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kausfiles: A mostly political Weblog.

Obama's Better Off Losing IndianaHe doesn't need a vote-count controversy.

By Mickey Kaus
Updated Wednesday, May 7, 2008, at 1:42 AM ET

Hail, Columbia, Hail Mary: John Ellis sees"one last chance" for Clinton. ... 7:34 P.M.

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Hillary's campaign sends out a message to supporters:

So Hillary's victory in Indiana – fought out against the backdrop of an ailing economy – is all the more incredible. We started out behind in both the public and internal polls.

For example, our March 13 poll showed Hillary trailing by 8 points, while our latest poll gave Hillary a 5 point lead.

Huh? What do Hillary's internal polls mean at this point? We have actual results now, and she doesn't have a 5 point lead. ... 9:53 P.M.

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LAT finds a witness who contradicts excitable McCain aide Mark Salter's "totally false" charge. ... 9:24 A.M.

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Obama may win/steal Indiana. Only Wolf Blitzer could make this not exciting! Where is Pat Caddell when you need him? ... P.S.: Isn't it almost better for Obama if he loses Indiana by a few hundred votes? The nomination campaign is almost certainly over anyway, yet if he loses Indiana he won't have to contend with lingering charges of vote-counting mischief. ... P.P.S.: OK, CNN eventually had a reasonably dramatic momentary dispute between the mayors of Hammond and Gary, with the pro-Clinton Hammond mayor openly suggesting possible impropriety. ... 9:02 P.M. link

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Blogger DWA:

Why don't the networks tell us who "won" according to the exit polls? The polls have closed, so they can't affect the results?

Good question. It's mildly infuriating how the networks--even on the Web-- pompously present all the various permutations of the exit poll data except the permutation you are most interested in: the result. After the polls have closed, why not be transparent and release the overall horse-race numbers--especially since those numbers have almost certainly shaped their coverage? Is it because the nets want to avoid being embarrassed when their bottom line exit poll estimates turn out to be wrong? Does CNN think viewers are so pathetically passive and needy that they will sit there happily as Bill Schneider and Soledad O'Brien spoonfeed them third-order tidbits on how white working class independents and male suburban Catholics broke down? If you're watching CNN, you're into politics enough to understand that early exit numbers can be off for legitimate reasons. ... P.S.: Mark Blumenthal gives a somehwat unsatisfying statesmanlike response to DWA. [See his 9:32 P.M. entry]... 8:45 P.M.

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A note on NBC's attempt to disprove the Limbaugh Effect with exit poll data: Why do we assume that mischievous dittohead Republicans will make the effort to vote in the primary of a party they don't even believe in, but that then these same people won't lie to exit pollsters (i.e., about which Democratic candidate would do better against McCain, or even about which candidate they voted for)? ... See also. ... 7:56 P.M.

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The rehabilitation of John Zogby would be a heavy price to pay for transcending America's historic racial divide: Kf remains skeptical of early exit polls showing a double-digit Obama win in North Carolina. Remember that some very early exits had him actually winning in Pennsylvania. ... P.S.: Mark Blumenthal is liveblogging the shifting exit polls. ... 4:55 P.M.

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Johnny Sack on 'card check': Mike Murphy's ad (which is running on MSNBC) seems effective. 2:56 P.M.

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That was fast: CNN's politicalticker on McCain's recent appearance --

The Arizona senator also seemed to move past his usual "secure the borders first" mantra in favor of calling for, as he put it, "comprehensive immigration reform." ...[snip]

"Unless we enact comprehensive immigration reform I don't think you can take it piecemeal," he explained Monday, answering a question about providing visas for skilled workers.

"In other words," he said, "because as soon you and I start to talk about the highly skilled workers, our agricultural interest people are going to say, 'Look we need ag workers, too.' And then somebody's going say, 'We need the DREAM Act,' and then somebody's going to say, 'We've got to enforce our border.'"

Throughout the Republican primary battle last fall, McCain faced relentless questions about his support for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, the 2007 bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the United States if they faced certain penalties. Opponents labeled it "amnesty."

Since clinching the nomination, McCain has largely avoided speaking about wide-ranging immigration reform, arguing primarily that the government needs to focus on securing the border with Mexico before taking on other measures.

On Monday, he lobbied for a broader approach that includes a temporary guest worker program and tamper-proof ID cards.

"We get in this kind of a circular firing squad on immigration reform in the Congress of the United States," McCain said, "and the lesson I learned from it is we've got to have comprehensive immigration reform."

McCain's "secure the borders first" position was always a transparent deception designed to get him through the Republican primaries. I just didn't expect him to drop it before the Republican convention. Won't there be at least a mini-rebellion? Or is that what McCain wants? ... [via KLo]

P.S.: Wasn't this supposed to be Reassure Conservatives Day for McCain? Why should they believe his insincere promises on judges when he's already backsliding on his insincere promises on immigration? ... Watch McCain's judge speech. Does he seem like he believes a word he's saying? ... 2:23 P.M. link

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Why not predict? Clinton by 8 in Indiana. Obama by 3 or less in N.C. ... Update: Hmm. ... 5/7 Update: kf calls both results correctly! ... Other than that I completely missed it. ... 3:05 A.M. link

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Monday, May 5, 2008

"Obama by double digits" in N.C.: Predicted by a blogger using a sophisticated model that ignores ... what's been happening in the campaign. Like Rev. Wright. I predict this person is wrong! ... Update: He was right. ... [via Insta] 9:27 P.M.

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McCain didn't vote for Bush in 2000? Did he vote for Gore then?** (Rush--you want to continue with Operation Chaos?) ... After saving this nugget for 8 years, shouldn't Arianna have dropped it at the beginning of her book tour? ... Of course, the anecdote makes a point opposite from the one Arianna wants to make. Her argument is that McCain is now a doctrinaire right-winger. Isn't it much more likely that his current GOP orthodoxy is mainly an appearance? What he told Arianna in 2000 would be the reality. [That assumes he'll act on the reality and not the appearance--ed. True. The reality is already taking over.] ...

Update: McCain camp denies. Excitable aide Mark Salter calls Huffington "a flake, and a poser, and an attention seeking diva." Arianna posts a useful compendium of righteous McCain falsehoods. This is getting good. Certainly good for Arianna. ...

**--Correction: Item originally, erroneously had Kerry instead of Gore as the 2000 Dem candidate. I am living in my own "psychic reality." Watch out for the snipers. ... But hey, maybe McCain voted for Kerry too! 3:06 P.M.

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We Build Excitement: The Insider Advantage non-robo poll has Hillary within striking distance in North Carolina and Obama within striking distance in Indiana. ... A perversely self-cancelling double-upset? (Or, if you correct for the Bradley Effect, are these polls just grim for Obama?) ... More: Marc Ambinder on the seemingly unlikely black/white Clinton/Obama breakdowns that would be required for a Clinton North Carolina win. ... 1:54 P.M.

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The New York Times has now completed the bogus cocooning poll exercise anticipated in this space last week. To repeat: If 21 percent of Democrats are willing to say Rev. Wright has made them "less favorable" to Obama, and 15 percent say the controversy has made them "less likely" to support Obama, that doesn't mean

In Poll, Obama Survives Furor, but Fall Is the Test [the NYT hed]

It means Obama Badly Damaged by Furor, May Not Make It to Fall. ... Obama can't really afford to lose 10% of Democrats to the Wright controversy. ... P.S.: USA Today does not make the NYT's mistake. ... [via RCP] ... P.P.S.: The NYT poll is of only 283 Democrats. Mighty thin. USA Today surveyed 516. ... Has Pinch Sulzberger's visionary leadership so depleted the Times' resources that it can't even afford to take a decent-sized poll? If so, should the paper still run this now-iffy self-generated news on the front page? ... 1:23 P.M.

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Nut Graf! Psychologist Ellen Ladowsky elaborates on her Hillary Bosnia Fantasy Theory at HuffPo. I recommend navigating swiftly to paragraph #20, where she's buried the nut grafs:

There are two possibilities: Hillary may be a pathological liar. Or, more persuasive to me, Hillary believed what she was saying and her description of her Bosnia trip was a true representation of her psychic reality and not external reality. In her internal world, Hillary may feel as though she's always being shot at by sniper fire and that she's heroically managed to stay alive.

This theory makes sense of Hillary's recklessness. It didn't feel reckless to Hillary to repeat this lie over and over again, and she paid no heed to those who contradicted her, because in her mind, she was telling the truth. Only when confronted with undeniable evidence of external reality -- actual footage from her Bosnia trip - did she admit (possibly to herself as well as the public) that her version of events was not true.

It also explains Hillary's reaction when exposed. She was angry because she was forced to abandon her psychic reality for external reality. For her, this was tantamount to giving up the truth in exchange for mere facts. .... [snip]

While most of her explanations have made no sense, when Hillary told Leno that she'd had "a lapse", she was right on. She'd had an actual lapse in mental functioning. [E.A.]

To me, Hillary's Bosnia exaggeration doesn't seem that bizarre--just a particularly egregious and risky version of the sort of resume-brighteners even candidates who served in the military sometimes tell. I'd be tempted to dismiss Ladowsky's argument if it didn't resonate with other bits of data in Hillary's biography: a) Her marriage! Did she stay wedded to a notorious philanderer by insulating herself within a "psychic reality"--a reality only disrupted by "undeniable evidence" in the form of Monica Lewinsky's dress? I remember during the early days of the Lewinsky scandal when Hillary's aides said she didn't read the papers. That would be one way to stay in a comfortable "psychic" cocoon. Another way would be to surround yourself with ultraloyal aides. (Hello, Sid!); b) Her refusal to face the legislative failure of her health care plan in 1994 until it was too late; and c) Her failure to take the Obama threat to her candidacy seriously enough (including, maybe soon, a refusal to admit that it's too late for her to win the nomination). ... 2:27 A.M. link

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Sunday, May 4, 2008

The Eight Belles Metaphor is so obvious that everyone is embarrassed to use it, figuring that everyone else is already using it--a thought born embalmed as a cliche, already tiresome from anticipated over-expression before being sincerely expressed in the first place. [The thought that it's a cliche is also already a cliche, no?--ed Faster! ... I'll never get out ahead of this, will I?] ... 11:57 A.M.

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It seems like only ten years ago that policy hustler Robert Reich was confusing marginal tax rates with effective tax rates in an attempt to fool his readers into thinking the tax burden on the rich had gotten lighter than it actually had. He's still doing it, apparently. ... [via Insta]1:04 A.M.

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

What if it was all a dream? (And if so, what does the dream mean?) Ellen Ladowsky and Rob Long interpret Hillary's Bosnia fantasy. ... Hint: In the end they cancelled her party! ... 4:54 P.M.

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Hillary Clinton has done best in this campaign when she's been on the ropes--the phenomenon everybody (OK, nobody) in the press calls Mutnemom, or reverse momentum. Recently, however, Clinton's been gaining in polls while Obama's been declining. You'd think that would hurt her in North Carolina and Indiana as voters focus more intently on the actual prospect of a Hillary presidency and less intently on Obama's flaws. But maybe, thanks to Hillary's seemingly hopeless elected-delegate position, she's achieved a kind of Permanent Mutnemom status, in which (happily for her) no number of primary wins can alter the perception that she's still on the ropes. ... 4:23 P.M.

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Jon Keller revisits Obama wrang-wrang Deval Patrick--the pioneering African-American governor of Massachusetts who now has a 56% disapproval rating. What's the difference between Obama and Patrick? They were both relatively inexperienced. They were both advised by David Axelrod. They both ran on race-transcending "hope." A veteran GOP political analyst recently described to me what he considered the key analytic distinction:

Deval Patrick is an idiot. Obama is not an idiot.

OK! In that case .... 12:36 P.M.

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Friday, May 2, 2008

"Minister's Comments Hold Little Sway in Indianapolis Enclave": On the one hand there's the New York Times report:

[N]o one interviewed here said that Mr. Wright had affected how they or anyone they knew would vote.

On the other hand, there are the actual polls, showing Obama tanking. Who you gonna believe? ... P.S.: A staple of cocooning journalism is the quickie poll showing that "Voters Say They Aren't Troubled by X," with X being an issue the polltakers don't want voters to be troubled by. Typically, these stories 1) ignore the tendency of voters to lie to pollsters, especially when it comes to admitting they might be influenced by thoughts of the sort that they suspect polltakers don't approve of; and 2) even if everyone's telling the truth, if only 10% of voters say they will vote against a candidate because of X--while fully 90% of the voters say they are untroubled--that means the candidate has been badly damaged by X. In most races a candidate can't afford to lose 10% of the vote on a single issue. ... In today's story, of course, the Times strikes a blow for transparency and cost-efficiency, dispensing with the expensive, scientific-sounding claptrap of polling and cutting right to the soothing BS, interviewing a handful of upscale Indianapolis shoppers who duly deny they would be influenced by the Wright flap (but who knows what those "less cosmopolitan" Hoosiers down South will do). ... 10:40 A.M. link

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Thursday, May 1, 2008

Sid, Busted: If Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wants to email around Manhattan Institute articles attacking William Ayers' education theories, that's OK with me. Peter Dreier's post is almost a parody of netrootsy Obamanoia--if you're going to ask voters to tolerate Obama associating with Ayers, don't trash Blumenthal for daring to read Fred Siegel. (Or for influencing Charles Krauthammer--"an arch conservative.") Webbische kopf! Sometimes even arch conservatives have things to say. ... Still, voters should know about Blumenthal's under-the-radar emailing because a) it's sometimes very effective (if not nearly as effective these days as Dreier, or arch conservative Sid enemies, pretend); b) it threatens to create a reality-distorting echo chamber (a point Dreier makes) and c) if we elect Hillary, we're going to get Sid as part of the package. ... P.S.: From the piece: "One of Blumenthal's associates scoffs at the notion that there's anything vaguely conspiratorial about these emails." Sid, conspiratorial? ... P.P.S.: Surprising name on Blumenthal's recipient list? Reza Aslan. Otherwise, it's people you'd expect. ... Backfill: Back in February, Blumenthal wrote (to Newhouse's Jonathan Tilove) that his emails were "not intended for you, or any other reporter." I count at least 5 reporters and 6 other more thumbsuckerish political journalists, plus three public-intellectual academic types, on the list Dreier gives. ... 2:30 P.M. link

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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Bob Wright's apocalypse is bigger than mine. ... 10:46 A.M.

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Amy Holmes, eerily prescient? ... [via I.V.D.] 12:27 A.M.

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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

HuffPo asks where John Edwards is, given the looming primary in his state. Turns out he's at Disney World. ... Kausfiles asks where Rielle Hunter is! ... Perhaps there is some connection between Hunter and Edwards' avoidance of the North Carolina spotlight. ... Update: Instapundit suggests this is one too many references to Rielle Hunter in a short period of time. He's right. But I don't think John Edwards is going away--he's talked about as a potential cabinet secretary or even Supreme Court justice. Which means Hunter isn't going away. ... Also, Edwards' power to extract any promises in connection with such jobs would seem to be at a peak this week, given the value of his endorsement in his home state. And his decision not to endorse (so far) is a bit mysterious, no? ... 5:26 P.M.

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I'll be interviewing Michael Kinsley about his new book, "Please Don't Remain Calm," at a Town Hall Los Angeles event on the UCLA campus tomorrow, Wednesday 4/30, at 7:30. Details here. ... 3:41 P.M.

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Monday, April 28, 2008

Hope! McCain will have trouble beating the Obama who showed up on Fox News Sunday, giving a highly effective interview to Chris Wallace. It included this bait for Hillary:

I think there are a whole host of areas where Republicans in some cases may have a better idea.

Obama cited not just "merit pay" but also "experimenting with charter schools," which he said has gotten him "in trouble with the teachers union." Maybe he didn't "add more substance to his unity schtick," but after his dreary Pennsylvania performance just restating the old substance offers relief. Harbinger of Pivot? ... P.S.: It would be a huge help in combatting the "arrogance" meme, however, if Obama would stop citing the world-historical greatness of his own speeches as if he were his own personal Chris Matthews. For example, he mentions

at the Democratic convention, giving what I would say was about as patriotic a speech about what America means to me and what this country's about as any speech that we've heard in a long time.

Eek. How about fake humility, Senator? Americans will probably settle for fake humility rather than real humility at this point. It doesn't look as if they will have a choice. ... 2:19 A.M.

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Sunday, April 27, 2008

There were Santa Ana gusts today, which tend to make one stupid. I'd leave town but can't tell if they're already dissipating--when I throw grass in the air it goes all over. I need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. ... 11:34 P.M.

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We Ignored the Rielle Hunter Scandal and All We Got Was This Lousy Op-Ed! Elizabeth Edwards has a bushelful of chutzpah chastising the mainstream campaign press for its "shallow news coverage" after the mainstream campaign press cut her and her husband** a huge break on one of the great shallow stories of 2008--the mysterious Edwards Campaign Love Child (see link for claim of an Edwards aide that he is the father of the child, and various other denials).. ...

P.S.: The E.C.L.C. must have been born by now, no? Tips gratefully accepted. ...

P.P.S.: What was so exciting about Joe Biden's health plan (which Mrs. Edwards thinks we should all have been told more about)? Couldn't she have spared a paragraph in her double-length op-ed to explain its unique, cruelly-ignored genius? It doesn't look so exciting to me. She could have steered me right. ... Or, like the MSM, was she worried about boring her readers to death, preferring to talk about process issues? ...

P.P.P.S.: Mrs. Edwards also complains that in 1954 the Army McCarthy hearings were televised, "but by only one network." Wasn't one enough?

***--She describes him as "a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife." When does chutzpah become heedless Gary-Hart like taunting? ... 10:06 P.M. link

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Ping!--Obama's Cattle Futures: If Hillary had this kind of smarmily conflicted relationship with a benefactor/constituent, it would be a big deal, no? [But all he did was write a letter--he didn't actually help his former employer get the grant--ed No, an aide did that! See last two grafs] ... Maybe not Killerspin, but at least ModeratelydisilusioningSpin. ... [Tks. to reader W] 9:35 P.M.

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Self-Denial Arms Race: So Obama thinks Rev. Wright is a "legitimate political issue" but McCain thinks making an issue of Wright is "unacceptable"? This is getting confusing.... Update--Gotcha! McCain comes to his senses and notes "Obama himself says it's a legitimate political issue." So will McCain, having received his moral guidance from Obama, now apologize to those North Carolina Republicans for self-righteously preening at their expense? ... 1:24 P.M.

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Friday, April 25, 2008

What exactly is so terrible about that North Carolina GOP ad?** Sure it's a double bank shot--X has endorsed Y who is associated with Z--but it seems like a legitimate double bank shot. Obama wrote a best-selling book casting favorable light on himself for being drawn to Rev Wright--and quoting the sermon that did it for him, a sermon that involved denouncing "white folks' greed." Did he really not know Wright was saying other inflammatory things from the pulpit? ... Hard to say it's unfair to link Obama with Wright. And it's not unfair to link North Carolina Dems with the candidate they endorse. That's true whether or not the ad is a stunt. ... The same ad using, say, William Ayers--whose relationship with Obama is more tangential--wouldn't seem legit to me.** ... Is Howard Dean's real problem with the ad that it's, you know, devastating? ... P.S.: I'd say North Carolina GOP chairwoman Linda Daves, who has the sort of non-FM voice you don't hear on NPR too often, rather gets the better of All Things Considered's Melissa Block in this argument. ...[Via Page]

Update: Obama's still boasting in campaign literature about how the "white folks' greed" sermon helped him find his faith, Ben Smith reports. Live by Wright, die by Wright, no? ...

**--McCain, for his own positioning and righteous preening reasons, is making a big issue of the less legitimate target (Ayers) while condemning the North Carolinians for making an issue of Wright. ... 1:07 A.M.

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The scales finally fall from Bob Wright's eyes. ... 12:39 A.M.

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Barack's Secret Weapon: All the talk about whether Obama can win the general election may miss the point, as far as Democratic superdelegates are concerned. They aren't necessarily thinking about that big picture, at least not all the time. Alert and experienced emailer K explains, hypothetically channeling a prominent superdelegate:

You have to look at this through the eyes of Dem super delegates. Take Joe Biden as an example. When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, Joe was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Two years later, after HRC's hare-brained health care zeppelin crashed to earth and Bill had earned the enmity of roughly everyone, Joe Biden was in the minority. ...[snip]

What Joe sees is a repeat of 1994 if Hillary is the nominee and wins the election in 2008. He gets to be treated like dirt by the Clinton Administration for 2 years and then he gets to be in the minority for God knows how long. So the truth about the super Ds is that they would rather lose with Barack than win with HRC, because they KNOW that if they lose with Barack, their pal John McCain is president and they get the royal treatment for two years..AND they pick up yet more seats in 2010, thus insuring they remain Chairman of whatever committee it is that they chair.

This is the dirty little secret of the Super Ds!

I think K may go a bit far when he says superdelegates "want Barack because they know he will lose to McCain!" But if you look at their personal and institutional interests, they certainly may have little reason to stick their necks out and overturn the judgment of primary voters and caucusers by denying Barack. And the more they are convinced that Obama is likely to lose, the less motivated they may be to defy that "pledged delegate" verdict. ... 12:56 A.M. link

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Hispanic Caucus members denounce Dem Congressional leaders as "spineless" for failing to move on "comprehensive immigration reform." Spineless? Why would they need spine? I thought we'd been told that illegal-immigrant-legalization was a surefire political winner for the Dems. ... 3:38 P.M.

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Bob Wright makes his most insane argument yet! ... 12:21 P.M.

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Styling by Pixar: They've turned the formerly elegant Infiniti FX into a cartoon. ...Update: Emailer--"Wonder what its voice sounds like?" ... 11:24 A.M.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

If Hillary Clinton is so convinced she can win, but she desperately needs money, can't she and her husband just write her campaign a check for, say, $20 million? $109 million - $20 million still leaves $89 million, no? ... Then she'd be on solid ground asking others to sacrifice for her candidacy as well. ... [Thanks to alert reader R] ... Update: Yglesias and his commenters on the case. This meme is headed to the MSM! ... 10:00 P.M.

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How Crappy Were the Exit Polls? Pretty crappy! They certainly didn't capture the 10 point Clinton win. [Looks like 9.2 to me--ed Print the legend!] According to National Review, the early exits even had Obama up by five. Maybe nobody believed that--but the exits still distorted the narrative of election night. The theme of the first New York Times story seemed to be

Mrs. Clinton faces major challenges going forward ...

The cable nets, primed by the exits, also spent the initial evening hours asking whether Hillary could or would go on--as opposed to why Obama had suffered an embarrassing drubbing that revealed real weaknesses. .... P.S.: Always trust content from kausfiles! ... P.P.S.: Brendan Loy has more on the crappy exits. ... P.P.P.S.: If the exit polls are this unreliable for press' result-predicting purposes, why aren't they also unreliable for all the scholarly purposes they are supposedly put to? Garbage is garbage, no? ... Update: John Tabin says not to worry, pollsters can "clean up the exit poll data by weighting it to the actual vote." But it will still be garbage if the problem is that more conservative voters didn't want to talk to the kid in the hoodie with the clipboard! Ask President Kerry. .. Roger L. Simon says I've misunderstood the purpose of exit polls. .. 9:19 P.M. link

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Brendan Loy and Mark Blumenthal are pouring cold water over early exit poll results, noting Obama usually does much better in the early exits than when the actual votes are counted. ... 3:41 P.M.

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Headlines for Free: "Who's Bitter Now?" 1:44 P.M.

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Chris Matthews has backed off his earlier prediction of a double-digit Clinton Pennsylvania win, saying "things have changed"--leaving all the more potential pundit glory for the less cautious! ... P.S.: Matthews declared 8 to be the margin of victory Hillary must achieve to have the election count as a victory ("based upon on all the expectations").

Eight points. I think eight points is the over/under. If she gets a victory of less than 8 I think she's going to have a hard time arguing that she should stay in this race. .... [S]he can't call it a victory winning five or six or seven up here. She's got to get at least an 8.

I wish I could report that he said it with a winning, ironic appreciation for its absurd arrogance. ... Update: John Ellis is betting the over. ... 1:40 A.M.

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Monday, April 21, 2008

Joe Conason, distinguished chronicler of George H.W. Bush's alleged marital infidelity, joins other Democrats in decrying ABC's

revolting descent into tabloid journalism

and

excessive emphasis on tangential "character" issues

P.S.: Last time I wrote about Conason's 1992 foray into "sheet sniffing" (his phrase) he chastised me for relying on contemporary press accounts of his Bush/sex article rather than reading the full original in the defunct magazine Spy. I finally located a copy of Spy stored several stories beneath the surface of the Earth in the vaults of UCLA's Southern Regional Library Facility. Conason's article turned out to be not as sleazy as the press accounts had led me to expect. It was much sleazier! ("In addition to following up the women on the list, SPY's own investigation succeeded in finding a woman who apparently had an affair with Bush while he was running for President in 1980. ... As for Mrs. X herself, when SPY reached her to ask whether she indeed told friends aout the affair ..." etc. ) ... [Note to Conason: All emails are on the record.] 3:40 P.M.

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He's still out there: The Deseret News snags an interview with "the entire media's designated 'man on the street' for all articles ever written." Good get!

Greg Packer, 44, of Huntington, N.Y., traveled to Washington earlier last week for the Mass at the new Nationals Stadium and was on Fifth Avenue Saturday. ...

"The homilies bring me out and the togetherness of everybody," Packer said. "It was really beautiful. It was worth going to Washington, but this is home. I feel like he is coming over to visit me."

3:14 P.M.

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O.K., one of us is wrong. 2:31 P.M.

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Sunday, April 20, 2008

Help! I'm A Snob Like Obama! Greg Mitchell ridicules Bill Kristol for insinuating that Barack Obama was a Marxist for saying that residents of economically depressed small towns "cling to guns or religion ... as a way to explain their [economic] frustrations." But of course it was a Marxist thing to say, wasn't it? If Democrats had delivered on the economy, Obama suggests, all those GOP cultural "wedge" issues would lose traction. This idea--that the economy trumps culture--isn't new. It's "materialism." The economic "base," Marxists would argue, determines the cultural "superstructure." If the economy changes (i.e. if small town Pennsylvanians get well-paying jobs) then the superstructure will change (Pennsylvanians will feel less intensely about their religion).

Actually this isn't simply Marxism--it's what, when I was in college at least, was called Vulgar Marxism. More sophisticated Marxists hypothesized various ways the cultural "superstructure" could interact with the economy or take on a life of its own. Less supple Marxists (Engels, if I remember) hew to the crude base/superstructure idea--with feudalism you get feudal beliefs, which give way to bourgeois beliefs once capitalism takes over.

I've sniped at Obama for the condescension implicit in his argument that Pennsylvanians will stop their 'clinging' once Democrats like him start delivering jobs from Washington. But this condescension is inherent in any Vulgar Marxist explanation, isn't it? European peasants thought they were loyal to divine monarchs in a well-ordered hierarchical universe. Comes the industrial revolution and they look like fools. "All that is sacred ...

The problem for me is that I'm a Vulgar Marxist too. I've always believed that people need to eat, and want to get ahead and prosper. If you give them an avenue that lets them do that, they aren't going to let their religion, their music, their sexual habits, their families or their educational system stand in their way for long. The two most obvious contemporary applications of this economic determinism are 1) China (when the Chinese have a capitalist economy they won't be able to have a Communist government, Vulgar Marxists would say) and 2) the Muslim world (if Islam needs a Reformation in order to prosper in a global market, then Islam will eventually get a Reformation). I agree with both of those propositions.

Does that mean I'm condescending too? It's hard to avoid the charge. If a Chinese Communist Party Official somehow came to me and declared that, no, China would out-compete the West while maintaining Mao-era control over free inquiry, I'd think 'You poor deluded fool. Just wait.' I support Western policies of bringing China into the global marketplace in large part because I think that means Chinese Communism will collapse even if the Chinese Communists don't realize it. Same with fundamentalist Muslims--e.g. Pakistan, when prosperous, will no longer be such a breeding ground of jihadist fanatics. They'll be too busy making money to blow up the world. My attitude toward Pakistan is roughly parallel to Obama's attitude toward rural Pennsylvanians: if the economy really delivered for them, they'd stop clinging to their God. And their guns.

I'm especially appalled by the possibility that I'm as much of a snob as Obama because I've made a big deal about social equality--how treating people as equals, rather than redistributing income, is the essential goal of liberal politics. Condescension, needless to say, is not treating people like equals. (Obama himself seemed to be quite aware of the problem, in his 2004 Charlie Rose interview, when trotting out his "What's the Matter With Kansas" homilies:

"If we don't have plausible answers on the economic front, and we appear to be condescending towards those traditions that are giving their lives some stability, then they're gonning to opt for at least that party that seems to be speaking to the things that are giving--that still provide them some solace." [E.A.]

Of course, he sounded a bit condescending when saying that. .....

Seeking a way out of the Condescension Conundrum, I asked my friend Robert Wright, another Vulgar Marxist, for guidance. He wasn't much help! What he said was ... well, you can see what he said here.

Is there an answer? I'm not sure. I suppose the short response is that you worry about condescending to Muslims when you are running for office in a Muslim country, you worry about condescending to Pennsylvanians when you are running in Pennsylvania. But it's not really an answer; 1) Nobody likes to be condescended to, and nobody's likely to be convinced when they feel belittled; and 2) in my view of the world, at least, condescension--social inequality--is a grave political sin in itself whenever it's practiced.

Some other obvious potential ways out come to mind, though they make me sound like a tenth grade civics teacher (or Andrew Sullivan):

1) Always entertain the possibility that you might be wrong and those whose "superstructural" behavior you are explaining are right. Call it the "Marxism of Doubt"! The left ignored this rule when it declared opposition to welfare one of those "scapegoating" behaviors that would thankfully disappear when Democrats delivered good jobs and good wages. In fact, opposition to welfare was fairly constant through good times and bad--perhaps because the opponents of welfare were right (as I think they were). In any case, they won.

Obama ignores this rule when he dismisses opposition to affirmative action and trade and illegal immigration as similar "scapegoating" behavior. Mighty convenient to say that the doomed "superstructure" happens to include all the beliefs you disagree with.

2) Don't pick fights unnecessarily: Do Democrats have to scorn people who cling to God, whatever the reason? No. Do they have to scorn people who cling to guns? Maybe, if Democrats really think they have to believe in gun control to be Democrats. But in fact they've caved on gun control--deciding, in essence, it's not a core position. Maybe they'll soon decide that race-based preferences and legalization of illegal aliens aren't core positions either--perhaps because, heeding Rule 1, they've been convinced by the people they are condescending to. (Obama is clearly a ways away from that moment.)

3) Emphasize the common goal: A companion to rule 2. If Obama thinks Pennsylvanians will stop clinging to God and guns and ethnic prejudices once they have a real prospect of getting national health insurance--well, talk about national health insurance! Let the prejudice take care of itself (if you really think that's what's going to happen).

4) Where you have to disagree, have the respect to do it forthrightly: A modern national Democrat, contemplating religious small town Pennsylvanians, won't want to concede, say, that homosexuality is immoral. Westerners, contemplating the Muslim world, won't want to tolerate stoning adulterers or honor killings, certainly not among Muslim immigrants to the West but not in the East either. Free speech and inquiry aren't things we think Chinese Communists might be right about. In these cases, the only thing to do is to honestly say "Yes, we think you are wrong and that you'll eventually come around."

I'm not sure rules like this really dispel the stench of condescension. Rule #3 seems like a PR gambit--hiding what you really think, maybe by keeping troublesome bloggers out of your San Francisco fundraisers. And even #4, don't the Chinese know we think we're not only "right" on a specific issue but "better" in some sense--more advanced, further along on the arc of history? I don't know that it helps if they feel the same way about us.

If anyone has the answer-even Charlie Rose!--I'm all ears. 2:44 A.M. link

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Yes, we are all waiting to see who Chuck Hagel endorses! The excitement builds. ...

P.S.: He might not endorse anyone at all! That would say so much. ... 5:38 P.M.

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Voyage to Mars almost over. Prediction: No water I was going to predict that Hillary will win Pennsylvania by 8 points--defying Newsweek and the wishful thinking about an Obama surge/surprise. But with some national polls now moving against Obama and the state polls still looking Ohio-esque, that isn't a very courageous call. So how about a double-digit Clinton win? Cling! ... Pay no attention if it's wrong. ... Note also that while reporters and bloggers may have moved past the stage where they are totally exhausted with the race and into that stage where they achieve a sort of giddy high--and then past that into the stage where they are totally exhausted again--many PA voters may not even focus on the race until two days from now. What they see on TV on Monday will be bizarrely important. ... P.S.: She's got her Mutnemom on: "I have to win." Maybe she'll cry! ... 12:01 A.M. link

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Friday, April 18, 2008

Jerry Brown's War on Suburbs: The once and maybe future Gov. Moonbeam, now California's Attorney General, thinks suburbs cause global warming and he's filing lawsuits to force more density. Jill Stewart questions the underlying science. ... P.S.: Didn't Brown get into trouble with his appointment to the state Supreme Court of Rose Bird, whose jurisprudence would have led judges to make lots of decisions now made by elected legislators? Brown seems peculiarly ill-positioned to litigate his way into the governorship. ... P.P.S.: How many thousands in campaign contributions is Brown going to accept from apartment-house developers who are dumbfoundedly ecstatic to find left-wing greenies suddenly on their side. ... It's win-win!

Update: SacBee's Dan Walters notes that while Brown "has been suing, or threatening to sue, just about anyone who doesn't immediately adhere to his vertical vision,"

his personal commitment is somewhat suspect since he and his wife, citing crime fears, moved from an urban loft in Oakland to a comfortable home in the Oakland hills after he took office last year.

Crime is for the non-visionaries! Let them fight global warming. ... 10:55 P.M.

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Kate O'Beirne on Peggy Noonan's recommendation that McCain promise not to run for a second term:

Should John McCain pledge to do 3 or 4 big specific things in his one and only term, he would have a mandate.

Hmm. I think I know what one of those 3 or 4 big specific things would be. [Secure the borders!--ed Right] ... Without "comprehensive" immigration reform, does McCain even have 4 big things he wants to do? Iraq, Iraq, entitlements, Iraq? ... P.S.: The real genius behind a one-term pledge is that voters are near-desperate for an end to Republican rule. The pledge would be a signal to them that they could safely act on their anxieties about Obama, confident that they were only giving the GOPs a short-term lease extension. ... The McCain chant would be: "Just Four More Years!" ... 5:14 P.M. link

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How to tell GM's successful cars: When struggling General Motors finally builds a car people actually want to buy, why does the plant that builds it always seem to become the target for a UAW strike? It's happened with the company's popular crossovers (GMC Acadia, Buick Enclave, Saturn Outlook) and with the new Chevy Malibu. I can't tell if this is a case of UAW leaders seeking out the few successful operations of GM in order to extract maximum gain, or if the strikes at successful plants are just the only strikes that get publicized. But you have to wonder whether the UAW understands how strongly consumers might not want to buy cars made in strike-riven factories? ... P.S.: I think the answer is that the national UAW probably understands this, but the union's decentralized structure gives lots of power to the locals. That's another reason--an idiosyncratic one--why the UAW has been a disaster for the American auto industry. ... 4:22 P.M.

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It's Too Late for Make-Up Calls Now, Arianna! How guilty does the pro-O HuffPo feel about breaking the news that made Obama's week miserable? Very, to judge by the compensatory pile-on of ABC-bashing on her home page after Gibson and Stephanopouos' persistent questioning of Obama. (See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10 ....) ... 2:21 A.M.

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Thursday, April 17, 2008

I Knew That! Several journalists have emailed me questioning whether Obama's answer on affirmative action last night represented any sort of new position, given that he'd suggested a year ago on ABC's This Week that his daughters "probably" shouldn't benefit from race preferences. See update below for why I think last night's statement was a significant strengthening of his position, and potentially a big deal. ... I will now go check the Web to see if he's backtracked yet. ... [You're getting zero pickup on this. You seem to be the only person on the planet who thinks it was significant.--ed The official post-debate story line, laid down by The Curve himself, has to do with ABC's negative questions and Obama's reaction to them. Fair enough. The MSM isn't thinking about affirmative action and doesn't want to think about affirmative action. That doesn't mean it's not significant. Check back in a couple of months.] 5:23 P.M.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Note to HuffPo: "Screw 'em. You don't owe them a thing" isn't condescending! It's not friendly, but it's something you say about opponents who are social equals. ... 'There, there, you poor people cling to God to explain your frustrations'--that's a violation of social equality. ... Backfill: Allahpundit made this point at 4:30. ... Maguire notes that Hillary was saying 'screw 'em' this in defense of traditional liberal policies (which were said to be alienating "Reagan Democrats.") But I don't see why that makes it different from Obama's comment. Obama is advocating traditional liberal policies too. ... P.S.: The full passage is still a timely reminder of what a rebuke the 1994 election was to Hillary's disastrous pursuit of health care reform before welfare reform. As David Plouffe would say, experience does not necessarily equal judgment. ... 9:10 P.M.

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Philly Debate watching--Pivot Now! Am I crazy or has Obama just opened up a potentially huge Pivot Possibility on affirmative action? His proposal: Allow individualized consideration of "hardship," with overcoming race discrimination being one of the possible hardships that you get points for overcoming.. ... The problem, I suspect, is that this interesting intermediate position (between banning any consideration of race and having race be an automatic plus factor) would, if honestly applied, exclude a huge portion of the current beneficiaries of race preferences (who tend to be the sort of affluent African Americans who, like Obama's daughters, have a more difficult time making an individual "hardship" case). Will Obama now be denounced by the civil rights establishment? Will that help him in Pennsylvania? It would certainly get rid of the Cling. ... Developing! ... Rick Kahlenberg, you're up! ... Note: I think last night's statement adds to what Obama has said before. See below.

P.S.: Aside from that, I thought Obama got the worse of it in the debate. He was on the defensive, and non-inspiring. Hillary was fairly palatable,** despite a few rough moments. ... I have no criticism of Gibson or Stephanopoulos. A relentless focus on negative character attacks can be revealing--and it was. That's especially true in this campaign, where the actual policy differences between the candidates have been small and often tedious. ...

Update: Here's a transcript of what Obama said about race preferences [E.A.]:

And race is still a factor in our society. And I think that for universities and other institutions to say, you know, we're going to take into account the hardships that somebody has experienced because they're black or Latino or because they're women --

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Even if they're wealthy?

SENATOR OBAMA: I think that's something that they can take into account, but it can only be in the context of looking at the whole situation of the young person. So if they look at my child and they say, you know, Malia and Sasha, they've had a pretty good deal, then that shouldn't be factored in. On the other hand, if there's a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that's something that should be taken into account.

So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination, but I think that it can't be a quota system and it can't be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black or white or Hispanic, male or female.

What we want to do is make sure that people who have been locked out of opportunity are going to be able to walk through those doors of opportunity in the future.

"Shouldn't be factored in." Potential game changer! Hello? A nuclear weapon aimed like a laser at Hillary's white working class base! ... Now if only some enterprising reporter will get Jesse Jackson to take umbrage at Obama's heresy. Is that so hard? (And if Jackson approves of Obama's answer, that's news too.)*** ... My fear is that the civil rights establishment will get to Obama in private, and he'll wuss out and walk it back. ...

Nathan Thurm Memorial Update: I know that Obama said a similar thing about his daughters a year ago on George Stephanopoulos' This Week show. But

1) He hasn't been saying it a lot since, so there was always a question as to whether he meant it or would backtrack, etc. His heretical position isn't featured on his Web site--it ducks the issue, as far as I can see (which itself is suggestive but not exactly clarifying). Even if he had simply repeated his This Week statement it would be significant. But he didn't.

2) On This Week he said:

"I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged, and I think that there's nothing wrong with us taking that into account as we consider admissions policies at universities. I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed. So I don't think those concepts are mutually exclusive."

Note that this year-old passage doesn't say his daughters race shouldn't be taken into account at all. He seems more to be saying everything should be taken into account. That, plus the "mutually exclusive" language, led skeptical commentators to speculate that he just wants to layer on another preference for disadvantaged whites--as opposed to taking it away from affluent blacks. ...

Last night, however, he certainly seemed to say race would not be a factor at all for "advantaged" blacks like his daughters. ("Shouldn't be factored in.") That seems like a further step--a big one. Wiping out the race preference for upper class blacks would in practice wipe out most race preference admissions at elite schools, no? It strikes at the core of the actual, practical race-preference constituency. If Hillary said it, there would be a firestorm from the civil rights lobby, I think.

**--I was watching the tiny Webcast picture. Maybe she looked worse full-sized. ...

***--If Obama could simultaneously arrange for race-blindness champion Ward Connerly to denounce him--because Obama's plan still allows race to be taken into account when it causes "hardship"--so much the better. Triangulation! ... 6:45 P.M. link

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

King of Cling Update:

1) Hugh Hewitt argues it is too about the "bitter." ...

2) David Coleman--who was there--notes that in the very same San Francisco talk Obama made

additional observations that black youth in urban areas are told they are no longer "relevant" in the global economy and, feeling marginalized, they engage in destructive behavior.

Coleman points out that "[n]o one has seized upon those words as 'talking down' to the inner city youth whose plight he was addressing." Was Obama condescending to blacks too?

Good question. The short answer is "yes." The longer answer, I think, is that it's different when you are explaining behavior that's unquestionably bad. Then the issue becomes whether you're making excuses (a point Coleman raises). Imagine if Obama had confined himself to explaining white Pennsylvanian racism--the "excuse-making" issue would get a lot more attention than the condescension issue. ... The trouble is Obama also tried to explain local Pennsylvania habits, like religious faith, that aren't incontrovertibly "destructive"--raising the additional question of why he felt a need to make an explanation in the first place. Imagine if Obama had tried to explain black churchgoing as a reaction to inner-city residents no longer feeling "relevant" in the global economy. Yikes! Condescension City! He'd be reamed and rightly so. ...

Making excuses for autonomous human actors is always a form of condescension, I'd say. But when you make excuses for what many people regard as normal, even laudable behavior, you double down on the disrespect, because you are also challenging your subjects' moral framework

3) Alert emailer M wonders why Obama is applying a Tom Frank analysis--of working class voters who vote Republican--to Pennsylvania, since unlike Kansas, Pennsylvania is a blue state that "hasn't voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988." And the most economically distressed parts of the state are the most Democratic, despite all the clinging to guns and God that's going on. [**See Correction, below] In short, Obama's explaining something that doesn't happen. ... I suppose one answer is that Obama wasn't explaining why Pennsylvanians wouldn't vote for a Democrat but why they might not vote for him--a black, liberal Democrat. But Obama says he's explaining why small-town Rustbelt voters don't buy the idea that government can help them, which sounds an awful lot like not buying Democratic ideology generally. ...

**Correction: I misstated emailer M's argument. He's not arguing that Pennsylvania's less prosperous areas are more Democratic than, say, Philadelphia. They aren't. He's arguing that they were Democratic in the '80s, when economic distress was at its peak, and have become more Republican since, as the distress eased. M cites The Almanac of American Politics, co-authored by Michael Barone, who wrote:

"Relieved of economic stress, voters here [Western PA] moved towards Republicans in the 1990s."

But I don't think Barone is saying that it's prosperity that bred Republicanism (which would be the opposite of the Obama "cling" theses). I think he's talking mainly about migration--the unemployed workers who voted Democratic in the 1980s have simply left, leaving behind older voters who are more content living where they are living. It's a sorting out frustration-reducing process, not a prosperity-driven frustration-reducing process. Either way, it's not the "cling" process that Obama is imagining (though in the absence of real prosperity some "clinging" could be going on too). ... P.S.: But it's mainly happening in Western PA's Pittsburgh suburbs. In the 2004 presidential race, rural towns seem to have remained pro-Republican by about the same margin as in 1988. ...

Update: Alter Untanked Jon Alter agrees with "M," not Obama:

[i]t turns out that working-class Americans have not left the Democratic Party, except in the South, where practically everyone except the black community has turned Republican. In the north, as Princeton political scientist Larry M. Bartels establishes in an important new book, "Unequal Democracy," working-class voters have actually been trending Democratic in recent elections, which helps explain why longtime bellwether states like Illinois and Pennsylvania have been more reliably blue. According to Bartels, more affluent voters are the ones who have been swayed by social issues like abortion and guns. Working-class voters, he writes, are still motivated by economics.

5:06 A.M. link

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Suicide Marketing! Has Microsoft hit on a brilliant new sales strategy? Here's how it's done: First, you screw up your major product, replacing it with a fancier version that is widely derided and universally regarded as inferior to its main competitor. But--key point--you keep selling the old, popular product. Then you announce that you'll stop selling the popular product on June 30. This causes a predictable--and highly profitable--surge in sales. ("Last chance to buy Windows XP!") You pocket the millions from those sales, but then at the last minute announce a reprieve. Bowing to customer demand you'll keep selling XP--until you need another little boost in the bottom line, when you will announce once again that you're killing it after a date certain. Last last chance! Really. We mean it this time! Then another reprieve, and another deadline, and another surge of panic buying, etc.--on and on, seemingly ad infinitum (at least if you are a monopoly player like Microsoft). ...

It seems like a can't-lose approach for the Redmond, Wash. firm, as long as a) they continue to cultivate the image of a big, clumsy and greedy organization that's just stupid enough to kill a product consumers like in order to try to force them to purchase a product the corporate bureaucracy has ploddingly disgorged and b) their new products continue to be awful.

There hasn't been a breakthrough business plan like this since New Coke. "Suicide marketing." (Buy this before we do something rash!) ...

P.S.: The only fly in the ointment is the slim possibility that Microsoft's next operating system, due in 2010, will actually be an improvement over Windows XP. But Ballmer & Co. know better than to let that happen.

P.P.S.: Back in 2001, I was so convinced of the primacy and potential of Windows XP that I predicted its launch would end the recession then underway. This was amateurish economic idiocy--though the October 25, 2001 launch date of XP did turn out to eerily coincide with the end of the last recession (in November of that year).

Will the debacle of Windows Vista have a conversely depressing effect on the economy--as many businesses decide to hang on to their old XP machines and hope they can make it to 2010 without having to install Vista? That wouldn't do wonders for the demand side. But to the extent that Microsoft's suicide marketing plan can keep drumming up panic demand for last-chance XP machines, the "systemic risk" presented by Vista will be contained. It's win-win--for Microsoft and for the nation. ... 1:10 A.M. link

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Sunday, April 13, 2008

Nein, bitter: There would seem to be four distinct, major problems with Obama's "cling" gaffe.

1) It lumps together things Obama wants us to think he thinks are good (religion) with things he undoubtedly thinks are bad (racism, anti-immigrant sentiment). I suppose it's logically possible to say 'these Pennsylvania voters are so bitter and frustrated that they cling to both good things and bad things," but the implication is that these are all things he thinks are unfortunate and need explaining (because, his context suggests, they prevent voters from doing the right thing and voting for ... him). Yesterday at the CNN "Compassion Forum" Obama said he wasn't disparaging religion because he meant people "cling" to it in a good way! Would that be the same way they "cling" to "antipathy to people who aren't like them"--the very next phrase Obama uttered? Is racism one of those "traditions that are passed on from generation to generation" that "sustains us"? Obama's unfortunate parallelism makes it hard for him to extricate him from the charge that he was dissing rural Pennsylvanians' excess religiosity.

2) Even if Obama wasn't equating anything on his list with anything else, he did openly accuse Pennsylvanians of being racists ("antipathy to people who aren't like them").

3) He's contradicted his own positions--at least on trade and (says Instapundit) guns.. Isn't Obama the one trying to tar Hillary as a supporter of NAFTA? Is that just 'boob bait'?

4) Yes, he's condescending. It's not just that in explaining everyone to everyone Obama winds up patronizing everyone. He doesn't patronize everyone equally. Specifically, he regards the views of these Pennsylvanians as epiphenomena--byproducts of economic stagnation--in a way he doesn't regard, say, his own views as epiphenomena.** Once the Pennsylvanians get some jobs back, they'll change and become as enlightened as Obama or the San Franciscans to whom he was talking. That's the clear logic of his argument. Superiority of this sort--not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views--is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liiberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.

Please note that Obama's characterization of Pennsylvanians as "bitter" doesn't even make the top four. (See Instapundit: "Bitter is the least of it" Patrick Hynes: "It's not about the bitter.") At this point, the MSM and Hillary are only doing Obama a favor by focusing on the "bitter" dispute. ... Anyway, maybe he meant "bitter" in a good way!

P.S.: Andrew Sullivan and John Rosenberg both say that Obama's "cling" argument comes from Thomas Frank's economistic "What's the Matter with Kansas?"--which seems semi-tragic to me. I'm convinced that the great achievement of Republicanism over the past decades was getting average Americans to think that it was the Democrats who were the snobs. The person who convinced me of this (in a highly persuasive lecture) was Thomas Frank. Now Frank's theories--if you follow Rosenberg--are on the verge of convincing millions of average Americans that the Republicans were right, at least about the likely Dem nominee. ...

See also this 2004 interview, in which Obama appears totally aware of the condescension problem--though I don't think he avoids it there either. His now-familiar go-to idea--that men spend time hunting and women go to church because of deindustrialization, as opposed to because they like to hunt and believe in their religion--seems inherently condescending (see below).

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**--You might argue that this was the same 'it-will-go-away' attitude Obama had toward the anger of parishioners of Rev. Wrights's church--which would reinforce the "he condescends to everyone" theory of Obama. But the parallel isn't there. Obama describes ongoing black anger about racism as an artifact of racism--it's an epiphenomenon only in the sense that it will eventually disappear when its legitimate cause disappears. Obama describes white anger--indeed white anger, white racism, white religiosity, white NRA membership and white opposition to comprehensive immigration reform--as an artifact of something unrelated, namely the loss of good industrial jobs. It''s fundamentally inauthentic, Obama suggests, because (unlike black anger) it isn't caused by what those who express it say it is caused by.

And Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality. Come to think of it, has he ever expressed any doubt about--let alone apologized for--his views? He certainly didn't apologize in his "race" speech. He presents himself as near ominscient, the Archimedean point from which everyone else's beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained, and to which almost everyone's beliefs will revert after the revolution. ... sorry, I mean after President Obama has restored hope! ... 10:59 P.M. link

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Saturday, April 12, 2008

Watch that Myth: Hillary Clinton had apparently stopped losing ground in PA polls before Obama's "cling" fling in Frisco. It's a bit unfair to say that 'Obama had been gaining ground until ...," though I think I've heard that nascent myth being spread at least three times today. ... P.S.: Obama's lead on Rasmussen (11 points a week ago) has gone and disappeared. Note that the slide began pre-gaffe. ... 7:29 P.M.

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Strike 2.5--They're bitter, left-behind, and have their little traditions: Don't think this digs Obama out of his hole. Might even dig it a bit deeper. ... 9:23 A.M.

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Friday, April 11, 2008

Ann Coulter is reading Obama's autobiography and comes up with a not-implausible interpretation of the famous Racist Grandma incident:

As recounted in Obama's autobiography, the only evidence that his grandmother feared black men comes from Obama's good-for-nothing, chronically unemployed white grandfather, who accuses Grandma of racism as his third excuse not to get dressed and drive her to work.

10:17 P.M.

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Cling Along with Barack: The always-suspect Michael Lind nevertheless sends around a useful commentary on Obama's gruesomely off-key condscension toward downscale Rustbelt voters:

According to Obama, working class (white) people "cling to guns" because they are bitter at losing their manufacturing jobs.

Excuse me? Hunting is part of working-class American culture. Does Obama really think that working-class whites in Pennsylvania were gun control liberals until their industries were downsized, whereas they all rushed to join the NRA ...

I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ...

P.S.: Because Obama's comments are clearly a Category II Kinsley Gaffe--in which the candidate accidentally says what he really thinks--it will be hard for Obama to explain away. [He could say he was tired and it was late at night?--ed But he was similarly condescending in his big, heartfelt, well-prepared "race speech" when he explained white anger over welfare and affirmative action as a displacement of the bitterness that comes when whites

are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition ...

Obama's new restatement confirms the Marxist Deskwork interpretation of the race speech, removing any honest doubt as to his actual attitude.

Rather than trying to spin his way out, wouldn't it be better for Obama to forthrightly admit his identity? Let's have a national dialogue about egghead condescension!]

P.P.S.: Note that guns are not the only thing Obama says "white working class" people "cling" to for economic reasons:

[I]t's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. [E.A.]

Hmm. Isn't Obama the one who has been clinging to religion lately? Does he cling to his religion for authentic reasons while those poor Pennsylvania slobs cling to it as a way to "explain their frustrations"? ... They worship an awesome God in the blue states because they're bitter about stagnant wages! I think that's what he said in his 2004 convention address ... 4:41 P.M. link

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Thursday, April 10, 2008

"Iraqi Offensive Against Militia is Raising Concerns on Stability"--Headline on April 8 NYT story. Uh oh. And it's a front-page story--sounds like the whole Maliki government might collapse. But we shouldn't hide our heads! Let's confront the bad news unearthed in "interviews with dozens of Iraqi politicians, government leaders, analysts and ordinary citizens" by the nine (9) Times reporters who contributed. Here's the story:

A crackdown on the Mahdi Army militia is creating potentially destabilizing political and military tensions in Iraq, pitting a stronger government alliance against the force that has won past showdowns ...

"Potentially destabilizing." Hmm. That's a bit weaker, no? A lot of things are "potentially destabilizing," like having sectarian militias in control of your major port city! And what's this about "stronger government alliance." It's stronger, and as a result there are increased "concerns" about its "stability"? Perverse and dialectical!

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's military operations against the Mahdi Army that Mr. Sadr leads have at least temporarily pacified Sunni political leaders ...

So the Sunni political leaders are pissed off! Oh wait, no, they're pacified. This doesn't sound so unstable, yet. Ah, but it's only "at least temporarily." Maybe the long run is where the "concerns on stability" are raising. That must be it!

And both the Kurds and some of Mr. Maliki's Shiite political rivals, who also resent Mr. Sadr's rising power, have been driven closer to Mr. Maliki. This may give him more traction to pass laws and broker deals.

Now Maliki has two additional sets of allies, and "more traction." The instability better be coming soon, because this is beginning to sound like the makings of, you know, stability.

But the badly coordinated push into Basra has unleashed a new barrage of attacks on American and Iraqi forces and has led to open fighting between Shiite militias.

Aha! He launched an attack, which led to ... fighting! But we already know he launched the attack. That's what strengthened his ties to the Sunnis, Kurds, and other Shiite groups.

Figures compiled by the American military showed that attacks specifically on military targets in Baghdad more than tripled in March, one of many indications that violence has begun to rise again after months of gains in the wake of an American troop increase.

Violence rose in March. Maliki launched his attacks March 25, meaning that most of the rising March violence happened before the (potentially) destabilizing crackdown. Blinded by conventional notions of time and causation, you might even suspect the rising violence prompted the crackdown.

In Iraq, where perceived power is a key to real authority, Iraqis saw the Mahdi Army stopping Mr. Maliki's Basra assault cold, then melting away when Mr. Sadr ordered them to lay down their arms.

Talking about "perceived power" conveniently allows the NYT to avoid reporting whether the actual events in Basra conform to its description of "Iraqis[']" perceptions. (The one Iraqi man on the street who is quoted says something a bit different: "I think Maliki and America are more powerful than [the Mahdi Army], but Maliki alone would be smashed by it." He is the first and last "ordinary citizen" in the story.)

The rest of the piece: "Senior Iraqi officials" see the rallying behind Maliki as "turning point" that could bring political reconciliation. "But for many Iraqis ... Mr. Maliki has cemented his reputation as a tool of the Americans." Nobody is quoted from this "many" except a Sadrist official. ... An NGO type says that the Sadrists are not going to disband, but that they are facing a dilemma because not disbanding might cost them the right to participate in elections. ... A parliamentarian says that disarming the Sadrists is "not an easy job." ... The Times opines that a "truer gauge of the two sides' real power" may come Wednesday, "when Mr. Sadr has called for a million of his followers to march through the streets of Baghdad." (He has now called the march off.)

Then there is the final ominous kicker:

One unexpected bonus for Mr. Maliki is that the Sadrists appear to have been dismayed by the political establishment's decision, at least in public, to back him.

"We were astonished at the political blocs' stance in supporting Maliki's government," said Hassan al-Rubaie, a Sadrist lawmaker.

Even the Sadrists are dismayed by Maliki's breadth of support. Another sign of instability! But of course it's "unexpected." (Really? By Maliki?)

kf Nut Graf: The Iraqi government may be on the verge of collapse, or not, but the NYT's piece doesn't come close to substantiating increased concerns about its stabiity. It's more like the opposite.

I'm not saying that the Times editors are predictable anti-war, anti-Bush types who reflexively leaped to a pessimistic extrapolation from the muddled Basra fighting and imposed that unsupported conclusion on their reporters. But they definitely succeeded in producing the piece that predictable anti-war types would have generated given no more information than the news that Maliki had failed to take all of Basra. Arianna Huffington could have written it from her sofa after coming back from a party. Except it would probably be more convincing. ... 10:44 P.M.

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Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Meet 'Johm McCain": Is McCain's first ad really as bad as blogger "Richelieu" says. No. It's worse! The problem is a) the voice-over voice, simultaneously pompous, condescending and saccharine, almost a parody of an announcer's voice. Think "Real Men of Genius." b) The disjointed rhythm of the script, with its fake-profound get-up-and-get-a-beer questions substituting for arguments ("What must a President believe about us. About America? That she is worth protecting? ...") in which the insertion of a groaning cliche ("Has he walked the walk?") seems almost like a bit of down-to-earth relief,** all building to a semi-anticlimactic video of a captured McCain lying in a North Vietnamese bed and reciting his name and serial number. ...

It's almost as if McCain's ad man secretly likes Obama. Correction: Not secretly!

P.S.: This one is even more awful! A 10 on the Condescendometer. Also endless. After 30 seconds you are yelling at it "Get to the F-----g Point!" It never does. It's Barney the purple dinosaur's speech at the next Bloomberg Nonpartisanship Symposium. Repeat playing would be an excellent enhanced interrogation technique.

P.P.S.: At least they didn't misspell the candidate's name in the final frame. ... Oh, wait! "Paid for by Johm McCain 2008."

Request: Someone do a screen cap of that frame before they fix it? Thanks. ... Update: Got plenty now--much appreciated. You can see the relevant frame here and here ... and now, in an unprecedented display of multimedia mastery, here. [Click to enlarge]

Still from McCain Ad. Click image to expand.

**--Though, as Jacob Weisberg notes in his recent book, 'walking the walk' may also contain a special targeted meaning for conservative Christians who might have been turned off by McCain. ... 1:00 A.M. link

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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

L.A.'s Special Order 40--a "sanctuary" rule that has been interpreted to prevent police officers from asking even known, previously deported gang members about their immigration status--comes under attack from African American victms of crime. Touchy issue for Dems! Jill Stewart notes the discomfort. ... P.S.: The city's much-admired police chief William Bratton made his name in New York proving the efficacy of the "broken windows" theory--the idea that cracking down on minor crimes reduces major crime. Isn't entering the country illegally a "broken window"? ... 5:02 P.M.

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Monday, April 7, 2008

Bob Wright perversely--yet not crazily--thinks the muddled outcome (so far) of the intra-Shiite warfare in Iraq means we can withdraw rapidly with less worry about leaving behind a bloodbath. ... P.S.: As my Iraq-vet friend P told me, just because Iran can broker a cease fire in Basra doesn't mean they can broker a cease fire in Baghdad. (That's quite apart from whether we even want a ceasefire that allows a non-state militia to control chunks of Iraq.) ... 11:17 P.M.

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Saturday, April 5, 2008

Clintons' Tax Returns: The press is focused on where all that money ($109 million) came from. Fair enough. But where did it all go? This seems like a genuine mystery. It's not as if the Clinton's live especially lavishly, or own huge estates. It's not like Bill has to pay for all his hotels and travel. The Clintons only gave about $44 million to the IRS and to charities (including their own). Where's the rest of it? If it's all invested, what is it invested in? Green companies pursuing sustainable growth and living wages? Or hedge funds seeking the highest returns? And assuming it's invested, what are they going to do with it later?...