Alright, so George W. Bush has the lowest approval rating ever in the history of public polling. As he's fond of saying, the previous winner, Harry S. Truman, has been looked upon far more approvingly by history, and he was involved in taking the United States into an unpopular proxy war in the midst of economic turmoil, a housing crisis, and what we would now call stagflation. So W. can't be all bad, er, right?

Before you start frantic troll-rating, let's just agree: Worst Ever. But for the basis of comparison, let's review the other candidates (below the flip) so we can put damage to the Republic, the Nation, and the Planet in appropriate context.

Some people compare the two top Democratic candidates this year to various Democrats from years past: McGovern, Hart, Dukakis, Kerry -- and Bill Clinton.  While you can make a case for various such analogies, the best comparison is actually to a couple of prominent Republicans, each of whom illuminates both one path to electoral success and the dangers of that path.

Hillary is "Our Nixon"; Obama is "Our Reagan."  That doesn't mean that either shares their Republican counterpart's ideology or flaws; neither truly does.  But comparing them in this way does shed light both on what each candidate's proponents see as their benefits, and what each candidate's detractors see as their deficiencies.

While I am an Obama supporter, I don't intend for this diary to be a slam on Hillary, and I think reading it through will bear that out.  But if it strikes you that calling her Our Nixon as opposed to Our Reagan tilts the scales towards Obama, then perhaps that is the beginning of insight.

It is 1970, near the end of the youth movement that started in the 1950s and boomed in the 1960s. High school and college students are protesting civil rights violations, inequality, the draft, bombing of foreign countries and U.S. government indifference toward the will of the people.

Frustration and anger filled the air at many a university and in many a home occupied by a teenager. Richard Nixon's election by and subsequent betrayal of the American people only fuel the fire.

A week after Nixon announces plans to bomb Cambodia, students around the country protest. At Kent State University, the protests reach a fevered pitch when the ROTC building catches fire and students gather around to cheer its symbolic destruction. The National Guard is called in, and arrests students who threw rocks at police officers or damaged fire department equipment.

The next day, amid more protests, the National Guard fires into a crowd of student protesters and hits 13.

Four are dead in Ohio.

That's what you get in the special on-line issue of In These Times   a magazine

dedicated to informing and analyzing popular movements for social, environmental and economic justice; to providing a forum for discussing the politics that shape our lives; and to producing a magazine that is read by the broadest and most diverse audience possible.

Just to give you the flavor of the jornal, when I renewed my subscription I got a free tee shirt with a cartoon of Kurt Vonnegut saying:

If it weren't for In These Times I'd be a man without a country.

 I still haven't really figured out what that is supposed to mean, but it is a really nice shirt.  Oh, getting back to Hillary for President, you may be wondering why such a journal would be saying anything like that.  Well look below and I'll explain.

I am moved to write this, I guess, by the passing of Dr. Hofmann, the father of LSD.  I am what an anthropologist of the '60s might call a hippie.  I wore my hair long.  I spent the last two years of high school, which I graduated in 1969, stoned out of my mind a good deal of the time.  I had several pairs of bell-bottoms, not the kind that you buy in the store, but the kind where you bought Levis from the Army/Navy store, and made a big slice around the ankle, and then sewed in some kind of bandanna.

I want to tell you that hippies are not what you think...

Under no circumstances was I going to vote for any Democratic Presidential candidate who voted for the ill-fated Iraq War Resolution. Even, if it meant that another tired-looking, middle-aged Republican was going to occupy the White House for another 4 years. I couldn't understand that 77 United States Senators, with sparkling credentials could be duped by a faux-Texan who invaded Iraq, not just for oil, but to avenge an assassination attempt on his father. How stupid can 77 people be? One, can suggest that the individuals who voted for this war were either blinded by blatant jingoism or scared of being labeled unpatriotic. I could think of nothing more patriotic than standing proud and tall in the United States Senate and voicing concerns for the war and demanding fellow citizens that they had a responsibility to stop this war before it even started. Yet, only one person brave enough to do that, while his other colleagues just sat in their seats with their thumbs up their asses. Robert Byrd gets ridicule for sounding like a pathetic old fart and having been a past member of the KKK, but on that day, he proved to me what it really means to be patriotic.    

Barack Obama has won the Democratic Party nomination and the Republican establishment is scared.

I can say this confidence. Why, you ask? Well, don't worry, this is not gonna be a rehash of electability arguments, or who or what played the race card, or what kind of shoes Barack's campaign bus driver wears. No, my metric is a simple one. Ratf***ing.

The urban dictionary defines ratf***ing as thus:

Politics: Formerly known as "the double-cross," it refers to infiltration and sabotage of the opposition party, particuarly during (but not limited to) an election campaign. The second half of "All the President's Men" describes ratfucking done to 1972 Democratic presidential candidates by employees of the Committee to Re-Elect Nixon.

Ken Clawson, Nixon's communications director, confessed to a ratfuck when he told how he forged a letter making it look like a Democratic candidate was a racist.

In only four months oil's made nearly 20% gain, gold has been one of the best investments of the last decade and you might want to stockpile your Costco food now, if you haven't already.

Unemployment claims spiked about 17,000 last week.

Know what these warning signs all point to?

It was near the end of June in the summer of 1973, about 3 weeks after my 15th birthday.  Summers were hot in Oklahoma.  In the air-conditioned comfort of our family room that summer, my political consciousness was born.  

A little while ago on Countdown (11 PM West Coast airing), Keith Olbermann interviewed John Dean about his new book on Barry Goldwater, co-authored with Barry Jr.  I think it was the first time I've actually seen Dean since that June that began it all for me.  I was struck with an overwhelming urge to write this diary.

There are those of us who remember the last elelction that had this kind of young voter turn out,

TRICKY DICK was elected, mostly by the young who "heard" his message of hope and change

boy wasn't that a huge success, HMO'S changes in insurance, the first of many deregulations,  just great stuff starting there....

In his 4/22/08 article "Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream" in The Nation, Tom Hayden makes some interesting points about how Hillary Clinton has betrayed her roots.

Read more.

President Nixon's daughter contributes maximum amount to Obama

Staff
AP News

Apr 22, 2008 10:02 EST

One of President Nixon's daughters, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, apparently supports a Democrat in this year's presidential contest — Barack Obama.

Eisenhower has contributed the maximum amount allowed during the primary season to Obama's campaign: $2,300. Federal Election Commission records show she gave Obama's campaign $1,000 on Feb. 4, another $1,000 on Feb. 18 and $300 on March 5.

One of her father's staunchest defenders during the Watergate scandal, she married the grandson of another Republican president, David Eisenhower, just before her father took office.

Since her father's resignation, she has written several books and is now co-chair of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace Foundation.
AP News

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/...

In a certain twisted way, it makes sense that Sen Hillary Clinton is taking an excruciatingly long time to acknowledge what polls and voters have ratified since February: she cannot win the Democratic nomination in 2008 and therefore will never be president.

As befits a sideways kind of New Yorker, if she does not make it here, she cannot make it anywhere. Obama is not going to fail renomination as incumbent president in 2012, and she will be too old in 2016 as well as having an incumbent vice-president to contend with. This horrid and implacable truth must haunt her.

Hers is a common problem in other lines of very public work. What we have here is the reluctant, resisted farewell tour of that once-hot rock band, The Clintons; and after this, they have to hang it up because -- despite all their practice -- their pipes are shot, they just can’t hit the notes anymore, and the public taste has moved beyond their smooth but superannuated act.

More Yet Below

A quick look at the other number, the Gallup disapproval rating, in historical context.

[Promoted by DHinMI: The press just loves to talk about how John McCain is so dreamy, partly because they refuse to face the fact that to get the nomination McCain has prostituted himself to the same lobbyists, televangelists and rightwing nutjobs that have captured the GOP over the last few decades.  Dean does a great job of showing the deep connections one of McCain's key finance people has to some of the more loathsome features of the Nixon administration.  It's a "bonus" that the guy is also a jerk]

Recently, cancer survivor Elizabeth Edwards made a brilliant observation about cancer survivor John McCain: that neither of them would be covered under McMaverick's do-nothing health care plan.

Well, according to McCain's National Finance Co-Chair Fred Malek, cancer patient Elizabeth Edwards shouldn't be talking about cancer in a political context:

(below the fold...)

I ran this snark back August 6th last year. L'amour reprise....

Hillary Clinton comes across as the Democratic Party's version of Nixon.

This Hillary even looks like Dick Nixon. Same blank political face.

One "Nixon" is enough.

The poll is the core idea of the snark.

Who in history would be the best match with Hillary ?

BTW: first time results surprised me. 54% of DKOS voters put Hillary with Nixon, Hitler or Cleopatra. I'd included Hitler as a joke -- didn't expect him to get votes.

Cleo got more votes, first time around, than Bill. And yes, Baghdad Bob is a new option. Hillary was not that funny back in August.

The more I think about it, the more I see huge similarities between Richard Nixon in 1968 and Hillary Clinton in 2008.  Both are figures that have a likeability problem and both would benefit from the unpopularity of the opposition party.  Lyndon Johnson was very unpopular in 1968 and George W. Bush is very unpopular now because of unpopular wars.  Despite these favorable conditions, Richard Nixon was only able to pull out a close 43%-42% victory in the fall over Johnson's VP, Hubert Humpherey.  At the same time Republicans made almost no gains in Congress.  

I have read people here describing Barack Obama's speech on race as "brilliant," "magnificent," and "moving."  I agree.  But I have also seen it referred to as "brave," "daring," even "heroic," and there I have to disagree.  I disagree for a simple reason.  Obama did not give the speech, as many here have posited, "when America needed to hear it."  He did not give the speech "because it was time to talk about race."  Obama gave that speech for one reason, and one reason only - to save his campaign.  The Rev. Wright videos were damaging his campaign, perhaps, if he did not stop the bleeding, to the point where superdelegates would consider him unelectable.

Heroism, quite simply, is not doing something brave to save yourself.  It is doing something brave selflessly.  Had Obama given that same speech two months ago he would have been heroic.  He would have been Martin Luther King trumpeting "I have a dream."  But he did not.  So, no matter how eloquently he spoke, he was really Richard Nixon saying "our little girl-Tricia, the 6-year old-named it Checkers.  And ... we're gonna keep it."