"But Whitey Loves Me!"

When your campaign is reduced to barely concealed race baiting, you need to stop, Sen. Clinton.

Edit: I should probably add to this; it's a big story.

But, honestly, what else is left to say? Clinton's done, the nation is dismissing her, and she's been reduced to trolling the media. She probably doesn't even care if she's called racist, now, because at least it'll keep her name in the headlines. Which is the last thing anybody needs. It's over.

Symbolism, Eh?

The Victory Fund.

That's what the Canadian Liberals are calling their new donation scheme, where you sign up to have ten or twenty or however-many dollars pulled out of your bank account per month. It's a nice idea; people sign up for this sort of thing and then benignly forget about it, like a subscription to an old MMO that you used to play, but can't be bothered to cancel.

But don't think about that. Think about the name. "The Victory Fund."

What does it conjure up?

It conjures up images of WWII. Of sacrifice and victory against terrible, maniacal, mad fascist dictators. Of a glorious struggle, perhaps the last truly glorious struggle the world has ever known.

And they're using it as a weapon against the most secretive and all-controlling Prime Minister Canada has ever known; one who (possibly) cheated his way to victory, cloaks himself in an image of "the common man", and who has nothing but contempt for those who disagree with him.

God DAMN, these guys might be better at messaging than I thought.

Somebody Find a Fork

North Carolina was a blowout for Obama, and Indiana is, at best, a squeaker for Clinton. (And it's still theoretically possible that Obama could win it)

Clinton's pretty much done. She needed a split decision to go on, and a pair of wins to be a credible nominee. That isn't what happened. And post-Wright, Obama can credibly say that he's thoroughly "vetted" and has overcome the worst that can be thrown at him.

Yes, she'll win West Virginia, but that just doesn't matter. Obama achieved almost everything he could have hoped for tonight, and broke her short streak.

(Gave a good speech, too.)

She's probably frantically calling superdelegates pleading her case, but I imagine she's getting one response: "end it before you ruin your Senatorial career." It was a hell of a run, but the Change guy won.

Edit: From Ambinder:

Dear XXXXX,

Tonight's victory in Indiana was close, and a margin that narrow means just one thing: every single thing you did to help us win in Indiana helped make the difference.

Every call you made, every friend you spoke to about our campaign, every dollar you contributed made tonight's victory possible. And I couldn't be more thankful for your hard work.

Every time we've celebrated a victory, we've celebrated it together. And tonight is no exception. This victory is your victory, this campaign is your campaign, and your support has been the difference between winning and losing.

Thank you so much for making this campaign possible. Let's keep making history together.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

The entire thing is in the past tense, except for "let's keep making history together." And there's no call for more donations.

Yeah, this doesn't sound like a nominee. It sounds like a eulogy.

Re-Edit: CNN projected Clinton in Indiana by a hair. Doesn't change much, though. Her bragging rights were all about the margin, and there' s no margin there.

Plus, let's be honest: If you subtract the Dittoheads, Obama probably won.

Clinton Wants to Try to Break up OPEC

Good luck with that.

Whining about how OPEC has "a monopoly" is just silly; American anti-monopoly laws don't have much effect on other countries for obvious reasons, and there's just no way that yelling about "monopoly" will affect states that have nationalized their oil production. The reaction to the accusation of monopoly will be "yeah? And? So?" Or some variation thereof.

Between this and the gas tax holiday, I really get the sense that Hillary knows that Wright isn't a winning issue, and wants to ride the gas price issue all the way to Denver. The problem is that she's being dumb about it; instead of using it as a springboard for interesting renewable energy proposals, she's pulling out proposals that every expert in the country says will have no positive effect whatsoever. She's just as tired as Obama, but it's coming out in a different way; her actual ideas are slipping, instead of her delivery.

Or maybe she's just desperate. Either way.

Little Brother

Just finished reading Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother." I might have more on it later, but right now I just want to echo this: bit from Neil Gaiman

But I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year, and I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can.

Because I think it'll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won't be the same after they've read it. Maybe they'll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it'll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they'll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they'll want to open their computer and see what's in there. I don't know. It made me want to be 13 again right now and reading it for the first time, and then go out and make the world better or stranger or odder. It's a wonderful, important book, in a way that renders its flaws pretty much meaningless.

Funny thing; I thought the only weakness was that "don't trust anybody over 25" tagline, which makes sense for a YA novel. What Doctorow's book does is vital for anybody who's heavily engaged in social networking, which is pretty much everyone under 30 or so: it shows why control over your information is important. The oppression that the kids in Doctorow's books face is not only plausible, but a lot of it strikes me as inevitable, and I think a lot of people don't really see what's on the way.

There is a massive and worrisome trend of gleefully jettisoning any concern about privacy or information control of any sort within the popular culture of the past few years, especially among the young; Doctorow's book reminds us of how incredibly disastrous this sort of thing can be.

(I'd link to the book, but I'll just wait until it shows up on his website; Cory releases all his books online under a creative commons license. )

Gaiman said that "I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13-year-olds as I can." I agree and disagree. I agree that it should get into as many teenagers' hands as possible, but I'd go far farther: I'd say that people should agitate to have it put on reading lists. This book should be required reading; I know that's death for the popularity of books among teens, but there are parts of it that absolutely everybody should know about. The bit about "the paradox of the false positive" alone is such a powerful correctional to people's complacency about governmental (and private-sector) surveillance that I honestly don't think kids should be able to graduate junior high without having read it.

Plus, since it's Creative Commons, it's not like it'll be especially costly if you don't want it to be.

(Oh, and Iron Man was great too.)

A Tip for Hillary, in the Name of Balance:

When they're praising you for being such a "fighter?"

They're setting you up for something else entirely.

I'm not going to say what it is, but here's a tip: do a google blog search for Huma Abedin, and think about how these things percolate.

And think about how the Republicans set it up so that even if there's no proof for an allegation, they've defined your character to the point where it's just plausible enough that they can get away with it.

Senator, they are not your friends.

What'd I Tell You, Barack?

I can appreciate the thought, but buddy, this ain't gonna help.

Yes, you did grow up less privileged than your counterparts. Hell, you're the only one of them who hasn't been a Republican at some point.

But that isn't why they're calling you "elitist". It has nothing to do with privilege, which the media and Washington both fall over themselves to adore.

It has to do with the fact that you're a tall, well dressed, well groomed, good looking, slender man who speaks well. That doesn't signal "privileged" in these people's minds. It signals something else.

They're calling you queer, Barack. They're calling you gay, Barack. They're calling you a fag, Barack. When Brooks goes on and on about "bobo"? Gay. When O'Reilly is railing against your comments? Gay. When Candy Crowley is saying "the people think he's an elitist?" Gay.

Gay, gay, gay.

But they know they can't get away with that overtly, so they're using proxy terms like "elitist", which they've invested in all this effete baggage over the years, and which now have a dual meaning.

That dual meaning makes it wonderfully flexible, too. They can use terms that actually signal elitism, and make them serve a dual purpose. Intellectual elites are more likely to be secular than the common man, so secularity is tied to a certain brand of elitism. So if you're secular? Gay. Elites go to Ivy League schools, though generally because of their families, an advantage you didn't have. So if you went to a Ivy League school? Gay. And so on.

(Of course, Republicans of various stripes are definitely elitists, and they seem to be turning up in hot tubs and airport washrooms on a regular basis getting their "not-hetero" on. But they're Republicans, so obviously they aren't gay, because not-gay people vote for them!)

So, yeah, they can get away with it. It helps that the Dems are so relatively gay-friendly, but it has more to do with their weak and womanish views towards helping the less fortunate and saving the environment and whatnot. REAL men (read: hetero) would never stand for it. Let 'em die in a gutter whilst guzzling domestic beer and eating raw meat, that's what real men do!

Points for effort. And were this a serious question of elitism, it might even help. But talking about being underprivileged won't help you, because it's not about privilege. It's about exploiting the carefully-crafted confusion in American society between signifiers of status and signifiers of homosexuality in order to turn your real best strength (your charisma) into a weakness (lol ur a fag). Nothing more.

It's, well, perverted, but it's the truth.

Attention, People of London:

If you vote for Boris Johnson, you're a prat.

(Not that Livingstone is much better, but at least he's not a gimmick dripping with racism.)

That is all.

Arugula and Beer and "Elites"

Amanda Marcotte (who is apparently embroiled in some conflict over her book, but whatever) points to something that people seem to miss a bit.

Where do wine coolers sit on the elitism scale? Sure, they’re about as cheap and disgusting as you can get, more so than even Budweiser, but they are also known as girly drinks, and the slur of liberal elitism is just as much about feminizing someone as it is invoking class anxiety.

Bingo.

People, "elite" as it's being applied against Obama (or other Dems) has nothing to do with actual elitism. Real elites (hell, even the "real" stereotype) don't drink wine or beer necessarily; they drink expensive single-malt scotch. They don't eat arugula or NOT eat arugula... they eat whatever's trendy and expensive.

No, this is all about masculinity, and by that I mean "not gay". It's about what straight men supposedly do that gay men don't. "Real" men don't drink wine... gay men do! "Real" men don't pay attention to what they're eating...gay men do! "Real" men know how to bowl... and gay men don't! "Real" men don't live in cities and drive hybrids! Gay men do!

(Real men drive pickup trucks and live on a "ranch", you see, though since not everybody can afford a ranch an overpriced, poorly made house in the exurbs will do in a pinch.)

When David Brooks et al are attacking Obama for being an "elitist", for drinking wine and eating arugula they're not saying he thinks he's above regular people. They're saying that he's womanish. They say he's fey. They say he wants to be "sodomized". They're calling him a "Batty-Man".

That's what this is about. "lol ur a fag" cleaned up for television. Nothing more.

Wright's Return

Digby isn't terribly impressed by Wright's comments.

I'm not either.

I have frankly been a little bit confused by the reaction to Reverend Wright's recent comments around the sphere and even here on this blog. I thought most people in the Netroots were big Obama supporters and yet they defend Reverend Wright, which I find rather surprising considering what he did.

It's true that after Obama's Philadelphia speech, I too defended Wright's sermons and even got a more positive sense of Barack Obama's worldview as a result of hearing what he'd said and listening to Obama's explanations for them. Other than a vague sense that he was something of a showboater, I was not hostile to to the man.

But Wright's latest round of media appearances have not seemed to me to be any kind of defense of liberalism or the black church or even Black Liberation Theology so much as one man's desire to deny a rival his destiny. This was personal and I find it very creepy.

John Amato shared some of my impressions:

Seeing Wright go on Moyers Friday night—at first, I didn’t understand why he’s doing this. Why did he need to come out now and use such loaded rhetoric that the media would pounce on? In the middle of a ugly primary race, he makes himself the story for another three news cycles. Then after I watched his National Press Club appearance, I wondered if he was actually trying to hurt Obama’s chances of winning even the primary because his ego wouldn’t allow him to hang back until December to have his say. It seems Obama has the same feelings.

And rightly so. Reverend Wright called into question the entire premise of Obama's campaign, a campaign built on changing the very nature of politics, when he said, "he did what politicians do." There was no need for him to speak out now except to gin up the controversy at the worst possible time. Any person of sensitivity would have at least waited until this tough, hard fought primary had ended. It was a self-aggrandizing, personal attack and it says something important about the man....

...Clearly [Obama] sees it as a betrayal and a deeply personal one. And so it was. So much so that I felt uncomfortable even watching it. Obama trusted Reverend Wright. As he pointed out, Wright had married him and Michelle, baptized their children, prayed with them over major events in their lives. Obama was very generous with him in his Philadelphia speech, offering a personal endorsement of his good character. And yet, knowing that Obama is fighting this ridiculous rumor about being a Muslim, Wright shows up at the National Press Club with bodyguards from the Nation of Islam and praises Farrakhan? Outrageous.

This all really doesn't seem to have an upside for anybody.

Wright looks like an asshole. Sorry for the language, but it's true. Had he said he understands Obama et al that'd be one thing, but his comments about Obama being "just a politician" are an asshole move of the highest order, one he's smart enough to understand the consequences of. Plus, by repeating the AIDS nonsense, he's lost all credibility. Foreign policy is debatable, as is white America's reaction to America's black churches, but the AIDS comments are beyond the pale. I had thought that these were remnants of past ignorance, long remedied. A bit too charitable, I suppose. He's getting fame, but it's more infamy than anything else.

(The sad thing is that the US Government is somewhat culpable for the spread of AIDS in that it ignored its existence and threat. But that's a more complex and difficult issue of rampant homophobia and ignorance; far easier to claim a conspiracy. Bit like the "truthers", that.)

Obama has to deal with this, and with the man he refused to "throw under the bus" doing the same thing back to him. There is a bit of an upside to it all, in that Obama can now repudiate the man without worrying about looking like a traitor, but the whole "20 years" thing has gained salience. Obama deserved credit for not willing to abandon a friend that he disagreed with; I still believe that, and always will. But he did, apparently, misjudge Wright's character.

Yet Clinton and McCain are now in tricky positions as well. Clinton has to play this very carefully. She's already on the verge of having to sacrifice the African-American and progressive communities if she wants the superdelegates to overturn Obama's near-insurmountable grassroots advantage. That would almost certainly cost her the election; the white middle class voters that she's counting on in the primary aren't likely to be overwhelming supporters in the general, and the ones that would vote for her are the ones who are almost certainly willing to vote for any Dem.

As for McCain, he has to deal with the reality of his own party's racial issues. Hit Wright too hard, and it will almost certainly embolden the racist, nativist elements in the party to come out in force. We're already starting to see hints of that, and they're already going to be pressing McCain to see just how much of a conservative he really is. While the black vote is already lost to the Republican, this could have an effect on OTHER minorities. If Obama is the nominee (as is still almost certainly the case) and the bleeding out of white Obama supporters is halted over the summer and fall, this could come back and bite McCain in the face. Remember, the press has a short attention span, and we've already seen their tendency to "build up and knock down". They haven't knocked down McCain yet, but he has to be aware of the possibility and plan for it.

Digby also brings up a really important point: that much of this is tied to the Dem's hamfisted attempt to wrap themselves up in religion. That was always a key part of Obama's campaign, one of the ones that I was never a huge fan of, and we've once again seen the Republicans pull the "strength into weakness" trick. But digby understands the broader point:

Amy Sullivan, one of the primary proponents of putting religiosity at the center of Democratic politics doesn't seem to know what to make of the problems Wright has caused for Obama. Apparently, she never considered the possible downsides of hewing so closely to religion that people think it's definitional. She and he friends didn't seem to realize that all the blather about secular Democrats was never about religion, but about social conservatism. You get no points for going to the "wrong kind" of church. You'd think they would have figured that out a long time ago.

Bolding mine. This continues to be the Dem's biggest weakness: they mistake methods for reasons. They see religion being used to attack Dems, and they think that the reason is because Dems aren't religious enough. So they emphasize their religion, and are surprised when it doesn't work. It doesn't work, though, because the reason has been, and always will be, to serve the interests of conservatism.

If they go to church? It's the wrong church. If they go to the right church? They pray the wrong way. They pray the right way? They're not "real" Christians because of disagreements with social conservative positions on issues.

The Dems need to figure out that they can't win this game. Not at this point. Not when the Republicans have become so very good at it. Obama can't win it, Clinton can't win it, Kerry couldn't win it, nobody can win it.

The only way to win is not to play; to ignore the snipes, build your own narrative, and run with that. Sure, you should respond, but not with "nuh-uh, I AM good enough, see?" You'll never be good enough for them. Riposte their attacks and hit back on all the things that they are terrible at.

With Republicans? That's pretty easy.

Problematic Analysis

I'm normally a big fan of Feministing. And I'm a committed supporter of feminism.

But as someone who's also a committed supporter of interactive gaming as an art form, may I simply suggest that anybody not willing to even consider the thought of playing a game like GTA4 refrain from throwing out any and all attacks that might occur to them after watching one clip? Especially of a "free-form" game that specializes in extremely dark humor?

After all, someone who had ever played a game ever might know that games have, yes, had female protagonists. Sometimes, they're even violent. Someone who had played a GTA game might also know that the characters are deliberate comedic caricatures, whether male or female, and that the series has featured female characters who are just about as developed as their male counterparts. (Though, again, they are all caricatures played for comedic effect, as anybody would figure out after about, oh, five seconds of playing the game.)

The commentariat there are a bit more divided, though again between the "I've actually played one of these games" group and the "I'd never touch it, clearly it's sexist trash, though I'm not sure what they're about other than hookers." A few people started yelling about all the rape (which the game has never contained in any way, shape, or form) or killing children (there are no children or animals in any of the games, for obvious reasons.)

Again, as a committed supporter of feminism, it really bothers me that people would harm the movement by reinforce the most negative stereotypes about its supposed humorlessness, hypersensitivity, and unwillingness to engage with the subject of its critiques. And I know for damned sure that loud-mouthed, ignorant jeremiads against gaming isn't going to do anything to close the abyss between the feminist movement and the growing number of Americans who play electronic games.

(Though I will say one thing: We've definitely hit the point where a GTA-style open world game should have a female protagonist. It'd be a tough sell in a series focusing on the hyper-masculinized and -sexist world of organized crime, but it's certainly possible.)

It's not that I don't think that there might be troubling elements to modern gaming. But the feminist critique of GTA4 smacks right into the wall that I see all the time: substituting easy criticism of what doesn't exist, for a complex critique of what does.

Hat tip: the somewhat NWS "Reverse Cowgirl", who thought the whole thing was a hill of crap, though for far more complex reasons.

Edit: Here's a good example of what I'm talking about. From one of the commentators on Feministing:

As an aside, there's a new competitor to World of Warcraft coming out, Warhammer Online, that limits the classes that male and female players can be. This makes absolutely no sense, and is one of the reasons I won't be buying it.

Here's the response:

That stinks about Warhammer. I don't know why they can't try to make things at least a bit more neutral. I mean if I can't be a female character, at least try not to have all the female characters in the game be damsels in distress or prostitutes with no names.

Warhammer is a fantasy game, from an established fantasy setting. Said setting includes several species with no female gender (Orcs, specifically), others who are beings of pure destruction of no gender whatsoever ("Chaos" beings), and one where only females can join a certain group of murderous savages, and said group consists of one of the classes (the Dark Elves' "Witch Elves").

Now, there's something to be said for a critique of a setting like this, though Warhammer has been around for longer than the blog's author, and sexism in medieval societies is kind of a given. But the game designers actually had very good reasons to restrict genders for some of the classes. But instead of taking all of three minutes to google up this "Warhammer" thing and find out why these restrictions existed, there was this jump to "ooh, that's terrible" and unthinking agreement.

Yes, these are just two posters in a long thread, and a later poster set them straight. But they're just an easy example. There are lots of others.

Next Edit:

The best one? The person saying "It's not like this game has any structured plot with a complex resolution like a book or a movie. So let's cut the crap." Actually, that's exactly what it's like, why the game has received universal plaudits for its "surprising narrative richness", and why you don't have the choice of protagonists.

Tomb Raider and Metroid Prime don't give you the choice of being male, and GTA4 doesn't give you the choice of being female, precisely because they do have a "structured plot with a complex resolution."

(Shortly thereafter, somebody trotted out Craig Anderson.)

Honestly, the only useful thing that came out of the whole discussion, and almost any discussion of this, is that Rockstar needs to put a female protagonist in a future GTA game. I'm wholeheartedly in favor of that, and of said female protagonist being able to do all the nasty things the male protagonists can do in the current games. Fair's fair. Get to it.

Obama's Running Mate!

Well, not really. But he, and everybody else, was inspired by the passion of Jean Weiss, 82, who told him:

"Don't hit on Hillary," Weiss advised, "Bring us all back. Let her do that stuff. Leave her alone, you don't need to do that. You are higher than that."

The video's all over Youtube.



Also DailyKos.

(He did answer her question about water, by the way. Just not on the video.)

In the Interests of Fairness

I'm thoroughly in agreement with Kos that Obama's Fox News appearance was dumb, dumb, dumb. They're going to pocket the victory and keep on attacking their asses off.

Still, it's odd that Kos would use language this vehement:

Brilliant! Fox ignores the entire interview, except the part that gives them permission to keep harping on Wright. Boy, no one could've predicted that! Note that while Fox itself ignored the bulk of their interview of the likely Democratic nominee on a show that supposedly covers the campaign, they did have time to show Bush pretending to conduct a military band and McCain saying healthcare was too expensive (because what ... he cares?).

Success! But of course, Obama's appearance was a great thing because nothing Obama does can be questioned by mere mortals!

Whatever. Stupid move, and in the end, ends up legitimizing the network while they continue spending their every waking moment trashing his very existence.

Is Moulitsas a little bit disenchanted with the Senator from Illinois, perhaps?

Mmm....

Pork:

Hillary enjoys the hell out of it. Taibbi:

But of the three candidates, no one can touch Hillary Clinton for her expertise in dispensing federal pork. She is fast becoming a sort of Heavyweight Earmark Champion of the Beltway -- one think-tank analyst has even dubbed her the "Queen of Pork" -- who excels as a favor trader not only in sheer quantity but in brazenness as well. A recent examination of this year's earmark requests shows her solidifying her champion status more and more with each passing year, even under the ostensibly bright lights of a presidential campaign...

...

Hillary's defense earmarks benefited some of the world's largest weapons producers, many of which have factories in New York. Among the most prominent include Northrop Grumman, which Hillary singled out for $6 million to develop a new radar system; Plug Power, for whom Hillary secured $3 million for a backup power system for Pentagon operations; and Telephonics, which Hillary gave $5 million for an intercom system for Black Hawk helicopters.

Her biggest coup of all was a multi-billion-dollar contract she helped to secure for Lockheed Martin to build the Marine One presidential helicopter -- a project derided by insiders as a typical example of Pentagon waste. "Oh, the presidential-helicopter thing is a classic boondoggle," says one congressional source. "They could have taken any old Black Hawk helicopter, put a nice interior in it and a decal on it, and it would've been OK. Instead, we got this thing that costs four times as much. It's nuts." Indeed, the Pentagon confirmed in March that the helicopter Hillary made sure would be built at Lockheed's plant in Owego, New York, would, in fact, cost $400 million per unit -- more than the modified Boeing 747 used as Air Force One. You heard right: $400 million for a single fucking helicopter.

With most of her earmarks, Clinton makes sure to get a return on her investment of taxpayer money. Lockheed donated $10,000 to Hillary's Senate campaign in 2006 and provided her with plenty of free rides on its planes. Plug Power officials have reportedly donated some $7,100 to her campaigns since 2003, and several Northrop executives gave the max to her presidential campaign. In that light it seems odd that Hillary was critical of a deal to award a refueling tanker project to Northrop -- except that she has also received maximum contributions from executives at the rival bidder, Boeing. Meanwhile, employees from Corning, for whom Hillary secured a $1 million earmark, donated $133,000 to her presidential campaign. The list goes on and on.

But Hillary's most brazen earmark this presidential-election season had nothing to do with defense. It had to do, oddly enough, with rock music. Back in June 2007, Hillary attempted to write a $1 million earmark for a museum commemorating the Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York. Not that anyone should have anything against Woodstock, but it seems weird to ask taxpayers to pay for it -- especially when the project is principally funded by one of America's richest men, a media mogul named Alan Gerry. Listed as number 297 on the annual Forbes list of wealthy Americans, Gerry reportedly has a net worth of $1.6 billion. Beyond the fact that he hardly needs the money, there is this to consider: On June 30th of last year, exactly three days after the earmark was officially inserted into an appropriations bill, Gerry and his wife both made maximum donations to Hillary's presidential campaign, totaling $9,200.

The deal stank, even by congressional standards. When Republican opponents introduced an amendment to kill the earmark, the measure passed easily. "Most of our amendments fail by fifty or sixty votes," says John Hart, a spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, an anti-earmark crusader who introduced the amendment to kill the handout. "But this one passed with no problem. It was so over-the-top.

Not that McCain is exactly innocent of big ol' earmarks. The man was part of the Keating 5, for heaven's sake.

To be fair, Obama's also caught up in it:

Hillary isn't alone among the candidates in selling us down the river for a few campaign contributions. Unlike Clinton, who has only disclosed the pork she actually succeeded in doling out, Barack Obama has supplied reporters with a list of every earmark he requested. But the list only served to highlight Obama's own pork, including $8 million for a "High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program" that would have been overseen by General Dynamics. Obama's Illinois finance chairman, James Crown, not only sits on the board of General Dynamics, he and his wife are both Obama bundlers who have raised more than $200,000 for Obama's campaign. Obama was also alone among the remaining candidates last year in using his leadership PAC to hand out money to politicians whose support he sought in his presidential run.

Yep, he's got earmarks too. It's how you become and stay a Senator.

But this gets to the Clinton strategy of being part of the machine, co-opting it to their purposes, and "playing the game." Well, kids, this is the game. This is how it's played: big ol' defense earmarks that move billions of dollars of contracts around in order to get a couple hundred thousand dollars in bundled campaign contributions.

I'm not saying you shouldn't recognize it. But I am inclined to look unfavorably on someone who wraps themselves up in it.

Another Open Letter to the LPoC (Bloggers Edition)

Dear Liberal Bloggers:

RUN IT INTO THE GROUND.

Going over my RSS reader, I'm noticing a shocking lack of, well, shock. This is one of the worst weeks in the Conservative Party's post "progressive" history, and the perfect moment to sink the knives in and give happy, gleeful twists... and yet what do I see?

Ruminations about Albertan budgets!

Apologies for minivans!

Bits on Earth Day!

And bits on Colbert from last week!

And all this while they're so off message that a bunch of Conservatives are pathetically whining about the raiding cops "pushing their way in" and wearing Flak jackets!

For all the crap that Cherniak takes--especially from me--at least he's been on the ball on all this.

Do you think Kos would stand for this? NO! Do you think Digby would stand for this? NO! Do you think those "Bloggin' Tories" would stand rest on their hideously enlarged knuckles for this?

NO!

They'd be making all kinds of fun insinuations and accusations and jokes and barely disguised "analysis" that all amounts to "hah, hah, your guy's a loser and he's going to end up dying alone in a gutter!" That's what you need! That's what you want!

SO GET TO IT!

(Regards, that one person with the historical/fictional pseudonym.)

Two Other Observations:

First: There seems to be a bit of a disconnect in how people are looking at voting. They're focusing on whether or not groups will vote against Obama in the general by looking at whether they're voting against him in the primary.

But that's wrong. People do vote against candidates, but they also vote for them. Anybody who voted for Hillary and not against Obama will likely vote Obama in the fall. And anybody who did vote against Obama may well vote against McCain in the fall, as they dislike McCain more than Obama.

That's why you can't claim that the primary results show that Obama is alienating anybody, as opposed to Clinton attracting them for whatever reason. The basic mechanics of voting simply don't work like that.

Second: I don't want to get all postmodernist, but the American media is Othering the HELL out of blacks at this point. Everybody's looking at working-class blue-collar white men and whether or not they're likely to support Obama in the primary in, say, Indiana... but North Carolina's blacks are completely written off in the coverage. "Well, they're black, we don't need to even pay attention to their votes" is the order of the day. This despite the fact that any Democratic candidate is going to need their votes more so than the vanishingly small number of true swing-voters that fit that blue-collar male demographic.

(If Republicans didn't attract blue-collar males who weren't already Democratic for economic reasons, there wouldn't be a Republican party. Obama's would have a hard time erasing that advantage, but Hillary "Hillarycare" Clinton wouldn't have a prayer. Sorry, but she wouldn't.

Speaking of Hacks, it's ABC!

Yep, ABC, the "all 'bout Clinton" network, which has written a lovely little hit-piece on Obama called "Why Can't Obama Close the Deal?" Filled with suppositions, Clintonista quotes, and grade-A bovine digestive byproducts, it omits a simple question:

"If not Obama, then who?"

ABC (and others, who seem to be fully off Obama at this point) are focusing on Obama's various weaknesses with the "heartland". You know, the "heartland?" That part of America (supposedly) filled with low-brow whites that media types are completely unfamiliar with and thus lionize all the more?

It's nonsense if you look at it over time, his numbers have been improving with these demographics, but it's not important.

Here's what is. If not Obama, then who? Well, that's easy. Clinton.

And Hillary Clinton has been getting an easy, easy ride from the media these days. Even with that stupid Bosnia thing, they aren't asking the real question, which is what her weaknesses are. And yes, she has them, and people acknowledge it, but her main weakness is something they don't discuss: the convention itself.

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: she cannot win the pledged delegates. The Democratic primary system simply doesn't work like that. Screw the "math" line, people's eyes glaze over if you use that word, just acknowledge that she can't win the pledged delegates. The only way she can win is if the superdelegates override the pledged delegates.

And that would be disastrous. Everybody knows that. Nobody will admit it who isn't already in the Obama camp, but that would be disastrous. She'd be seen as illegitimate. She'd be seen as someone who couldn't even beat Obama. She'd be seen as everything negative about the Dems, with the media leading the charge.

(That's something she doesn't get. Every "strength" she has against Obama will become a weakness against McCain. The demos she wins against Obama would be automatically put in the "Maverick" camp by the media during the general. Even if she can win them, it will be portrayed as a weakness by the gatekeepers. And the "experience" and "judgement" arguments will be a bloodbath. That's one of the reasons Obama's a stronger candidate- he has answers to his deficiencies on those. She doesn't.)

In the wake of the convention, the Dems would fall apart. Blacks would stay home, and probably never come back. Progressives would stay home or go Green. Fundraising would flatten. Some bloggers would half-heartedly support the party, but would have received their own "fuck you" from the party as well. Many would probably bail out; not necessarily going Green, but focusing on local races and ignoring the presidential elephant in the room. The volunteer numbers would crater. It'd be a disaster. Clinton would lose, the 2008 advantage would be squandered, and the various factions in the party would blame each other for the loss.

THAT IS WHAT A CLINTON GENERAL ELECTION WOULD LOOK LIKE.

Sorry, but it is. By ignoring this ABC (and the rest) are lying to you by omission. We can't compare Obama against some platonic Democratic ideal, and we can't compare him against Hillary in a race that wasn't already decided. If Hillary had remained the frontrunner from the beginning, it'd be an entirely different scenario. If this were still a primary race, it'd be different too.

It's not.

I'm not totally comfortable with Obama's policies, and I do think he made some mistakes in Pennsylvania, though not as many as the barking idiots seem to believe. But the decision is clear, as much as ABC and its ilk is trying to hide it. It's Obama, or it's mutually assured destruction. Those are the choices.

Choose wisely.

There's a Scent in the Air

Anybody else scenting the delicious aroma of, well, giant hack?

Seems to be coming from over here.

Yep, when faced with a controversy between the Conservative Party of Canada and Elections Canada, an unbiased election body that's probably the single thing that America most needs to copy from the poutine-and-back-bacon crowd, who is she betting on?

The CPC.

Look, I know you have a big stake in Harper's continued success, because you'd rather chew glass than have Stephane Dion as the Prime Minister. I know the spectacle of Steve-o and his crew getting caught up in a scandal arguably as bad as the Liberal one you've been riding for years is a disaster scenario. And I know you want to say that if Harper and his minions get a majority then they'll change the government enormously.

But seriously:

Over the past decade, Elections Canada has gone from election watchdog to arbiter of Canada's democratic life, taking on a more central role in every aspect of federal electoral politics, including the leadership campaigns of the various parties. It has never been easier for a politician to run afoul of its regulations.

But in this affair, its moral authority is on the line.

By calling in the RCMP to assist them in executing a warrant against the governing party, election officials had to know that they were hanging the Conservatives out to dry, creating a perception of guilt that will not be easily dissipated and a sense of wrongdoing that may yet not live up to the facts.

Having forced his way into the filing cabinets of the governing party, elections commissioner William Corbett has now staked his credibility on building an airtight case.

Not only is this piece flagrant goalpost-moving that would give Sully pause in his Bush-loving heyday, but it shows that you actually agree with the contention that the scandal is somehow a little legal conflict between "Elections Canada" and "The Tories", instead of what it actually is: an investigation of election cheating.

And there's more.

But that's not even necessarily the worst-case scenario. Should the Conservatives take a hit at the ballot box on account of this affair and it then turns out that Elections Canada was not able to make a winning case against them, the episode would leave an indelible black mark on the agency's reputation.

This is like saying that the police shouldn't execute search warrants because they might not be able to make a case. Wait, no. That is exactly what she's saying.

And as for the moral aspect of Harper being caught cheating, but getting out on a technicality and an unbiased regulatory body receiving a "black mark", and what that would mean for democracy in both Canada and abroad? Or even the slightest word about the ethical implications of the subject of the investigation? Not a blessed word. That might mean the Liberals win a few seats in Quebec!

Hack.
Hack.
Hack.

Sweet Mollycoddling Crapola

Krugman just justified his damned blog right here:

Nordhaus, among other things, wrote a hostile review of Jay Forrester’s World Dynamics, which led to the later Limits to Growth. The essential story there was one of hard-science arrogance: Forrester, an eminent professor of engineering, decided to try his hand at economics, and basically said, “I’m going to do economics with equations! And run them on a computer! I’m sure those stupid economists have never thought of that!” And he didn’t walk over to the east side of campus to ask whether, in fact, any economists ever had thought of that, and what they had learned. (Economists tend to do the same thing to sociologists and political scientists.The general rule to remember is that if some discipline seems less developed than your own, it’s probably not because the researchers aren’t as smart as you are, it’s because the subject is harder.

Bolding is mine, because it's the good bit. The attitude of economists towards other social scientists has always intensely annoyed me; figuring out how one divvys up the resources is relatively easy to compute compared to, say, social dynamics. Yet we get the spectacle of economists trying to "explain it all" using logic that would cause helpless gales of laughter in anybody familiar with the fields in question.

(That's why I've never been totally impressed by Levitt, by the by. His books are an interesting read, but I wouldn't bet the farm on 'em.)

In any case, kudos to the Professor for not acting like, well, every other economist in the world. Nice change.

Edit: Ahahahaha I hadn't read his latest column yet.

Nine years ago The Economist ran a big story on oil, which was then selling for $10 a barrel. The magazine warned that this might not last. Instead, it suggested, oil might well fall to $5 a barrel.

In any case, The Economist asserted, the world faced “the prospect of cheap, plentiful oil for the foreseeable future.”

Last week, oil hit $117.

Oh Economist editors, you're such lovable hacks.

Shifting Goalposts

Remember when Hillary needed to win Penn. by 20% to stay? And then remember when she needed to win it by 10% to stay in? Well, now the various networks are saying "SHE WON! THEREFORE SHE'S STILL IN!"

Look. Folks. I know you want this to keep going. I know that the second the Dem primary ends you lose all those easy stories. But come on. Unless the margin widens, she's not going to beat the percentage she was supposed to beat to stay in.

Get the fork.

Edit: Or perhaps not? She won by about 10%, and that was the expected margin. I'm still not seeing a path to victory here--I truly doubt that Hillary supporters will switch to McCain en masse were Obama the nominee--but the slugfest may continue.

Re-Edit: The Obama spin, courtesy of Kos:

To: Interested Parties

Fr: The Obama Campaign

Re: A fundamentally unchanged race

Da: 4/22/08

Tonight, Hillary Clinton lost her last, best chance to make significant inroads in the pledged delegate count.

The only surprising result from Pennsylvania is that in a state considered tailor-made for Hillary Clinton that she was expected to win, Barack Obama was able to improve his standing among key voter groups since the Ohio primary. For example, among white voters, Obama narrowed the gap with Clinton by six points. Among voters over 60, he nearly cut the gap in half, from 41 points to 24 points. And Independent voters – the group that will decide the general election and a group Obama is particularly strong with – were not able to vote in Not surprisingly, she led by as much as 25 points in the weeks leading up to the election.

As he has done in every state, Barack Obama campaigned hard to pick up as much support and as many delegates as possible and was able to stave off Clinton from achieving a significant pledged delegate gain from Pennsylvania.

The bottom line is that the Pennsylvania outcome does not change dynamic of this lengthy primary. While there were 158 delegates at stake there, there are fully 157 up for grabs in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6.

And that's it, isn't it? Network spin aside, Penn. wasn't supposed to be a win, it was supposed to be a stomping. It wasn't anything of the sort. And since I assume that the "not able to vote in Not surprisingly..." bit was SUPPOSED to say that Independents couldn't vote in the Dem primary, this really was Hillary's to win, and puts the lie to the "independent minded Hillary supporter" line popular on CNN right now. Hillary's the candidate of the machine, the machine is very much operational in Penn. and it did its job.

Nothing wrong with that, but the real story is that Hillary didn't do better.

Re-Re-Edit: Hmm...according to the Penn. election site, the spread is actually 54.3% to 45.7%. Rounding the former down and the latter up, you get a 54-46 spread, or 8%. Double digits that ain't. Networks don't care, and Hillary's going to keep on going, but it's something to consider.