...more recent posts
Josh has some thoughts on a WaPo interview with Clinton. She appears to be saying she will stay in until the convention where she'll fight to try to seat Florida and Michigan. The conventional wisdom is that this drawn out democratic primary hurts the dems. But suddenly I'm not so sure.
My one horse race belief that hasn't changed throughout this entire show is that Clinton's negatives, while obviously quite high, are still under reported. A lot of people really hate her. It doesn't exactly make sense, but anecdotally this is what I have found. And it's why I've always been against nominating her (in a year when otherwise republican turnout might be quite low.)
But maybe her staying in the race actually helps Obama. Especially if it's real nasty and comes down to spilling some blood on the convention floor. Obviously this will dominate the news. And my new feeling is that all the Clinton haters out there will be drawn, like magic, into empathizing with Obama. This is going to be a lot of independent swing voters and center leaning republicans. They want to see Clinton go down. If they need to vote for McCain to do it, they will. But if Obama can do it, especially after a long fight in which it looks like she might actually pull it out, then he'll be the hero. And he really will have beaten her in a final way since I don't think she's viable in 2012 or 2016 if she really drags the party through this all the way to the convention. She's rolling the dice very big, burning all her bridges, and if she fails then it's over. I could even imagine her losing her Senate seat (okay, probably not.)
You can probably tell I haven't thought this through so much yet, but what do you think? Is Clinton hatred really that strong? Can a long fight with Obama actually rally people to his side rather than tear the party apart? The more outrageous, nasty, and underhanded her campaign appears to be, the better for Obama? He'll be the one who killed the wicked witch.
Again, note, I don't think *I* have Clinton Derangement Syndrome. I like all of her domestic policies. I'm just saying I think CDS is real, and can move a lot of votes one way or the other.
Or to say it all the other way: if Obama had won NH and just swept to the nomination, I think he'd inherit a lot of the anti-dem feelings that are out there. But since these anti-dem feelings have their strongest manifestation as anti-Clinton feelings, by engaging in a long bloody struggle and beating her Obama actually becomes a hero to these anti-dem forces and picks up a lot of middle ground votes that might otherwise have gone to McCain.
I don't know for sure, but this sounds like an authentic blog from Baghdad detailing the fighting there for the last few days.
Alex was predicting this sort of meeting of the minds along time ago:
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — head of one of the most oppressive regimes in the world — has said that atheism is a “frightening phenomenon that must be vanquished”. He made the threat during a speech in which he called for dialogue between all monotheistic religions.
"I ask representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith," Abdullah told delegates to a seminar on "Dialogue Among Civilizations between Japan and the Islamic World," according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA). “If God wills it, we will then meet with our brothers from other religions, including those of the Torah and the Gospel... to come up with ways to safeguard humanity," he added.
A simple explanation for something I've wondered about:
Why, some wonder, is the U.S. closer to the Iran-backed ISCI and Badr Brigades than it is with the Sadrites? Why does this make sense? Two Baghdad political veterans have ruefully pointed out to Abu Muqawama that while Sadr has more popular support, the ISCI crowd have something more valuable: they speak English. One former State Department veteran with whom Abu Muqawama spoke a few months ago pointed out that former Iraq honcho Meghan O'Sullivan was particularly vulnerable to falling under the sway of those politicians who didn't just speak in that confusing gutteral language where they write from right to left in co-joined letters. Ergo: they speak English, so they must be our friends! Hoo-ray, democracy!
Bush: Iraq is returning to normal.
Oh thank God, finally, Mission Accomplished.
Excellent work Mr. President.
What a whack job. He is clearly determined to stick rusty nails in our psyches to the very end.
double secret probation extra-constitutional backside-fakie occupation without end "treaty"
ralph 2008 "pick a winner"
Dick Cheney, who in 2005 told us that the insurgency was "in the last throes, if you will," was asked last week about polls showing that two-thirds of Americans don't think the fight in Iraq is worth it. Cheney's response: "So?"
(And Act 2, where Lieberman corrects McCain)
The 71-year-old McCain's recent misstatement that al-Qaeda terrorists were being aided by the Iranian regime -- quickly corrected by Sen. Joseph Lieberman in a whispered aside -- might have been simply a senior moment. Or it might have reflected an intention to do something precipitous about Iran's growing stature in the region. Either way, scary.
saw samantha power on colbert tonight. she seemed smart and thoughtful. too bad she got caught up in the medias gotcha games.
jay rosen on beyond press self-neutering.
This just in, again.
Dershowitz on Spitzer at WSJ -- free today
Shorter: The government has ridiculously intrusive laws that are selectively enforced, but they should only be applied to real criminals, not people like us.
Admiral Fallon to resign. Bad bad news as far as I can tell. Maybe the next war is back on.
upsurge of anti-semitism in the media today.
your liberal blogosphere. i love how they are sitting in the dark with the symmetry of macs, beers and glasses. the middle guy is bucking the beard trend though.
On Real Time, Terry McCauliffe raised the specter of 9/11.
Fuck you, Terry.
Seriously.
Hillary, are trying to make me vote for Nader?
based on polling at the moment both hillary and obama beat mccain via the electoral process in surprisingly alternate fashions.
My cable tv went out. The box is trying to reboot, but it's been doing that for 30 minutes. Cable internet is fine though, so that's sort of weird. I guess it saves me from having to figure out which is the least bad cable network to watch the results on.
dont read kos as assiduously as i did but this special election for hasterts open seat in illinois caught my eye because its apparently winnable and because the democrat is a physicist. we need more diversity than just lawyers representing us.
anbar angie?
this op-ed must make a dittoheads explode with contradiction. notorious hollywood liberal in league with the UN and is concerned with displaced brown people thinks we should be cautious about our withdrawl from iraq for humanitarian reasons. wouldnt it just be simpler if we bombed them back to the stone ages?