Sage Comments
From TPM Reader JS ...
I was one of the pure in heart who in 1968 could not bring myself to vote for Humphrey and voted for Cleaver instead. Politically it was the dumbest thing I've ever done. However, I did learn something: elections are about deciding who will be the next president, senator, governor or whatever, but they should not be psycho-dramas conducted to allow people to demonstrate their high-mindedness.Those supporters of HRC who cannot bring themselves to vote for Obama or vice versa will a few weeks into the McCain administration wake up and realize that they've been jackasses. Or, at least I hope they will realize it.
--Josh Marshall
More on Upsetting the Applecart
We've gotten a number of very interesting replies to the post below about Democratic primary campaign supporters who won't vote in the general or will vote for McCain if their preferred candidate does not win the nomination. One of the dissonant aspects of reading the emails is hearing from each side's supporters explain how the other candidate has demonstrably crossed the line into political perdition, etc. etc.
But one point has come up enough times that I think it's worth clarifying. A number of people have read what I wrote as saying that because Clinton and Obama basically agree on policy issues, they're interchangeable. So get over it.
But that's not what I'm saying.
Presidential leadership is not simply about policy stands. Certainly that's not the case in how elections actually work. Nor is it how things ought to be. There's a lot about the presidency beyond policy positions. And character does count. The problem is just that in this country we routinely seem to confine it to matters of sexual ethics and whether you happen to say something that can be distorted beyond imagining by sundry right-wing agitprop freaks.
In any case, I'm not saying they're interchangeable. Whichever you prefer, they're actually very different candidates. What I am saying is that no one can run away from the choice every American with the franchise will face in November. The next president will either be John McCain or the Democratic nominee. That's an immovable fact. Not voting or voting for some protest candidate doesn't allow anyone to wash their hands of that choice.
Now one reader, TPM Reader KK, wrote in and said that he supports Obama, isn't a Democrat, actually doesn't agree with a number of Obama's policy positions but believes he could change the tenor of politics in the country and through his election help shift the rest of the world's view of the US. For KK, if Obama doesn't win the nomination, I guess there really might not be any particular reason he'd vote for Clinton over McCain.
But I do not believe this is the case with the great, great majority of readers of TPM who are supporting either of these two candidates. I think most are Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents who ascribe to a series of policies now generally adhered to by members of the Democratic party. People for whom that applies have to decide whether the alleged transgressions of either candidate or their differences in tone, political style and so forth are so grave and substantial that they merit electing John McCain who stands on the other side of basically all of those issues.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader PJ shares his most feared scenario ...
Here's the scenario that I'm worried about...Let's suppose that Hillary has a very good day in Pennsylvania, perhaps a 15-20 point win. If that happens, there is no way the superdelegates are going to move to lock it down for Obama. It's likely that she will also do fairly well in Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky, chipping away at Obama's lead. She probably won't overcome his current margin, but she will be close enough to be able to make the case to the superdelegates that she has the momentum, and that the Pastor Wright mess renders Obama unelectable.
Thus, we go into the convention with a bitterly divided Party, with tensions running high, and both of our potential nominees battered and less able to take on McCain in November. The superdelegates will be in the very uncomfortable position of having to risk alienating the newly-inpspired and huge African-American and youth components of the Party if they hand the prize to Hillary Clinton. If they give the nod to Obama, the Clinton faction is going to raise all kinds of hell and may not be supportive of Obama in the general election.
IMHO, we are headed toward a very unhappy ending, and if I were a superdelegate I'd be inclined to slam-dunk it now for Obama. The Clinton camp would have no cause to complain; they started this campaign with 96 committed SD's who didn't even bother to take a look at the other contestants-- they were in Hillary's pocket from the start. It is also worth noting that the Clinton team was saying that they expected to wrap this whole thing up by Super Tuesday, so they are in no position to claim that the Obama SD's acted in haste. At the moment, Obama leads by every conceivable metric-- pledged delegates, popular vote, states won, caucuses won, and yes- primaries won. The uncommitted SD's who have been patient enough to witness 19 debates and 40 primaries could easily justify their decision to line up behind a nominee so we can begin to consolidate support for our general election candidate.
The fact that those superdelegates haven't pulled the trigger yet make me inclined to believe that they are going to let the process run its course, and I'm betting that when we reach July we are all going to wish that they had summoned up the wisdom and the courage to end it back in mid-March.
--Josh Marshall
Bank Transfers? Really?
From McClatchy ...
Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ''used the services of high-priced call girls'' while in Florida.The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ''a social contact in an adult-themed club.'' It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn't taken off his calf-length black socks ``during the sex act.''
Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton's presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.
--Josh Marshall
Goodbye, Cruel Ballot Box
To follow up on the emails I posted last night, it's worth saying that over the last couple months, during each campaign's moments of extremity, we've had supporters of each candidate (probably in roughly equal quantity) writing in and saying they wouldn't be able to vote for the opponent in the general election. In general I just think that people are deeply invested in the campaign (which is a good thing), and in moments of disappointment and frustration need some outlet, even if only expressed within themselves, to put some contemplated action to their angst. Threatening to upset the applecart in November is the most emotionally satisfying way to do that. Certainly too, when a campaign gets this intense and hard fought, there's just too much cognitive dissonance for people to be on the one hand seething at the other candidate and then also contemplating working for and voting for the same person.
So I see most of these promises as the emotional equivalent of things friends or lovers can say in the midst of heated fights -- the vast number of which they recant later and wish they'd never said.
Clearly though there are some people who really do mean it. A very small fraction I think, but there nonetheless. And there's really no better example of emotional infantilism that some people bring to the political process . One can see it in a case like 1968 perhaps or other years where real and important differences separated the candidates -- or in cases where the differences between the parties on key issues were not so great. But that simply is not the case this year. As much as the two campaign have sought to highlight the differences, the two candidates' positions on almost every issue is extremely close. And the differences that do exist pale into insignificance when compared to Sen. McCain's.
That's not to say that these small differences are reasons to choose one of the candidates over the other. But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn't win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one's ego-investment in one's candidate far outstrips one's interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one's position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.
--Josh Marshall
DT'S Plan B
[ed.note: A few readers seem to have had the misimpression that we might agree with DT's email. Ummm ... not so. And in case there's any question, most of DT's claims are patently false. Actually I'm not sure there's a single claim that has any factual validity to it. But sometimes I think it's worthwhile to know what folks on the fringes are thinking, especially when the fringes are growing in toward the center.]
From TPM Reader DT ...
I won't get upset about Hillary being called a loser. Why? Because I already have plan B figured out.I got really emotional about it before I realized that I would vote McCain and a straight top to bottom GOP lineup if Hillary isn't the nominee and leave the party if Florida isn't counted.
Its not about winning anymore. Its about whether the Democratic party and its anti democracy is worth defending or if the most liberal GOP presidential candidate in decade is a better use of my vote.
Obama has done the following
1) Sat idly by as Jessy Jackson Jr called Hillary a racist and Wright likened what Bill Clinton did to Monica to how he treated Black people.
2) Acted to avoid democracy both in caucuses and in Florida and Michigan
3) Threatened the party both in terms of his voters not voting and in terms of his supporters often threatened rioting in Colorado if the rules are followed where super delegates vote as they please or with the majority vote not as the pledged delegates which are mostly determined by caucuses.
4) Called anyone a racist who challenged his 2 years on the national scene as not being enough experience for commander in chief
5) Minimized the connections with Rezko while refusing to answer questions about what appears to be a $600,000 bribe that likely comes directly from a Saddam loyalist.
6) Claimed that his Independent and GOP voters are better than Hillary's Democrats.
In a revolution words don't matter. Actions matter. I am at peace with my voting actions come general election.
--Josh Marshall
Still Fightin'
TPM Reader MR disagrees ...
I have to say that I disagree with your entry stating that Clinton supporters have thrown in the towel and accepted that Barack Obama will be the nominee. Let me be clear, we will never back down until the fat lady sings. And that performance, which will be for the better, will be on the convention room floor. It will be an all out brawl!We're not backing down! The fight has just begun!!!! Pennsylvania is around the corner and a large victory is excepted. Polls in West Virginia also strongly favor her. Polls in North Carolina that have favored Obama are now virtually tied. There will be big surprises in North Carolina.
It's not over. And I might also point out how inaccurate the Politico article that you quoted/linked to really is. If the superdelegates support Clinton there will be "a backlash of historic proportions"!?!? THEY WOULD BE DOING THE JOB THEY WERE CREATED FOR, JOSH. The superdelegates weren't created to add fluff to the popular vote, but to make the educated decision that voters sometimes can't. They're there for the same reason the electoral college is. For example, picking a glorified motivational speaker over an experienced leader (good example, eh?). The SD's are there to put the better qualified and more electable candidate in charge. And in poll after poll, that's Hillary.
I'm sorry Josh, but you have it wrong.
--Josh Marshall
Step 8: Acceptance?
This will probably bring the emails out of the woodwork. And that's fine; we can take it. But usually when we publish something that doesn't reflect well on either of the remaining Democratic candidates (was the same when Edwards was still in) we get a flood of really not very happy emails from readers. Yet this afternoon, just before going to a meeting, I posted a link to The Politico article on Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the nomination and expressed my agreement with it. When I returned I fully expected an avalanche of emails from Hillary supporters. But when I did return, nothing, or nearly so. Even the few we did get barely seemed to have their heart in it.
This is, I grant you, a highly unscientific measure. But I wonder whether the collapse of the revote negotiations, the revelation that the campaign is in debt and the Richardson endorsement together are collectively forcing a moment of realization.
--Josh Marshall
Out of Character
The girl, now a young woman, in the Hillary red phone ad has made a web video for the Obama campaign, rejecting the "politics of fear."
--David Kurtz
Pretty Much
As Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen argue in this piece in The Politico, the press has been largely complicit in maintaining the fiction that the Democratic nomination race is not for all intents and purposes over. The obstacles in the way of Hillary Clinton are virtually insurmountable. And her now-sizable deficit among pledged voters is only one of them. Everyone in the press, probably including us, should be much more candid about that.
--Josh Marshall
Picking Up After Penn
From the Journal ...
“The time that he could have been effective has long since passed,” [Penn] continued, “I don’t think it is a significant endorsement in this environment.”Perhaps sensing that it may not be effective to dismiss out of hand a popular Hispanic governor’s political clout, campaign spokesman Phil Singer chimed in. “We respect Gov. Richardson,” he clarified, “But at the end of the day this campaign is about Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama.”
--Josh Marshall
Protest Too Much
Seems there's an aspect here of protesting a bit much on the State Department's part. Amazingly, within 24 hours of the news of the snoops into Sen. Obama's file, we have news that the same thing has happened to each of the other presidential candidates. Presumably if Gov. Huckabee had done better in South Carolina we'd be hearing that he got a look too. The look at Sen. Clinton's file was done by a trainee during a training session after an instructor asked a class to practice with random names. So, really not in the same category. And McCain's breach, well ... not much information at all about that one, other than that it was done by one of the same people who snooped Obama.
Adding to the oddity is that the fact that the State Department seems much more solicitous of the privacy of these fired rule-breakers than the privacy of the president candidate(s) being snooped. State is still refusing to release the names of the snoopers or the contractors they worked for.
--Josh Marshall
And McCain . . .
From Reuters:
The passport files of presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, and Sen. John McCain, a Republican, were improperly accessed by State Department workers, a U.S. official said on Friday.The official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, declined further comment.
The State Department is giving a press briefing on these breaches now. Paul Kiel has some of the details.
We'll have video soon.
--David Kurtz
The Vile Charles
MJ Rosenberg on Charles Krauthammer's paranoia, race-hatred and other fun topics.
--Josh Marshall
Hillary, Too?
CNN reporting that Clinton campaign will receive briefing from State Department today on a security breach involving her passport records.
The revelation came in a call this morning from Secretary of State Condi Rice to Clinton's Senate office, according to CNN.
Apparently, this breach occurred in 2007. The Obama breaches reported last night occurred in 2008.
Rep. Henry Waxman is on the case, and he wants the names of the contractors involved. He's sent a letter to Rice, which we have here.
--David Kurtz
New McCain Not Same As Old McCain
Steve Clemons, on McCain's rejection of Nixonian approaches to enlightened American self-interest in the world in favor of neoconservative-inspired interventionism.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
Just a case of three bored cube rats scoping out a celebrity presidential candidate's passport records -- or something more sinister?
--David Kurtz
Names?
We're not jumping to any conclusions that this Obama/passport incident is anything more than a case of "imprudent curiosity", as State Department spokesman Sean McCormack put it, on the part of some State Department contract workers. But why isn't State releasing the names of the contract employees responsible for the breach? These two employees were fired for cause and probably violated federal laws. So what privacy rights do they have exactly?
Second, why is this only being handle at the State IG level? Remember, at the moment, there is no State IG, hasn't been since Cookie Krongard had to resign over his Blackwater conflict of interest. And now that the two have been canned, the IG's office cannot compel them to cooperate.
But again, why don't we have those names?
--Josh Marshall
Who's That?
Just curious, but who's the Bill Richardson impersonator CNN used for this Obama/Richardson montage?
--Josh Marshall
Richardson Endorses Obama
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is set to endorse Barack Obama today at a campaign event in Portland, Oregon.
--David Kurtz
Nuggets
A few more details about the Obama passport breach. According to a new piece out in the Post from Glenn Kessler, the breaches occurred Jan. 9th, Feb. 21st and March 14th.
That would be the day after the New Hampshire primary, the day of the Democratic debate in Texas and the day the Wright story really hit.
--Josh Marshall
No Edwards Endorsement Tonight
Carnac the Magnificent foresees no endorsement from John Edwards tonight on The Tonight Show.
--David Kurtz
Hmmm
Hard to know just what to make of this at this point. But let's flag it and keep watching: two fired and now another disciplined for breaching Obama's passport file at the State Department.
Remember, something very similar happened to Bill Clinton in 1992 -- eventually brushed under the rug by an 'independent' counsel investigation by Joe DiGenova.
--Josh Marshall
Apparently Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a guest of the Clintons at the White House in 1998 at the gathering of religious leaders where Clinton described his contrition over the Lewinsky scandal.
--Josh Marshall
Short-handing It
From the Post ...
President Bush said the Iranian government has "declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people" and vowed that the United States would be "firm" in preventing Tehran's acquisition of such arms....
Washington has long suspected that Iran wants to use its civilian nuclear power program as cover for an effort to build nuclear weapons. But the Iranian government has not publicly declared a desire to obtain such weapons. In fact, Iranian leaders have said the opposite, repeatedly insisting that they do not want nuclear arms and asserting that their nuclear program is intended only to generate electricity.
Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation specializing in nuclear policy, called Bush's statement "uninformed" and "troubling."
"Iran has never said it wanted a nuclear weapon for any reason," he said. "It's just not true."
Asked to explain Bush's comment, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said he spoke in "shorthand," combining Iranian threats against Israel with concerns about Iran's nuclear program.
"The president was referring to the Iranian regime's previous statements regarding their desire to wipe Israel off the map," Johndroe said. "The president shorthanded his answer with regard to Iran's previously secret nuclear weapons program and their current enrichment and ballistic missile testing."
...
According to Farsi-speaking commentators including Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan, Ahmadinejad's exact quote was, "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Cole has written that Ahmadinejad was not calling for the "Nazi-style extermination of a people," but was expressing the wish that the Israeli government would disappear just as the shah of Iran's regime had collapsed in 1979.
--Josh Marshall
Flip, Flop, Flip Again
First John McCain said that Iran was trained and arming al Qaeda in Iraq. Then Joe Lieberman corrected him and he apologized and corrected himself. Now his campaign is saying ... well, he was right after all.
--Josh Marshall
More on McCain's Myopia
From the earlier post there seems to be some confusion. No one is saying that John McCain's service as a Navy pilot shows or suggests that he lacks the grasp of strategy and national interest to be president. What I'm saying is that the available evidence, and there's a lot of it, shows that McCain is unable to see beyond immediate tactical questions to any larger grasp of strategy. His myopia about the 'surge' is simply one example of that. I raise the issue of his Navy pilot service because McCain has based so much of his campaign on the premise that that service gives him a unique insight into foreign affairs. But the strategic sense he lacks is not one you'd get from that kind of service.
Meanwhile TPM Reader RW says that the real issue isn't so much short-term tactics vs. broader strategy as the military vs. the political prism. But I actually think this a disservice to all the military men and women who've got no problem in this department. This is a stereotype people have about career military people that's seldom been born out by my experience. This is something about McCain, his myopia. He can't see the big picture or anything else that's going on in the world except Iraq. And even there he doesn't want to grapple with what the goal of the surge even was.
--Josh Marshall
So?
Dana Perino scoops up after Dick Cheney, in today's White House press briefing:
--David Kurtz
Done in by Twitter
McCain aide suspended for pushing racially-charged Wright/Obama video.
--David Kurtz
Others See It Too
TPM Reader JR on McCain's weakness as a foreign policy leader ...
To follow up on Josh's earlier post on "McCain's inability to see beyond the immediate issues of military tactics to any firm grasp of strategy" -- that reminded me of something that a conservative, long-time McCain foe told me recently about the McCain - it's too neat of an explanation, but it occurred to me then (and now, reading Josh's post) that it has some usefulness.The guy -- who has been watching and fighting against McCain for years -- basically said that McCain has the personality of a Navy pilot, which is to say he is focused like a laser on tactics and maneuvering and has little grasp of overall strategy, nor does he want it; and that is coupled with a total enthrallment of his own rightness.
The guy's point was -- the skills of instant two-step-ahead (but no more) thinking and total faith in one's decision-making are what keep you alive in a cockpit, but it doesn't serve you well in politics (or leadership). It leads to what Josh was noting - an inability to grasp strategy or nuance, and a general lack of self-awareness that comes from self-questioning.
The closest parallel was Duke Cunningham, he said. Which I thought was kind of funny -- McCain is clearly brighter and substantially less criminal that Duke. But they are/were both short-term thinkers absolutely convinced of their own rightness. Maybe it *is* a pilot thing.
--Josh Marshall
His Biggest Weakness
The 'Surge' is working? Try reading Fareed Zakaria's new column on just how poorly things are going on the ground. McCain's opponents may seize on what may possibly be the beginning of an uptick in violence in the country. But that's really secondary to the real issue which is that the strategic aim of the surge has failed. It's fastened us down even more firmly in Iraq whereas the aim was to jumpstart a political process in the country that would allow us to begin to disengage.
These points are completely lost on McCain. A savvy campaign should be able to make McCain's failure to understand the surge's failure into a potent political issue.
This is why Clinton laudatory statements about John McCain as potential commander-in-chief amounted to such folly. McCain was a Navy fighter pilot. Everything suggests he's incredibly weak on foreign policy. He doesn't get strategy, doesn't get the big picture of what's going on in the world. At the simplest level he can't grasp why it's not in the United States' interest to stay in Iraq for decades. The monetary costs, the inattention to the growth of other regional powers -- all lost on him.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Campaign 2008 Roundup #17
So where do we stand in the presidential race? Have Wright and the CinC questions hurt Obama? It's just a snapshot. But as of today the answer looks like a pretty clear yes. In today's campaign 2008 roundup we survey the numbers ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
Getting Serious
Yesterday, I wrote the first in what I hope will be a series of posts making the case that a John McCain presidency would be a strategic disaster for the United States. McCain's record suggests he has little ability to think in terms of America's strategic goals around the world and focuses instead on near term tactical issues which he usually gets wrong.
Whether it's going to be possible to make that case -- which I think is an extremely strong one -- in the context of an election campaign is another question. And whatever else we say about McCain any campaign strategy against McCain has to start with a recognition that he has very low unfavorable ratings for a candidate who's been in public life for as long as he has. (According to the latest Gallup poll, each candidate's unfavorable numbers are McCain 27%, Obama 33% and Clinton 44%. Other polls have different reads, but the basic point about McCain's low negatives is a consistent finding.)
So if the Democrats want to run well against McCain they need to be focusing in on one key political fact. The Iraq War remains very unpopular. Most Americans think it was a mistake and most want to leave.
John McCain meanwhile is in lockstep with President Bush on the issue and wants to continue all his policies, including a decades long occupation of Iraq.
The details beyond these two salient facts are secondary at best. If the Democrats are serious about contesting this election, affiliated groups -- and there's at least one already out there specifically tasked with taking the fight to McCain -- need to get on the air making this single point and running it in key states around the country.
Whether that pulls down his numbers in the short-term is an open question in my mind. But the realization of this key fact in the minds of voters is a necessary predicate for a Democratic victory in November.
--Josh Marshall
Why Do the Media Love Petraeus?
Jay Rosen, Spencer Ackerman and Robert Bateman all agree over in this week's TPMCafe Book Club.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
Did Dick Cheney personally intervene to break the Iraq election law impasse?
--David Kurtz
Final Options
From the NYT ...
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers had hoped that the uproar over inflammatory remarks made by Mr. Obama’s longtime pastor that has rocked his campaign for a week might lead voters and superdelegates to question whether they really know enough about Mr. Obama to back him. Although it is still early to judge his success, the speech Mr. Obama delivered on race in Philadelphia to address the controversy was well received and praised even by some Clinton supporters....
No less important, the campaign hopes that Mr. Obama will have been battered by five rough weeks that raise questions about his past, including the pastor’s incendiary comments, that would underscore Mrs. Clinton’s warning to Democrats that they were rallying around someone who was untested and unvetted.
“The superdelegates are not going to really decide until June,” Mr. Penn said. “He’s just going through a vetting and testing process that didn’t happen a year ago and is now happening. The whole vetting and testing process will make a big difference.”
It is in the interest of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign to portray the contest as being highly competitive. Her campaign is intent on combating Mr. Obama’s efforts to pick off superdelegates. And it is increasingly concerned that any sign that the window is closing could lead a Democrat like Al Gore or Speaker Nancy Pelosi to step in and urge Democrats to back Mr. Obama in the interest of unity.
In truth, in interviews, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said that task was tough and growing tougher and that the critical questions were what would happen with Florida and Michigan and the possibility of developments involving Mr. Obama’s relationship with his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
...
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.
That argument could be Mrs. Clinton’s last hope for winning this contest.
--Josh Marshall
House That (GOP) Hate Built
I often find it quaint when Republicans go after anyone for hateful rhetoric or race prejudice when it's been a major pillar of GOP coalition going back more than forty years.
The co-founder of Laura Ingraham's radio show who now helps run Hugh Hewitt's 'Salem Radio Network' has mixed an Obama video interweaving Obama with Malcolm X, the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics and Public Enemy's 'Fight the Power'.
--Josh Marshall
'Nother GOPer Retires
Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is retiring.
Been a rough couple years. He got busted for apparently helping to keep the lid on Rep. Mark Foley hijinks. And now it's just come out that under his leadership the NRCC a renegade staffer pilfered something like a million bucks of GOP money.
--Josh Marshall
The Mythical Iran-AQI Connection
Maybe John McCain gets his foreign policy briefings from CNN, or maybe it's vice versa. In any event, CNN's Kyra Phillips was interviewing Gen. David Petraeus today and repeated McCain's gaffe from yesterday, touting a connection between Iran and al Qaeda in Iraq. Later in the interview, Petraeus gently corrected her, noting that Syria is typically the path for weapons and fighters for AQI:
(Thanks to TPM Reader JS for the tip.)
--David Kurtz
Who Me?
Was I really the first person to reference Starbucks coffee drinking as an indicator of social cleavages within the Democratic party? I find that very hard to believe.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Unfit to Serve
The gaffes are the least of it. In today's episode of TPMtv, we discuss why John McCain's poor grasp of foreign policy and military strategy makes him a dangerous choice for the role of commander-in-chief ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
Gimme
Will anybody ask John McCain today whether there is anything he disagrees with in what President Bush has said today about the war in Iraq?
--Josh Marshall
Chipping Away
Just looking over the recent poll soundings, I'm curious what the next two weeks are going to show on a few fronts. The Zogby poll may be an outlier today. But there does seem to be some real evidence now that something is allowing John McCain to draw even with the Democratic candidates in hypothetical national match ups and that Clinton is moving ahead against Obama in nationwide matchups between the two of them.
On top of this there's a poll out of North Carolina showing a neck and neck race between Obama and Clinton, a state that has been expected to be a strong one for Obama.
It's hard to draw too many conclusions based on these numbers at this point. These come after a string of days where the major campaign coverage has focused either on Obama's problems (mainly Wright) or his efforts to deal with those problems. And neither is good news for him in the short run.
But it will be very important to see whether these new polling trends stick over the next couple weeks.
The Clinton strategy is to keep the popular vote and delegate deficits as close as possible while trying to inflict sufficient damage on Obama that he becomes a non-viable national candidate. That, they hope, will lead to a broad consensus in the party that running with Obama simply isn't realistic and superdelegates flocking en masse to Clinton. The collateral damage of success on those terms would be vast. But there's some limited evidence that she's making progress on that front.
So are these poll numbers a blip or a sign of a fundamental rejiggering of the race?
Quasi-Correction: I didn't refer to it explicitly. But I think in preparing this post I misread today's Rasmussen daily tracking poll, thinking it had Clinton over Obama by 5 when in fact the reverse is the case. Yesterday he had a one point margin over her. This isn't necessarily more than the background noise one finds day by day in a tracking poll. But it's one nugget pointing away from the possible trend discussed in this post.
Late Update: TPM Reader CB chimes in ...
I'm not at all surprised that Obama has dropped in the past couple of weeks and I think it speaks to one of the structural problems in the race right now. The conservative movement has laid into Obama hard on the Wright controversy, and the organized left (e.g., blogs, pundits, party leaders, activists) have not fought back in a collective sense. Obama and his partisans have fought back, of course, but those in the Hillary camp have not done so and the party leadership (probably in an effort not to appear biased one way or the other) has been relatively quiet as well. The effect is a pretty significant mismatch - it would be surprising if Obama did not lose ground under those circumstances.I don't think this is an Obama-specific phenomenon - in fact, if the roles were reversed and it had been Hillary who was under sustained attack from the right over the past couple of weeks, I think Obama partisans and the party leadership would be similarly silent. Rather, I think it speaks to a structural problem - because the Democrats don't have a nominee, they can't respond in a "team" sense to attacks from the other "team." I don't think that has to be the case - indeed, one could see it as a failure of the Democratic party leadership, who arguably should defend all Democratic candidates from attacks by Republicans on the grounds that the party's nominee is ultimately a party issue in which Republicans have no place. But that is a tricky tact to take, in that it is difficult to defend a specific candidate from right-wing attacks without implicitly boosting that candidate to some degree. So it's not surprising that the party leadership has opted for a more quiet role.
What worries me is that this structural imbalance will continue until there is a nominee (and probably a couple weeks after at least - it takes a while for the full party/movement apparatus to get behind a nominee under any circumstances, and the length and nature of this primary will likely exacerbate that tendency). In other words, if Hillary effectively takes the lead (in the sense of becoming the most probable Democratic nominee) and Obama does not drop out of the race, my guess is that we will see similar conservative 'team-wide" attacks met by only partial responses. I'm not sure how to fix this situation - but I think the Democratic Party leadership (and others in the organized left) need to devise a solution if they want to preserve a realistic chance of winning, regardless of who is the candidate.
Thanks,
CB
P.S. I'm curious about the level of Republican activity/attacks on a primary candidate prior to their emergence as the nominee (or the inevitable nominee). I don't have a clear sense on this, but it does seem greater than the degree of similar activity in past elections where one party had its nominee and the other party was still in a dogfight. But I'm not sure 1992 and 1996 really fall into that category (since the challenger nominee emerged relatively early in the process) and I don't have clear memories of 1984. Put another way, how does the current Republican/conservative intervention in the Democratic primary stack up in historical terms?
--Josh Marshall
Poured Into The Sand
Apropos of my post below about John McCain's unfitness to be president, everyone should take note of this new book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.
Remember, no country's military standing long outlasts its economic might.
--Josh Marshall
March Madness
Eric Kleefeld crunches the Michigan numbers at TPM Election Central and arrives at a similar conclusion to what Hillary's Michigan co-chair conceded to us yesterday: a re-vote there is likely to have minimal impact on the overall delegate race.
But clearly the Hillary people know this, so why all the effort from them to make a Michigan re-vote happen?
It all goes back to their last-ditch strategy to pull out the nomination by making Obama seem, between now and the convention, unelectable in a general election. And there is probably no better way to do that than by running off a string of victories in the remaining states, especially in a big state like Michigan.
Their goal is to put superdelegates in the position that the NCAA tourney selection committee faces each March: Who deserves to be in the big dance more -- the team with the better overall record on a late season losing streak or the one who started the season slow and is finishing on a roll.
--David Kurtz
Bearing Witness
A reader flagged this multimedia effort by Reuters on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion.
There are a lot of similar compilations put together for this week, but this one strikes me as especially good (warning: some of the images are graphic).
Meanwhile, on a related note, at TPMCafe Book Club, we are discussing Greg Mitchell's So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits – and the President – Failed on Iraq. This morning Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, has a post up on how little TV news coverage the war is now attracting.
--David Kurtz
TPMCafe on Obama's Speech
We've got reactions to Obama's big speech yesterday still coming in at TPMCafe. For your reading convenience, we collected links to some of the more noteworthy posts here.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
What if you throw a national reconciliation conference and key players don't even show up?
That's Iraq, five years on. But it's not dampening President Bush's celebratory mood today.
--David Kurtz
No Gaffe, Just Totally Out of It?
I was working on a longer post about John McCain this afternoon, which I'm hoping to post tomorrow. But I just noticed that this goof where McCain got confused about whether Iran was training al Qaeda operatives or not didn't just happen once. McCain apparently said the same thing several times, in a couple different venues - not just in the press conference, where Joe Lieberman of all people finally had to correct him, but earlier on the Hugh Hewitt show.
(I'm assuming that no one noticed on Hewitt's show. They said Saddam had nukes and bio weapons but left them in a safe deposit box in Damascus. So by those standards thinking the Iranians run al Qaeda isn't that big a stretch.)
--Josh Marshall
The Speech
Our highlight reel of Obama's speech on the racial divide in America:
--David Kurtz
Passing the Hat
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a big Hillary backer, tried hitting up George Soros for money to fund a do-over vote in Michigan, TPM Election Central has learned. Soros declined.
--David Kurtz
Unfit for Duty
Let me follow up on this McCain gaffe in which he got confused and claimed that al Qaeda was getting trained and equipped by Iran before doing mischief in Iraq, before being corrected by his senate colleague Joe Lieberman.
Let's start by stipulating that if Barack Obama had had this slip up it would be everywhere on the news for the next week. Pretty much the same if it had been Hillary Clinton.
But this is really just the tip of the iceberg with McCain. In almost every discussion of foreign policy, not just today but in previous years, what stands out is McCain's inability to see beyond the immediate issues of military tactics to any firm grasp of strategy or America's real vital interests. His free willingness to commit to a decades long occupation of Iraq is an example, his push for ground troops to be introduced during the Kosovo War is another. His refusal, almost inability, to grapple with the political failure of the surge is the most telling one if people will sift through its deeper implications.
The idea that fighting jihadists in Iraq or policing the country's sectarian and ethnic disputes is the calling of this century is one that is belied in virtually everything we see in flux in today's world and which seems certain to affect us through the rest of our lifetimes and our children's.
It is very difficult to draw practical lessons from history. But one of the closest things to a law is that military power is almost always built on economic might. And the former seldom long outlasts the latter. Indeed, countries with sound finances have routinely been able to punch over their weight -- great Britain and the Netherlands during different periods are key examples. So fiscal soundness even over the medium term is much more important than any particular weapon system or basing right.
Then you step back and see the huge number of dollars we're pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. I don't think I've ever heard anything from John McCain that suggests he's given serious consideration to any of these issues, except as possible near term military challenges -- i.e., is China building a blue water navy to challenge the US, Russian weapons systems, etc.
Candidly, I do not think I've heard sufficient discussions or solutions to these challenges from my preferred candidates. But neither has the myopia that McCain has about Iraq. Or the willingness to spend -- how else to put it -- like a drunken sailor in that country at the expense of everything else now going on in the world.
Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain's qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: Young Bites Back
For two years now, we've been chronicling Alaska Rep. Don Young's (R) efforts to be involved in every major political corruption scandal of the last decade. And now that the political waters are rising around him back in his home state, he's gone on the attack. So here in today's episode of TPMtv, we bring you some of the choice mouth-foaming moments ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
al Qaeda, Not al Qaeda, Whateve ...
From the Post ...
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."
--Josh Marshall
Intra-TPM Dissent
I think I have to dissent from David's view that Obama didn't bring his A-game to the speech this morning. I was only able to listen/watch out of the corner of my eye because I was on deadline for something else. But my sense was that the tempo and tenor was suited to the occasion. The kind of stirring delivery he's made a trademark of in his victory celebrations would not have been appropriate for the moment.
--Josh Marshall
Kettle Speaks
Key neoconservative and AEI scholar Michael Rubin accuses Nancy Pelosi of trying to engineer "Rwanda-like genocide" in Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
A More Perfect Union
Sen. Obama is giving his major speech on race now in Philadelphia. We have the text posted here.
It is remarkable for its nuance, for its long view of history, and for its decency.
I am not sure, on first take, how effective it is politically. Your thoughts?
Late Update: The text is one thing. Delivery is another. And Obama doesn't seem to have his A game today.
Later Update: TPM Reader DW:
He found his A game towards the end, I think.Had to watch on Fox, due to some DirecTV weirdness on CNN and MSNBC.
I think it's a great speech, but it's nuance. There are too many soundbytes that will be taken out of context, and Fox already got one.
"Obama: Rev. Wright is family to me"
That's all the wingers need, and all the Foxwatchers need, to perpetuate what they already believe.
I agree with DW. Obama picked up the pacing and spoke with more energy toward the end. At his best, Obama doesn't just read the text of his speech, but delivers a speech. Overall today, he seemed flat.
TPM Reader HC says:
Just scrolled through Obama's speech and I think it does all the heavy lifting it needs to -- his disavowal of Wright's inflammatory statements while refusing to reject the man altogether bolsters, rather than diminishes, the whole philosophy of his campaign. At first blush I wonder if it's too smart for most Americans, especially those easily swayed by Atwater/Rove race-baiting, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. In any event, it seems to me to be an extremely important speech, one rich in history and nuance but pointing the way past the Bush-Clinton era. I'm on board.
Still Later Update: TPM Reader PT is looking for the same things I am:
In my eyes, the question going forward is this: what is the bite-sized take-away? What sorts of things can supporters and campaign representatives now say when asked questions like, ‘How come he didn’t leave the church after hearing those things?’ ‘How could he expose his children to that?’ ‘In 20 years, he never noticed?’ Maybe Obama can answer the question by reframing it and throwing it into the biggest possible context, but can his noisy and undisciplined supporters on DKos do it? Can Durbin do it? Can Sebelius do it? Can media types summarize it on his behalf? And if they can’t, doesn’t that just return us to the old, unsettling gotcha questions? That’s what I’ll be waiting to see.
This was after all a campaign speech. Ultimately it has to be judged on whether it achieved its purpose.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
Despite the White House effort to gin up a terrifying sense of urgency, the surveillance bill has stalled in Congress and may not move any time soon.
--David Kurtz
David, You're No Eliot Spitzer
Sworn in today, New York Gov. David Paterson (D) has admitted in an interview that during a rocky period in his marriage to his wife Michelle, between 1999 and 2001, he carried on an affair with another woman -- probably a wise admission given the circumstances surrounding his predecessor's political demise.
But I have to say that Paterson will have to do better than this thin gruel to make his mark on the landscape of tri-state governors. In fact, the competition seems to be escalating even in recent days.
In 2004, Jim McGreevey resigned as Governor of New Jersey after admitting to an affair with his dubiously qualified homeland security advisor, Golan Cipel, and coming out as a "gay American." Then last week former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) significantly upped the ante by admitting to being a habitual user of extremely high-priced prostitutes. But over the weekend, despite having left the political game, McGreevey engineered the revelation of the fact that, while still professedly heterosexual in the years just before winning the governorship, he and his wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, routinely engaged in threesomes with a young McGreevey staffer. Still more lurid, the trysts usually began with Friday night dinner at TGI Friday's.
This most recent news would seem to put McGreevey back firmly in the saddle in the regional gubernatorial shagstakes. And Patterson appears to realize he simply cannot compete.
--Josh Marshall
Coda to Kristol
As you know, Bill Kristol got dinged for using a non-fact is his piece in the Times this morning on Obama. Now the originator of the bogus fact gets dinged for trying to remove the episode from his Wikipedia page.
--Josh Marshall
Only Good for the Goose?
Given the vast sums or money Bill Clinton has raised and made since 2001 and the fact that the couple loaned $5 million to Hillary's campaign, I don't think there's any question that Hillary should release the couple's tax returns. But how is it exactly that this very reasonable point has become a staple of the political conversation while no one has even raised the point that John McCain hasn't released his either?
Remember, McCain's the one running as John Q. Ethics. And not to put too fine a point on it but his substantial wealth comes from his heiress wife who only a few years ago was revealed to have been skimming pills from her own charity to feed her drug addiction.
I highly doubt that last episode has any direct relevance to their current financial standing -- but the efforts to cover it up and help her escape legal jeopardy do show a tendency to avoid playing by the rules. So let's not pretend McCain is so squeaky clean that he doesn't need any scrutiny too.
--Josh Marshall
TPMCafe Book Club: Greg Mitchell
For the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we'll be discussing Greg Mitchell's new book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits – and the President – Failed on Iraq, this week at the TPMCafe Book Club.
Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, will be joined by military historian Robert Bateman, McClatchy military columnist Joe Galloway, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Paul Rieckhoff, Washington Independent reporter and TPM alum Spencer Ackerman, and media critic and NYU professor Jay Rosen.
Mitchell opens the discussion with an overview of his book, which tracks media coverage from the run-up to the invasion all the way through last fall's debate on the "surge."
Ackerman, fresh off covering the Winter Soldier Conference, complains that the deficient coverage continues apace, noting that few major media outlets covered the conference, let alone gave it prominent placement.
--David Kurtz
Snarky Headline of the Day
From McClatchy: Cheney Praises "Phenomenal" Progress as Bomber Kills 39
--David Kurtz
Answers on the Pressure Front
The initial responses to my post below about what kind of pressure the Fed could have brought to bear on Bear Stearns to sell at vastly under its market value, if that in fact was the case (a proposition that I find difficult to believe from my vantage point of complete ignorance), suggest that there's no obvious answer to the question that everyone agrees on.
In other words, we've received no emails telling us about the little-known 'sell your $%&#& company for what we say or it's off to Gitmo' law being invoked.
But here are some possibilities. Berkeley economist and reality-based blogger Brad DeLong suggests two possibilities. One, that Bear Stearns execs were unwilling to go into bankruptcy because of a various forms of criminal liability they would face -- and that everyone would be so pissed about the collateral damage of the bank's collapse that everyone would want to not only execute them but also have them drawn and quartered (in case you only know the phrase and not what it actually means: not pretty). Two, there's so much crap on Bear Stearns' books that $2 per share is just a fair price, even with the Fed assuming a lot of the potential liability. Let's call this the Atrios option.
Brad says the market seems to believe two while he's leaning toward one.
More generally, a lot of what I'm hearing suggests that the some part of the answer may be that the Bear Stearns board and execs may have pursued interests not perfectly in line with their shareholders on this deal, whether that be to avoid criminal liability or protect their own compensation not directly tied to stock price.
--Josh Marshall
Post-Political Corruption Era!
You'll be happy to know that the Los Angeles US Attorney's office, where the (endlessly) on-going investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is being handled, has decided to shut down its public corruption unit.
That topic was getting a bit too much attention.
--Josh Marshall
That Generous?
At TPM I always try to follow a pretty strict policy of not talking about topics I don't know a lot about or keeping to issues sufficiently vague and ambiguous that no one can tell. Since neither applies on this market meltdown stuff, I'll frame this as a question.
David Kurtz and I were just going over this and we seem to have a different idea of what happened with the Bear Stearns deal, or at least different emphases in understanding the story.
At the end of trading on Friday Bear Stearns was at approximately $30 a share. JPMorgan bought it over the weekend for $2 a share. And even that latter amount was cushioned by extensive guarantees from the Fed insulating Morgan from a lot of Bear's vast liabilities.
Looking at this from the outside, one of the most striking things about this story is that with all pessimism on Wall Street, all the panic to unload stocks in companies with heavy mortgage exposure, market knowledge was still out of it enough to have overrated the value of the company 15-fold.
Now, market value is an abstraction and can become pretty notional in the midst of a crisis: an asset is worth what you're about to find someone willing to pay for it. So it's likely a mistake to reify the $30 and the $2 market valuation to too great a degree. On the other hand, David Kurtz thinks that JPMorgan got a crazy bargain and that the fed muscled Bear into selling at far less than its actual value. And at The Atlantic, Clive Crook suggests that, yes, the Fed forced Bear to hand itself over to Morgan for much less than it was worth, that Bear's shareholders likely would have recouped more of their money if the company had simply gone into bankruptcy.
To get one matter out of the way, let me say, that I completely recognize that the Fed must have brought a tremendous amount of pressure to bear to make this happen. And they also seem to have put the taxpayer on the line for a lot of the risk involved in this transaction.
But here's my question, what is the precise nature of the pressure the Fed is able to bring to bear on a company like Bear Stearns in a case like this. On Friday, the market capitalization of the company was $3.5 billion. Let's say that was dramatically but not wildly off. Let's say a more realistic valuation of its net assets was $2.5 billion. It went over the weekend for about $2.25 billion less than that. So again, what kind of pressure is the Fed able to bring to bear to get the Bear Stearns board and shareholders to fold its cards leaving more than $2 billion on the table if they didn't have to.
That strikes me as more money than private shareholders are willing to give up just for the greater good. Then again maybe a lot of the stock is owned by big funds that see more potential losses for themselves in a wider meltdown than in letting Bear go down the tubes? In any case, this isn't a rhetorical question. I'm curious to hear your opinions and even more curious to hear from those of you in the financial services sector who might have some facts to shed more light on this question.
--Josh Marshall
Hanging Tough
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA): There's an "enormous difference" between my use of prostitutes and Eliot Spitzer's.
--David Kurtz
A Classic Bank Run
Jared Bernstein offers a primer on the Bear Stearns meltdown and the government's bailout.
--David Kurtz
Stop Yelling
CNBC's Jim Cramer declaring Bear Stearns to be "FINE!," during a segment that I understand ran last week:
--David Kurtz
TPMtv: Sunday Show Roundup: Fox Goes Wright After Obama
Lotta Rev. Wright on the Sunday shows this weekend. But nothing quite matched Fox News Sunday's -- dare I say -- Jihad against Barack Obama ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
Funny how even five years later no one can quite put their finger on the when, where and how -- let alone the who -- behind the decision to disband the Iraqi Army. As they say, success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.
--David Kurtz
Shotgun Wedding
Dean Baker, on the Fed’s forced marriage of Bear Stearns and JPMorgan.
--David Kurtz
Deregulation?
TPM Reader SW's lament ...
I am appalled, though not surprised, at the complete silence by the candidates on the last few days' events on Wall Street and the world's stock, bond and currency markets. This has far more effect on all of our futures than racist comments by the oxygen deprived brains of some old political or spiritual leaders. I know why Clinton and McCain are not talking about it: too many of their biggest supporters had too much to do with what happened, and benefited from the deregulation of the past twenty years for which both (and their allies) had a great deal of responsibility. (Remember that Hillary stood by while her colleague Chick Schumer killed the bill to tax hedge fund managers, who ear scores of millions every year, at income, rather than capital gains, rates.) What about Obama? Is he not up to the task of educating people about what the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act did to the markets many Americans poured their retirement and college savings into? Does he know that the Federal Reserve is about to bail out bankers, investors, and outright thieves who helped drive down the dollar, and brought the credit markets to a near standstill? Does he understand the problem? I wouldn't know.Seventy years ago Franklin Roosevelt was able to explain this country's and the world's financial crises to a far less educated, and less accessible, American public. That today's candidates are unwiling, or
unable to do so, is alarming. Maybe if the media first tried to understand the problems, then asked the proper questions until answers were forthcoming or it was clear the candidates are afraid to ask them,
political coverage would be more than the extreme sports coverage it has turned into.
--Josh Marshall
Not Your Weekly Standard Anymore
Bill Kristol forgets that fact-checking is important, even in a hit piece.
--Josh Marshall
