How Sweet it is!

I am watching Obama’s speech as I type this. He has congratulated Senator Clinton on her Indiana victory, though MSNBC has called the Indiana race as being “too close to call”; she is up 53-47 but Obama’s strongest areas have yet to be counted. It is possible that he comes back to win (as he did in Missouri.

Right now, he is addressing the perceived lack of unity in the Democratic party; he says that the supporters of one candidate will end up supporting the other in the general. He is being “oh-so-gracious”; then again he can afford to be at this point. Rubbing it in will do no good.

Even the pundits are suggesting that he tread lightly and not rub it in.

Oh, North Carolina: Obama is cruising and leading by 20 points at this point; that won’t end up close.

Back to Obama’s speech: his is wisely slamming John McCain; saying that we don’t need McCain to fill out George W. Bush’s 3′rd term.

Spin on the Primary Election

Al Giordano of the Huffington post tells us what to expect:

Today marks the 47th and 48th primaries or caucuses for the Democratic presidential nomination. More than 90 percent of the delegates will have been chosen by tonight. By now, we all ought to know the drill.

The day begins with the Clinton campaign “leaking” something to the Drudge Report to set expectations for the day. That then gets repeated on political blogs and cable news, where Clinton surrogate Terry McAuliffe elaborates. Today’s “expectation”: That the Clinton campaign expects a “15 point” defeat in North Carolina. Clinton’s yapping puppies in the news media repeat the manufactured expectation all day long, in which the bar is supposedly now that if Clinton comes within 15 points in that state that she has somehow “won” with a 14 point (or 6 point) defeat.

Around 4 p.m. rumors of exit polls begin circulating on the Internet. Around 5:30 p.m. AP and other news organizations leak minor data from the exit polls that explains almost nothing of value. Sometime after 6 p.m. Drudge posts raw numbers from exit polls that – if past is prologue – show Obama doing an average of seven percentage points better than he actually does.

Obama supporters then get prematurely jubilant and after polls close (tonight at 7 p.m. ET in Indiana and 7:30 p.m. ET in North Carolina) the real results start to come in and reveal Clinton then doing “better than expected” (at least better than the new expectations promoted during the day).

The media talking heads then ask aloud why Obama can’t “close the deal” (in Clinton’s own words) and what is numerically a defeat for Clinton (because the results, even in her recent wins, bring her objectively farther from the nomination in the context of the smaller number of delegates then available) gets spun as a Clinton victory.

Clinton takes to the stage, claims “unexpected” victory, gives out her web site address and pleads for elder women on fixed incomes to send more money to the $109 millionaire. The following day they claim that $10 million rolled in, only to be disproved more than a month later when the actual FEC filing is due. Obama’s FEC filing simultaneously reveals that he raised much, much more, from more small donors, and the Clinton campaign plays the victim card over being outspent.

The Chicken Littles among Obama supporters then proceed to agonize across the Internet for days on end, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their candidate has just moved closer to the nomination, and Clinton was pushed farther away from it. [...]

That isn’t going to happen tonight; Obama has closed to within 4 points with his areas still outstanding; this one really is too close to call. North Carolina is at 19 points.

What went wrong for Clinton? You know, I really think that, in her heart, she is an intellectual, but she is attempting to play the rough and tumble “know-nothing” populist. Yes, Bill could pull it off, but she isn’t him. Her going on about how she doesn’t regard expert opinion is absurd, and deep down, even her biggest supporters know that.

Anyway, she catches some heat from a science blog over that:

As you know, I’m not blogging right now — I’m taking a well-deserved vacation. But if I were blogging, I would most likely be lamenting Hillary Clinton’s decision to take up the side of ignorance in the culture war against expertise.

“There are times that a president will take a position that a broad support of quote-unquote experts agree with. And there are times they will take a position that quote-unquote experts do not agree with.”

That would be Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s communication director, speaking about the McCain/Clinton gas tax holiday proposal. The one that is so bad that a gaggle of economists have fired up a blog just to oppose it. But who cares what economists might say?

STEPHANOPOULOS: But can you name an economist who thinks this makes sense?

CLINTON: Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists….

Paul Krugman gets this completely wrong. He thinks the gas tax holiday, while obviously a bad idea, is small potatoes in the big scheme of things, and all of the fuss is just an excuse to paint Hillary Clinton as evil. That’s not right. It is small potatoes, policy wise, but the fuss is being kicked up by the Clinton campaign themselves — they’re running a wide variety of ads attacking Obama for opposing the holiday, casting him as elitist and out of touch.[...]

The tragedy is that Hillary Clinton understands perfectly well that this is a stupid policy. (If you actually wanted to save people $40 over the course of the summer, you would just give them $40.) She is embracing it anyway. Her campaign is pushing it as a purely symbolic gesture, attempting to take the side of “real people” against elitist snobs with all of their “education” and “expertise” and Ivy-League degrees.

A bit later she added: “It’s really odd to me that arguing to give relief to a vast majority of Americans creates this incredible pushback…Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that don’t benefit” the vast majority of the American people.

It’s hard to be more clear than that — elite opinion is the enemy. She knows perfectly well that this is a lie. But it’s politics as usual. I don’t want to dislike Hillary Clinton — she is smart and capable, and would be an enormously better President than John McCain. But treating experts as the enemy is a craven strategy to achieve short-term gains at the cost of substantial long-term harm. It’s sad to see her go down that road, and I hope she reverses course soon.

In that vein, I’ll post a video that shows Senator Clinton at her best: calmly, coolly, explaining a topic and doing it well.

She is talking about the pitfalls of giving vouchers to religious schools; explaining how the government can’t take sides with regards to religion. THAT is the person I used to like and want to like again.

Update: Indiana still at 4%, North Carolina for O at 14%. I watched the first several minutes of HRC’s speech and it was the mirror image of BHO’s: graceless, delusional and pathetic. You know, I really don’t want to have contempt for her, but I am sorry; there is fighting, and there is having no touch with reality. She is reminding me more and more of the Monty Python Knight that got all of his limbs cut off.

And if you are curious to know why I react so bitterly to Clinton and her supporters, go here and see what they call us:

Donna Brazile, however, wasn’t having any of it, and minutes later took the opportunity to dress Begala down (and in front of her boo, Lou Dobbs, to boot!). Begala protested, “We can’t win with eggheads and African-Americans.” Brazile, on the other hand, seemed to think that unifying the entire Democratic base would be preferable to alienating and insulting large demographic cross-sections of it in order to make blue-collar voters feel sufficiently pandered to. “You’ve got a hearing problem,” Brazile jeered, “I’ve drank more beers with Joe Sixpack and Jane Sixpack than most white Democrats.” She also took issue with Begala’s continually referring to the Democratic Party as “my party.” “It’s our party, Paul.”

Dear Mr Begala: fuck off. Which campaign is broke right now? Which one still has money and is in the lead? Just fuck off.

Video:

Obama is now taking shots at McCain. So, let’s see what is there.

First of all, forget about the so-called “straight talker”. Either he lies, or frequently forgets what he said. Some evidence First Arianna Huffington talks about her disillusionment:

The way the McCain camp has reacted to my revelation about his not voting for Bush in 2000, immediately moving into kill-the-messenger mode, is further confirmation of what has happened to McCain — now willing to say or do anything, or sling mud at anyone, to satisfy his hunger for the White House.

And I’m curious, at exactly what point did Mark Salter decide I was “a flake, and a poser, and an attention seeking diva”? Was it before or after I hosted a book party at my home for the book he co-wrote with McCain, Faith of My Fathers?

Was it before or after our many conversations about McCain giving the keynote address at the 2000 GOP Shadow Convention I organized in Philadelphia to underline the failure of both political parties to address major issues, like campaign finance reform? [...]

As you can see from the many, many newspaper columns I wrote singing his praises, John McCain was one of my political heroes. [...]

Now for some instances where he contradicted himself.

Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn’t vote for Bush in 2000. “It’s not true,” Bounds told the Washington Post, “and I ask you to consider the source.”

My sentiments exactly — because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry’s ‘04 running mate — then later admitted he had, insisting: “Everybody knows that I had a conversation.”

He denied admitting that he didn’t know much about economics, even though he’d said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he’d ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He’s also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, “consider the source.”

Original Post: At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. “I didn’t vote for George Bush” the man confessed. “I didn’t either,” his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).

The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush — both literally and metaphorically — he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn’t stomach voting for in 2000.

Now he waffles about whether the current Iraq war as over oil or not:

During a town hall event in Colorado today, John McCain “decried the dangers of Americans reliance on foreign oil,” but “also seemed to suggest that this reliance caused the current struggle in Iraq.”

Here’s what he said:

My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will – that will then prevent us – that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

Adam Aigner-Treworgy of NBC/National Journal has more:

This comment was initially prompted by a compliment from a military veteran who stated that he hoped a group called “Swift Boats for McCain come out and help” the GOP nominee. McCain then launched into an unprompted defense of the DNC campaign against him based on his 100-year statement.

“You have seen an ad campaign that is mounted against me that says I wanted to stay and fight in Iraq for 100 years,” McCain said to a crowd at a Jewish Community Center. “My friends, it’s a direct falsification, and I’m sorry that political campaigns have to deteriorate in this fashion because there’s legitimate differences between myself and Senator Obama and Senator Clinton on what we should do in Iraq. After we win the war in Iraq … then I’m talking about a security arrangement that may or may not be the same kind of thing we have with South – with Korea.”

Of note — McCain didn’t object to the audience member’s suggestion that a so-called ’swift boat’ group help him win the presidency. Instead, he thanked the man for his good wishes and his military service.

Later on Friday McCain sought to clarify the remarks he made earlier in the day about the Iraq war and oil. From the AP:

“No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons,” McCain told reporters.

One reason was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, he said. “But also we didn’t want him to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil, and it’s more important than any other part of the world,” he said.

“If the word `again’ was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that’s all I mean,” McCain said.

“The Congressional Record is very clear: I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

UPDATE: So, McCain’s defense of his comments was that he was really talking about the first Gulf War. “But then when specifically asked by an Associated Press reporter if, when he made the statement, he was ‘thinking about the first Gulf War,’ he said no.” Huh?

“No, I was thinking about – it’s not hard to – we will not,” McCain stumbled. “By eliminating our dependency on foreign oil, we will not have to have our national security threatened by a cut off of that oil. Because we will be dependent, because we won’t be dependent, we will no longer be dependent on foreign oil. That’s what my remarks were.”

Non election: John Kerry discusses the Pentagon Pundit Program and why it needs to be investigated.

Like me, I know you’ll be following the election returns today – but it’s imperative that we not lose focus on some of the issues in play that may be obscured by the election – and I can tell you that if you’re watching the returns on television news, there’s one story you’re almost guaranteed not to see tonight.

It’s now been two weeks since the New York Times published their story on the Pentagon Pundits.

I wanted to call out the cavalry here because we still don’t know exactly what was going on and exactly what steps were taken to try to shape the news. You can help make sure we find out.

* John Kerry’s diary :: ::
*

Just to recap, if you didn’t catch the original story, the Times described a program to “cultivate” the military analysts you see on so many news programs.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. […]
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

You know, the first thing I thought of when I heard this story was General Batiste getting put on ice last year when he had the guts to speak up about the need to change course and start bringing our troops home from Iraq. I spoke out then to defend General Batiste’s right to say that, but he lost his job as a military analyst.

And now we know the existence of this covert program in the Pentagon designed to spread pro-Administration messages into our newscasts. But there’s been – outside of PBS – virtually no coverage of this at all on television news. Media Matters – which has been really dogged in covering these kinds of issues online, they’re a great organization – reported on Friday:

Continuing their silence, the major broadcast networks and cable news networks all reportedly declined to discuss the April 20 New York Times front-page article on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon on the record with NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Further, according to a search* of transcripts available in the Nexis database, the broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — still had not reported on the revelations in the Times story on any of their news programs through May 1

In fact, this has been another great example of how important online media has become in keeping the spotlight on stories like this. The first and I think still only time Dana Perino was asked about this was when a reporter from rawstory.com asked her about it. The great folks at freepress.net have been working hard to keep the issue front and center for their activists. And I’ve seen Think Progress and the folks at Huffington Post keep up the heat, as well as – of course – posts here at Daily Kos.

And this is really important because we can’t let this story slide. We need to push hard to get a full accounting of this program.

The Pentagon now says that it has suspended this program, but we still don’t know what really happened. What was the extent of the program? Did the Pentagon leverage the financial interests of the analysts? And, especially, now that the Pentagon has announced this program has been suspended, what steps are being taken to make sure it never happens again?

Note: it is 4 points for Clinton in Indiana and 14 for Obama in North Carolina. Note that DLC chair and HUGE Hillary Clinton Supporter Harold Ford is saying that Clinton ought to drop out; but he is suggesting an Obama/Clinton ticket be considered. I am not so sure; if HRC wasn’t married to WJC, then possibly. But Bill would be too big of a distraction.

Update: Indiana ended up 50.75-49.25 Clinton, at least as of 5 am this morning.