Najaf recently. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim could set it up and help guarantee it.

He also recommends a trip to Jordan to meet with the half million Iraqi refugees in that country which would bring some visibility to that aspect of the occupation and civil war.

We Wait and We Wonder

By BJ Bjornson

I'm not watching the RBC hearings, both because I have other, more important things to do, and because the ultimate decision they reach really isn't the important point. What's important is whether or not the Hillary campaign accepts the decision. As I put it a few weeks ago:

The results don’t change, but given how voraciously many of Hillary’s supporters have taken up the fate of these two rule-breaking states, it makes sense for the party and the campaigns to come up with a solution to put the issue to rest and to allow the healing to begin. This is why the 31st may be the most important date remaining. If the Clinton camp refuses to accept any and all compromises and takes this issue to the convention, a good number of her supporters will stay with her and we’re back to the Samson Option.

I was probably overly generous in my thinking that Hillary would be willing to fade away quietly and start helping the Democratic party move forward towards defeating McCain in November, but we're now at crunch time, and the next few days will show us Hillary's true colours. Publius at Obsidian Wings has roughly the same take on the matter.

The truly truly critical event tomorrow is the Clinton campaign’s reaction to the rules committee’s decision. It could very well cost Obama the election — or win it for him.

I’m not saying anything that Josh Marshall and Hilzoy haven’t essentially already said, but it’s a point worth emphasizing. In the days ahead, the Clintons have the power either to unite the party going into the fall, or to leave a lasting, poisonous, and potentially-fatal schism. At this point, it’s not clear what path they’ll choose.

. . .

But this latter assumption — inevitable party unity — is up in the air these days. There’s a lot of bad blood. And what’s really "baddening" that blood for Clinton supporters is the idea that she’s being cheated out of the nomination.

And that’s where Clinton herself comes in. Her supporters will follow her lead. If she acknowledges that her defeat was legitimate (regardless of how much she actually campaigns), then I think the party will unite. If, by contrast, she spends the next few days (or god forbid, months) alleging that it was illegitimate, then that reaction will leave lasting damage. Not just among pro-Clinton bloggers, but among her core supporters, particularly older liberal women.

No idea at this point whether or not Hillary's supporters will actually follow her lead, but certainly a whole lot more of them will come around with her making the case that the decision was a legitimate one. It is clear that if she keeps the legitimacy pot on full boil for much longer, her supporters will continue to hate and blame Obama for her loss and guarantee a President McCain in November out of spite.

And if you don't think Hillary will take the brunt of the blame for a Democratic loss under those circumstances, check around on how popular the name Nader is in Democratic circles these days. The narrower the defea