I have a lot of respect for what Tom Daschle has done behind-the-scenes for Barack Obama. This Washington Post story suggests that he is urging Obama to pick a Clinton supporter like Strickland, Clark, or Bayh be his running mate for the sake of party unity.
In addition to the fledgling attempts to merge the fundraising operations of Obama and Clinton, there is growing talk that the best -- and perhaps only -- way to truly mend the rift is for Obama to pick a top Clinton surrogate as his vice presidential nominee.
"There's gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket," said one Obama ally in Washington. "You hear the names [Ohio Gov. Ted] Strickland, [Indiana Sen. Evan] Bayh, and [retired general] Wes Clark almost constantly, and it's no secret that Jim Johnson and Tom Daschle are purveyors of that wisdom."
If the Washingtonpost is correct and this is Tom Daschle's argument, I think he may be wrong on this one.
In 1938, Nevelle Chamberlin appeased Hilter by giving him half of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement. Hitler took advantage and invaded the rest of europe.
In 2003, McBush appeased Iran by replacing an Iraqi regime hostile to Iran with one sympathetic to Iran. Iran took advantage and armed insurgents to kill the very Americans who knocked off their biggest competitor.
McBush helped Ahmadinejad as much as Chamberlin helped Hitler
Keith and others are showing a lot of justifiable outrage at Bush's reasons for (*UPDATE per Keith - pretending to )give up golf.
But there is another piece of the story. Is Bush lying by neglecting to tell us that this this clip from Fahrenheit 9/11 is the real reason he (pretended) to give up golf?
Ok, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this one.
The Prince of Darkness, Robert Novak, is"reporting" that Mike Huckabee is giving a nod and a wink to evangelicals who think that Obama should be allowed to win in order to bring a biblical plague upon on the US that would then be saved by Mike Huckabee in 2012.
An element of the Christian community is not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regards the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a Biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate" running for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee's course.
So this whole idea of Obama helping to retire Hillary's debt is controversial. Many argue that the Clintons have enough money and they don't need Obama's help. Fair enough.
But I have an idea by which Obama could retire Hillary's debt and get his money's worth.
Once Obama is the nominee, the two of them should go on a unity campaign tour together.
They should appear in big rallies that will double as small dollar fundraisers to retire Hillary's debt.
Hillary gets her debt retired and Obama gets a strong show of support from Hillary.
So while we fight about whether Hillary has played the race card again or not, John McCain is airing an ad featuring his mom on ABC Family, A&E, Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, Oxygen and TLC.
Yeah, it's a cute, feel good ad. But we need to know why John McCain is doing this. He is trying to take advantage of disappointment female voters may have with Hillary's likely loss and ingratiate himself to this group.
Buried in that response memo from Mark Salter is a most curious argument:
Senator Obama is hopeful that the media will continue to form a protective barrier around him, declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race.
Senator Obama has good reason to think this plan will succeed, as serious journalists have written of the need for ‘de-tox’ to cure ’swooning’ over Senator Obama, and others have admitted to losing their objectivity while with him on the campaign trail.
Kos community, let's all cry a tear over BBQ McCain's bad press coverage.
I think we have to be empathetic to how hard this has to be be for the Clintons. They must feel like Tom Brady did when the Giants rushed on to the field. They must feel betrayed by a party they think owed them for all they did in the 90's.
So what do we do to unify the party? There are a lot of good ideas - stop Clinton bashing, give them space, retire their debt, hire their staffers, etc. Some say unity ticket, but I think that this would be mistake for a variety of reasons. But whether Hillary ends up VP, Senate Majority Leader, Supreme Court Justice or whatever, a consolation prize is still a consolation prize.
But I have an idea that I think might get the Clintons to go beyond the motions and truly work their hearts out for Obama. Obama should promise Bill and Hillary now that when he wins, Chelsea will be given a job in an Obama White House. Obama will become political mentor and door-opener for Chelsea in a party that will now be his. Combining the talents of the Clintons with the mentorship and imprimatur of Obama, Chelsea would be well-positioned to seek high political office someday and even become a future President.
Although I have found Rev. Wright's media tour to be both enthralling and edifying, I disagree with his comments that people are attacking not him, but the black church itself.
To say that the media is attacking the black church is to imply that the media is primarily motivated by racism. But I don't think the media is really offended one bit by Wright's views on America, race relations, HIV/AIDS, Isreal, Farrakhan and the rest. They know damn well he is not the caricature they have drawn in the public's eye.
I think there are only three words spoken by Jeremiah Wright repeatedly over the last several days that truly offend the press: "Corporate-owned media"
If the national political media is a "village," Joe Klein often plays the role of village idiot, endlessly pumping out "analysis" laden with error and psychobabble.
But Klein just wrote a truth rarely heard in the traditional media in the course of a back-and-forth he is having with Josh Marshall about whether McCain can still be viewed as running an honorable campaign when he is playing the Hamas and Ayers cards:
If McCain wants to go that route, I can suggest another: that John McCain is probably the favorite candidate of Osama bin Laden, just as George W. Bush was Osama's presidential preference. Why? Because both Bush and McCain have bought Osama's disinformation about Iraq being the central front in the war on terrorism. Of course, bin Laden wants the gullible neocons to take the Iraq bait because Afghanistan really is the central front of the war on terrorism--more precisely the Afghan-Pakistani border areas where the real Al Qaeda lives. The war in Iraq has been a grand strategic gift to Osama, keeping the U.S. military tied down elsewhere and off his tail.
After PA, it seems like every concern troll of a pundit has a pet theory about why Obama lost. Maybe it was race and Wright (never mind that Obama went up with whites compared to OH). Maybe it was Bittergate (never mind that Obama went up with rural voters since Ohio). Maybe it's because of eonomic policy differences, even though they are nearly identical. Blah blah blah.
My reading of the exit poll data tells a different story. The PA electorate was very old, very white, and very female. More people said they voted based on gender than on race. Many voted for Hillary despite saying that they thought she uttacked unfairly, that she is neither honest nor trustworthy, and that Obama is going to win the nomination anyway. This tells me that short of a sex change operation, there is little that Obama can do to get some of these voters who are with Hillary no matter what in the primary. However, it is very much an open question how many we can bring back into the fold in the general...but there are a lot of reasons it looks good....
Sure, many of us are down right right now. There is no doubt we lost the media spin battle on this one. Folks put her over/under around 8-9 points, she nearly got 10 and she has bragging rights, some new cash, and day of good headlines.
There's just one problem with this analysis. Despite Wright, despite Bittergate, despite the ABC Debate, despite triple teaming by Hillary, McCain, and the media, exits polls show that Obama improved his performance among voters earning <50K/year, white voters, rural voters, and seniors compared to OH. These improvements in voter groups considered weaker for him were what allowed him to keep this race at the same 10 point deficit he had in Ohio, despite the fact that PA is older, whiter, and more rural than Ohio. </p>
If you are a superdelegate looking at the PA results in terms of electability, you should be somewhat pleasantly surprised that Obama managed to improve his standing among these groups despite all the crap thrown at him in the last six weeks.
So on the night before possible elimination of Hillary as a candidate, she chooses to use valuable time to be interviewed by Keith Olbermann, her harshest critic among cable news anchors.
Why would she do this? Does she think that undecided PA swing voters watch Countdown? I doubt it. She knows that progressive Obama supporters watch the show and there is little chance she would be able to sway one voter who regularly watches the show.
I am worried she is doing the show to make news by getting into a confrontation with Keith Olbermann that will allow her to play victim in the campaign's closing hours. Perhaps there will be an angry confrontation or Hillary feigning offense and umbrage at a question. If a manufactured moment is dramatic enough, it will be endlessly replayed on the late local newscasts and the early AM news shows as were the pre-NH tears. And Hillary will get her base revved up and try to repeat a NH-like last minute surge of older working class female voters coming out to rally around the aggrieved Hillary.
One could argue that the episodes are similar. Both involved comments at closed door fundraisers that could be used as fodder for gotcha politics.
But barely 24 hours after the story broke, you get the sense that the media is ready to let Hillary's comments about Moveon.org die. Quite a difference from "Bittergate," in which the media was eager to make Kerry-Dukakis elitism into media narrative du jour even though there is little evidence the voters are particularly outraged by what Obama said.
This despite that Hillary's comments are demonstrably worse than "Bittergate." Hillary's words had a clear lie - Moveon.org opposed Afghanistan. She contradicted earlier statements praising Moveon.org. Her comments channel Judas since Moveon.org helped save the Clintons during impeachment. Most importantly, Hillary just kicked the very groundtroops she would need if she were to be the nominee.
So why aren't the media jumping on this story like they did bittergate?
It was surreal watching MSNBC yesterday afternoon.
Pope Benedict's arrival was covered live. The plane landed. He was greeted by the Bushes. Cardinals, Archbishops, and other well-wishers kissed his hand on the tarmac.
And then it was the top of the hour and coverage of the Pope have way to John McCain on the Hardball College Tour.
After 20 minutes of deferential softballs from moderator and audience alike, Chris Matthews declared that it was finally time for a hardball question....Is Barack Obama an elitist?
I was expecting a question on McCain's flip flops on taxes, his lobbyist ties, his penchant for mixing up countries. But Chris really decided to get tough, didn't he? Is Barack Obama an elitist?
The images of the Pope's arrival minutes earlier came back to me, and I wondered....who gets more deferential press, John McCain or the Pope? And if the answer is McCain, is Chris Matthews his alter boy?
Why are Hillary, McCain, and the media are so persistent in trying to paint Obama as an elitist? His comments were pretty mild. He is not particularly wealthy. His manner of speaking isn't pedantic. He frequently says that he is not a perfect man and he won't be a perfect president.
When bittergate broke, my gut reaction was that most people are not going to view a charismatic black candidate who connects with voters so well as an "elitist." It neither fits the stereotype nor passes the smell test.
But then I read this diary by Granny Doc yesterday about how someone she met called Obama an "uppity n****r." And late last night, Bob Johnson came out of nowhere to stay that Ferraro had it right - Obama's success is because he is black.
A light bulb went off. Maybe the point of this feeding frenzy is not to caricature him as they did Kerry and Gore, but to appeal to a sense that Obama does not know his place. Maybe with their lead narrowing a week before PA. the Clintons are starting to push another round of race-baiting.
When bittergate was breaking Friday night, I wrote a diary about how I thought the controversy was a huge opportunity for Obama to make a powerful economic argument to low info, small town PA voters tuning in to see what the fuss is all about.
Not only could the controversy end up being a net positive for Obama, I am starting to wonder weather this story counterintuitively has the potential to propel Obama to an upset, race-ending victory in PA. Why?
The Clintons are nauseatingly overplaying their hand - will there be a backlash, especially in the socially progressive Philadelphia suburbs?
Obama's forceful response on Sunday night, pushing a strong economic populist message, mocking gun-praising Hillary as Annie Oakley, and hitting her on trade, bankruptcy, lobbyists, and use of republican talking points. Will it resonate in small town PA?
Obama's superior performance at the CNN Compassion Forum talking about faith in a genuine way.
Yes, we're playing the expectation game to lose, but maybe in the next 8 days we should (quietly) go for the knockout...can we do it?
