al-Maliki endorses Obama's position on Iraq

Today, the German publication SPIEGEL released the transcript of its interesting interview with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In that exchange, al-Maliki clearly embraced Barack Obama's withdrawal plan for Iraq.

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business. But it's the business of Iraqis to say what they want. And that's where the people and the government are in general agreement: The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited.

The full story here, full interview here (and continued here).

Needless to say, the Obama foreign policy advisors are pleased.

Hat tip: Ilan Goldenberg. See also Matt Yglesias.


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Obama's foreign policy address

Barack Obama gave a terrific foreign policy speech today in Washington DC.

I watched most it on TV. My only concern was that he made too many good points. He specifically ticked off 5 goals and talked about each of them in a relatively sophisticated way.

I will focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

It was impressive, but I'm not sure how many people will see or read the entire address.

That likely means that news organizations and John McCain will attempt to parse the speech to their own ends. It might not be easy:

I opposed going to war in Iraq; Senator McCain was one of Washington’s biggest supporters for war. I warned that the invasion of a country posing no imminent threat would fan the flames of extremism, and distract us from the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; Senator McCain claimed that we would be greeted as liberators, and that democracy would spread across the Middle East. Those were the judgments we made on the most important strategic question since the end of the Cold War.

Now, all of us recognize that we must do more than look back – we must make a judgment about how to move forward. What is needed? What can best be done? What must be done? Senator McCain wants to talk of our tactics in Iraq; I want to focus on a new strategy for Iraq and the wider world.

This framing of Iraq was very strong:

What’s missing in our debate about Iraq – what has been missing since before the war began – is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq and its dominance of our foreign policy. This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. This war diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy, and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century. By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.

I am running for President of the United States to lead this country in a new direction – to seize this moment’s promise. Instead of being distracted from the most pressing threats that we face, I want to overcome them.

This may have been my favorite line: "America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons."

Tomorrow, apparently, he's going to talk about his plans to "develop new defenses to protect against the 21st century threat of biological weapons and cyber-terrorism."


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Reviewing the Dem primaries

Remember the hullabaloo about which Democratic candidate was "ready on day one"?

In the June Atlantic Monthly, Joshua Green quoted John Roos, a corporate attorney who has been an Obama fundraiser in Silicon Valley:

“No one in Silicon Valley sits here and thinks, ‘You need massive inside-the-Beltway experience,’” he explained, after a diplomatic pause. “Sergey and Larry were in their early 20s when they started Google. The YouTube guys were also in their 20s. So were the guys who started Facebook. And I’ll tell you, we recognize what great companies have been built on, and that’s ideas, talent, and inspirational leadership.”

This makes me feel old.

Green has one other interesting nugget in the article -- "the tech community was up for grabs in 2007." Obama saw the opportunity and reached out to a lucrative donor base. Clinton did not:

In a colossal error of judgment, the Clinton campaign never made a serious approach, assuming that Obama would fade and that lack of money and cutting-edge technology couldn’t possibly factor into what was expected to be an easy race. Some of her staff tried to arrange “prospect meetings” in Silicon Valley, but they were overruled. “There was massive frustration about not being able to go out there and recruit people,” a Clinton consultant told me last year. As a result, the wealthiest region of the wealthiest state in the nation was left to Barack Obama.

I don't really want to rehash the 2008 primary campaign in any depth, but Vanity Fair does. Go there if you want a fix of "Hillaryland at War." Author Gail Sheehy's examination of the top staff is illuminating:

It was impossible to find anyone who could lay out the hierarchy of Hillary’s campaign. Almost everybody had veto power, but no one could initiate. The group was about as effective as the U.N. Security Council....They became consumed with trading personal invective, hurling expletives, and trashing one another in print.

[Mark] Penn and [Harold] Ickes especially hated each other.

The article also provides ample evidence why Hillary Clinton probably won't be the choice for Veep:

“Bill Clinton was out of control … even the night she won in New Hampshire. Even Hillary couldn’t control him,” a Clinton fund-raiser tells me. “He began calling me directly,” says one of Hillary’s Big Five, “and you don’t talk back to the president of the United States.” Not only did Bill give “advice” directly to Penn, [Howard] Wolfson, and [Patty Solis] Doyle, he wanted to set up his own shop in campaign headquarters, but the team persuaded him he was better used out on the stump.

While Bill proved to be a magnet for rural voters, he turned off some super-delegates with his imperial assumptions.

It's a lengthy read.


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Obama in Vegas

When Barack Obama goes to Vegas, he apparently isn't completing satisfied with the potential payoffs from safe bets. He wants to win big. Earlier this year, his campaign managed to earn more delegates from Nevada despite finishing second to Hillary Clinton in the state caucuses.

This week, Obama went to Vegas to talk about an issue that has long been near-and-dear to Republicans -- energy, and especially oil. Remember how the 2001 Bush cabinet was loaded with people with ties to the oil industry?

Indeed, Obama gave a terrific speech on energy on Tuesday, June 24. Here are two key paragraphs that speak directly to Senator John McCain's energy plans:

Senator McCain wants a gas tax holiday that will save you – at most – thirty cents a day for three months. And that's only if the oil companies don't just jack up the price and pocket the savings themselves, which is exactly what they did when we tried to do the same thing in Illinois. He's willing to spend nearly $4 billion on more tax breaks for big oil companies – including $1.2 billion for Exxon alone. He wants to open our coastlines to drilling – a proposal that his own top economic advisor admitted won't provide any short-term relief at the pump. It's a proposal that George Bush's Administration says will not provide a drop of oil – not a single drop – for at least ten years. And by the time the drilling is fully underway in twenty years, our own Department of Energy says that the effect on gas prices will be "insignificant." Insignificant.

Just yesterday, Senator McCain actually admitted this. In a town hall he said, and I quote, "I don't see an immediate relief" but "the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial." Psychological impact. In case you were wondering, that's Washington-speak for, "It polls well." It's an example of how Washington politicians try to convince you that they did something to make your life better when they really didn't. Well the American people don't need psychological relief or meaningless gimmicks to get politicians through the next election, they need real relief that will help them fill up their tanks and put food on their table. They need a long-term energy strategy that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil by investing in the renewable sources of energy that represent the future. That's what they need.

Much of the remainder of the speech outlines the contours of a long-term energy strategy -- strong federal government backing for renewable sources, including geothermal, solar, and wind power.

Indeed, Obama directly compares his energy initiative to JFK's commitment in May 1961 to land a man on the moon -- and return him safely to earth -- within a decade. Obama:

When John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn't put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win – he put the full resources of the United States government behind the project and called on the ingenuity and innovation of the American people. That's the kind of effort we need to achieve energy independence in this country, and nothing less will do.

Here's the meat of Obama's energy plan:

I have a plan to raise the fuel standards in our cars and trucks with technology we have on the shelf today – technology that will make sure we get more miles to the gallon. And we will provide financial help to our automakers and autoworkers to help them make this transition. I will invest $150 billion over the next ten years in alternative sources of energy like wind power, and solar power, and advanced biofuels – investments that will create up to five million new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced; that will create billions of dollars in new business like you're already doing here in Nevada. And before we hand over more of our land and our coastline to oil companies, I will charge those companies a fee for every acre that they currently lease but don't drill on. If that compels them to drill, we'll get more oil. If it doesn't, the fees will go toward more investment in renewable sources of energy.

When all is said and done, my plan to increase our fuel standards will save American consumers from purchasing half a trillion gallons of gas over the next eighteen years.

The environmentalist in me is ready to cheer these policies.


Hat tip: David Roberts of Gristmill.


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Blogroll add: FIveThirtyEight

I just started reading FiveThirtyEight.com and recommend that you read it too if you are interested in analysis of the 2008 presidential election. I'm not sure what my colleagues who study American politics would say about its methods, but Nate Silver (of Baseball Prospectus fame) is producing some interesting work.


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Stereotypes in 2008

Today, Hillary Clinton delivered a speech in Washington suspending her campaign and throwing her support to Barack Obama. Unsurprisingly, journalists, bloggers and political analysts have spent much of this past week analyzing why Clinton's campaign failed. After all, she started out as the big favorite with significant advantages.

Many of her most fervent supporters believe that Clinton was a victim of overt media bias and sexism. For example, a number of bloggers have been linking to this video highlighting the disturbing sexism and misogyny in the media. In linking to this video, Judith Warner wrote on June 5:

... if similarly hateful racial remarks had been made about Obama, our nation would have turned itself inside out in a paroxysm of soul-searching and shame.

Is this basic analysis correct?

Was Hillary Clinton victimized in a way that Barack Obama was not?

Allow me to review some of the lowlights of this past campaign. I'll ignore informal reports of racism on the campaign trail. Let's pretend the voting demographics don't matter and overlook the role Obama's black church played in the campaign. Instead, I'll focus on the same kind of verbal snippets used in the video.

Joe Biden, February 2007:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,"
Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Billy Shaheen, December 2007:

"one of the things Republicans are certainly going to jump on is his drug use."..."It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

Bill Clinton, January 2008:

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88," Clinton said at a rally in Columbia. "Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

Hillary Clinton, January 2008:

"Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done,” she said. “That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people’s lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it and actually got it accomplished.”

Bill O'Reilly, February 2008:

"I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels -- that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever -- then that's legit. We'll track it down."

Geraldine Ferraro, March 2008:

" "I got up and the question was asked, 'Why do you think Barack Obama is in the place he is today" as the party's delegate front-runner? "I said in large measure, because he is black....If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Ron Fournier (AP), March 2008:

Arrogance is a common vice in presidential politics. A person must be more than a little self-important to wake up one day and say, "I belong in the Oval Office." But there's a line smart politicians don't cross — somewhere between "I'm qualified to be president" and "I'm born to be president." Wherever it lies, Barack Obama better watch his step. He's bordering on arrogance....both Obama and his wife, Michelle, ooze a sense of entitlement.

Hillary Clinton, April 2008:

Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know - not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York.

Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY), April 2008:

“I’m gonna tell you something. That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,”

Mike Huckabee, May 2008:

Appearing in front of about 6,000 gun rights activists, Huckabee's speech was interrupted by a loud noise. The former Arkansas governor said, "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he -- he dove for the floor."

Hillary Clinton, May 2008:

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

HRC was correct about one thing she said in May, "There's a pattern emerging here."


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Veep update: Dems

Columnist Ruth Marcus provides the best line I've read yet explaining why Barack Obama cannot pick Hillary Clinton as his Vice Presidential candidate:

the White House is not big enough to accommodate three people who believe they should be president.

A lot of names have been floated, but none of them seem like an obvious choice.

Bill Richardson would be a good choice so far as I'm concerned. The Latino voice is going to be important in this election and Richardson has foreign policy and much executive experience to bring to the ticket.

His presidential campaign didn't go far, but Richardson had one of the most aggressive plans to exit Iraq and he's already negotiated with rogue state leaders in North Korea, Sudan, and Cuba. Under his tenure, New Mexico has taken a lead role in addressing climate change via cooperation with other states. Plus, Richardson was Secretary of Energy and can speak credibly against the Republican oil agenda.

That's a lot of positives to bring to the ticket.


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The smears to come

I've been on the road lately and had some conversations with various people about the likely shape of the fall campaign. Many think there's a good chance it will "feature" a litany of smears. The politics of the past continues to haunt the present.

He is a dangerous upper class elitist.

Did you know he wasn't born in the USA?

He spent all those years abroad...is he some kind of Manchurian candidate?

What makes a man of his limited background qualified to run for President? Is his success just a fairy tale?

Can American elect someone who seems so unpatriotic?

Why is he trying to hide important information about his identity?

What about those awful things he did in his past?


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Hillary's Hypocrisy

These days, Hillary Clinton has only one or two thin straws left to grasp in her efforts to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Voting is about to end -- Barack Obama has secured a majority of elected delegates even though Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico will still select 86 delegates.

Likewise, the Superdelegate "primary" -- which she was once winning by a sizable margin -- has turned away from Clinton. Obama has seized the lead among those convention participants and seems to add several more delegates each day. He currently leads the superdelegate race by 25 to 30 delegates. Just over 200 are yet to declare their allegiance.

By the math long accepted in this race -- Clinton too once agreed that the number for victory was 2025 -- Obama needs only about 60 more delegates to secure the nomination. Given proportional representation, he's going to get at least half of those from the remaining three electoral contests even if Clinton wins Puerto Rico by a 3-to-1 margin.

To get to the magic number assuring victory, Obama will likely need the support of fewer than 30 of the remaining 210 unpledged superdelegates.

So, where is Clinton making her last stand?

The answer is in Michigan and Florida, states where Clinton won both primaries.

However, Democrats agreed in 2007 not to campaign -- and not to count the delegates from those states. The states are being penalized harshly by the Democratic National Committee for moving their primaries to early dates, which competed for attention with traditional opening contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Back in 2007, none of the candidates wanted to offend early voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Here's the Clinton press release from September 2007:

"We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process," Clinton's campaign said in a statement. "And we believe the DNC's rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role."

The Clinton campaign, like the campaigns of Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Chris Dodd, signed a pledge not to "campaign or participate in any state which schedules a presidential election primary or caucus before Feb. 5, 2008, except for the states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina," as drafted by the DNC.

Note that this was not merely a pledge not to campaign. This was a promise not to participate in an election. Can one claim victory if such an election occurs? All the candidates save for Clinton and Dodd withdrew their names from the Michigan ballot. The DNC had already invoked the penalty. Clinton certainly agreed when she was campaigning in New Hampshire:

...she told a New Hampshire public-radio audience, "It's clear, this election [Michigan is] having is not going to count for anything."

Moreover, the DNC is not some disinterested third party. Hillary Clinton supporters were the mainstream of the Democratic party when these penalties were imposed. Some of her highest profile supporters helped make the DNC decision:

On Aug. 25, when the DNC's rules panel declared Florida's primary date out of order, it agreed by a near-unanimous majority to exceed the 50 percent penalty called for under party rules. Instead, the group stripped Florida of all 210 delegates to underscore its displeasure with Florida's defiance and to discourage other states from following suit. In doing so, the DNC essentially committed itself, for fairness' sake, to strip the similarly defiant Michigan of all 156 of its delegates three months later. Clinton held tremendous potential leverage over this decision, and not only because she was then widely judged the likely nominee. Of the committee's 30 members, a near-majority of 12 were Clinton supporters. All of them—most notably strategist Harold Ickes—voted for Florida's full disenfranchisement. (The only dissenting vote was cast by a Tallahassee, Fla., city commissioner who supported Obama.)

By the way, Clinton now has the support of 13 members of the DNC, to 8 for Obama, with 9 unaligned.

To hear Clinton talk now, however, voters from Florida and Michigan are comparable to the voters in authoritarian states, who are ruled by thugs who do not care about their concerns:

Speaking in Sunrise, Fla., Clinton said: "You heard Diana talk about coming from a country where votes don't count. People go through the motions of an election only to have it discarded and disregarded. We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe -- tragically an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."

I wonder what Clinton thinks of elections in single-party states, where voters are given ballots that do not reflect electoral choice?

In the former Soviet Union, the state's sanctioned candidate used to get over 90% of the vote; Clinton managed only 55% in Michigan. Uncommitted ran a strong second -- with 40%.

Clinton has also been making the argument that she should be the nominee because she leads the popular vote:

We believe the popular vote is the truest expression of your will. We believe it today, just as we believed it back in 2000 when right here in Florida, you 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 is not realized and our democracy is diminished. That is what I have always believed.

Independent sources that track the vote count reveal Clinton's hypocrisy on this issue.

Obama won a number of caucuses that do not report traditional vote counts. Would Clinton not want to count those votes? She won Michigan where Obama was not on the ballot. Indeed, the only calculations that give Clinton a popular vote lead are those that fail to count every vote -- by ignoring caucus results or by counting votes in states where voters had no chance to register their support for Senator Obama.

Make a reasonable estimate of the caucus results and exclude Michigan where Obama was not on the ballot, and the popular vote results do not favor Clinton. Barack Obama has not only secured more delegates than Hillary Clinton, he's ahead in the popular vote as well.

This would be a nice opportunity for Al Gore, who was genuinely wronged in 2000, to step forward and silence Clinton's latest argument. Failing that, this is likely to be resolved on May 31. It now appears that Obama's delegate lead is insurmountable, meaning that he's going to win the nomination even if Michigan and Florida delegates are seated. Democrats from those states have presented plans to the DNC that would not hand Hillary Clinton a last minute victory.


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Election day in Kentucky

Some anecdotes as we wait for results from Kentucky (and Oregon):

1. Today, as I voted in Louisville, a well-dressed 50-something women turned around in the voting booth next to mine and cried out, "Hey, Barack Obama is not listed on my ballot."

The poll workers reminded her that she had requested a Republican primary ballot and told her that she could not vote for a Democrat until the November general election.

The woman turned back around and muttered under her breath, "But I don't want any of these guys." She may have said "losers" instead of "guys." Her voice was trailing off.

2. In the past five days, I've received 2 phone calls from the Obama campaign asking me if I planned to vote for him and reminding me where to vote. Sunday, my spouse received one of those calls too. Yesterday, we also received 2 tape-recorded calls from his campaign that reminded us to vote. Today, a kid from my daughter's high school knocked on our door to remind us to vote for Obama. We were also apparently canvassed by an Obama worker last week when I was not home.

We received no calls from Hillary Clinton's campaign, though some months ago we did receive mailed requests for donations to her campaign.

Moreover, as of last Friday, our local Obama office was completely out of yard signs. I've also seen a number of Obama TV commercials, but none that I recall for Hillary Clinton. Our neighbor has a Hillary sign, as do a few other people on the street. Nonetheless, I think Obama is winning my block and neighborhood.

That said, Hillary or Bill Clinton have been on the front page of the local newspaper almost every day for the past week because of community or state appearances. Obama was in town once and his spouse came through as well. She did not make the front page. The paper had a long piece about Chelsea Clinton, but it was in the opinion section.


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Delegates

By all accounts, Hillary Clinton is going to win today's West Virginia Primary.

At stake? 28 delegates to the Democratic presidential nominating convention.

If Clinton wins the state by a 75-25 landslide, she'll pick up 21 delegates while Barack Obama will receive 7. That's a net gain of 14.

Meanwhile, since last Friday when I last posted about the then-nearly tied Superdelegate "primary," Obama has picked up 14 more superdelegates, while Clinton has added one and lost one.

Indeed, Obama has now gained a net of 29 superdelegate endorsements since last Tuesday and has clearly taken a lead in that battle.

Don't be surprised tonight if the talking heads covering the election spend as much time talking about superdelegate endorsements as they do about West Virginia returns.


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Bargaining time

Virtually everyone agrees the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination is over. Today's NYT:

The moment came shortly after midnight Eastern time, captured in a devastatingly declarative statement from Tim Russert of NBC News: “We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it,” he said on MSNBC.

Expect a superdelegate avalanche to start growing more pronounced this week.

The next stage of the contest is a negotiation and Hillary Clinton loses much of her leverage if she stops campaigning altogether. Thus, she is making appearances in West Virginia today. She might crush Barack Obama in West Virginia and both sides know it. Presumably, both sides also know that while this result would look bad for him, it would do almost nothing for her electoral chances.

Thus, both sides should be talking now about the terms of her withdrawal from the race. HRC has personal debt to retire and will have concerns about delegations from MI/FL, the platform, and perhaps the Veep. She likely wants to place some of her staff on Obama's campaign and may want the power to name some potential Cabinet members.

My guess is Obama caves on the debt question and figures out a way to seat the delegations for MI/FL. However, he will reveal less interest on most of the other demands. He will accept some Clinton staffers who are known to his people.

The McCain-Obama race has started.


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Clinton: 50 years may be enough

While many Democrats have piled on Senator John McCain for saying that it would be OK for the US to spend "maybe 100" years in Iraq, few have taken note of Senator Hillary Clinton's similar comment. Mark Kleiman has this from a "Face the Nation" transcript in February 2005:

Senator McCain made the point earlier today, which I agree with, and that is, it's not so much a question of time when it comes to American military presence for the average American; I include myself in this. But it is a question of casualties.

We don't want to see our young men and women dying and suffering these grievous injuries that so many of them have. We've been in South Korea for 50-plus years. We've been in Europe for 50-plus. We're still in Okinawa with respect to protection there coming out of World War II.

You know, we have been in places for very long periods of time. And in recent history, we've made a commitment to Bosnia and Kosovo, and I think what is different is the feeling that we're on a track that is getting better and that we can see how the Iraqi government will begin to assume greater and greater responsibility. The elections were key to that. The training, equipment, equipping and motivating of the Iraqi security forces is key to that. But so is our understanding that if we were to artificially set a deadline of some sort, that would be like a green light to the terrorists, and we can't afford to do that.

I suspect, as does Kleiman, that a Clinton candidacy would dramatically reduce Democratic options concerning Iraq against McCain in the fall campaign.


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Email as echo chamber

I've known about Sidney Blumenthal's emails for some months, but did not write anything about them because I lacked first-hand evidence. I am not on Blumenthal's email list. However, I did link to a Newhouse New story about the email list back in mid-February when I discussed the Barack Obama-as-messiah smear.

Peter Dreier, who gets the material via a forward, explains how it works:

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.

Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.

Blumenthal has gone from critic of "right wing conspiracy" to enabler. Apparently, some of the stuff he's circulated is comparable to the "Clintons-killed-Vince Foster" crap from the 1990s.

Jonathan Tilove of Newhouse News named some of the recipients back in February:

the list of those receiving Blumenthal's e-mail included reporters John B. Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic; Joe Conason, national correspondent for The New York Observer and columnist for Salon.com; and Gene Lyons, columnist with the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and author of "The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."

Dreier names more:

Among those whose names show up as recipients of Blumenthal's emails are writers and journalists Craig Unger, Edward Jay Epstein, Thomas Edsall (Politics Editor of the Huffington Post), Joe Conason, Gene Lyons (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist and author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton), John Judis, Eric Alterman, Christine Ockrent, David Brock, Reza Aslan, Harold Evans, and Josh Marshall; academics and think tankers Todd Gitlin (Columbia U sociologist), Karen Greenberg (NYU law school), Sean Wilentz (Princeton historian), Michael Lind, William M. Drozdiak, and Richard Parker; and former Clinton administration officials John Ritch, James Rubin, Derek Shearer, and Joe Wilson.

Mark Kleiman is fairly disgusted that the journalists kept this to themselves.

I think this is why some Obama supporters so actively want to find a politician who are

"hungry for a new kind of politics, a politics that focused not just on how to win but why we should, a politics that focused on those values and ideals that we held in common as Americans; a politics that favored common sense over ideology, straight talk over spin."

On substance, there's very little separating Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The former is a bit better on health care and some other domestic issues, while I like Obama's foreign policy better.

On political process, I see big differences. Blumenthal has been sending this stuff around for six months.


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Religion in the public square

I don't think Reverend Jeremiah Wright speaks for Barack Obama and I'm not all that concerned that Obama attended his church for 20 years. Over the past few decades, since Ronald Reagan embraced Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, we've heard many religious figures make incredible statements about politics. For the most part, their ties to specific politicians has not determined voting outcomes.

I think this reflects the insight Ronald Reagan offered when asked about the views of a John Birch Society member who supported him:

"if anyone chooses to support me, they're buying my views; I'm not buying theirs."

For most politicians, that's sage advice.

George W. Bush tried to take a similar stand in 2000 when Senator John McCain called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance." This is what McCain said at the time:

"The politics of division and slander are not our values," McCain said in Virginia. "They are corrupting influences on religion and politics and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country."

I've previously blogged about Pat Robertson's outrageous "contributions" to public debate. It is almost impossible to select a single representative example from so much nonsense, but here's one to pit against Wright:

"If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer. You've got to blow that thing up."

Colorful, eh? And he said that after 9/11.

This is from a transcript featuring Jerry Falwell on Robertson's TV network, September 13, 2001:

JERRY FALWELL: ...[T}he Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil, first time, and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters; the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats, what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do.

Back in 2000, then-Governor Bush tried to echo Reagan to distance himself from these kinds of remarks from Falwell and Robertson:

Bush acknowledged that Robertson, Falwell and other fundamentalist religious leaders have lined up behind his presidential bid. "They're supporters of ours, but I have all kinds of supporters," Bush said.

Obama supporters are probably ready to offer an amen to that, eh?

But what of McCain? Should it make a difference if the politician seeks out the controversial religious leader?

You've probably already heard about McCain pursuing the endorsement of controversial Texas pastor John Hagee. Indeed, he was "very honored by Pastor John Hagee's endorsement." In various public forums, however, Hagee has said that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans because of their offensive "level of sin." He's denounced all Muslims for having a "a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews." There's more:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue said Hagee "has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’

Given the saturation TV coverage of Wright -- and the previous efforts to make Obama denouce Louis Farrakhan -- it is one-sided to think that we haven't seen more about this pastor and his endorsement of McCain.

In any case, rather than provocative statements in the public sphere, perhaps we should worry most about what religious figures say privately to politicians. This story concerns release of tapes from Richard Nixon's Oval Office in 1972. Reverend Billy Graham has had the ear of every president since Harry Truman:

In the taped conversation, Mr [Reverend Billy] Graham said the Jewish "stranglehold" on the media "has got to be broken or this country's going down the drain".

"You believe that?" [President] Nixon replies.

"Yes, sir."

"Oh boy. So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it," Nixon says.

"If you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," Mr Graham replies.

Later in the conversation, when Nixon raises the subject of Jewish influence in Hollywood, Mr Graham says:

"A lot of Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me, because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth, but they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them."

Jon Stewart played the tape on last night's "Daily Show."


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Clinton: When to obliterate Iran

I have some security question fors Senator Clinton. First, what policy choices should the U.S. pursue so as to avoid "doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic."

CLINTON: Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that. Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that. Because that, perhaps, will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic.

Certainly, Dick Cheney was wrong pretending that deterrence cannot work against Iran.

However, it is morally reprehensible to talk lightly of obliterating a society. Would the U.S. really punish millions of innocent people if their government acted reprehensively? How could this be consistent with just war theory? Just think about proportionality for one moment.

Do all the Catholics in Pennsylvania who apparently voted for Clinton know about this?


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Basketball primaries

Did you catch this news item from the AP today? Barack Obama's campaign is offering young Indiana campaign workers the chance to play basketball with the candidate:

Obama's campaign has been intensely focused on new voter registration ever since staff arrived in large numbers back in mid-March. The campaign... [is] offering high school and college students who register their peers the chance to play basketball with the senator.

In the Hoosier state, this is a politically savvy move.

Indeed, several of the next primaries are in states that are basketball crazy -- Indiana and North Carolina on May 6 and then Kentucky on May 20. This March, the largest cities in these states had some of the "highest average television rating[s] and share[s] for the run of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament." Of the top 56 TV markets, Louisville finished #1, Charlotte was #2 and Indianapolis was #4. Additionally, Raleigh-Durham finished #10.

Is Obama's link to basketball authentic? Yes.

Barack Obama was a high school basketball player (footage here). His brother-in-law is a college head coach. Most importantly, Obama has continued to play basketball into adulthood -- the offer to young staffers isn't an awkward gimmick.

Even the NY Times has noticed Obama's love of basketball:

From John F. Kennedy’s sailing to Bill Clinton’s golf mulligans to John Kerry’s windsurfing, sports has been used, correctly or incorrectly, as a personality decoder for presidents and presidential aspirants. So, armchair psychologists and fans of athletic metaphors, take note: Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, the version of the game with unspoken rules, no referee and lots of elbows. He has been playing since adolescence...

That rough-and-tumble vision of pickup basketball might not jell completely with Obama's "change" agenda, but consider these elements:

...over the years, Mr. Obama’s gymmates have become loyal allies and generous backers....Though some of these men could afford to build courts at their own homes, they pride themselves on the democratic nature of basketball, on showing up at South Side parks and playing with whoever is around. At the University of Chicago court where he and Mr. Obama used to play, “You might have someone from the street and a potential Nobel Prize winner on the same team,” Mr. Duncan said. “It’s a great equalizer.”

It is a theme that runs throughout Mr. Obama’s basketball career: a desire to be perceived as a regular guy despite great advantage and success...

For fans in Kentucky, Indiana, and North Carolina, here's the money quote:

“I dream of playing basketball,” Mr. Obama said in a television interview

As frequently as he can, over the next month, I think Obama should appear with a basketball in his hands.

Based on this CNN footage, it appears he can shoot.

If he can win Indiana and North Carolina on May 6, the long campaign may be over.


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Duck

Yesterday, at the Duck of Minerva, I posted "History lesson: PA 1980."

April 21, I blogged "Nuclear umbrella" concerning what the Democratic candidates said in the California debate about nuclear deterrence and proliferation in the Middle East.

From Friday April 11, you can find "Teaching from the blogosphere."


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Debate analysis

The media is still buzzing about last week's Pennsylvania debate. Nico Pitney, National Editor at the Huffington Post, looked systematically at the one-on-one candidate debates to determine whether the latest contest was uglier or included more one-sided ("gotcha") questioning than those that preceded this one.

Here's his method:

I went through each of the four one-on-one contests between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, starting with CNN's debate way back on January 31, and cataloged every question, classifying them as follows:

# Policy and expertise: In this category, I put any questions about a candidate's policy preferences or legislative record, as well as questions about a candidate's experience ("Neither one of you have ever run a business, so why should either of you be elected to be CEO of the country?").

# Non-policy questions: Questions focused on politics, including electability and the role of superdelegates, as well as those about campaign management, such as releasing tax records or accepting public financing.

# Scandal questions: Questions about hot-button, non-policy issues like Jeremiah Wright or Clinton's Bosnia trip. (Note: this category does not include follow-up questions on these issues given to the opposing candidate; ie. Clinton being asked about Wright, or Obama being asked about Bosnia.)

What did Pitney find?

1) ABC's debate was in a class of its own, with more scandal and non-policy questions than any other. ABC asked the most scandal questions, and both ABC and NBC devoted only half of their questions to policy issues. The CNN debates were dramatically more policy-focused.

Here's a breakdown:

Policy Non-Policy Scandal
CNN (1/31) 31 3 1
CNN (2/21) 23 5 2
NBC 24 17 5
ABC 32 14 13

2) Barack Obama has received the overwhelming majority of scandal questions over the course of the four debates, by a margin of 17 to 4.

Interesting, eh?



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Debate critics

I had a conflict and missed the Democratic debate on Wednesday night. Apparently, from what I've heard and seen about the debate, the moderators were terrible.

This group of bloggers and journalists has taken its complaint public. Here are the first two paragraphs:

We, the undersigned, deplore the conduct of ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson at the Democratic Presidential debate on April 16. The debate was a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world. This is not the first Democratic or Republican presidential debate to emphasize gotcha questions over real discussion. However, it is, so far, the worst.

For 53 minutes, we heard no question about public policy from either moderator. ABC seemed less interested in provoking serious discussion than in trying to generate cheap shot sound-bites for later rebroadcast. The questions asked by Mr. Stephanopoulos and Mr. Gibson were a disgrace, and the subsequent attempts to justify them by claiming that they reflect citizens' interest are an insult to the intelligence of those citizens and ABC's viewers.

Read the entire letter and the list of signatories.


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