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The Huffington Post, February 7, 2008

Jack Nicholson phoned up LA’s ‘Rick Dees in the Morning’ Monday morning to publicly announce his support for Hillary Clinton:

“I wanted to, as a performer, see how Sen Clinton dealt with the glee that they (her opponents) exhibited in their desire to bury her candidacy.” Said Nicholson. “I must tell you: when I saw her sit down, and she said she ‘found her voice in New Hampshire’, that was it for me. She handled that next debate as the masterful person that she is. She’s the one to get the job done that needs to be done.”

Dees was equally as thrilled with Senator Clinton calling into the show to thank Nicholson for his endorsement, and to thank them both for the opportunity to reach out to Southern California listeners.

“This was so special for me, to have an Academy Award winning Actor like Jack Nicholson and Senator Clinton on the show talking about change and shaping our nation. This was a top five moment in my radio career”, said Dees. Rick continued noting, “It was a good thing Hillary was the 100th caller”.

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Joe Conason, Salon, February 7, 2008

John McCain’s gleeful proclamation on Tuesday evening that he is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination could only have intensified the despairing rage of his party’s far right. For months the zealots have watched helplessly as the Arizona senator, who built his maverick reputation by taunting and tweaking them, clambered back into contention by humbling their would-be champions. Suddenly, the conservative cause found its last hopes reposing in the likes of Mitt Romney, a dubious convert, and Mike Huckabee, a suspect populist.

That desperate situation, which displayed the political disarray of their movement, only got worse for conservatives as McCain moved inexorably closer to victory on Tuesday night. And now they will have to listen to his claim that he is a legitimate heir to Ronald Reagan and decide whether to line up dutifully behind a man they have despised for a decade.

Certainly there will be many elected officials, bureaucrats, officeholders and assorted pork-choppers who will fall into the McCain ranks without much protest, out of personal interest or partisan loyalty. If conservatives could persuade themselves to accept Romney’s professions of the true faith despite his record of support for abortion rights and gay rights, then why not believe McCain when he promises supply-side tax cuts?

As Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, James Dobson and their lesser imitators furiously explain, they have strong reasons to distrust “straight talker” McCain, who straddles and shifts incessantly to advance his contrarian political strategy. He has so casually disrespected them and their opinions over the years, showing up routinely on the wrong side of so many of their issues, from climate change to gun control to campaign finance reform to the marriage amendment to the Bush tax cuts to judicial nominations, that endorsing him now would look like a wholesale abandonment of principle.

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Adam Nagourney, The New York Times, February 6, 2008

The Republican and Democratic presidential contests began diverging Tuesday, leaving the Democrats facing a long and potentially divisive nomination battle and the Republicans closer to an opportunity to put aside deep internal divisions and rally around a nominee.

The differing situations for the Republicans and Democrats have clear implications for both parties as they begin to move from the nomination battle toward the general election.

On the Democratic side, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama seem likely to continue their state-by-state struggle, after a night of tit-for-tat division of states and delegates, though Mrs. Clinton claimed the formidable prize of California.

But after months of disarray, Republicans seemed closer to coalescing around Senator John McCain of Arizona. As Mr. McCain logged victories in populous states, including California, and added more delegates to his count, he moved nearer his goal of wrapping up his competition with Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. A third Republican candidate, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, underlined Mr. Romney’s weakness by posting a series of victories, in a performance that highlighted the discomfort social conservatives have with the field.

Mr. Huckabee’s relatively strong showing was both a blessing and a curse for Mr. McCain, though perhaps more of a blessing. It injected a small note of uncertainty into the Republican race, and potentially delayed the day when Mr. McCain would have the stage to himself. But Mr. Huckabee appeared to drain votes primarily away from Mr. Romney, contributing to his overall weak showing on this night.

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Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, February 5, 2008

It may be the best sideshow in presidential politics: the nation’s top radio talker trying to take down the Republican front-runner in today’s Super Tuesday showdown.

Rush Limbaugh has been relentless in his criticism of John McCain, prompting suggestions that he may have to soften his stance if the Arizona senator wins the nomination and faces off against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But if that happens, Limbaugh said in an interview over the weekend, he would rather see the Democrats win the White House.

“If I believe the country will suffer with either Hillary, Obama or McCain, I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit . . . rather than a Republican causing the debacle,” he said. “And I would prefer not to have conservative Republicans in the Congress paralyzed by having to support, out of party loyalty, a Republican president who is not conservative.”

When it comes to the McCain mutiny, Limbaugh has plenty of company on the right side of the dial. Laura Ingraham endorsed Mitt Romney last week, saying, “There is no way in hell I could pull the lever for John McCain.” Sean Hannity, who also endorsed the former Massachusetts governor, regularly rips McCain. Hugh Hewitt is urging the audience for his syndicated radio show to fight for Romney against what he calls a media-generated “McCain resurrection.” But with a program heard on 600 stations, including Washington’s WMAL, Limbaugh is the loudest and brashest voice inveighing against the man he derides as “Saint John of Arizona.”

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Paul Krugman, The New York Times, February 4, 2008

The principal policy division between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama involves health care. It’s a division that can seem technical and obscure — and I’ve read many assertions that only the most wonkish care about the fine print of their proposals.

But as I’ve tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates’ approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I’ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.

Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost.

Let’s talk about how the plans compare.

Both plans require that private insurers offer policies to everyone, regardless of medical history. Both also allow people to buy into government-offered insurance instead.

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Jason Linkins, The Huffington Post, February 3, 2008

Candidates on the campaign trail are frequently faced with any number of tough questions and confronted on all sorts of difficult and divisive issues. But only Hillary Clinton has had to face down the harrowing prospect of earning the support of wackadoodle dandy Ann Coulter. When asked to respond to the news by George Stephanopoulos, Clinton was either forced to choke back a dollop of gorge or else found the prospect so amusing that it prompted a coughing jag. Anyway, who can blame Clinton for reacting the way she did? It definitely “humanizes” her!

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Frank Rich, The New York Times, January 3, 2008

Before John F. Kennedy was a president, a legend, a myth and a poltergeist stalking America’s 2008 campaign, he was an upstart contender seen as a risky bet for the Democratic nomination in 1960.

Kennedy was judged “an ambitious but superficial playboy” by his liberal peers, according to his biographer Robert Dallek. “He never said a word of importance in the Senate, and he never did a thing,” in the authoritative estimation of the Senate’s master, Lyndon Johnson. Adlai Stevenson didn’t much like Kennedy, and neither did Harry Truman, who instead supported Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri.

J. F. K. had few policy prescriptions beyond Democratic boilerplate (a higher minimum wage, “comprehensive housing legislation”). As his speechwriter Richard Goodwin recalled in his riveting 1988 memoir “Remembering America,” Kennedy’s main task was to prove his political viability. He had to persuade his party that he was not a wealthy dilettante and not “too young, too inexperienced and, above all, too Catholic” to be president.

How did the fairy-tale prince from Camelot vanquish a field of heavyweights led by the longtime liberal warrior Hubert Humphrey? It wasn’t ideas. It certainly wasn’t experience. It wasn’t even the charisma that Kennedy would show off in that fall’s televised duels with Richard Nixon.

Looking back almost 30 years later, Mr. Goodwin summed it up this way: “He had to touch the secret fears and ambivalent longings of the American heart, divine and speak to the desires of a swiftly changing nation — his message grounded on his own intuition of some vague and spreading desire for national renewal.”

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Robert Parry, Consortium News, February 2, 2008

Barack Obama argues that the Democrats will have a better chance for victory in November if they have a presidential nominee who opposed the Iraq War from the start and who can contrast that judgment against John McCain’s enthusiasm for a centuries-long U.S. occupation of Iraq.

What Sen. Obama didn’t say out loud, but what Democratic voters surely recalled was the endless baiting of John Kerry for having been “for the war before he was against it,” earning a place – as George W. Bush put it – “in the flip-flop hall of fame.”

Hillary Clinton would be open to similar attacks since she voted in 2002 to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq and remained a staunch war supporter almost until the eve of Campaign 2008, when she realigned herself with the anti-war sentiments of rank-and-file Democrats.

She was for it, for it and for it – before she was finally against it.

But another factor that plays to Obama’s advantage as the prospective nominee – when compared to Hillary Clinton – is that the Right’s powerful media apparatus and the Republican attack strategies appear less successful against Democrats with strong oratorical skills and the ability to inspire enthusiasm and passion.

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Nate Anderson, ARS Technica, February 01, 2008

Michael Weiner has a radio show. For obvious reasons, he has chosen to do the show under the name Michael Savage instead, and “The Savage Nation” attracts a few million listeners per week. They listen, in part, to hear Savage rant on conservative topics. On October 29, 2007, listeners were rewarded with this bit of enlightened monologue on the topic of Muslims:

What kind of world are you living in that you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate. Don’t tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation. I don’t need reeducation. Deportation not reeducation. You can take CAIR and throw them out of my country. I’d raise the American flag, and I’d get out my trumpet if you did it. Without due process. You can take your due process and shove it… Wherever you look on the Earth there’s a bomb going off or a car going up in flames, and it’s Muslims screaming for the blood of Christians or Jews or anyone they hate.

There’s more… much more (Savage believes that “90 percent of them are on welfare,” for instance), and it’s not surprising that the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) might have a different view. CAIR posted a four-minute excerpt of this show on its website along with a rebuttal, and Savage then filed a lawsuit against the group, alleging copyright infringement.

Savage’s legal filing stands in a class by itself. Little of the filing talks about copyright at all; the vast majority is an extended rant about “CAIR and it’s [sic] terror connections” and how the group was “tied to terror from the day it was formed.”

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Paul Krugman, The New York Times, February 1, 2008

So John Edwards has dropped out of the race for the presidency. By normal political standards, his campaign fell short.

But Mr. Edwards, far more than is usual in modern politics, ran a campaign based on ideas. And even as his personal quest for the White House faltered, his ideas triumphed: both candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform Mr. Edwards built.

To understand the extent of the Edwards effect, you have to think about what might have been.

At the beginning of 2007, it seemed likely that the Democratic nominee would run a cautious campaign, without strong, distinctive policy ideas. That, after all, is what John Kerry did in 2004.

If 2008 is different, it will be largely thanks to Mr. Edwards. He made a habit of introducing bold policy proposals — and they were met with such enthusiasm among Democrats that his rivals were more or less forced to follow suit.

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Greg Mitchell, Pressing Issues, February 1, 2008

We know the far right is upset with McCain as nominee but this is really going too far: Ann Coulter asserting that if he gets the nomination she would not only “vote for” Hillary, she would “campaign for her if it’s McCain.” She tells Sean Hannity that Clinton “is more conservative than he is” and adds that in that scenario “she will be our girl.” As president she would be “stronger in the war on terrorism” and would not pull the troops out of Iraq, pointing out that she jumped to her feet at the State of Union speech when Bush said the surge was working. Hannity says: “McCain did support the war.” She points out: “So did Hillary.”

Alan Colmes says Hillary would say “no” to the campaign offer. But Coulter goes on: “Hillary is absolutely more conservative” and moreover “she lies less than John McCain. And she’s smarter than John McCain so when she lies she knows it….John McCain is not only bad for Republicans he is also bad for the country.” Hannity doesn’t agree.

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