Who Are They Trying to Convince?

My own reaction to Rev. Wright I'm going to keep to myself for a while longer.

For a candidate who allegedly has an insurmountable lead and who is all but guaranteed the nomination, Obama's campaign is behaving like an operation in crisis. Probably because it is. The Wright revelations are actually not new, but have finally escaped the right wing email circuit and hit the mainstream. This stuff has been percolating in Greater Wingnuttia for months.

Does everyone remember the flap last year about Robert Novak saying that the Clinton campaign had some deep dreadful oppo research on Obama, and how Obama challenged them to produce it or "retract"? I suspect this is the story Novak was alluding to, and that (given its nature), he hoped he could prod the campaign to let it slip, all to Hillary's detriment. I've always been curious about Obama's belligerent, almost hysterical behavior at that time. What on earth could be so bad (aside from dead girl/live boy) that he'd behave like that? Now we know. What we also know is that everyone in the game knew about this story - all the MSM players, all the Democratic candidates, all the kids in oppo - and everyone was breathlessly waiting for someone to spill the beans.

A veritable Sword of Damocles. (Note - I suggest that y'all go read up on the Sword of Damocles so you understand the full applicability of this anecdote.)

I don't own a TV so I read up on the atrocities via the web. When reading over the accounts of the Sunday talk shows today, what struck me was the way in which the Obama side simultaneously vehemently denied that Wright was a problem and just as aggressively tried to claim that the Hillary campaign was behind it all (just like with the Somali photo) and/or build up Gerry Ferraro as some purveyor of hate crimes. This follows on Obama himself trying to wiggle his way out of acknowledging the relationship on the Friday gab-shows, and is accompanied by an announcement that they are going to attack Hillary on several fronts. Armando/BTD has a good analysis on this here at TalkLeft.

Obama's defenders (Hillary's, too, for that matter) on the shows were really not talking to people like me, people who have already formed an opinion of Wright, who have already cast a primary vote, and who are not super delegates. They aren't talking to supporters or to detractors; the only audience is those who have not yet cast a ballot:

• Voters in the upcoming primaries who will choose a candidate and may change the pledged delegate allocation.
• Undeclared super delegates

To the average voter, the Obama angle is to tamp out the Wright debacle ASAP as a mentionable campaign issue and make it go away, hoping non-AA voters forget about it before Pennsylvania, the Michigan and Florida revotes (yes, I think they will both happen), and Kentucky. The danger here is that the combustible nature of Wright's speeches (and, no, I don't think that they are unrepresentative of the man's thought, though they may not be representative of his average sermon.) will outrage the core Democratic voter, the Reagan Democrat blue collar, "lunch bucket" person who isn't black and who is feeling a little worried about the economy.

The real target, though, was the undeclared super delegates, and the argument there was more like a performative - look, see how we are removing this as an issue from the table? You don't have to worry that this is going to impact us in the general. It was just a dirty campaign trick by Hillary and it will not be used against us by the republicans. Oh, please, pleeease believe us!

The trouble here is that this story has been peddled by FOX News and the Republicans, though at a very low volume, since last summer. It matters that Novak was trying to make HRC be the bagholder on this one, and her campaign is (very wisely) refusing this trap, even when they could probably exploit it in the upcoming primaries.

Watch for Obama's team to try even harder to prevent Michigan and Florida from revoting because then they will be passign judgment on him in light of this news, and their voters are not likely to view it with much favor. I also suspect that the Democrat for a Day schtick is going to backfire badly in Pennsylvania because of the combination of the economy and the offensiveness of Wright. Republicans who don't really support McCain and who are infuriated by the Wright video clips may line up behind Hillary, and in this case I think you will see a new breed of cross-over voter - Hillary Republicans. Unlike Obama's cynical "Dem for a Day," these are voters who will probably stick around, especially the women voters.

This is explosive, campaign ending stuff, and Obama knows it. This is real racism, not the BS jabs at white liberal guilt they've been pushing against Hillary, and is exactly what the Republicans want for the general, something they can use to push up their own turn out and get party members unenthused about McCain all riled up, just like they used the anti-gay measures last time. It is not a mistake that the incendiary ballot issues the Republicans are pushing this year are about affirmative action. The Wright videos are what they need to make it visceral. They won't have much convincing to do.

Obama is trying to convince the super delegates that he isn't a losing proposition in the general election, and his way to do it is to trash Hillary even more.

Anglachel

Blog Updates

I've updated the blog links to the right. The blogs I've selected are those that appeal to me for more than just the current election and which I intend to keep reading long after November is past. I won't be linking to the A-List Blogger Boyz ever again.

I've added a section just for sites centered on electoral politics. There's odds and ends in the last links section. I have both an RSS and an Atom link, courtesy Feedburner, in that section, plus links to my Tolkien fanfiction novel Hands of the King.

I rarely reply to comments on the blog and I don't comment on other blogs. Why? The biggest reason is time. The second is a little more complex. One of the reasons why some previously solid and interesting bloggers have gone so totally off the rails is the desire to be part of the "in crowd" and get virtual hugs and pats (and other favors) for saying what is popular, including what is popularly "controversial". The need to get the hits, rack up the comments, be cross-linked, etc., does something to your perspective. It's not just Left Blogistan that is affected, of course; I see this pattern of behavior wherever online "communities" are formed. It is just extending the very human desire to belong into a new medium. It's the foundation of both salutory collective action and destructive tribalism.

I have enough to do to maintain those relationships and communities in the physical universe (see reason number one), so I'm not really interested in expanding them online. I have finally extricated myself from the psychotic mind-fuck that is the Tolkien fandom and I'm not really eager to go that route again.

This blog is simply my space for saying what comes to mind. Thanks for reading along.

Anglachel

Long Week

I've had a tough week at work with a big project that won't wrap up for a few weeks, so I haven't had much blogging energy the last few days.

Also, I'm watching the Pastor-gate blowup with great curiosity. I'm not as certain as others that this can put a stop to Obama's campaign (there's a lot of momentum sending that train over the cliff), but I do know when I've seen something that will end any general election hopes he may have. At this point, I think bile will fuel the rest of the election season as the nomination becomes overtly what it has always at base been about - preventing Hillary from winning.

If she gets the nomination, she gets the White House. Why? Krugman explains:

I used to think that the major issues facing the next president would be how to get out of Iraq and what to do about health care. At this point, however, I suspect that the biggest problem for the next administration will be figuring out which parts of the financial system to bail out, how to pay the cleanup bills and how to explain what it’s doing to an angry public.

Betting the Bank

The economy will be going down the drain by November and McCain won't have a clue of how to handle it.

I've got taxes to prepare and a lot of housework to do this weekend, but I've got a post percolating along about Electoral College math and why it all comes down to Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania if I can find the time to write it. Short answer:

• Win two - Democrats lose
• Win three - Democrats have a chance
• Win four - Democrats win

Anglachel

Losing Faith

The Obama campaign is bargaining that it can win the nomination without seating Michigan and Florida. I didn't think they would be that insane, but with every day that passes with him refusing to agree to any measure that would remedy the situation in a democratic way, I begin to think that he would rather take his chances with not seating the delegations rather than risk public losses to Hillary.

The ironic thing is that, like Bush in 2000, he doesn't give a shit about the voters, only with manipulating the delegate count by any means necessary to deny Hillary her actual constituencies. In the short term, there is a rational incentive for him to do this, dragging his heels over any decision. He's seeing if he can make Hillary blink. Prior to Ohio and Texas, he was making headway with the super delegates, peeling away a few here and there, trying to make his win seem inevitable so that enough would change sides and make the promise reality. Nothing wrong with that. If he could get a large enough margin in the delegates that he stood a good chance of winning on the first vote then the ambiguous condition of Michigan and Florida could be "resolved" by making them irrelevant. No matter the loud yelling about pledged delegates, until you hit 2025, you don't get the nomination, even if you have more. It's not a plurality vote, but a true majority one - one half + 1 of all possible votes.

The fly in the ointment is that Hillary has absolutely no incentive to back down. The longer things go on, the better it is for her. Whenever she has been faced with a "must win" situation, she has performed. The flip side of her being strong in those contests is that Obama has failed to break through and secure his own victory through winning the big contests.

Barry has not been able to disprove Hillary's campaign narrative - I can win the big, must-win, swing states, even when facing incredibly hostile press and pundits, even when being out spent, even when my obituary is written anew every day, and he cannot, even when he is championed by the press, supported by the blogs, (allegedly) raking in the dough, and being touted as a done-deal. I am the most popular choice in the places the Democrats must win in November.

Hillary is right about the need to revote:

Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that she would favor restaging the Florida and Michigan primaries, if the Democratic national Committee continues to insist that primaries' original results won't be counted.

At an appearance before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Clinton said she still believed that the results of the two primaries, which were held in violation of national Democratic Party rules, were "fair and they should be honored."

But she added that if the Democratic National Committee continues to insist that the delegates from those states not be seated at the party's convention this summer, then the primaries should be held again.

"In my view there are two options: Honor the results or hold new primary elections,'' Clinton said. She said she hoped rival Barack Obama's campaign would join her "in working to make that happen.''

Clinton says she'd support redoing Fla., Mich. primaries

She is willing to risk losing the gains she has already accrued to ensure that the voters have participated and will view the outcome as legitimate. If the original primaries are not going to be honored, then the voters deserve an opportunity to register their opinions in another way. Insisting on DNC insider-politics rules as the grounds upon which to justify barring the delegations of two key states may play well with the Blogger Boyz, but it will go down sideways with the voters. This isn't just losing legitimacy in Florida or Michigan, either. This is risking losing millions of voters in many states who will look at the gerrymandering of the convention as a betrayal of their participation. Hillary has no guarantee of the nomination even if she does retake Florida and Michigan, but she and every Democrat who can think straight knows the party will take a huge hit in November if voters do not think that Florida and Michigan are being counted fairly. That means a primary, mail-in or otherwise. The caucuses are too compromised.

Obama's game of chicken with the voters is going to backfire badly, and for the right reasons. Not racism. Not lack of experience. Because he knows he can't win in a head-to-head contest:

Obama is advocating disenfranchisement of two must-win states because he does not have enough confidence in his own electoral strength to submit himself to true primary votes by large and diverse Democratic populations.

If Obama does not have faith in himself, why should we?

Anglachel

Disembodied Politics

Shakes has posted another installment in "Disembodied Things," where she starkly points out the ubiquity of disembodied and sexually abused female parts in everyday life and how inured we become to their presence. The post today is on a bicycle that incoporates a fiberglass naked female form positioned such that when the bicyclist is seated, he appears to be having sex with the mannequin.

Disembodiment. Dehumanization. Reduction of a being to an attribute, which may then be consumed without (too much) guilt by "nice" people, that's what's going on here. It's not simply the "sexist" guys who do this, though (ironically enough), they may be the most conscious of doing so as they try to valorize the execrable. What Shakes does is show the ways in which people who don't think of themselves as sexist can wave it off as some "cheeky" fun. It's a joke, dontcha see? Just a little funnin'. Geez, get a sense of humor!

I knew that the progressive blogosphere was not going to treat Hillary Clinton with much kindess, but what I was not prepared for was the way in which her campaign has become both a catalyst and an excuse for disembodiment of women's political participation. Hilalry and Chelsea Clinton have been subjected to hazing, insults and threats aimed at their gender and expressions of sexuality. Women who vote for her and bloggers (female and male) who promote her are also subjected to invective, threats and deliberate attempts to reduce the actor down to manageable size.

Kinda like mounds o'boobies floating around, just ripe for picking up and squishing, sucking, crushing, sitting on, smacking around, tossing into drinks where they melt, and other ignomious ends.

The speed and savagery with which the Blogger Boyz (A-list and the lesser lights) have turned upon the dissenting voices on the web has been breathtaking. It has also been, for the most part, gendered. Tom Watson wrote a wry post about those few, proud and frankly brave bloggers who will not descend into the symbolic honor killing of the uppity broad.

Hillary herself has asserted, her entire life a demonstration of this fact, that no matter the outcome of this contest, she will be fine. There may not be a more centered or psychologically normal politician alive in the US today (Al Gore doesn't count as he is a recovering politician), which explains how she can suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with such equanimity.

What will not be fine, I dare say, is the blogosphere. It is already dramatically different than what it was just a few months ago. I wrote in "Just Like Grad School" last month about the psychology of the Blogger Boyz and where a certain kind of obsession with being right has its roots among these guys. What I didn't get into was the way in which their verbal assaults and barely contained rage is oh so similar to what I have seen my whole life - the fury of certain men (and they are almost always men) towards women who will not bend to their will. From Hillary herself right down the line to lesser bloggers and those stupid wimminz who keep voting for Her, treating female political presence as something to be used, not engaged, becomes more prevalent as the campaign goes on.

If only you bitches would get over yourselves, starting first and foremost with Hillary, and just get used to the idea of the inevitable (Hmm, what sexual situation does that phrase bring to mind?), then we would be happy and you can just put up with it, 'cuz it's better than what McCain will do to you. Pardon me if I don't like coercion coming from my "friends" any more than from my opponents. Something deep and ugly, but not new, has emerged from the keyboards of Left Blogistan. Not new at all. It's sadly familiar, like the friend who sends "Jingle Boobs" cards at the holidays and the relative who thinks breast shaped lollipops are great Halloween treats. Or the teaching assistant who "accepts" blow jobs for A's (Hey, she offered!). Or the blogger who says it doesn't matter that women's voices be heard if they are speaking in favor of Hillary.

We are not here to be consumed. We are here to be.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours -- your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Anglachel

Postage Paid

That's how serious Florida is about making its voice heard at the Democratic convention. They are going to do a mail-in revote and are determined to remove every barrier to voting, including not having a stamp

Under the emerging plan, estimated to cost as much as $10 million, the state's four million registered Democrats would be mailed self-addressed, stamped ballots that would be tabulated by an independent party, such as an accounting firm or a company that runs corporate shareholder voting.

Fla. Dems settle on new plan for vote-by-mail primary

While I formally oppose making Florida and Michigan revote rather than simply seating them as-is given that the initial ruling against them had more to do with penalizing two strong HRC states than developing a realistic plan to prevent a mad rush to the head of the primary line, the political scientist in me is fascinated to see what will happen. There will be a lot of confusion, of course, which will be used by both campaigns to make political hay, but the prominence of the mail-in should go a long way to encouraging more states to use this very democratic and paper-trail-producing voting method.

All voting procedures can be gamed, of course. There is no method of voting that does not permit very determined cheats from gaming the system. However, mail-in ballots are very good ways to increase participation without significantly raising the cost of elections. And, I can't emphasize this enough, it provides a paper trail. You can't have only mail-in voting. There must be provisions for "day of" voting, giving people a location for dropping off unmailed ballots, encouraging some kinds of same-day registration and provisional voting (as it is called in California), and other ways to accommodate the procrastinators and the clueless. Oregon has had enormous success with their mail-in system.

In terms of the Florida contest, this forces Obama’s hand. The only reason for him to oppose this revote (and it’s a big reason) is that he will lose and probably by a larger margin than he lost the first time around, given the crap his campaign and surrogates have been throwing at Florida. They wanted a caucus where they could control access and intimidate voters and they won’t get it. They can’t suppress turnout with mail-in, and using an independent party to count the votes cuts down on the post-vote shenanigans like stealing tally sheets and misreporting numbers. They can’t get the “Democrat for a Day” people because you have to already be a registered voter.

My mother-in-law will be able to vote. She’s just had major knee surgery in the last week and it would have been very hard for her to physically get out and go to the polls. Now she can fill in her ballot from her easy chair and have her sister take it to the mailbox.

This is a win-win-win for Hillary. She won the state when no one thought it would matter and after Obama had just come off a huge win in South Carolina. She has championed the right of Florida to be hard even before she won the state and when polls were not going her way. Florida, like Ohio, is a must-win state for the Dems in November, and she is coming in as the person who fought for Florida’s voice to be heard.

If Florida does the mail-in, I suspect Michigan will follow suit, and it will be another good situation for Hillary. Again, it enfranchises her supporters, who have the greatest difficulty getting to the polls, and it counter-acts impulse and cross-over voting. While I think she will extend her margins in Florida, I think she will maintain and perhaps slightly increase her margins in Michigan. Then there is Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico, both of which favor her, plus Kentucky.

I’m going to hammer away at nomination strategy and not listen to the whining of the A-List Blogger Boyz. Neither Hillary nor Barry can get 2025 delegates prior to the convention unless there is a massive defection of super delegates. That is unlikely. The decision will be made by super delegates and the pledged delegates who are not in either camp as of yet. This means making some tough choices about who will be best for the party in the November election.

Most important, regardless of who the candidates are, the Democratic convention cannot be held without Florida and Michigan’s full participation. I’m not even talking Hillary’s advantage here, though I admit that makes it easier to argue. To exclude these two states is to guarantee a Democratic loss. This simple fact does not seem to be getting through the skulls of the people who keep insisting on “Teh Rulz”. People like Kevin Drum, who plaintively call on Hillary to gracefully concede when she is absolutely even and probably has a small edge, are aware of this. If only she would concede, the thinking goes, then Obama could graciously allow Florida and Michigan to be seated and we’d avoid the November debacle. That is at the root of the frantic demands that she bow out when no male candidate would be badgered in such a way. That is the only way to avoid having to fight about whether the Democrats will disenfranchise a substantial portion of their constituents in order to allow Obama to win.

Well, the DNC created the situation and Hillary is not their mother. They can clean up after themselves by either seating the delegations or else helping fundraise to pay for the mail-in revotes. Hillary is already raising money. I suspect the state voters will look appreciatively on a candidate who helps them get their voices heard.

There is also the problem that Obama’s coattails do not appear to be very long. His voters are much more likely to show up only to vote for him and then ignore the down ticket races. This is the exact opposite of his supporters’ talking points, which is that he would bring out voters who would support the party ballot. Surprise, surprise, it is the dedicated Democrats supporting a solidly Democratic candidate who can be relied on to vote for the Congress critters, state politicians, and ballot measures. Just what advantage does the party gain if they lose strength in the Congress and State legislatures, or fail to turn back racist measures like those that will be proposed in Missouri and Colorado?

Frankly, after Gore and Kerry so gracefully conceding their presidential races to C+ Augustus, I really like having a candidate who will not be backed down by a bunch of people getting in her face and screaming that she’s not playing nice. Hillary Clinton is firmly dedicated to Democratic policies and principles, completely supports the party, and will fight with the tenacity of a pit-bull bitch defending her puppies when confronted by Republican threats and dirty tricks.

Our passage has been paid for.

Anglachel

Life of the Party

Almost in spite of itself, this election cycle has become a debate about the nature and focus of the Democratic Party. It was supposed to have been a relatively easy path for John Edwards, with a campaign schedule that should have moved him from strength to strength among the different Democratic constituencies, culminating in a knockout sweep on Super Tuesday. Instead, we will spend half a year determining the life of the party.

In Hillary and Barry, we are looking at people who have captured the imaginations of the major Democratic constituencies in new and invigorating ways. While various bloggers and pundits have used the terms “beer track” and “wine track” to sum up their respective supporters, the alignments do not break out so cleanly.

Hillary has much of the traditional Democratic blue collar core, as shown in her win in Ohio, the classic “Reagan Democrat”. The working class, the elderly, ethnic whites, Catholics, mainline Protestants, the socially disadvantaged and economically vulnerable. She has brought in enormous numbers of women voters, higher than the usual gender gap the Democrats enjoy. Finally, she is the clear favorite of Hispanics and Asians, especially south Asians. These are growing demographic groups and ones the Democrats need to consolidate as a dedicated voting bloc. This is the group that Bill and Al won. It is also composed of the voters most likely to defect to the Republicans (elderly, working class whites, Hispanics).

Barry has what I think is a totally unique combination of voting groups for the Democrats, the African American vote and the “wine track”. It is as though Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson had been merged. Usually, AA voters are found with the other core constituencies, leaving the wine track voters – upper middle and upper class, highly educated, college students, significant wage earners, in creative and technical industries, predominantly white – in the minority, able to challenge but not large enough of a block to dominate, but this time they have left their regular voting pattern to promote Barry. Just as with high female turn-out for Hillary, I think high AA turn-out for Obama needs to be seen as salutary and constructive identity voting.

The wine track group is more problematic. These are voters who are most likely to identify as “independents” rather than Democrats, and who bolt the party for third party candidates, such as Nader and Anderson. There is a mistake being made, I think, that these are somehow new voters in the system. AA voters are some of the most loyal and reliable voters in the US. Wine track voters are usually highly politically motivated, voting in higher levels than beer track Democrats, but are less likely to affiliate with the party.

The candidates are evenly balanced in terms of support, no matter what the Blogger Boyz scream about pledged delegates, with a very slight edge for Hillary’s supporters in sheer numbers. Both candidates are definitely striking the right chords with the complete range of the widely diverse groups that make up the Democratic Party.

What will the Party do?

Let’s make no mistake. At this point, the candidates can jostle, strategize, wheedle, threaten, coax and cajole, but the decision as to who will be the nominee lies in the hands of the convention voters. Neither of them can win enough delegates before the convention to win the nomination outright. The minor lead Barry enjoys with the pledged delegates today goes away the second MI and FL are acknowledged, but even with them seated Hillary cannot clinch the nomination. It comes down to super delegates reviewing the possible outcomes of the general given the one candidate or the other, and deciding which provides the party with the best electoral chance. Here are some considerations.

Jeralyn on TalkLeft posted a great analysis by William Arnone on the ten most vital states in the general election, Ten Key States Update and a Perspective on Pennsylvania. Those states are:

• Arkansas
• Colorado
• Florida
• Iowa
• Missouri
• Nevada
• New Mexico
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Virginia

Please read the entire article and Jeralyn’s notes for the full run-down, but the gist of the article is that when a nominee was the winner of a given primary, that nominee has a better chance of winning that state in the general. That puts Arkansas, Florida, Nevada and Ohio in Hillary’s column, Colorado (caucus), Iowa (caucus) and Virginia in Barry’s column. Missouri and New Mexico (caucus) were statistical ties, so bode equally well/poorly for both. North Carolina is yet to be voted, but I expect it will go to Barry. The states favoring Hillary carry more Electoral College votes than the states favoring Barry.

Hillary has won both Ohio and Florida, and will win Florida again if there is a revote. Democrats cannot lose both Ohio and Florida and win the general election. One of those states is a must win in November. She also won Oklahoma and Tennessee, and it looks like she will win Kentucky. Hillary does well in border states where Obama does not and where Bill won last time. These parts of the country are pro-Clinton, and, yes, just the way that Barry enjoys a clear advantage with college students, Hillary enjoys a clear advantage with people who voted for Bill. This is good for the party, not bad, and an advantage Democrats are wise to exploit.

Let’s look the threats and negatives squarely in the face. Both candidates have supporters who say they will not support the other person if their own candidate is not the nominee. I should know – I’m voting for Hillary in November even if I have to write her in, and most of my female relatives intend on doing the same. Exit polls show that a larger and growing percentage of Hillary supporters say they would not be satisfied if Obama won and that they will not vote for him. Given whom her core constituency is, these voters are highly likely not only to not vote for Barry, but to actually defect and vote for McCain. These are the Reagan Democrats, after all. Though Obama supporters like to mutter about closet racists, the answer, frankly, is to be found in class – as Paul Krugman pointed out on Friday, people who are at the economic margins are not impressed with what Obama is offering, and will go with someone more familiar. Conversely, disaffected Obama supporters are more likely to vote Nader (Thanks, Ralph…) or sit out the election. What about the AA vote? The Blogger Boyz like to say that HRC’s racism has permanently alienated the AA vote. I say hogwash. There will be some who would sit out, but most are simply giving their candidate the best possible shot at the nomination. They will vote Democratic in the general. It is the really new voters to the process - women, Hispanics and college students - who are most liekly to sit out or defect in the absence of their preferred candidate.

Hillary has made it clear that she will support the party no matter what and that she wants a unified ticket for November. Barry is blustering and claiming he won’t take a VP slot (Just like he said he wasn’t running for President when campaigning for the Senate?), is refusing to say he will support the nominee regardless, and is making direct claims that his constituents won’t support Hillary. Which position is more constructive in the long run for building the party? Too much "Me no wanna do!" from a candidate, and he begins to look like a sore loser.

I can’t blame Barry for puffing up and making absolutist statements; I said yesterday he’s between a rock and a hard place and this is probably the only strategy he can run, but he is running out of time and maneuvering room. He’s going to have to agree to a revote on MI and FL, allow the delegations to be seated as-is, or else stonewall them being seated at all. The first two options will put an end to his pledged delegate lead, but will position him for a round two of negotiations. The third choice will force an incredibly ugly floor fight. None of these choices will result in a winner before the convention, and the Party will still have to decide, though a revote might make the choice easier. It is that possibility that Obama is fighting against right now.

Without Michigan and Florida being seated with full delegations and no restrictions on their pledges, Barry cannot gain a legitimate nomination. With them being seated under those terms, Hillary becomes the best general election choice for the party, having carried the largest number of battlefield and must-win states. The one outside option is that Dean and Brazile are more interested in defeating Hillary than in winning the general, and so refuse to seat the states and bully super delegates into installing Obama. To do this, they have to bet that they can get a high enough turn out in November to counterbalance defections from Hillary to McCain and those who will write in HRC rather than vote Obama. That’s a hell of a gamble. Remember, it’s not national advantage, but which candidate will do best state-by-state.

So, Dr. Dean, what’s it going to be? You put this patient into the ICU. How are you going to remedy this situation? What are you going to do to save the life of the Party?

Anglachel

Unpopular Votes and Obama's Legitimacy Crisis

I think Obama has lost the nomination with his own behavior (plus the antics of his campaign) since last Tuesday. He lost a lot of momentum with the Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island defeats and since then has behaved with petulance and arrogance. While there is no one thing, there have been a lot of smaller events adding up to a really profound loss of electoral legitimacy.

First are the Texas reports of caucus shenanigans after HRC clearly won the popular vote in the state. It made very real the way in which the structure of the caucus was unfairly penalizing Hillary supporters. On top of the already problematic structural issues there are the reports of belligerent and possibly criminal acts by Obama supporters to try to exacerbate the situation. I note that most of the Texas counties that have not reported their caucus results (scroll to the second Texas map near the bottom of the page) are pro-Clinton. They are small and even if they go strongly for her, won't likely change Obama winning the caucus, but it could significantly affect the final delegate count.

When even Media Whore outlets like the WaPo have taken note of the disparity between the primaries and the caucuses, the fact that you've won a caucus rather than a primary becomes a delegitimizing factor with voters who are not already strongly committed to you. If Obama claims victory in Texas on the basis of the caucus after having lost the popular vote, this will be little different than Bush claiming victory over Gore - technically correct, but not accepted as legitimate.

The weak response to the "3:00 AM phone call" ad did more damage to Obama than to HRC. Rice could only speak with authority about her own candidate, and she cut him off at the knees. All the Hillary campaign has to say is "No, our girl is ready, but nice to know you admit your guy's not up to the job, kthxby."

The Monster and Archie Bunker gaffes form a pair of bookends to something that has become an increasing irritant to rank and file Dem voters - the derisive attitude shown towards people who are not "on the bandwagon." If someone does not support Obama, the fault lies with them, not with the candidate, or that is the message coming through loud and clear to the Reagan Democrats. It fits in with the not very subtle accusations of racism against core Hillary supporters; they don't really like her, but are voting their deep, secret racist impulses. This actually started in Iowa with the extravagant praise of whites who voted Obama, explicitly noting that they weren't falling for racist BS, which immediately cast doubt on whites who didn't vote Obama. It became the dominant meme for a while in New Hampshire to try to explain away Obama's loss, and then went mainstream for a few weeks, when Obama had to admit that his campaign was deliberately trying to catapult the racist propaganda. The Archie Bunker reference is yet another attempt to call Hillary supporters racists.

This comes across badly in two ways. First, the "Archie Bunker" reference insults voters directly. People who might grudgingly allow that HRC or people campaigning for her made remarks that someone might be able to construe as possibly being racist won't accept that accusation made against themselves. Second, and this is more about the attacks on HRC herself, they come across as simply rude, the mark of people who don't respect others. The monster comment went down sideways with many, many voters. As I have said and as has been said by a number of other bloggers, Hillary's support is strong and diverse, and they feel insulted on her behalf over such comments, especially after the months of battering she has received, especially from a candidate who markets himself as a unifier, a nice guy, a conciliator, etc. He undermines the image of himself he has been projecting, and this damages his legitimacy.

Then there are the NAFTA lies. When another government says, "Erm, um, no, you actually did tell us you were lying to the voters and not to be worried by your campaign rhetoric," somebody has some 'splaining to do. This will not do him any good with blue collar voters, who tend to know about NAFTA and care what politicians say. Given that the economy is tanking, ordinary voters want straight answers on economic questions.

Now, today, there are three significant developments. First, Obama fairly strongly dismisses being on a unity ticket with Hillary. There's some equivocating, but he's not going to give an inch. He's pretty much between a rock and a hard place, of course. Say yes, he'd consider it, and his support among super delegates collapses like the house of cards that it is. Fail to agree to it, and he becomes the one refusing to unify the party and playing chicken with Dem fortunes in November. It reinforces the sense that his campaign is both arrogant and immature.

Next, Obama dismisses the possibility of a "firehouse" primary in Michigan, which raises all sorts of questions. Is he trying to force a caucus on a primary state? Do his own internal polling numbers show that he's not going to get more delegates than he might collect via "uncommitted" delegates all going to him? The real answer lies in the final development of the day.

Finally, and this is the nail in the coffin, James Carville pulls the ultimate gotcha on live TV. Read the exchange between Carville and David Wilhelm on Wolf Blitzer's show this AM. (Transcript here on Taylor Marsh.) Basically, Carville says HRC will put $15 million of her own money up to pay for new primaries in Florida and Michigan, since both the states and the DNC say they would like to do so but can't afford the cost. Will Obama raise $15 million in matching funds from his own vaunted money machine and give the voters of these states a legitimate, sanctioned, no-equivocations primary voting opportunity?

The Hillary campaign hit this one out of the ballpark and into the next county. The rock and hard place of the VP suggestion just became a lady or tiger situation. Obama cannot afford to be seen losing big states again to HRC (and he will lose MI and FL), but now he is the person in the position of preventing those votes from being cast. If he stonewalls the votes, the fury of HRC supporters at the convention will be epic and they will demand that FL and MI be seated as is. If he can bully the credentials committee into any solution other than seating as-is, he will lose all legitimacy with HRC supporters, who will either write her in, vote McCain or stay home in November.

Any claim he tries to make about how pledged delegates represent the will of the people is DOA now. Between the circus of the Texas Two-step and Obama's refusal to even allow MI and FL primaries to take place, he cannot maintain the claim to be the popular choice. How can his Texas caucus votes be more legitimate than Hillary's Texas primary votes? Moreover, he looks like he's afraid to put his money where his campaign rhetoric is and stand up to a vote.

What all of this points to, however, is one of the deep, negative themes that has been present in his campaign from the beginning, that people who do not support him are not legitimate voters and their opinions should count for nothing. People who vote for Hillary are Archie Bunkers, "low information" people who vote for "monsters" and who need to be shoved around, harangued, locked out of polling places. They will simply fall into line after he is nominated and support him, of course, but his high-minded followers cannot be asked to stoop to support anyone else.

Hillary supporters are accused of being racists, of being war-mongers, of not understanding just what a heinous human being she really is, of being stupid, old, uneducated yahoo bitches. Their dissenting opinions about key events and policy decisions (what these acts and policies mean, how they relate to each other, how important they are on their own and in relation to other acts and policies) are scorned and attacked.

The root cause of Obama's loss of electoral legitimacy is his campaign's refusal to accept that he might, very legitimately, not be the nominee.

Anglachel

It Comes Back to the Economy, Stupid

Paul Krugman talks about what matters to the voters and why. Not "hope", not Iraq, but the worsening economy (my emphasis throughout):

Democrats won the 2006 election largely thanks to public disgust with the Iraq war. But polls — and Hillary Clinton’s big victory in Ohio — suggest that if the Democrats want to win this year, they have to focus on economic anxiety. ...

According to exit polls, Mr. Obama narrowly edged out Mrs. Clinton among Ohio voters who consider Iraq the most important issue — but these voters cast only 19 percent of the ballots in the Democratic primary. Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton led by 12 points among the much larger group of voters citing the economy as the most important issue — and by 16 points among those who cited health care. Mrs. Clinton’s winning margin was twice as large among those who were worried about their own financial situation as among those who weren’t.

Why has Mr. Obama stumbled when it comes to economic issues? Well, on health care — which is closely tied to overall concerns about financial security — there is a clear, substantive difference between the candidates, with the Clinton plan being significantly stronger. More broadly, I suspect that the Obama mystique — his carefully created image as a transformational, even transcendent figure — has created a backlash among those unconvinced that he’s interested in the nuts-and-bolts work of fixing things. Ohio voters were more likely to say that Mr. Obama inspires them — but more likely to say that Mrs. Clinton has a clear plan for the country’s problems.

And Mr. Obama’s attempt to win over workers by portraying himself as a fierce critic of Nafta looked, and was, deeply insincere — an appearance particularly costly for a candidate who tries to seem above politics as usual.

Thanks to Tuesday’s results, the nomination fight will go on to Pennsylvania in April, and probably beyond — and rightly so. It’s now clear that Mrs. Clinton, like Mr. Obama, has strong grass-roots support that cannot be simply brushed aside without alienating voters that the party will badly need in November. So the Democratic National Committee had better get moving on plans to do Michigan and Florida over, to give the eventual nominee the legitimacy he or she needs.

And, as the Democrats ponder their choices, they might want to consider which candidate can most convincingly ask: “Are you better offnow than you were eight years ago?”

The Anxiety Election

Like me, Krugman takes a look at the election results, not the wishful thinking of the Blogger Boyz, and sees who is actaully winning. He warns the DNC not to try to delegitimize Hillary, who is now just as likely to be the nominee as Obama.

He also picks up on two things I said a long time ago - Iraq as a campaign issue is not that salient among the broader population and that people have favorable memories of economic conditions under the Bill Cinton. Iraq, psychologically, is already resolved in most Americans' minds. We are going to leave in an orderly fashion soon and the timing has to do with the level of success.

The economy, however, that is the growing crisis and is far more immediate and tangible to the general public than Bush's War. They are anxious about their own situation and look for a candidate who can, as Krugman put it, talk directly and knowledgeably about the nuts-and-bolts of economic recovery plans.

On this count, Obama fails and is dropping. The more he is questioned, the less he is able to offer to those who want to know. The Kwel Kidz in the Press Corpse may be bored by wonkery, but town hall attendees have some questions they want answered and they want in depth responses, not fluff about awesomeness and audacity. What about stagflation, dude?

Finally, Krugman takes notice that Hillary voters are, like, real. They really think she is the best choice. They've had wall-to-wall Obama coverage and they like the candidate who has greater experience at a national level and who appears to understand the dangers facing the nation in depth, and has clear plans on how to deal with them. Get this through your thick skulls, Blogger Boyz - Hillary is more popular with Democratic voters than Obama.

She's got policies, and she knows how to use them.

Anglachel

The Inevitability Game

Or how rules, assumptions and disparities are fueling an unwarranted claim of inevitability in the Obama campaign. I think that Obama's political tactics are undermining his claim to legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of Democrats. The basis for my opinion is the simple fact that Hillary is not losing the campaign, but is, when all voting preferences are taken into account, slightly ahead.

Big Tent Democrat doesn't like it when I mock Obama. Fair enough. I can't stand BTD's continued assertions that Obama being a "media darling" should carry any weight in politics. To me, asserting that we should get behind a candidate because some morons in the press may or may not be marginally less brutal to him than to Hillary is obscenely wrong-headed. It ignores the real and meaningful institutions of political authority, undermines the foundations for social and political reform, and rewards the press for attempting to subvert elections.

Instead, let me put on my political scientist hat and talk about elections, delegates and political judgment critically, ditching mockery for truth, which may be less palatable because more difficult to dismiss.

Obama and his supporters are, ironically, trying to float the meme that his nomination is inevitable because HRC cannot possibly get the requisite number of delegates to win the nomination outright. Therefore, they argue, she must step aside and let history happen. To refuse to do so is a mark of her illegitimacy and willingness to "do anything" to win. It is why they can get away with calling her a monster. However, as I pointed out in my last post, Obama can't win on delegate count, either. There is nothing inevitable to his pursuit of the nomination. Instead, there are some specious arguments about rules and more than a few misleading assertions about super delegates that do not withstand scrutiny.

One of the problems with touting pledged delegate counts, as I alluded to in the last post, is that it refuses to acknowledge that there are substantive differences between those delegates, if only because of the disparate ways in which the delegates were selected. Increasing numbers of Democrats are looking at caucus selected delegates as suspect because of strong-arm tactics documented in videos and relayed through anecdotal accounts. Others, like me, see the caucus system itself as inherently undemocratic exactly in the way the Electoral College is - they are intended to dampen the effect of popular votes. They over-represent the number of actual voters in a state or region. One of the reasons to have super delegates is to provide a balance to unrepresentative voting systems. Democratic voters, particularly HRC supporters, are keenly aware that Obama's advantage is coming from his ability to leverage the caucuses, and that this undermines his legitimacy.

Another talking point is that Florida and Michigan broke the rules and so we can't discuss them, they can't be counted, they don't exist, will you stop mentioning those states!?! The problem comes that there are two sets of rules, one of which deals with the conduct of the primary and another set that deals with the conduct of the convention. MI and FL have had 100% of delegates stripped. In Florida the early primary was the result of Republican actions to move it forward. Now, let's be real and note that the Dem officials didn't exactly fight tooth and nail to prevent it, but the decision wasn't theirs. Also, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina also pushed their contests forward, yet none of them was penalized, only warned. The point here is that the rules were applied in a disparate manner.

The odd thing is that FL & MI were allowed to have their primaries, but they couldn't get the side benefits of the media circus because candidates were forbidden to campaign. They could, however, remain on the ballot. What this says to me is that the threat to not seat the delegates was toothless from the start. The DNC presumed that either there would be a front-runner or else there would be parity. The shell game was to make the states lose money and national exposure, but not really interfere with expression of voter preference.

Then Edwards and Obama decided to play politics with Michigan, seeking to damage Hillary in IA, NH and SC. They very publicly withdrew from the MI ballot and made it part of their campaigns. HRC and the other Dems did not. I think this was a risky but understandable strategy, and that it hurt Edwards very, very badly. Had he stayed on the Michigan ballot, he probably would have polled about 20%, which would have raised his viability profile in later states. As it was, the "Uncommitted" voters have all been presumed to be Obama supporters, robbing Edwards of a claim to support. My real point here is that their lack of presence on the MI ballot was by their own choice. Just as HRC didn't plan well enough to contest the caucus states, they failed to contest well enough in the big primary states. Obama also pledged to fight for Florida's right to be seated, but only if they voted for him. Hillary said she would fight regardless of the victor, and this went over well. You win some, you lose some.

The second set of rules governs the convention itself, and those rules explicitly allow the credential committee to seat any, some or none of those delegates as they see fit. There is no rule breaking going on. The convention itself may reverse, and thus repair, the damage done by the initial DNC ruling. Thus, there is an existing mechanism for resolving the barred delegate conundrum. The trouble, of course is that any type of decision they make will materially affect the outcome of the delegate count, and thus no ruling will satisfy both candidates. To allow less than the full count of both states in will diminish HRC's power and anger her supporters. To let them all in means Hillary takes a slight lead in pledged delegates.

That's the fact. Taking Michigan and Florida into account, the majority of voters have selected Hillary over Obama. It is a very slender lead, and even with it, she does not have enough delegates to win outright. Remember - neither does Obama. To refuse to seat MI & FL will anger more than just the voters of those states. It will anger the majority of HRC supporters nationwide who can point to the voters cast and say "She's ahead." Let's say this really clearly:

Hillary Clinton has won both the majority of popular votes and the majority of pledged delegates.

To claim otherwise is to presume that that her supporters are irrelevant and that support for her is illegitimate. Whether or not Dr. Dean & Ms. Brazile want to count those votes, whether or not anyone can get them seated and counted, they exist and they will only grow in importance as the campaign goes on and pressure increases to seat the delegates. This is part of Hillary's political strategy and like the move by Edwards and Obama to leave the Michigan ballot; it is both risky and potentially highly rewarding.

This leads us back to the argument Obama supporters, particularly the A-List Blogger Boyz, like to make, which is that pledged delegates are the express will of the voters and thus super delegates should just go with the majority. There are a few problems with this argument, the biggest being that they make this argument at the same time as they refuse to recognize the will of FL and MI voters. They fall back on the "Rules say they don't count," even as the truly democratic stance is to insist that they be counted. The second problem is that this is contrary to the point of the super delegates. Dr. Dean himself has emphatically said that the SDs are bound to one thing only - voting for the good of the party. They are themselves elected officials (either public office holders or elected party officials) and they are as representative as any other delegate. One of their purposes is to evaluate and smooth out the disparity of the delegate selection process, such as that caused by unrepresentative caucuses. They are supposed to exercise political judgment.

And what might that judgment be? Well, for starters, looking at the candidates and making some hard-nosed decisions about who really would be the most competitive in the general election. Who really has the largest block of support. Who really will best promote and defend the party's policies and objectives. Who will be a leader of the party. It matters that Hillary wins big in states with large and diverse populations. It matters that she was the overwhelming choice in Ohio and Florida, and that she also captured border states like Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee. She'll make McCain spend resources in places where he hopes not to. It matters that exit polls consistently show her supporters (who are greater in number than Obama supporters) are less likely to turn out for him than his supporters are to do so for her, no matter what spin he tries to put on the matter. It matters that she is so incredibly popular with the Hispanic population, which could easily go with a Republican candidate, and not just for her own success. A big turnout in Texas could help grind down the stranglehold the Republicans have on the state apparatus.

Obama has been a "media darling" from Day One, and has been provided with every advantage a politician could dream of having. He has money, outrageously gentle and fawning press coverage, the full-throated support of the largest leftwing blogs and most of the highly regarded pundits, and a fantastic run of electoral success in certain states. It was not enough to put him ahead of HRC in the must-win states or to give him a substantial lead in any kind of count. Again, his delegate count only holds if you refuse to acknowledge the express opinions of FL and MI. Increasingly, the polls show him weakening as a general election candidate against McCain. There is plenty of room for his negatives to go up.

Hillary, on the other hand, has been blasted, reviled, threatened, dissed, shit on and treated in the worst possible way for months. Heck, let's really rack up the negative on her and say her campaign was mismanaged and she should never have fallen behind in fund raising the way she did. Put every negative on her you want and we come back to the simple truth - she wins. Rank and file voters prefer her to Obama. Not by a lot, but by enough of a margin that, given all of her handicaps and all of his allowances, she is shown to be the more substantial and indomitable candidate. Any deals cut need to be with her because she has the support of the core Dem voters. To dismiss her, and thereby dismiss the majority of participants in the primary process, will have serious repercussions, which is why Dean is backing down from his original opposition to seating FL and MI.

There is no inevitability to either candidate, but the candidate who will have to compromise the most is Obama. HRC has already let it be known that she will be reasonable. Can Mr. Uniter act for the good of the party and for his own long term political prospects?

Anglachel

The Reality About Legitimacy

The A-List Blogger Boyz have their collective knickers in a twist about that nasty, mean, spiteful Hillary Clinton refusing to withdraw gracefully from the campaign and allow The Precious to be coronated. Oh, the damage she does by not conceding! How dare she harsh our mellow! The sheer selfishness of her behavior! Nay, the immorality of forcing a destructive battle on the party who needs to unite behind The Golden One and glide to victory on promises of bipartisan love! And ponies for everyone, natch...

Among the punditocracy (among whom I place the A-List bloggers), Golden Boy Barry's legitimacy is presumed, that he simply must be the most adored, most preferred candidate of them all. The count of the pledged delegates is a sacred relic within the cult, the objective symbol of The Precious' status. This is repeated constantly despite clear patterns in the votes to spell out his weak points and as though there are not structural advantages in voting procedures that over emphasize his popularity.

The converse is also a matter of unshakeable belief, that Hillary enjoys no legitimacy, that she is presumptively an illegitimate candidate, and that there is something inherently good in trying to defeat her. What Nevada, the Florida Primary, Super Tuesday and yesterday's smashing victories in Ohio and Texas demonstrate is that Hillary Clinton has broad, deep and diverse support among Democrats, and that she is seen by them as a worthy and legitimate candidate for President. This is important because the animus against her among the leftist blogs and many party elites is that she cannot rally support, that she is not a popular choice candidate. In fact, she is the strongly preferred choice of millions of Democrats. Because her legitimacy cannot be acknowledged, the phenomenon of her really kicking ass and winning big time must be diminished, rather in the same way as Grover Norquist wanted to reduce the Federal government and for much the same objective.

Hence, the fetishization of the pledged delgate count among the punditocracy. The super delegates must vote the way the majority have voted, they protest. This is the express will of the people and must be bowed to. But, is it? The delegate count is not unequivocally legitimate, and this casts an increasing pall of illegitimacy on Obama. There are three significant points where the pledged delegate counts are not obviously the will of the people.

ONE: Open vs. closed contests. Just which people are being counted? For a very long time, Obama's margin of victory was among Independents, not Democrats. He has run the notorious "Democrat for a Day" operation in at least three states (California, Florida, Nevada), explicitly urging Republicans to switch parties simply to vote against Hillary. To the degree that his support does not come from the party, his delegate count is suspect. What would contests look like rebalanced to show only Democratic support?

TWO: Caucus vs. Primary. This, to me, is a far more pernicious and delegitimizing situation than open primaries, because the structure of a caucus has two anti-democratic effects.

First, it reduces popular participation by being limited in time and place (there are far fewer caucus locations than polling places) and by removing the secret ballot. The time issue is two-edged. First, the participant must be available at the appointed time, which is unfavorable to shift workers. It also requires you to be available for a significant amount of time, usually several hours. This is a great burden on people who work, who have caretaker duties, and/or who are physically unable to attend, such as my mother. As for the secret ballot, that has been shown over and over to be essential to free exercise of political preference. Peer pressure is difficult to resist. It is interesting that Hillary won the New Mexico caucus where the votes themselves were cast secretly. Every caucus contest has come replete with reports of Obama supporters bullying and threatening Hillary supporters. The Texas caucuses may result in criminal charges.

The second effect is to exaggerate small differences of support and slight margins of victory, as well as allow a far smaller number of voters to be represented per delegate. A vote margin as small as three people may create a 50/50 split or a 70/30 in terms of delegate allocation. One-tenth the turn-out in a caucus state may earn the same number of convention delegates as in a primary state.

With both Washington State and Texas, we saw the difference between holding a primary and a caucus, using the same pool of voters. In WA, Obama won both, but with a significantly smaller margin in the primary than in the caucus. In TX, Hillary won the primary handily, but may be edged out in the caucus, which is composed of a sub-set of all primary voters. The pairing of these two states demonstrates that it is entirely possible Obama would not have won some of those caucuses (Iowa would probably have gone by a tiny margin to Hillary in a straight vote, and Nevada would have gone to her even more than it did). In short, the contests where the process itself is more democratic, Hillary has gained more support. The allocation of delegates is inconsistent and exaggerated. The disparity between delegate counts would be far less if all states had been primaries, even if Obama had won all the states he currently holds.

THREE: Michigan and Florida being excluded from the counts. The Florida and Michigan delegates are not being seated because they would allow Hillary to win. Period. Unlike the first two issues, which are structural, this one is political. In a pathetic attempt to stack the primary season for John Edwards, the DNC shoved these two, must-win states out in the cold, probably figuring they would fall in line and support the eventual nominee and all damage could be fixed before the convention. Michigan is a self-inflicted wound for The Precious. He took his name off the ballot to try to deligitimize Hillary, and the strategy backfired on him. In Florida, he ran campaign ads and came off a power-house victory in South Carolina, only to be thoroughly snubbed by the voters of a state the Democrats must win in November (hmm, I'm sensing a pattern here) . While a formal argument might be offered that Michigan shouldn't be seated because of the ballot - though it was Barry's choice to do so and it was done for strategic reasons - there is no reason to refuse to seat Florida at this point except to prevent a count of Hillary's true support.

Something I have not seen discussed much in the blogosphere, in great part because voters who support Hillary are not seen as having cast legitimate votes, is that Florida knows it is the king-maker in this convention, and it damn well is not going to revote. In this game of chicken, Howard Dean loses. "The rules" aren't going to count for squat when Florida demands to be seated. If Obama's forces refuse to seat Florida for the sole purpose of denying Hillary delegates, he will lose Florida in the general, and probably Michigan, too, and there goes the election. To try to wrangle a win out of a convention that does not seat Florida and Michigan is to lose massive amounts of legitimacy. Do you think my mother-in-law and all her senior female friends who turned out en masse to vote for Hillary in Florida are going to vote for Obama after he denies FL a voice at the convention?

The pledged delegate count is not invalid or without merit, but it is far less definitive in the eyes of rank-and-file Democratic voters - the ones who have been favoring Hillary in big state primary contests - and they are not going to regard it as fully legitimate. The Blogger Boyz and the rest of the media whores know this, which is another reason they howl loudly to drown out the contesting perspectives.

And, here is the real rub. The contest is basically tied and Golden Boy Barry, despite his overwhelming money advantage and all the positive media attention money can't buy, couldn't close the deal yesterday and will not get to the magic number of 2,025 delegates before the convention. Hillary is behind him only because two big states are not being counted for her. I add she can't get to 2025 by the convention, either, but she has as strong (if not a stronger) argument to make to the convention - my wins are where we need to win in November, and my wins are up front and broad based, more like the national electorate than my competitor has won. My point is that what the rank and file Democrat thinks is legitimate may not be measured in the delegate count, and that the way in which Hillary and her committed supporters are treated is what will determine the final outcome.

Obama cannot win without Florida and Michigan, and they don't want him. He is going to have to compromise, else he will lose all legitimacy. And that's the cold, hard reality.

Anglachel

Caucus Votes Tell the Same Story

I'm looking at the TX election results page on the NY Times. They give the primary results and the caucus results for Texas. There is very little reporting in from the caucuses yet (13%) and the percentages there are inverted and distorted compared to the primary:

Primary:
HRC: 50.8%
BHO: 47.4%

Caucuses:
HRC: 46.0%
BHO: 53.9%

Now, every person who votes in a caucus is already supposed to have voted in the primary, so the caucus represents a sub-set of all primary voters - those who know about the caucus and and can take the time to go there.

Let's set aside the various criminal acts Obama supporters have been committing in Texas to try to throw the caucuses (Makes you wonder what else they were doing in other caucus states). Let's just think about the comparison between the caucus numbers (assume, for the sake of argument, that they are real) and the primary numbers. When voters can vote during a long period of time throughout a day and when they can cast their voters in private, they vote for Hillary. When they have to show up at a specific time in a location that may or may not be a normal polling place, and they have to subject themselves to public harassment and intimidation, they vote for Obama.

Hmmm.

Could it be that The Golden One's caucus "victories" actually would have been Hillary primary victories? Could it be that the delegate count is abnormally skewed, with more delegates being awarded to The Precious than is warranted? Could it be that Golden Boy Barry really, truly wants to win the Democratic nomination the way Shrub won the general election, by losing the popular vote and clinging to an antiquated and anti-democratic electoral system?

I'm beginning to like the sound of revoting Michigan and Florida. No fucking caucus - a secret ballot open to all Democrats and ONLY Democrats. Make it like the general election and may the best Democrat win.

Anglachel

Exit Polls Tell the Story

• Hillary won the white male vote in both Texas and Ohio
• Hillary won Latinos, male and female, overwhelmingly in TX
• Hillary got double-digit AA votes in TX, and among AA men (a very interesting factoid, I think) in OH
• Hillary strongly won voters who are not doing well financially and who are worried about the economy
• Hillary wins Democrats hands down
• Hillary wins white Independents
• Hillary wins women
• More voters are satisfied if Hillary wins than if Obama wins
• Hillary's momentum is back - as with Super Tuesday, recent deciders broke strongly in her favor.

It looks like Obamacans are trying to win caucuses in Texas by fraud. This reeks of desperation. He may keep even with delegate counts because of the skewing of the caucus (which is a double vote, btw - vote in primary, vote again in the caucus). But he has clearly lost the popular vote.

What to make of this? A few things. First and foremost, Obamamania has peaked. He should have won all the states tonight, given his massive money advantage, his multiple-win momentum in February, his kissy-kissy treatment by the press (though that worm has turned), and the 24/7 Clinton Derangement Syndrome condition of all media outlets. But he didn't. With every advantage possible, and cross-over voting by Republicans to boost him up against HRC, he has lost two more huge states.

When faced with a large Democratic voting base of ethnically and economically diverse voters who use a secret ballot in an all-day primary, Obama consistently loses to Clinton among the constituencies who are most vulnerable to defection to the Republicans - blue collar whites, non-college educated women, Latinos of all age, gender and economic brackets.

Ohio and Texas, very different demographic states, put the lie to the piddly-ass caucus "victories" of February. Hillary has now won:

• California
• Florida
• Ohio
• Texas
• New York
• New Jersey
• Massachusetts
• Michigan

All of them (except Michigan) under conditions like the general election. She has also won border states that Obama couldn't touch (Oklahoma, Tennessee & Arkansas). If they were to revote Florida and Michigan, Hillary would wipe the floor with The Precious. I don't think that's in the cards now, because that would send The Golden One to the convention with a losing hand.

When it is possible for the core of the party to vote in a secret ballot primary, Hillary wins the majority of the time. She is the stronger general candidate and simply more qualified to be president. She is also poised to lock the Hispanic vote in for Democrats for a generation. The win in Ohio will not be lost on superdelegates. The Dems must win Ohio to win the general. With the energized Latina vote, there is even a chance that we could win Florida, too. And that, my friends, is the White House and a President who knows the system inside and out and is ready to launch the cap to the Social Security foundation - Universal Health Care.

Anglachel

Policy vs. Personality

Paul Krugman and Stanley Fish offer a fascinating brace of articles in the New York Times today, making opposite argumants about Golden Boy Barry that point to the singular lack of solidity in this candidate - the empy center of The Precious, into which people insert whatever they most desire.

Krugman, in Deliverance or Diversion?, continues with his policy-above-all campaign for the Democrats, arguing that "All in all, the Democrats are in a place few expected a year ago. The 2008 campaign, it seems, will be waged on the basis of personality, not political philosophy. " While rejecting claims that The Golden One is a crypto-Republican (No, he isn't. That would require having some kind of ideology to encrypt.), Krugman sums up the true political danger of an Obama administration:

If Mr. Obama does make it to the White House, will he actually deliver the transformational politics he promises? Like the faith that he can win an overwhelming electoral victory, the faith that he can overcome bitter conservative opposition to progressive legislation rests on very little evidence — one productive year in the Illinois State Senate, after the Democrats swept the state, and not much else.

We are being asked to take on faith that The Precious will shed his campaigner's skin and become some reincarnation of Paul Wellstone. That he won't be a weaker, less committed, less effective, less Democratic version of Bill Clinton in his first term. Obama's campaign has been the force of his personality in front of large screaming, adoring crowds. As is becoming more difficult to hide, his personality tends to become far less appealing when he is questioned closely and with little sympathy. Krugman coldly points out:

Some progressives are appalled by the direction their party seems to have taken: they wanted another F.D.R., yet feel that they’re getting an oratorically upgraded version of Michael Bloomberg instead.

Big Dog craved the approval of the people around him and to that end he worked very hard to win over those who were suspicious of him. While the press and the pundits never liked him, ordinary voters still do. Why? Because he delivered substantial gains to them. The Precious wants not so much approval as adulation, and becomes arrogant and hostile towards those who are critical of him. Policy, like personality, is a tool deployed for the sake of elections and adulation. Actual work, where he could have taken on the people's business in substantive ways, got pushed aside for "present" votes and are accompanied by whines that he was "too busy" campaigning to tend to his Senate committee duties. Rank and file Democrats are only now, after over a year of campaigning and rivers of money for TV ads, beginning to very slightly prefer him, and the percentages in swing states remain very low. Why? Because he has not delivered for anyone except himself. And Tony Rezko.

You can never be guaranteed of popularity (look at Saint Ronnie's declining approvals or the precipitous drops of both Bushes or LBJ's well deserved reputation for being a nasty SOB), but you can always fall back on policy, which is Stanley Fish's point in his article "Why McCain Would Vote For Obama". Fish makes the argument that Obama's reliance on personality will be a liability against the "policy" stances of John McCain. The Golden One has done his best to try to turn pandering to a crowd into some blanket argument about his policy prowess - he had the judgment to oppose the Iraq War. Fish notes that, in politics and particularly in general elections, an absolutist position is not always the most wise:

Meanwhile, as McCain was nimbly moving around, Obama would be standing still, stuck in the one-note posture he has assumed from the beginning of the campaign. In the democratic primaries and caucuses, Obama’s strong suit – the club he used to beat up Hillary Clinton – has been the absolute consistency of his position on the war: he would have voted against it had he been in the senate at the time; he has spoken out against it repeatedly since becoming a senator; and he has promised to end it and bring the troops home within a short time.

But once McCain, and not Clinton, is his opponent, that position becomes a liability, because it can be attacked as being inflexible and without nuance. McCain can ask, Don’t you see that the situation has changed in recent months, and shouldn’t a responsible leader adjust his or her stance according to the facts on the ground? And he can add, I too had my doubts about the conduct of the war, but now a policy I long advocated has been put in place with good results. Moreover, by saying something like that he would be reminding the electorate that he knows how to think tactically about military strategies, while his opponent’s only experience in combat has been trying to figure out how to beat Alan Keyes in the Illinois senate race, something anyone with the letter D (for Democrat) after his name would have been able to do easily.

Unless Iraq is the single issue for you (and it is so salient on the Left because it can be used instrumentally to beat up HRC), Barry's one-note bleating about how he was smart 'nuff not to support that war and how this explains everything you need to know about him and his foreign policy chops (oh, yeah, that and being a clueless kid in Indonesia) goes over like a lead balloon. What Fish points out is that McCain's narrative is rooted in his policy stances, and that the personality acts as a supporting player to the policy. You may be revolted by the policy, but most Americans are ambivalent about Iraq war as such (which is a different question that wanting it to end), and someone who can give them a graceful policy exit is to be preferred to one who stakes out the moral(istic) high ground. I don't think Barry supporters understand how poorly his argument will go over with the general public.

Thus, we get the ironic inversion that the party of policy wonkery may have one of the most talented, informed, skillfull, substantive legislators in recent history, a person eminently suited to cleaning up the steaming pile left behind by the Movement Conservatives, undermined by a personality campaign, while the general could be the Republican rally of substance over style. Golden Boy Barry is a current Media Darling, but we can already see the bloom coming off that rose. Stanley Fish cuts to the heart of the primary vote tomorrow in one crystal clear sentence:

Still , I would bet that if McCain were pulling a lever in the Democratic primaries in Texas and Ohio, his vote would go into the Obama column.

Republicans in Texas and Ohio will cross party lines to try to throw the Democratic primaries to The Precious because they know they can grind him into dirt in swing states come the general election. Destroying personal honor and integrity is what they do best. Krugman cites Bob Somerby (The Daily Howler) on what awaits:

Bob Somerby of the media-criticism site dailyhowler.com predicts that Mr. Obamawill be “Dukakised”: “treated as an alien, unsettling presence.” That sounds all too plausible.

The vague and vacuous politics of Hope and Change will be converted into all the standard tropes used against Democrats the last 20 years, plus a whole new arsenal - Muslim, terrorist lover, anti-American, undeserving Affirmative Action oppotunist, bagman for Middle eastern mobsters.

A campaign based on a cult of personality cannot defend itself from the deconstruction of that mythos.

Anglachel

Almost Settled In

The main part of the move is done and we are getting settled into the new house. The cat came home from the kennel today and is exploring the new digs. After an initial hour of panic, she's decided she likes the place, I think.

We're exhausted and not looking forward to the coming work week. There is still a lot to be done around here and most of the boxes remain packed. The master bathroom is still under construction and there's a leak in the roof that needs fixing.

I've been back on line for only 24 hours so am still catching up on the news. I see that people are finally starting to wake up to the fact that Golden Boy Barry is short on substance, enamored of truthiness, and entirely too eager to kiss Republican ass to get a few primary votes.

Something I realized as I was looking over my links is that Riverbend (Baghdad Burning) has not posted since late October 2007. I keep checking her blog, hoping to see some word on where she is. Nothing. I'm afraid of what the answer might be. She had a two month visa at the end of October. It's now two months beyond that deadline. This is how her last post ends:

By the time we had reentered the Syrian border and were headed back to the cab ready to take us into Kameshli, I had resigned myself to the fact that we were refugees. I read about refugees on the Internet daily… in the newspapers… hear about them on TV. I hear about the estimated 1.5 million plus Iraqi refugees in Syria and shake my head, never really considering myself or my family as one of them. After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or Internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside, it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own... especially their own.

We live in an apartment building where two other Iraqis are renting. The people in the floor above us are a Christian family from northern Iraq who got chased out of their village by Peshmerga and the family on our floor is a Kurdish family who lost their home in Baghdad to militias and were waiting for immigration to Sweden or Switzerland or some such European refugee haven.

The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too... Welcome to the building.”

I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.

Bloggers Without Borders...

This is the Bush legacy, father and son. This is what Cheney and the neocons would gladly do to every being on the planet. Are these the ideas you thought were so awesome, Barry? Is this what you think is a pretty darn good way to run the White House, just like Saint Ronnie would do? Are these the people you intend to invite into your administration, and seat in your cabinet, and get all warm and bipartisan with? Because this is the core of the Republican Party.

Anglachel