Mike Davis, the author of Planet of Slums, has a new piece up at The Nation about the science, economics, and politics of global climate change.  If you haven’t yet read it, you should.  But be warned: he paints a bleak portrait.  

When the chips are down and the decisions are made as to who the candidates will be, then the 11th commandment prevails and everybody goes to work, and that is: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.

-- Ronald Reagan

The chips are down my friends.

Our nominee has been chosen.  And from now until November, the 11th commandment -- revised leftward, of course -- is in effect.

Thou shalt not speak ill of another Democrat.  Specifically, thou shalt not speak ill of Barack Obama (or Michelle Obama, or the Obama campaign, or Obama volunteers, or Obama supporters...).  Capiche?

Now that the chips are down, we have a job to do: Elect Barack Obama as our 44th President.  

And we will only have a harder time doing that job if people on the left are echoing conservative talking points about Obama.

So...

Here we are; the endgame.  

The primary Kabuki Theater is in full swing.  On the surface, both candidates are being more-or-less gracious to their opponents.  Clinton talks a good game about party unity, while Obama speaks highly of Clinton, talks about her candidacy as "groundbreaking," and says that she should feel free to stay in the race through the end.  Best friends.  

Below the surface, or behind the scenes, the campaigns and their surrogates are still fighting tooth and nail.  For what?  Well, it is little secret that Clinton wants to be the Vice President, and Obama doesn’t want her on the ticket.  So Clinton and her surrogates are leaking stories, sending Bill out to talk about sexism and "disrespect," ginning up resentments amongst Floridians, white women, Appalachian voters, and whoever else seems like a potential "anti-Obama" constituency, and talking about how Obama "loses in November."  They want to force Obama into a corner, and make it impossible for him to say no to Clinton as VP.  Obama’s campaign, for its part, is parrying these thrusts, leaking their VP short-list, and sending surrogates out to tamp down speculation about Clinton as VP.  

More after the jump.

Last week, I had a pretty upsetting conversation with my mom about my grandfather.  

She and my sister had just returned home from his house in Baltimore, where they had been helping him with some errands.  While there, my mom decided, "against [her] better judgement," to bring up the election with my grandfather  (She just can't resist an opportunity to talk up Obama :-)  

Wasting no time, my grandfather said definitively (as is his custom...) that if Clinton is the nominee, he will vote for her; but if Obama is the nominee, he will vote for McCain.  This shocked my mom, as she never would have thought my grandfather would vote for Clinton.  After all, the man worked for Barry Goldwater way back when.  

take the jump ~        

As a staunch Obama supporter who just gave the last two months of my life to the campaign, I say: QUIT IT, ya'll!  Quit it with the classist comments about West Virginia.  It's one thing to talk about the relative virulence of white supremacism in West Virginia; it's another to start talking about in-breeding and slack jaws.  I am quite confident that we all know where the line is.  So hows about we all start respecting it.  Right about NOW.  

Ok. Now that my Public Service Announcement is done, I'd like to share some pictures from the great state of West Virginia.  

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Don't know if I can find a transcript or video, but I just saw Howard Wolfson on Chris Wallace's show this morning.  Wallace was running through the standard fare: Clinton's comments about "hard working, white Americans," Florida and Michigan, the all-but foregone conclusion of the nomination campaign, Clinton's debt, the question of the "dream ticket," etc....

When Wallace asked about how Clinton could win the nomination, this is, more or less, what Wolfson said:

"It starts with West Virginia.  WV is an important state, one that democrats should fight to win in November."  Wallace didn't press him any further (in my mind: "OK, Howard, it STARTS with WV, but after you pick up a handful of delegates there, how do you overcome the massive delegate lead that Obama has already accrued?).

Then, later in the show, Wolfson returned to the theme of West Virginia's importance.  

At this point in the show, he started laying into Obama: Why is he "writing WV off," why can't he close the deal, what if he loses WV badly after having emerged as the front runner, what will that say about him as a candidate, etc. etc.  Wolfson seemed pretty pissed and, dare I say it, bitter.  

More after the jump.  

 This Tuesday, I was in Northwest Indiana, helping coordinate a massive GOTV canvass for Obama's campaign.  

When I came into the office in the wee hours of the morning, some friends of mine in the office showed me an internet news article, accompanied by this picture:

By seabrook at 2008-05-07

This image momentarily put me on edge.  But, soon after seeing it, I forgot all about it, as I re-immersed myself in the world of "turfs," "tiering," "canvass training," and the rest.  

More below...

Ok. Here is my take on what has been happening around here.  

First of all, we are all dead tired of this primary campaign.  It has gone on too bloody long, and Democrats' feelings toward each other have started to sour.  As Matt Stoller has said, each primary since February has resulted in the most annoying and inconclusive possible outcome, and there is no reason to believe that this trend will not continue through to June.  Not to mention the fact that the superdelegates very well might not take decisive action after the voting ends, so it is possible that this thing could go all the way to the convention.  

Second of all, and more pertinently, people just went through a roller-coaster with Jeremiah Wright's recent appearances and Obama's interview on Fox News.  Watching the zeitgeist on this site over the past few days has been pretty entertaining, but also troubling....

(Keep reading for the motivational shpiel below)  

I didn't watch the debate last night.  Instead of being at home in the evening, I was in York, PA, an hour away from my hometown of Gettysburg, talking with the regional field director for the Obama campaign about our GOTV plans.  I didn't watch the debate last night because I am helping get Barack Obama nominated.

But after I got home late last night, I checked into Daily Kos and found the site awash with (apparently justifiable) anger at ABC, George and Charlie, Clinton, Hannity, et al.  And this morning, the gnashing of teeth continues.  

Take the jump...

Soon, Barack Obama should be officially named the Democratic nominee for President.  

When that happens, the Democratic party will unify around our nominee, and turn our collective ire against John McCain.

And if our party has a coordinated and effective message, we should be able to knock McCain off of his stride and cripple his chances in November, especially since he will not have a deep warchest with which to defend himself.

With one voice, loud and clear, we should say: "John McCain is unfit to lead."  

Today's revelation that Hillary Clinton is (subtly) invoking Barack Obama's race in her private appeals to party leaders got me thinking about Hillary Clinton's psychology.  

In recent months, Clinton's psychology has really been an enigma for me.  I didn't understand what kept her going despite the increasingly slim odds that she would be nominated.  And, more than that, I didn't understand why she was putting her reputation amongst Democrats on the line by attacking Obama from the right.  The arguments that she was, deep down, a neo-conservative, or that she was allying with McCain to ensure that Obama would lose this November just didn't add up to me.  She had spent too much time working on center-left issues over the years, had staked out a bold healthcare plan in this election cycle, and generally seemed to care too much about the fate of the Democratic party for these explanations of her behavior to make sense.    

But today's revelation that Hillary Clinton thinks -- in essence -- that America is not ready to elect a black president suddenly made everything click into place for me.  

I'm a native Gettysburgian (PA), and am back home from Chicago for the next few weeks, helping out with the Adams County for Obama group.  Our highest priority right now is getting people who want to vote for Obama registered as democrats.  Right now, there are voter registration drives going on at Gettysburg College, at the local campus of the Harrisburg Area Community College, by phone (we have a list of registered indys), by personal appeals, and by canvassing.  Tonight we are having our first meeting with a paid Obama staffer -- hopefully, he will help get us even better organized than we already are.  

I wanted to use this diary as a sort-of clearinghouse on PA registration issues.  Hopefully, you will find it useful in some way.  If you do, consider rec-ing it up so that the larger community can make an impact today on the PA primary.  

There is a new essay up at The Nation about transformational politics that is worth a read.  In it, Eric Schneiderman offers a critique of 'checklist liberalism,' and suggests ways for activist/grassroots organizations to help move the political center of gravity in this country to the left.  Early in the essay, Schneiderman gives a good explanation of transformational politics:

Transformational politics is the work we do today to ensure that the deal we can get on gun control or immigration reform in a year--or five years, or twenty years--will be better than the deal we can get today. Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities. It requires us to root out the assumptions about politics or economics or human nature that prevent us from embracing policies that will make our lives better. Transformational politics has been a critical element of American political life since Lincoln was advocating his "oft expressed belief that a leader should endeavor to transform, yet heed, public opinion."

 

So I've been sitting in the Fort Myers (FL) airport since noon today, waiting for a flight back to Chicago.... It's been delayed because of the weather in the Baltimore/Washington area (our plane is coming from there).  All day, I've been doing my best to avoid thinking about Chicago (the weather, my work, etc.), so have been doing what I always do when I want to get my mind off of my 'real' life.  Read blogs and think about the election.  

At about 6PM today, I had a bit of a vision.  Maybe the heat down here is just getting to me, or maybe it's because I've only eaten a potato, a spring roll, and some chex mix since breakfast, but while reading the blogs and checking up on Obama's website, I had the following vision: John Edwards, in Ohio tomorrow, standing next to Barack Obama, endorsing him for POTUS.

My rationale below the fold...

This is going to be brief.

What Obama did in Wisconsin this past Saturday was not plagiarism.  Anyone who says that it was, is full of it.  Not only are they full of it, they are basically falsely accusing him of a crime that he did not commit.  That doesn't rank highly in my book.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about plagiarism:

Right now, the nomination is all about the 2 "Big Mo's" -- momentum and money.  As BooMan has pointed out, the upcoming primary schedule is favorable to Obama, meaning that he should pick up some momentum in the coming month.

And as tsackton has pointed out, Clinton is starting to self-finance, meaning that she is in some serious financial trouble.  Money is going to make a big difference in the coming months, as it will determine whether a candidate can make significant ad buys in the primary and caucus states, and can pay for needed staff in all of these states.  As shown in Iowa, when Obama has a chance to put his ads on television and to finance a major organizing effort, he does quite well.  

(Take the poll after the jump)
 

... and then vote for him.  

The following is a slightly modified version of an email I recently sent to some friends of mine who are Kucinich supporters (and who have been trying to convince me not to vote for Obama).

There is much that Barack Obama stands for, has done, or might do if elected president that I find objectionable.   Below the fold, I've included a partial list:

The following is a letter that I just sent to the editor at NBC (letters@msnbc.com):

Dear Editor,

I am writing to inform you that, based on Chris Matthews' performance over the past few days, I have decided never again to watch any show in which he appears.  The statements he made about Hillary Clinton last night and this morning reflect very poorly on NBC.

I will break my boycott if the following conditions are met:

1. Chris Matthews apologizes to the nation generally, as well as to Hillary Clinton specifically, for his sexist comments.

2.  Mr. Matthews' behavior changes drastically, and for an extended period of time.    

Thank you for taking my decision into account when considering your employee review of Mr. Matthews.

Sincerely,

Seabrook Armstrong
Chicago, IL