Tom Watson

The Cultural Yearling

Tonight, a bunch of newcritics bloggers are getting together at the Paley Center for Media to celebrate our little experiment, which is a year old. I have an anniversary post up - so hop over and read it, if you'd like. Here's an excerpt:

You know, newcritics is non-influential. It is non-profitable. Indeed, by any standards of the day it is non-successful. And yet a year on, we gather to revel (some in person, some virtually) in the minor media glory - but sweet karmic profit - of this little blog. Why? Because we like each other. That’s obvious in the courteous style of our site, and in the ongoing conversation each week. But we’re also genuinely interested in what each of us has to say about media - about film, television, music, theater, and books. And in our careers, our disparate lives, a place to turn for some polite middlebrow conversation over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee is a very nice thing indeed.

Some of the greatest bloggers in the world will make the scene tonight, including our host, the fabulous M.A. Peel, but we're also marking the anniversary with a series of posts about how a single bit of media moved each of them over the last year. Some great thoughts in these posts:

Pretty in P!nk
Lost Lust
Once in a Lifetime
Shrunken Heads Revisited
R.I.P. The Wall Street Journal
A Bit O’ Media…
What Is The Question?
A Reason to Go On Living: The Poor Boy’s on the Line
The Reblog Button

Edwards Bows

John Edwards has been relegated to an after-thought these last couple of weeks, and after Florida's beauty contest last night, he saw the hard political handwriting and will reportedly make an exit today - symbolically - in New Orleans. The wingnuts rejoice over the defeat of the most liberal of the remaining Democrats:

He won’t be missed. Not the cloying, braying sanctimony. Not the hypocritical Fox-bashing. Not the oleaginous class warfare. Not the odious politicization of Memorial Day.

That was the odious Michele Malkin. But she's got it wrong - those are exactly the reasons Edwards will be missed.

I don't know who his supporters go to, or whether he will endorse Obama or Clinton or neither. But I know which party gets to keep his ideas, and that's a good thing.

UPDATE: Somebody smart just told me something I have to repeat: for the first time in American history, the nominee of a major party won't be a white male.  Obvious, yeah. But when you say it aloud...

And Now For Some Real News

The Mets have traded for the fireballing left-handed ace of the Minnesota Twins, Johann Santana, giving them the best rotation in the National League East. According to USA Today:

The deal is pending the Mets and Santana reaching agreement on a six- or seven-year contract extension and that Santana passes a physical; they have been granted a 48 to-72-hour window to do so. Santana has a no-trade clause that he will waive if agreement is reached on a contract extension.

Santana won the American League Cy Young Award in 2004 and 2006 and is 93-44 lifetime. The Mets gave up centerfielder Carlos Gomez and pitchers Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey. Patience clearly paid off for Omar Minaya.

On to Florida! [Port St. Lucie, of course - what, you thought I meant that  primary today in which a million Democrats are voting - the one that "won't count."]

State of Diss Union

Did you see Barack Obama's discourteous snub of rival Hillary Clinton before President Bush's mail-it-in final State of the Union Speech last night? The peppy Senator Clinton, rather than avoid the headline-making Camelot duo of Teddy Kennedy and his young iconic pal, strode right over and stuck out her hand with that spunky grin of hers flashing serious kilowattage. Recognizing the gamesmanship, Kennedy grinned and shook it. Obama turned away, frowning deeply, finding something much more interesting in the middle distance of Claire McCaskill's hair.

It was a moment of the finest reality programming - described by the talkers and captured in what Keith Olbermann described as Pulitzer shot by veteran AP lensman Scott Applewhite - that a couple of centuries of disharmonious union can possibly produce. This political junkie loves the SOTU, not for the speeches - which drone on incessantly, with their menacing Cheney teeth-sucking backdrop, lately leavened by a dash of Pelosi room-surfing - "oh look, there's Justice Breyer!"

Last night, the drama was in the room, not at the podium - Senator Biden walked Clinton (an endorsement, perhaps?), Senator Obama cutting in front of several colleagues to stroll in with Uncle Teddy, the hugs and kisses and man-punches down the aisle. And there was my Congressman, the large-skulled Eliot Engel, in his usual camping spot, down the row on the left, in prime C-span territory. I remember camping out for Stones tickets, but Eliot pitches his tent for a chance at pumping Steney Hoyer's fist on camera. Traditionally, Engel waiting for the President is the first sign of spring in New York politics, well before the first crocus.

So Obama capped a day that was supposed to lift Democrats' spirits by connecting the martyred vision of JFK with a swarm of young voters with a rude gesture that will only remind many women of his nasty "likeable enough" crack in New Hampshire. For a speaker of such grace, the surprise lies in such boorish moments.

Still, you had to love Teddy's late-season moment in the sun yesterday, even if Chris Matthews did torture his usual logic of a generational "change election" in which  political dynasties - like Dylan's cannonball - are forever banned: a difficult argument to make faced with a gaggle of Kennedys led by the 75-year-old lion in winter. Great theater, though. Top drawer.

And while Bush droned on as yesterday's man, one intrepid group I'm proud to know ignored Obama's singularly ungracious moment and soldiered mightily in the cause of analyzing actual policy. The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy pulled the proverbial all-nighter to provide a rapid analysis of the President's proposals to Congress. Please read their analysis and comment on it, but I think Andrea summed it up quite well at the top:

The American people want change. Every Presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican, has made this a mantra. But the State of the Union Address reveals no alteration from President George W. Bush. This year the President labored to keep breathing life into the same worn out ideology that has repeatedly failed America’s current and aspiring middle class.

Obama's Sad Victory

After Iowa, I felt good about Barack Obama and his campaign, even though my candidate lost. I loved his speech that night, and believed he was good for the progressive side of American politics. But after the last week, Obama's victory in South Carolina tastes like thin, salt-less gruel to this hopeful Democrat. It nourishes no one except the hard-core partisans, and its audacity - to use the favorite word du jour - was evident only in its cynical partnership with the rabidly anti-Clinton, race-baiting media.

It was a great political victory with a terribly sour after-taste, as Craig Crawford notes this morning:

The Obama camp was smart to gin up any plausible rationale for sidelining or ridiculing the former president. For the most part, he is an asset for his wife, the New York senator.

It was certainly brilliant for Obama’s team to enlist the aid of the news media in stirring up racial resentment against the Clintons – going back to New Hampshire when reporters and pundits promoted the bogus notion that Obama lost the state because of racism. That still unproven charge had to help Obama’s forces get the attention of African-American voters in South Carolina.

But it was sad to see so many in the news media become tools for one campaign’s agenda.

When you watch the likes of conservatives Joe Scarborough, Bill Bennett, Byron York, Andy Sullivan, George Will and Peggy Noonan "worry" about how the racial divide will split the Democratic Party, a slow burning rise of bile burns the throat. Digby:

So, this ugly race is over and it looks like all the racial talk was overblown and overplayed. The voters, once again, made their voices heard and the politicians will have to heed them.

I would hope that the media will take a little breather as well. Watching the concern trolling about Democratic racial divisiveness among people like Peggy Noonan, Joe Scarborough and Bill Bennett is enough to make me sick and should give progressives pause. As I wrote last night, I don't think this helps Senator Obama any more than it helps Clinton.

Twice now, the Obama camp has been too smug and too clever by half - early on, they enjoyed the vicious and openly sexist campaign against Hillary Clinton, until the "likeable enough" backlash cost them in New Hampshire and forced an on-air apology from Chris Matthews. In South Carolina, they cleverly played the race card - and I mean cleverly with all the sincerity of a reporter who once covered the mean streets of Bronx politics. They demonized Bill Clinton (who did a pretty good job of helping out, it must be said) and assisted in making the Clinton campaign seem racist - even though not a single racist statement has ever been attributed to either the Clintons themselves or to any of their bungling surrogates. They allowed the media to claim that the use of the word "fairytale" and any mention of Obama's youthful drug use was racially-tinged, even if the words came from black men who'd fought all their lives for civil rights. Why? Because they know the villagers (as Digby calls them) hate the Clintons, and always have. Lance Mannion:

The story is arising out of the same old prejudice against the Clintons.  The bullshit about Hillary being so goddamn ambitious, as if no other politician in American history ever actually wanted to an election, is a legacy.  It was Bill who was originally the ambitious one, the one who would do anything to win, like read polls and find out what voters wanted and then give it to them, the snake!

If they'd thought of it they'd have begun calling her Slick Hilly a long time ago.

They, of course, are the insiders' insiders of the Washington Insider establishment, the royalists and their journalist toadies, who have always been appalled by the Clintons' presumption.

For me (and I suspect for many other Democrats who feel silenced by the sexist anti-Clinton media onslaught), Barack Obama wasn't knocked off his pedestal by Bill and Hillary Clinton. He climbed down himself, with David Axelrod holding his hand. And he'll never reclaim that lofty position again.

Sadly, many normally sane observers bought into the national media lines. Hell, even Al Giordano - who claims he's pretty "hardboiled about politics" but fairly melts under the chosen one's gaze - actually says, "Obama became inoculated against the most powerful plays in the Clinton playbook." What plays, Al? What playbook? You actually think the Clintons took billionaire Bob Johnson aside and said "hey Bob, can you slyly inject race into this contest by  appearing to clumsily refer to Obama's drug use?" It's patently absurd, and guys like Giordano and Bob Herbert at the Times - who used a single anonymous comment from an unattributed blog to cry racism this week in a shockingly juvenile column - ought to know better. So should the Josh Marshalls of the world, who actually have the temerity to claim that President Clinton's comparision of Obama and Jesse Jackson as pioneers to African-Americans was a racist ploy. Hey Josh, my second presidential vote went to Jesse Jackson, pal. The man was a pioneer. Inoculated? As if the Republicans won't dig up the very dirt the Obama campaign itself sent out regarding a racial divide that didn't actually exist?

The morning after Iowa, I felt pretty good about the future of the Democratic Party. This morning, I need a shower to wash away the slime of Obama's not-very-subtle partnership with the sickening race-baiting media.

Sour grapes, you suggest? Hell yeah. Not at the primary win, but at the sheer dishonesty openly employed by the Obama campaign and its media enablers. And there are millions and millions like me - Democrats who once thought they could happily vote for Barack Obama as a decent second choice. If it comes to it, I'll still pull the lever against any Republican, but I'll know what I'm getting now.

UPDATE: Once again, Barack Obama is singularly ungracious in victory.

UPDATE II: Big Tent Democrat, always a cynic (though an Obama supporter), absolutely nails it over at TalkLeft:

Regarding the Media coverage of this primary season it now seems clear that there is a new rule that objectivity and appearances thereof are out the window. Certainly at NBC this is true. From the far right commentators like Joe Scarborough to the liberal newscaster Keith Olbermann and Establishment columnists like Eugene Robinson and Margaret Carlson any pretense of not openly rooting against the Clintons has now been discarded. NBC's performance last night was unlike any other I have seen outside of Fox News. Olbermann, who likes to trash Fox, properly in my view, should pause for a moment and consider how much his broadcast last night resembled Fox.

But Barack Obama has an opportunity here to make these new rules, as they pertain to him, lasting. And so does the progressive blogosphere. I have long stated that Obama is a Media Darling, and indeed it is one of the main reasons I tepidly support him for the nomination.

He then lists a bunch of rules that basically boil down to: any criticism of Barack Obama is now to be considered "vaguely racist."

UPDATE III: It's incredible to me how supposedly liberal commentators are eager to smear Jesse Jackson, and ignore his record as Presidential pioneer. Do they forget that in 1988 - the famed "Year of Jackson" proclaimed by Times political writer R.W. Apple - Jesse Jackson won 11 primaries and caucuses, and racked up seven million votes? He won a majority of Hispanic votes in New York, and 14 percent of the white vote nationally. He was the first crossover black candidate for President, and he seriously challenged Michael Dukakis from the left. Yet according to Josh Marshall and this poorly-informed DailyKos diarist, the invocation of his name by President Clinton (who is close to Jackson) is some kind of racist smear against Obama. It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

UPDATE IV: Jesse Jackson weighs in.

Four More Years! Four More Years!

It was a cold January day four years ago when this blog was born. Warren Zevon (gone only four months) was on my mind when I added "My Dirty Life & Times" after my own name and conceived this space as a place to share what was on my mind, regardless of anyone else's interest. As it turns out, there was a fair amount of interest - in politics, media, baseball, music, and general observations of a verbose middle-aged guy from New York - and many of you have shared the ride. My view then, confirmed since, was that life holds many twists and turns, that most of what we see and think and pretend to know is written in shades of gray. I give you my version. You knock it down (or agree, or add some detail), and we have a conversation.

This community has been very important to me over those four years, but I'm taking a bit of a break - and it's for a good reason.

I've signed to write a book that's due to my publisher later this spring. The book is called CauseWired, and it explores the collision of media technology with social, charitable, and political causes. My experiences here will figure prominently in the book, which will identify the major trends in wired social causes and seek to draw some key conclusions. So who'll want to read it? I'm hoping it will appeal to a wide group of people in business, in the nonprofit world, in politics, and even in the general reading public.

I hope the timing is good. The business pages are filled with stories of start-up companies and massive valuations. Google grows ever more rapidly into a global powerhouse. And the reach of social networks like Facebook stretches every day. Americans are living more of their lives in public, creating vast lists of online “friends” and professional colleagues, sharing their experiences, their taste in music, their political choices, and even their personal lives.

No trend is hotter than the rush to create social networks, the vast intertwined next generation of the web that promises real-time connection and communication. Americans of all ages are taking part, but no group is more enthusiastic – and more empowered – than the so-called “millennials,” that demographic slice of our society that has never known life without the Internet. These young men and women now entering the workforce for the first time have lived much of their lives online, and they bring with them in their introduction to the national economy – and our society – great expectations for lightning-fast communications, openness and transparency, and the ability to change the landscape quickly.

At the same time, the world is a smaller place. Genocide in remote villages in the east African nation of Darfur is covered by Google maps that show the devastation and religious cleansing, while hundreds of bloggers write about the terrible story – not merely passing along links from mainstream media organizations, but urging action and placing a premium on their own opinion. On Facebook, the fastest-growing online social network in the world, hundreds of thousands of people – students, young professionals, political action committees, and even gray-haired CEOs and captains of industry – signal their support for stopping the slaughter and helping the victims by placing badges on their individual profiles. Video sharing brings the story home, and thousands of digital photographs are trade and posted on blogs and social networks. Keywords and tags allow anyone interested in the topic to explore a massive cultural document – the living expansion of the topic in public consciousness – through blog networks and search engines. Darfur becomes more than a yellowing news-clipping down in the backroom of the public library, more than a research report, more than a news story from far away. It becomes a cause. More accurately, Darfur becomes "CauseWired."

Yes, it's a term of art - and what business book these days would be complete without a blog. Some of you may have noticed that I've been very quietly blogging about this subject at CauseWired.com over the last month or so. Well, I'm going public today - the fourth anniversary of my personal blog - and I hope to see you all over there.

A note: this blog is not going dark - it will remain active, but I just won't post as often as I have been (this presidential race is confounding my attempts to beat the book deadline, I can tell you). And as I've said in each of the last three "anniversary" posts: I owe you all a hearty thanks for your time, your attention, your loyalty, and your vicious mud-slinging.

The Giants Win the Pennant!

I haven't been a huge football fan since Roger Staubach retired to a real estate empire and major Republican donor status, but who couldn't love the Giants' upset win on the frozen tundra of Green Bay (to quote the late, great Art Rust, Jr. one more time)? Reeling from Merrill Lynch's $10 billion loss and the sure-fire disaster year for all of Wall Street, New York's looking into another economic abyss the size of the 1970s. So the Giants' trip to the Super Bowl is a much-needed elixir for this town, a spot of flaming rum punch against the drab winter afternoons. The game itself was one of those rare classics, set at minus-4 degrees with the cold smoke of a northern plains January shimmering from mouths and noses.

Watching from the comfort of my modest room, I worried for Tom Coughlin's skin, Archie Manning's fatherly pride, and kicker Lawrence Tynes' sanity. Yet they pulled it out, forcing me to record the first of the epic Jane Austen series on PBS, Northanger Abbey, on my handy PVR, for viewing at another time. Now, in two weeks, the Super Bowl, with the undefeated - but hideously-uniformed - Patriots versus our Giants (yes, I'm the bandwagon now). And with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at half-time, I can close my eyes, listen to the music, and pretend old Roger the Dodger will be lining up another Navy jump-pass against the Steel Curtain back in the late 70s.

Speaking of that formative decade, what wonderful news that Jim Wolcott has agreed to write a memoir of his days stage-side at CBGB and other sordid venues, and for none other than Gerry Howard, boarding as he put it, "a graffiti-choked IRT train into the untamed past."

For more on the Jints, take a ride into my untamed pass by reading the terrific Giants blog penned by my one-time sports editor Ernie Palladino of the Gannett Westchester papers. Back in the day when my prose was thin and my waistline thinner, Ernie was the gruff, elder statesman on a late-night sports desk in White Plains, tossing out baseball columns and wisdom about deadlines with both authenticity and profane humor. He must have been all of 30 at the time, but he reminded me of those black and white movie Marine sergeants played by Van Heflin cursing about those God-damned college boys.

I mentioned earlier that the New England uniforms are horrendous, especially given the quality of the team. Yesterday's Giants-Packers tilt at Lambeau showed what good sports design is all about, combining nostalgia and the record book with rock 'em, sock 'em action in high-def. For more on NFL style - and uniforms of all shapes and sizes - there is no more obsessive blog than UniWatch, the Project Runway of professional sports, presided over the Paul Lukas, who captured yesterday's living color tableau (another Rustian term) perfectly:

Could any true football fan of a certain age who watched the Packers/Giants game last night honestly say that their enjoyment wasn’t keenly heightened by the mere sight of those two iconic uniforms doing battle against the freezing backdrop of Lambeau Field? The way the colors and logos so vividly hearkened to championship games played by these same two teams in the NFL’s glory years lent an inescapable air of nostalgia to the contest and a powerful sense of the sport’s past being present, a feeling that all too often seems lacking in this day and age of the league’s generally wretched marketing aesthetic.

A Mythical Concept of Time

II must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

Confederates Lose, Repeat 1865 Disaster

Mike Huckabee's cynical embrace of the Confederate battle flag in the waning days of the South Carolina Republican primary campaign didn't work - and he lost both the primary to an ascendant John McCain and his mantle of easy-going, nice-guy moderate conservative.

Laughably described by modern-day Nathan Bedford Forrest wannabes like Patrick J. Buchanan (who I like to listen to, by the way, in my own train-wreck watching Imus mode) as a "heritage symbol," the flag most Americans know as the Stars and Bars was resurrected by segregationists in the 1950s to fly about statehouse around the south. Everybody knew why it went up. Everybody knew what it meant - and to whom.

The flag is a symbol of white power, of segregationist propaganda dressed up as states rights and local rule, a Klan standard over South Carolina. And Huckabee held it to his heart in a desperate attempt to roll right of the centrist-leaning McCain, so often derided by a Republican In Name Only by the hardcore party faithful and left for dead after daring to buck the nativist, Mexican-hating strand of conservatism. So Huckabee was stripped bear, laid out as one of those old-timey Johnny Reb traitor types. The Nation got it right:

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," the former governor of Arkansas told a crowd in Myrtle Beach, where he was campaigning in advance of the state's Republican primary on Saturday. "In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do."

In Florence, he told his supporters that, "I know what would happen if somebody comes to my state in Arkansas and tells us what to do, it doesn't matter what it is, tell us how to run our schools, tell us how to raise our kids, tell us what to do with our flag -- you want to come tell us what to do with the flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole."

Exactly when are political reporters going to acknowledge that the candidate they have presented to America as a charming, good-humored "nice guy" is running a "southern-strategy" campaign so extreme in its sensibilities, themes and language that it would have embarrassed George Wallace?

Ah, but the Confederates always lose in the end, don't they? And these days, the Glorious Cause can't get you over the hump in South Carolina.

In other news, Aaron Burr wins Nevada 51-45 despite the wildly strange protestations of an ungracious Thomas Jefferson.

Washington, Jefferson, Madison - Obama?

The messianic quality of the argument for Barack Obama knows no bounds. Oprah famously (or infamously, depending upon your view) anointed him "the one" in South Carolina's mass rally, in more modern semi-secular shades of Billy Graham and Father Coughlin. The candidate himself identifies with two iconic martyred Kennedys - Jack and Bobby (I'm guessing he leaves Ted for Hillary) - Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King, and The Gipper. Campaign insiders whisper that the Gandhi media roll-out is timed for Florida.

Now along comes pop historian Joseph Ellis, who claims in today's L.A. Times that Senator Obama is pretty much the kind of candidate that - sorry, my hands shake with the effects of belly-laughter as I try and write this - the Founding Fathers would have approved of. Yes, Ellis (whose books I enjoy) gives the psychic endorsements of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison to Obama '08.

Alively debate has developed in these pages and in the blogosphere about the viability of Barack Obama's politics of hope. Critics of Obama's promise to bring us together -- blue states and red, young and old, women and men, blacks and whites -- have described his vision as a naive pipe dream that would be dead on arrival if he were elected president.

Central to the critique is the claim that Obama's message flies in the face of U.S. history, that partisanship is, as one critic put it, "the natural condition of politics." Zero-sum, "I'm right, you're wrong" battles are fundamental to the republic. From the beginning of our history, so the argument goes, an Obama-like message has been a rhetorical veneer designed to obscure the less-attractive reality of irreconcilable division and an inherently adversarial party system.

While you can certainly marshal evidence to support this interpretation, very few of the so-called founding fathers (save perhaps Aaron Burr) would agree with it. And the first four presidents -- George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- would regard it as a perversion of all that they wished the American republic to become.

Quick aside: Did you catch that sly Aaron Burr reference - wonder who he was aligning the killer of Alexander Hamilton, the would-be emperor of the west with? Senator Clinton's been called many things in this campaign - but Aaron Burr? That's a new one.

In any case, young Professor Ellis seems just as inebriated with the spirit of Obama's rhetoric as many other sensible Americans, taking leave of his senses in pursuit of some short-seasoned myth of hope fashioned around a talented but entirely conventional machine politician from Chicago. But there he is, book-ending the Audacity of Hope with the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and the United States Constitution (I kid you not), and making perhaps the most over-the-top declaration about Obama yet:

His message has roots in our deepest political traditions. Indeed, it is in accord with the most heartfelt and cherished version of our original intentions as a people and a nation.

In the course of his brief hagiocolumn, Ellis admits out loud that perhaps - perhaps?! - Jefferson isn't worthy of a comparison to Barack Obama.

Jefferson is somewhat tricky on this score, because he, along with Madison, did create the first political party, known initially as Republicans but -- this is tricky too -- soon to morph into Democrats. But Jefferson could never admit, even to himself, that he was a political partisan because it violated the core definition of republicanism (i.e. res publica, public things) and the central political legacy of the American founding.

Yes, sadly, Jefferson and Madison did wallow in politics a bit - they may not be on Obama's non-partisan level. I can see that. (Remember all those nasty pamphlets?) Though by gosh, they were good writers, and so is Obama.

Ellis, of course, knows better - but he's in the the throes of political lust, and not to be deterred from the silliest of bouquets. Barack Obama does this to people, and he is clearly the most talented politician to yet emerge from his (and my) generation. Yet outside of perhaps Washington himself, both the founding brothers (as Ellis eloquently dubbed them) and  the Obama campaign actually share a love for the political fight, for the grasping at for high office, for expansive rhetorical flourishes riding like fluffy cumulus clouds thirty-thousand feet above the more hardscrabble landscape where people actually live.

Jefferson and Adams? Two brilliant careerist talents who took great risks - and both vicious political fighters of their day, the former in the more passive-aggressive style of Obama and the latter in the aggressive-aggressive style of Hillary Clinton.

But then again, I guess I'm too jaded. You know, I'm backing Aaron Burr this cycle.

The Next Reagan Revolution?

Over at the Atlantic, good solid liberal Matt Yglesias says it's perfectly fine that Barack Obama praises Ronald Reagan's "change trajectory," and dozens of Democrats in comments mostly agree that Reagan is a fine example for a progressive candidate (policies notwithstanding) because like Obama, he had a "sunny disposition."

Meanwhile, in the heavens, the earth has ceased moving around the sun.

Democrats. Reagan. Hero worship? The metaphysics of American politics simply won't accept that a body of disdain and vitriol built over a quarter of a century, once in motion, won't stay in motion. It has to. That's why the strange mass apologia on the left strains belief.

Dig the pretzel self-twisting routine from these Obama supporters:

It's true that from a liberal perspective, Reagan was an awful President, especially when it comes to union-busting but also on a number of other issues such as the right to choose, affordable housing, etc. But none of this was really appealing; it was much more Reagan's sunny disposition and stories about the pipefitter and so forth.

[and]

You need to claim to be above partisanship -- and offer something genuinely new, both symbolically and substantively -- in order to produce a durable partisan realignment. Neither of the other candidates are likely to produce much realignment. I think Obama might.

Yeah, that union busting thing was bad, but the man did rise about partisanship - and dawg, he looooved those jelly-beans, too! That's my kind of change agent, dude.

Ah, but there are real Democrats who don't take the strange Yglesias pass on Reagan worship lying down. Here's one who is exactly spot on target:

Ronald Reagan was a sociopathic demagogue.

Now, maybe it's fine to compare oneself with a sociopathic demagogue--someone capable of preaching states' rights on the killing field of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney; someone who could tell Menachem Begin that he was at Auschwitz when he was on a Hollywood studio lot; someone who could persuade millions that the Sandinistas were coming for us through Harlingen, TX, so we could go kill us some Nicaraguan peasants; someone who said he thought it would be a great time for an outbreak of botulism when poor people in Oakland were being handed out food by the Hearst family; someone who preached small government while blowing the budget and growing the federal bureaucracy.

But I beg to differ. This Reagan-to-Rushmore insanity has got to stop.

Obama may well have misspoken, (it was probably just an accident comparing Richard Nixon with Bill Clinton) and any Democrat can certainly admire the 40th President's political skills out loud. But he should hustle to debunk the idea that Ronald Reagan is his model for change - and fast.

As Jon Swift said, Obama "wins the Hasty Pudding award as the most crossdressingest candidate after Giuliani with his sudden transformation into a Reagan Democrat."

Running to the right of Hillary Clinton on domestic policy may well pay dividends in the general election - but first he has to get there. And many voting Democrats remember the Reagan years very, very well.

UPDATE: Matt Stoller has an excellent analytical post on how Obama's Reagan moment may well have cost him Nevada. One clarification - lots of commenters seem to equate Obama's age with that of his followers, insisting if he'd "lived through" the Reagan years, he might not have blundered into praising him - but Obama's a year older than me, and must remember Reagan's presidency quite clearly.

Our Identity, Ourselves

We're all prisoners of who our parents and grandparents were, where we grew up, what language we spoke, where we went to church, what tribe we belong to. But sometimes, we can be liberated by that experience as well. Growing up white and Catholic in suburban New York in the 1960s and 70s was not exactly like putting down roots in Selma, but I do remember words residing in the common parlance then that would deeply offend today. And I do remember certain paths in life being essentially closed to women and to African-Americans - paths that lay wide open for my ambitions. That experience informs how I think today.

That was then. As Johnny Thunders said, now is today. And over the last two weeks or so as a black man beat out a white woman and was in turn beaten by that very woman in fair turnabout, the fissures of identity politics reappeared on the smooth plaster ceiling of our imagined American reconciliation. And two questions have been asked aloud to which there is no explicit answer: are we a post-racial society, as some suggest - and are we ready for a woman president?

I don't know, but as the media tarts up supposedly racial tensions between the two leading Democratic candidates, I was pleased to see the contenders themselves step up today in a joint attempt to cool those embers. I give Senator Barack Obama a great deal of credit for this statement - it serves his own campaign and the American electorate very well indeed:

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have historically been on the right side of civil rights issues. They care about the African American community.… That is something I am convinced of. I want Americans to know that is my assessment.

The Clinton campaign, somewhat unfairly accused of having some kind of strategy about raising the spectre of race (both the Clintons' record and their own political self-interest argue strongly against it), posted its own conciliatory comments.

We differ on a lot of things. And it is critical to have the right kind of discussion on where we stand. But when it comes to civil rights and our commitment to diversity, when it comes to our heroes - President John F. Kennedy and Dr. King – Senator Obama and I are on the same side.

And in that spirit, let's come together, because I want more than anything else to ensure that our family stays together on the front lines of the struggle to expand rights for all Americans.

As Digby noted, "This has the strong feel of a negotiated truce." And that's a good thing. Maybe we can get them both on the ticket, after all. One of my favorite political analysts, Chris Bowers, has a great post up about identity politics today and he argues that we're all blinded at times by identity. But he also argues that a black-feminist battle on the left helps no one but the Republican nominee. Ain't that the truth.

Huffington's Hillary Hatred: EnuffPo!

Does Arianna Huffington really want to be the fourth horseman of that posse of wild-eyed pundits fearing the Hillary Clinton apocalypse? To put it another way, does Arianna really want to play Ringo to Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd, and Andrew Sullivan - three prominent voices who can't say the word "Hillary" without sending a river of froth from their own lips, whose rancid anti-feminism and personal hatred for the New York Senator is fully on view in every segment, every column, every blog post?

Huffington comes late to her liberalism, but she has created a juggernaut in her star-studded Huffington Post, a brilliant Tom Sawyerish paint-my-fence media play that has added a site of real substance to the media polity. But she clearly risks her own reputation - and perhaps the future of her business - by lighting out so fiercely after a single candidate that so many of her readers support, and courting the kind of backlash that washes over Matthews, Dowd, and Sullivan.

In typical fashion, Huffington attacked Clinton just before the New Hampshire primary in these terms:

So the New Hampshire race is now officially too close to call, Hillary's hypocrisy running neck and neck with her cynicism. Be very afraid, indeed.

Yes, Democrats who read the HuffPo daily for its wide variety of progressive bloggers, be very afraid of Hillary Clinton - especially you liberal women. Here's Arianna in a post praising Barack Obama for changing politics by winning Iowa - she can't resist a vicious slam on the most prominent female American Democrat in history:

America, its vision distorted by the mushroom clouds conjured by Bush and Cheney, made a collective sprint to the bomb shelters in our minds, our lizard brains responding to fear rather than hope. And the Clintons -- their Hillary-as-incumbent-strategy sputtering -- followed the Bush blueprint in Iowa and played the fear card again and again and again.

The site relentlessly pushes positive Obama stories and negative Clinton stories on the front page, while letting more positive Clinton posts slip to the inside - the editors no doubt picking up on the unsubtle leanings of the person who signs their checks. How can this be good business for a lefty politics site in a race where 49% of Democrats currently support Hillary Clinton?

Some Democrats are noticing - I've been getting an earful via email over the past couple of months, and this exchange over on DataLounge is pretty typical of the sentiment:

I know Arianna Huffington is a democrat now. I can understand she support Obama but she never stops trashing Clintons. Is something wrong between them?

All I now is that HuffPo has turned into Obamamania Central. It's a real turn-off to supporters of Hillary and supporters of John Edwards. Hell, there was an editorial a few days ago saying that Edwards should step aside so as to not stand in the way of Obama!:*

**If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.***

I wish I could say that's parody!

Wow, is that a quote from Arianna, r1? That is disgusting. I'm so disappointed in her. Used to love her but not now.

Her personal animosity is evident in this New York Press interview, as is some strangely anti-feminist language:

“You can smell the fear on her. It wafts around her like a cheap perfume: Eau de Don’t Let Me Screw Up and Flush My Chances Down the Toilette. As a result of her fear of losing and the soul-sapping tyranny of trying to please and placate everybody, she’s become more processed than Velveeta.”

Fairly gross, reflux-inducing - but then again Huffington opposed the Clintons before she was a Democrat, too. Want more sexism? Here's Huffington in the LA Times:

Clinton's strategy for the presidency is threatening to become a cautionary tale about a perfect little girl who had a perfect little plan that went perfectly astray.

"A perfect little girl." Nice, Arianna. Then there was the imagined exchange Huffington dreamed up last summer between Clinton and David Letterman, before she appears on the show.

Dave:  What was the deal with all that cleavage earlier this summer?
Hillary: I think the fact that the front-runner for the nomination of one of our two parties is facing a question about cleavage is a sign of progress... Or: If an American president can't flash a little cleavage, the terrorists win. Or: You mean the Rack of Freedom? Or: Dave, this kind of question is a classic example of the patriarchal double standard faced by women who assume positions of power in America. I'd prefer to focus on the future of this country. On the other hand, I do have a killer rack.

Nyuck, nyuck. Is this really how Arianna Huffington views Hillary Clinton? I've blogged for Huffington a bit over the past two years, and she runs the kind of site where you can find a wide range of views, mostly on the left. I can certainly understand the celebration of Obama's message, particularly his attraction to young people who've ignored politics. But Huffington has become one of the leading Hillary haters on the progressive side of the coin, part of that gang of snarlers blinded by their dislike of the candidate on a personal level, and it's not a particularly good crowd to be associated with.

Bringing in Kerry from the Bullpen

Watching John Kerry endorse Barack Obama reminded me of the feeling I got as a Mets fan when the Red Sox brought in Bob Stanley in the bottom of the 10th inning in game six of the 1986 World Series. Kerry is a sinkerballer from Boston that Obama doesn't need and his dour arrival - a reminder of a race Democrats should have won - only cheers the Clinton team. More like a change-up candidate now?

The Quiet Speech

Barack Obama ripped off a barn-burner on Tuesday night and it gave me shivers, it truly did. He's an incredibly talented speaker and he channels several generations of idealism on the left - and possibly even the right. But Hillary Clinton's speech later on, claiming a shocking, surprise victory, was more important in the long run. We knew Obama could bring it. But few of us knew this Hillary Clinton.

I meant to quote Chuck Tryon's post over at the Chutry Experiment about the speech the other night, because it was one of the best descriptions of both its style and its importance:

While I remain convinced that this week’s gendered attacks on Clinton’s “emotional moment” were reprehensible, I do think that Clinton handled those attacks brilliantly and gave what I found to be an impressive, impassioned speech, one that essentially took the attacks (Hillary is too emotional or not emotional enough) and turned them on their head, in part by suggesting that the week’s events had allowed her to “find [her] own voice.” This assertion was not so subtly reinforced by the mise-en-scene of Clinton’s victory speech, in which Bill Clinton, Wesley Clark, and Madeleine Albright were conspicuously absent, replaced by a backdrop of Bennetton-esque college kids and identifying Hillary with the youth vote that Obama had supposedly cornered.

But one of Hillary’s strongest moments came when she asserted (and this is a rushed personal transcript scrawled on the back of an envelope), “Too many have been invisible for too long. Well, you are not invisible to me….There will be no more invisible Americans.” It’s a nice twist on John Edwards’ “Two Americas,” but without the baggage of polarization. More importantly, like Obama, Hillary has begun connecting her campaign to a larger narrative about empowerment, avoiding Edwards trial lawyer rhetoric of fighting for and replacing that with something more inclusive (fighting together).  Her description of America’s “can-do spirit” almost perfectly echoed Obama’s mantra, “Yes, we can.”  Hillary also channeled her inner Kennedy by calling for viewers to “join in this call to greatness” and to “roll up our sleeves and keep going.”

It's also clear from the Washington Post's fascinating tick-tock inside the Clinton campaign that this new voice came from the candidate herself.

The Matthews Meter

Okay, let's put it to the Matthews Meter and ask our regular panel of experts the following political question: did Chris Matthews' obsessive and openly sexist campaign against Hillary Clinton help or hurt the New York Senator in New Hampshire,  where she scored a stunning and historic comeback victory against Barack Obama in the Democratic primary for President.

Whoa, look at that number. 12-0! We rarely see such unanimity on the Matthews Meter. Everyone believes Senator Clinton was helped by the bizarre and personal attacks on MSNBC. Digby, you're one of the panelists who voted yes, what do you have to say?

I wonder if Chris Matthews realizes that every time he or one of his fellow gasbags blithely reveal their sexist lizard brains like this, another little feminist gets her (or his) wings.

Glenn Greenwald, you've described the national political media like Chris Matthews as in thrall of Drudge-like innuendo and pseudo-pschology. Can you add to that?

Can one find more compelling proof of all of this than their juvenile, sadistic, lynch-mob savaging of Hillary Clinton over the last several days based on the pettiest and most fact-free assaults and their long-harbored desire to see her crushed?

Tom Brokaw, give us some perspective. You came up in a different era of political reporting. Matthews suggested to you last night that without the amateur personality analysis, guys like him should ust stay home. What's your reaction?

No, no we don't stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they're saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this. But we don't have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process. Look, I'm not just picking on us, it's part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don't begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding.

Okay, that's the traditional journalistic experience. But it's a different world - you know, there are all these bloggers out there, it's a free-for-all. Hillary is fair game, right Markos Moulitsas? You bloggers love this stuff because it's just so "real."

The more she's attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she'll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they've gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe's mug to bring me back down to earth, but most people don't know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can -- by voting for her.

Yes, but surely people didn't actually react to Matthews himelf, right? Christy Hardin Smith, you voted yes - what's your take?

What is wrong with Chris Matthews?  With all of these media people? I mean that, in all honesty, what in the hell is wrong with them? Their personal loathing of Hillary Clinton shone through in every sniggering, overwrought report this week.  Their building up of Barack Obama is only their prelude and set-up for the frenzied clawing and shredding of him that is to come.  And they have well and truly written off coverage of either John Edwards or Bill Richardson solely based on their current fundraising numbers, and never mind that, as of yesterday, there had been two -- count them, only TWO -- Democratic contests. 

None of it has anything to do with substance.  It's as if a pack of hyenas were crossbred with the characters in Mean Girls and then sent out to play at journalism.

But did it actually mean, you know, real votes? Surely not, Matthew Yglesias.

"I don't think pissing off Chris Matthews is a good enough reason to pull the lever for Clinton, but I can certainly understand the impulse."

Wow, we may be learning something here, folks. Surely, there's a lesson for the Chris Matthews in the media right? What do you say, Greg Sargent?

Last night, Matthews said: "I give her a lot of personal credit; I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again." But by this morning Matthews had already forgotten his newfound respect for her. He said: "The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..."

Put aside for a sec just how loathsome this statement is on its own terms. The larger point here is that a mere half-day after acknowledging that he'd gotten it wrong and that she deserved a lot of "personal credit" for winning over voters, Matthews was already imposing his own narrative on her entire political career, the current race included, saying that her past and current success have nothing to do with "the merits."

Surely the voters don't see Hillary this way. But already Matthews is back to speaking for the voters again, oversimplifying complex voter sentiment in the most crude and reductive fashion he can muster.

Lesson unlearned. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

So, unanimous. Stunning. The Matthews Meter never lies. There you have it. One final thought from Mark Halperin and we'll be back with Lance Mannion and Jon Swift on the sad tears of Maureen Dowd, and Jason Chervokas on the new, softer Hillary.

'Likeable Enough'

Let the race begin...

The Sexist Media Mugging of Hillary Clinton

What kind of progressive American leader would stand silent, supporting with the cold reserve of ambition the disgracefully sexist, blatantly anti-feminist attack on a well-respected woman of the same party, a political foe perhaps, but a national Democratic leader?

Barack Obama - so far.

Make no mistake, Obama's breakthrough says something wonderful about the state of racial politics in our nation - or perhaps the lack of racial politics - and the involvement of young people in politics. But his silence in the case of the cynical media lynching of Hillary Clinton by a national press corps obsessed with her gender is telling. And unless Barack Obama speaks out, his campaign's chilling acceptance of the gender bias stirred by our national media will also remind many of Ronald Reagan's acceptance of the race-baiting southern strategy - because if Obama accepts the presidency, at least in part, because of abject sexism, a brutal gender attack on a female rival - the most famous female Democrat in history - he will set feminism in our country back a generation.

There is no hope for John Edwards, of course. His cruel, stony reaction to the news that Senator Clinton got a little emotional during a New Hampshire diner visit was a window on the man's soul, a window into an empty room.

But Obama claims a mightier throne, one forged in liberal ideals of justice and equality and hope. He is the secular messiah of the Democratic Party, ordained by Oprah Winfrey as the chosen one and given to preaching about transcending petty politics. Yet there he was at the New Hampshire debate, throwing a scornful "compliment" at his rival when asked about Senator Clinton's "likability," one of the many sexist code words deployed against her in this race. "She's likable enough," he smirked, looking downward.

I think every woman reading this post knows exactly how Hillary Clinton felt in that moment.

Obama has benefited mightily from sexism in this campaign, and has remained silent. And that sexism is starting to be noticed, and commented on - even in places you don't expect it. John Cole, to say the least, is no Hillary Clinton fan but the gender-based attacks have gotten to him:

Quite frankly, I hate to say this, but I think what we are actually seeing is a double-standard here, and the feminists may be right. This is all about Hillary being a woman. John Edwards has been 150 times as angry the whole campaign, and has built his entire campaign around it. Howard Dean was angry, and people lapped it up. Here, Hillary isn’t really angry, just matter-of-fact and frustrated, and people are giving her shit.

I don’t want Hillary as President, but it sure looks to me like she isn’t getting a fair shake and is being subjected to a double standard. It’s bullshit.

Then there was Clinton's flash of anger in the same debate as the two men teamed up to bash her - she showed her anger, something male candidates (think McCain) do every debate, and was promptly accused of having a "meltdown." More people are beginning the see this media lynching as a negative story for Democrats of truly historic; here's Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly:

Am I feeling bitter? You bet. Not because Hillary Clinton seems more likely than not to lose — I can live with that pretty easily — but because of how she's likely to lose. Because the press doesn't like her. Because any time a woman raises her voice half a decibel she instantly becomes shrill.

Nor is it all men, on the attack, sadly. At TalkLeft, blogger Jeralyn shares an email from a reader:

I have a question that I don't see anyone talking about right now and that is the disturbing behavior I see from women toward Hillary Clinton.

I belong to other on-line forums -- Democratic forums -- and I see women referring to Hillary as "bitchy", "catty", "shrill", "ugly" and some too bad to mention. Most of these come from women supporting Obama. The idol worship and willingness to throw their gender under the bus in order to elect Obama is disturbing.

My question is, what happens when the campaign is over and women realize that they have set themselves back ....Will they be surprised?

It's ugly, the MoDo Syndrome - not something lefties believe exists on our side. But it's there.  Taylor Marsh is right - the reaction to a little emotion, a little fire from the leading  woman in American political history may be too much. Maybe we're not ready for a female president.

Hillary quite simply let them have it. Women everywhere know how she feels. There isn't one person   in business or any level of professional life, even college, who hasn't had   it happen to them. But having a woman show it in public? It's an emotional cleavage   moment inspired by a flash in time when weaker men joined together to take   their more formidable female adversary down through a round robin rough up.

You could see it in the fire and flash in her eyes.

This is a defining moment in American history. To see if we can grow up from   "bitch" to "strength," while appreciating that an infuriated   woman standing up for herself and her record is a sign of real heart, passion   of conviction and determination. It all depends if America likes the look of   feminine power when it's released through a flash of fire in a potential commander   in chief's eye.

Has America grown out of their June Clever syndrome, finally ready for our Golda Meir moment?  We don't   know the answer to this question yet. But from the signs I'm seeing today, I wouldn't take the bet.

Me either. At the start of the campaign, I didn't think the national media could possibly be successful in an anti-woman campaign against a Democrat. I thought surely that the left wouldn't allow it, that the rest of the Democratic field - avowed feminists all - would object, and object loudly. I may be proved wrong. And Barack Obama is silent.

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher's all over it: feel the misogyny. And Matt Stoller fries "the cynical, nasty, and misogynistic press corps."

UPDATE II: Well, the headline's not popular and perhaps I should have proceeded more carefully with my own language in a post about loaded language. But I didn't. So I'll take the lumps. My main argument stands, though Mannion disagrees. Over at Shakeville, however, Liss is with me: "When a female public figure is demonized with sexist swill, and such tactics go unchecked, we collectively give our tacit assent to sexism being wielded against any woman in any situation." And, no Gloria Steinem did not time her Times Op-ed to coincide with this blog or with Senator Clinton's "shocking" show of emotion yesterday, but it's an elegant essay on the sad hit feminism is taking in this race.

UPDATE III: Well, the first candidate to speak kindly of Senator Clinton during this firestorm has made his views clear. Yep, it's Mike Huckabee.

FINAL UPDATE: I have closed the comments on this post for fairly obvious reasons. And I'm taking the rare step of changing the headline. My original headline was, in retrospect, inflammatory and I regret the use of the word "lynching." Its use had two inherent problems: poor writing (the word did not accurately describe what I intended it to) and an unfortunate tendency to discount its historic - and literal - meaning in American history. I'm taking this action because this post continues to draw significant traffic from search engines, and I'd like to correct my error in judgment, however tardy it may be. That said, my overall argument stands uncorrected.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

You'd have to possess a big old freezer of a Democratic heart, one of those basement models you pack with a year's worth of frozen meat, not have been warmed slightly by the sight of a black man bringing young voters out into the lily-white cold of Iowa with a message of bipartisanship and political hope. That one evening thawed some of the heartland permafrost that singes our politics, and Senator Barack Obama deserves every Democrat's respect and thanks for his eloquence.

If only every night in these United States was Iowa on January 3rd. If only every night's dusk brought goodwill and harmony and the common desire to bring Americans together, regardless of race or age or religion or party. If only every night, Americans went to bed with a warm glow and full stomachs and paid-up health insurance and an economic future better than their children's. But every night does not bring the warmth of brotherhood. And after watching this country slide toward decline over the last seven years, I cannot feed my future with hope alone, and I will not consign my children's future to a quality that's as elusive as the billions of particles of sand in the desert, and about as practically useful to a thirsty nation.

I'm prepared to believe. I 'm always down with hope. But there are also things I simply want to know. And to close the deal with Democratic voters, Senator Obama has some serious questions to answer.

The Illinois Democrat is fond of using Dr. King's famed "fierce urgency of now" metaphor, and it truly does capture this race for the nomination - but perhaps not in the way his speechwriters intend. For me, the fierce urgency of now isn't the march to the nomination; it's the election next fall, sure to be brutal. And it's the first 90 days, the first six months, the period from January to the July 4th holiday in 2009 when the next President will be at her (or his) strongest political point. That's what the fierce urgency of now is all about in this race for the White House.

And it doesn't boil down to a laundry list of academic policy papers on education, healthcare, the environment, and Iraq. Big-picture policy is fine. But I'd like answers to several questions from the new progressive front-runner.

Will he stop using the talking points of the right to defeat his political enemies on the left? Will the abandon silly talk of nonpartisanship and be prepared to take on directly the vicious slurs and unfair attacks from the right that are sure to follow his nomination - attacks on his background, race, age, religion and anything else the other side believes might stick enough to peel off a battleground state in November? Will he change his healthcare proposal to cover all Americans, and stop defending a middle-of-the-road plan that excites nobody who reads it? Will he stop referring to unions as "special interests" and dismissing the trial lawyers as a lesser breed of professional Americans? Will he prepare for debates seriously and stop relying on his natural brilliance as a speaker? Will he begin a crash course on foreign policy now with experienced, senior advisers so that he will appear better-informed next fall? Will he attack Republicans who supported the Bush Administration these last seven years, and so help Democratic congressional candidates next fall? And speaking of Congress, how will he force the do-nothing "majority" bench of worthless Democratic leadership on the Hill into some form of policy-making - ah, what's the word - audacity?

Many of us need to know this information now, given the fierce urgency of the race. It seems to me that Senator Obama needs consider his movement built, and consider what to do with his immediately. This nomination battle still has a month or more to run with many states to contest and two well-funded, talented Democrats to contest them. Both of those Democrats represent historic firsts for the party and for the country. But I know a lot about Hillary Clinton's strengths and weaknesses, her policy priorities and her performance under intense stress, her ideas and her characters. She remains my candidate and I'm confident she'll be a brilliant President.

But there is a new front-runner, if only by a hair. And if I'm to eventually believe in the audacity of hope, Senator Obama, you have to convince me on the merits of the fierce urgency of now.

A Blogging Soldier's Farewell

Blogger Andy Olmsted, an American Army Major who blogged from Iraq, was killed in action yesterday and posts his own eulogy at Obsidian Wings, where he blogged regularly under the name G'kar. Everybody with a soul should read the entire post and the comments, but here's an excerpt:

What I don't want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.) I had a pretty good life, as I noted above. Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I've enjoyed in my life. So if you're up for that, put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984), grab a Coke and have a drink with me. If you have it, throw 'Freedom Isn't Free' from the Team America soundtrack in; if you can't laugh at that song, I think you need to lighten up a little. I'm dead, but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact.

Andy requested no political statements, no use of his death to damn the war or the President. And so silence at this keyboard in his memory.

UPDATE: You can read about the circumstances of his death from his family, the family members of a captain who also died, and current and former comrades in arms in the comments secton of Andy's final post.

Obama Sweeps

Congratulations to Senator Barack Obama, who won a strong victory in the Iowa caucuses tonight. It was big win for Obama in the first contest of 2008, and his strength appears to have cut across all sorts of demographic boundaries. But the biggest boundary Senator Obama crossed was one that has cursed this country since its founding: that of race. For a black man of mixed racial and cultural background to put together a message and an organization to win a wide victory in one of our overwh