Bush Defames Obama on Middle East

May 15, 2008

The Commander-in-Chief is now the Smearer-in-Chief. In Israel to celebrate the country's 60th birthday, President Bush chose to debase the event with the defamatory suggestion, made before the Israeli Knesset, that Barack Obama would appease terrorists by talking to Syria and Iran.

Obama moved quickly to call it a "false political attack" by a president whose failed policies have "strenghtened Iran.'"

I would go on to point out that when it comes to talking to Syria, Israeli leaders would seem to agree with Barack Obama and not President Bush. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, Israel and Syrian negotiators met in secret from September 2004 to July 2006 and reportedly agreed on the main points of a peace agreement. And there have been reports of interest on both the Israeli and Syrian side to meet to conclude a formal agreement this year. The Bush administration has actively opposed these talks and has discouraged Israel from moving forward with final negotiations on a peace agreement. Obama might well ask the failed Bush Administration: Would Israel (and the United States) be in a stronger position vis a vis Iran, if it made peace with Syria?

Obama-Backing Edwards Elbows Aside Clinton

May 14, 2008

It was a weary and wistful Hillary Clinton who sat down with CNN's Wolf Blitzer and other network anchors for extended interviews in the middle of the day Wednesday. She knew that, no matter what she said, and how well she said it, it would not be enough.

Like the coronation march that her 2008 campaign was supposed to be, her latest gambit would be trumped by Barack Obama's juggernaut.

Yes, she had just been handed a face-saving landslide win by West Virginia Democrats, beating Obama by more than 2-1 in an honest-to-goodness swing state. But Clinton did not seem to be fighting very hard on a day when her senior campaign adviser, Harold Ickes, was disptached to Capitol Hill to reassure congressional supporter that the former frontrunner would remain in the race through June 3.

Of Course, Edwards Voted for Obama--and Now He's Set to Endorse

May 10, 2008

Appearing Friday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former U.S. Senator John Edwards was pressed by co-host Mika Brzezinski to discuss who he had voted for in last Tuesday's North Carolina primary.

"You're saying that this candidate you voted for will be the candidate that you potentially endorse, that it looks highly likely, if I can use your words?" asked Brzezinski.

"I'd say that's very likely," replied Edwards.

It's Not Over for the Lady in the Pantsuit

May 13, 2008

"It's not over until the lady in the pantsuit says it is."

That's the line Hillary Clinton has been using for the last few days to describe her attitude regarding the calls for her to quit the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And the lady in the pantsuit was saying Tuesday night that she would not be quitting the race for a bit longer.

Frank Rich's American Daydream

May 12, 2008

This Sunday, Frank Rich reported some of the most exciting news that has appeared on the pages of the New York Times in a very long time. According to Rich, Americans are on the verge of transcending the racial and cultural rifts that divided them for centuries. There simply aren't "enough racists of any class in America, let alone in swing states, to determine the results come fall," the former theater critic insisted. This statement is so inherently true that Rich did not even need to bolster it with actual statistical evidence.

Rich went on to announce that the rancorous street fights of the 1960's over militarism and civil rights have been neatly transmuted into "quieter social activism and grand-scale social networking." "The millennials' bottom-up digital superstructure," he wrote, has enabled economically marginalized ghetto dwellers and indignant campus radicals to air their grievances with the simple click of a button. So sit back in your Aeron chair, relax and blithely tend to your Facebook page.

McCain Had Better Hope Voters Think He's a Liar

May 9, 2008

O.K., let me get this straight:

Polls and anecdotal evidence tell us that Republican President George Bush is dramatically unpopular -- with approval ratings that have dipped into the low 30s or high 20s.

Polls suggest that Republican Vice President Dick Cheney -- Bush's running mate in 2000 and 2004 -- may well be the least popular elected official in the American history.

Clinton's Post-Mortem

May 9, 2008

It's perhaps a bit premature to write Hillary Clinton's political obituary, but that hasn't stopped members of the media from doing so. Yesterday Time magazine's Karen Tumulty published a pretty thorough list of "The Five Mistakes Clinton Made."

Analyses like Tumulty's tend to focus on the tactical errors committed by camp Clinton: they didn't devote enough resources to caucus states, didn't plan beyond Super Tuesday, didn't build a small donor fundraising base. All true, but focusing on the tactical errors alone obscures the substantive reasons why many Democrats turned away from Clinton's campaign.

The biggest factor that doomed Clinton, from day one, was Iraq. Her vote for the war and subsequent lack of apology cost her the support of a huge segment of the party that flocked to Obama (and, early on, Edwards) and tarnished her brand from the very beginning. That vote, more than any other, reflected the hawkishness, caution and calculation that soured many Democrats on Clinton and hurt her with young voters, new voters, independent voters, etc.

Vice President Clinton?

May 8, 2008

Why would a smart woman like Hillary Clinton continue her campaign when the odds are against her? In her public appearances as a newly cast woman of the people she says she is doing it for us. If so, thanks but no thanks.

Speculation assigns her pertinacity to other motives. Some are guessing that she is continuing to campaign as a means of crowbarring herself into being chosen as the vice-presidential candidate. According to this line of thought, the longer she campaigns the more she binds white women of a certain age to her and can argue that unless she is on the ballot they will be so disaffected that they will stay home on election day.

Others whisper that she hopes by soldiering on to make a deal with the Obama campaign that, in return for a.) her withdrawal and b.) her promise to stump for him against McCain, her campaign debts will be taken care of and she will be repaid the money she loaned herself. She does have a reputation for grasping for a buck.

Clinton Drops Stump-Speech Criticism of Obama

May 8, 2008

During a quick campaign swing into West Virginia, which appeared to have been organized mainly for the purpose of stifling rumors that she will quickly exit the Democratic presidential race, Hillary Clinton on Wednesday restructured her standard stump speech to remove overt criticisms of Barack Obama.

As with her muted victory/concession speech after losing Tuesday's North Carolina primary and barely scraping through the Indiana contest on Tuesday, the New York senator sounded party-unity and anti-Republican themes rather than stressing her differences with the now likely Democratic nominee.

Clinton's speech also dropped references to staying in the race "until the convention" and instead indicated that she was in it "until we have a nominee." That line echoes former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's comments from the latter stages of the Republican nomination race and leaves open the prospect of exiting the competition at a point when:

The Clinton Campaign is Broke

May 7, 2008

Don't misread the reports that Hillary Clinton has fronted her presidential campaign another $6.4 million.

This is not onward-to-victory money.

This is keep-the-lights-on money. And it has already been spent.