June 26, 2008
May 18, 2008
April 25, 2008
Paul Krugman: Self-Inflicted Confusion
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, April 25, 2008
After Barack Obama’s defeat in Pennsylvania, David Axelrod, his campaign manager, brushed it off: “Nothing has changed tonight in the basic physics of this race.”
He may well be right — but what a comedown. A few months ago the Obama campaign was talking about transcendence. Now it’s talking about math. “Yes we can” has become “No she can’t.”
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to play out.
Mr. Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an almost magical ability to transcend partisan differences and unify the nation. Once voters got to know him — and once he had eliminated Hillary Clinton’s initial financial and organizational advantage — he was supposed to sweep easily to the nomination, then march on to a huge victory in November.
Well, now he has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment — yet he still can’t seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class.
Comments Off
April 24, 2008
April 19, 2008
Frank Herbert: The Democrats’ Road Map to Defeat
Frank Herbert, The New York Times, April 19, 2008
The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can’t-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose.
Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P.
Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed.
That’s been it for the party for the past 40 years. The Democrats have become so psychologically battered by these many decades in the leadership wilderness that they consider the Clinton years, during which the president was impeached and they lost control of both houses of Congress, to have been a period of triumph.
Now comes 2008, a can’t-lose year if there ever was one. A united Democratic Party should be able to win this election in a walk. The economy is terrible and getting worse. The Republicans are demoralized. John McCain is no J.F.K. And the country wants to elect a Democrat.
Comments Off
March 7, 2008
David Sirota: Hope in the Time of NAFTA
David Sirota, TruthDig, March 6, 2008
Reading articles about Hillary Clinton attacking NAFTA can lead you to believe The Onion has taken over America’s news bureaus.
Clinton spent the last 10 years repeatedly praising the trade deal in speeches, most recently calling the job-killing accord “good for New York and America.” Yet, journalists barely mention that record as they transcribe her assertions that “I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning.”
This week, such media negligence went from pathetic to absurd, as a CNN headline blared, “Clinton hammers Obama on NAFTA.” Political scribes breathlessly recounted how the New York senator criticized her opponent-a longtime NAFTA critic-over a thinly sourced television report claiming his adviser, economist Austan Goolsbee, told Canadian officials to not take the campaign’s anti-NAFTA platform seriously. Clinton said the uncorroborated allegations, seeded by Canada’s right-wing government, showed “the difference between talk and action.” Most journalists regurgitated her charges without noting the difference between Clinton’s new fair-trade talk and her decade-long pro-NAFTA actions (nor did they note that the same report said Clinton advisers also did what Goolsbee was accused of).
Of course, Bill Clinton signed NAFTA after pledging to oppose expanded cross-border trade until Mexican wages rose. So Hillary Clinton’s dishonesty, which sealed her Ohio primary win, is nothing new in politics.
What is new is the fact-free coverage. Whereas diligent reporting marked the original NAFTA debate, today’s media reduce trade discussions to vapid cartoons-ones so inane that a leading NAFTA booster is rewarded with glowing headlines for pretending she never supported the accord.
Comments Off
Paul Krugman: The Anxiety Election
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, March 7, 2008
Democrats won the 2006 election largely thanks to public disgust with the Iraq war. But polls — and Hillary Clintons big victory in Ohio — suggest that if the Democrats want to win this year, they have to focus on economic anxiety.
Some people reject that idea. They believe that this election should be another referendum on the war, and, perhaps even more important, about the way America was misled into that war. That belief is one reason many progressives fervently support Barack Obama, an early war opponent, even though his domestic platform is somewhat to the right of Mrs. Clinton’s.
As an early war opponent myself, I understand their feelings. But should and ought don’t win elections. And polls show that the economy has overtaken Iraq as the public’s biggest concern.
True, the news from Iraq will probably turn worse again. Meanwhile, a hefty majority of voters continue to say that the war was a mistake, and people are as angry as ever about the $10 billion a month wasted on the neocons’ folly.
Yet for the time being, public optimism about Iraq is rising: 53 percent of the public believes that the United States will definitely or probably succeed in achieving its goals. So anger about the war isn’t likely to be decisive in the election.
Comments Off
March 6, 2008
Michael Smerconish: Candidates’ Pennsylvania Primer
Michael Smerconish, The Huffington Post, March 6, 2008
Welcome, Candidates! It’s been a long time since Pennsylvania mattered in a presidential contest and we are elated to host you. As your self-appointed advance man, I offer the following survival tips for your seven-week sojourn into the Keystone state:
Pronunciation matters. When in Philadelphia, make certain that Olney is “ahl-uh-nee,” Passyunk “pa-shunk” and the Schuylkill “skoo-kul.”
In central Pennsylvania, Juniata County is not akin to a Hispanic first name, but rather “joo-nee-atta.” In Pittsburgh, it’s spelled Monongahela, and pronounced the same way.
Sports. Work in a mention of the Eagles (pronounced “Iggles”) anytime traveling east of Harrisburg; reference JoePa whenever driving through or flying over central Pennsylvania, and describe the Immaculate Reception anytime subjected to a Q&A in Pittsburgh.
“Big Five” means basketball, and not the number of superdelegates controlled by city Democratic chairman Bob Brady.
Amish country: It’s beautiful, but you may want to avoid Intercourse, Pa., for press avails. Ditto Blue Ball.
Comments Off
March 2, 2008
Bob Herbert: A Democratic Nominee? Or a Debacle?
Bob Herbert, The New York Times, March 1, 2008
When does a dandy fight become an ugly brawl?
For the Democrats, perhaps on Tuesday.
If Barack Obama wins in either Texas or Ohio, the race for the nomination will effectively be over. At that point the Clintons, if they have any regard for the fortunes of the party, will be duty-bound to graciously fold their tents and try to rally their supporters behind a candidate who will be stepping into a firestorm of hostility from the other side.
If Hillary Clinton wins both Texas and Ohio, the Democrats will need a trainload of aspirin and a shrink.
The superdelegates currently sprinting toward Obama would suddenly look over their shoulders and wonder what happened to his O-mentum. The Clintons would declare themselves (yet again) the Comeback Kids, although they would still be behind in delegates. They would continue their push to have the Michigan and Florida delegations seated. They would step up their attacks on the Obama forces with understandable glee. And they would use whatever persuasive powers they could muster to push the idea with party regulars that Senator Obama is unelectable.
Comments Off
February 29, 2008
Ted Rall: Ralph Nader… Hope You Can’t Vote For
Ted Rall, AltWeeklies.com, February 28, 2008
“What,” editorializes U.S. News & World Report, “does Ralph Nader bring to the political dialogue this year? Answer: nothing except for his own inflated ego.” Dimestore psychoanalysis was the standard reaction to Nader’s third third-party presidential bid. “An ego-driven spoiler,” the Des Moines Register called him. “He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work,” jabbed Barack Obama.
You see, other politicians who seek the presidency are like the Dalai Lama, humble and self-effacing. Obama and Hillary? Two sweeties. Not an ounce of ego between them.
Even our former colonial masters put in their two pence. Nader’s “egotism and cult of left-wing purity has been an utter disaster for the values he affects to espouse,” railed the UK Independent. Nader’s values would fare better, apparently, were he to shut up and keep them to himself.
Is Ralph really a spoiler? To answer “yes,” you have to buy three assumptions:
Comments Off
February 22, 2008
John McCain’s Response to Lobbyist Scandal is Refuted by… John McCain
Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, February 22, 2008
A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.
On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman’s clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.
Just hours after the Times’s story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff – and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. “No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC,” the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.
But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. “I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue,” McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. “He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint.”
Comments Off
The Tattlesnake — Random Head-Slapping Flapdoodle Edition
– How’s That Drug War Working Out for You? Traces of cocaine can be found on 80 percent of the US currency in circulation, according to The Discovery Channel’s ‘Mostly True Stories’ series. Come on, folks, let’s increase the budget for the War on Drugs and get that number up to 90 or 95 percent.
– A Prediction: In 50 years all of the ugly truth will emerge about the Reagan and Poppy Bush presidencies, should the country survive, and they will be relegated to their proper places on the list of US presidents, lounging down near the bottom with Milliard Fillmore and James Buchanan. While you may find the occasional Ronald Reagan Memorial Corn Crib or George H. W. Bush State Penitentiary for the Insane in parts of the south and Midwest, the Reagan Airport in Washington will have a new name and the aircraft carrier that bears Bush Senior’s moniker will have turned into rust in dry dock. And what of Bush Junior, the worst president in our history? Americans will spit disgustedly after saying his name and he will have the distinction of coming in dead last on every presidential scorecard, if he manages to avoid jail. San Francisco has shone the way regarding appropriate memorials for Shrub’s occupations of the nation’s highest office – some of the city’s residents have plans to name a sewage treatment plant in his honor. Speaking of shrubs, perhaps a future landscaper will create Mount Bushmore – a large hedge trimmed to look like Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Newman reading ‘My Pet Goat.’
(more…)