More On The Obama Race Conversation

I really liked this section from a post-game interview with Senator Obama:

“Michelle and most of my black friends I think were much more confident and calm about me giving this speech. My white friends and advisers were much more nervous.”

Asked why the difference: “The African American community deals with this, grapples with this in ways that the white community just doesn’t. This is a common experience. I think most African Americans will share it. If there’s some horrendous crime out there, black people are always a little nervous until they see the picture, hoping that it’s not a black person who committed it. A white person never thinks that way.”

Now, in agreeing with Obama, I’m going to slightly qualify what he said: White Jews definitely do think this way on occasion (and I suspect other whites who still see themselves as part of a historically persecuted minority also share the feeling once in a while). It’s where the phrase “shandeh for the goyim” originates; we’re all embarrassed and concerned when a guy like Jack Abramoff gets his comeuppance because the crimes he committed seem like they might confirm to the majority some of the very worst stereotypes about Jews. So, when Obama says, “If there’s some horrendous crime out there, black people are always a little nervous until they see the picture, hoping that it’s not a black person who committed it,” black people are probably worrying about different crimes that would uphold different stereotypes, but it’s a similar sentiment. And, yes, I agree that- while the sentiment is slightly broader than Obama states here- most white Protestant Americans don’t have a real sense of how that feels.

Obama, Wright, How I Would Handle The Non-Issue

I just read Steve Benen’s latest thoughts on the right’s potential overreach with the current stream of attacks on Barack Obama’s pastor. Some are thinking that there might be a backlash that turns the whole thing in Obama’s favor.

I don’t know if that will be the case, but I do know that it should be the case if the senator handles his just-announced speech properly. There are two factors the wingnuts are ignoring here that turn the Wright controversy into a really dangerous can of worms, and I think Obama’s campaign is smart enough to use both.

1) Does the die-hard right really want Barack Obama, with the national spotlight shining on him, to give a [insert many superlatives that apply to Obama's oratory] speech proclaiming the importance of his religion and its role in his life*?

John McCain, to put it bluntly, can’t give that speech. If he tried, it wouldn’t be nearly as persuasive on any number of levels. The religious zealots of the Christian right already consider him a heathen regardless of what he does, and he’s not a good enough stump speaker (by several degrees) for such a speech to even matter to the moderates who like religion but don’t solely base their votes on it. If Barack Obama gives such a speech, it can only hurt McCain in the long run.

2) Does the die-hard right really want Barack Obama, with the national spotlight shining on him, to give a [insert many superlatives that apply to Obama's oratory] speech reminding moderate white America of the incredible guilt they felt when blacks took the worst of Hurricane Katrina two and a half years ago?

This one is a bit riskier for Senator Obama, but again, I trust him completely to do it well. When Obama stands up and denounces the extremism of some of his pastor’s statements, and then segues into a discussion of why some Americans feel so much anger and what a President Obama would do to bring everyone back together andend the divisiveness, he’ll be right on his favorite- and best- turf. This whole thing isn’t about Obama’s association with an Angry Black Man; it’s about Obama’s ability to communicate with and understand so many different Americans coming from so many different backgrounds. And, playing the Democrats’ strongest trump card in this election**, it’s about how a President Obama would base his presidency on protecting every American, giving every American a fair chance, and bringing us all together to achieve great things.

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*While also, I would hope, wrapping it in the importance of the separation of church and state and tolerance of religious diversity and all of that good stuff that I believe in as a progressive and a non-Christian.

**Don’t forget, Hurricane Katrina was the literal Category 5 storm that metaphorically destroyed the dam holding back President Bush’s record-setting disapproval ratings. People were already starting to lose faith in him and the pictures from the Superdome convinced them of just how bad his presidency was. Tie that in to the Republicans’ mishandling of the economy to protect only the rich, and, like I said, you’ve got the Democrats’ trump card for the election. (And yes, I feel bad about calling people’s suffering a trump card, but, you know…)

What The FUCK, Howard County?

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I actually grew up in Alabama.

Via Feministing.

The Surge Is Working

WHAT THE FUCK?!?

Also, I Don’t Know What The “Harry and Louise” Ads Were

Via Aravosis, the Clinton campaign goes a bit overboard:

The Clinton campaign convened a conference call with health policy experts to denounce Obama’s new mailer (.pdf), which attacks Clintons plan for “forcing” Americans to sign up for insurance, and which features a couple at a kitchen table that recalls, for some, the famous insurance-industry financed “Harry and Louise” ads against the original Clinton plan.

“I am personally outraged at the picture used in this mailing,” said Len Nichols of the New America foundation, a leading supporter of mandatory insurance, who called it a “Harry and Louise evocation.”

“It is as outrageous as having Nazis march through Skokie, Illinois,” Nichols said. “I just find it disgusting that this kind of imagery is being used to attack the only way to get to universal coverage.”

Are there swastikas hidden in the guy’s shirt or something?

Someone working in a more official capacity for the Clinton campaign already made a point of distancing the campaign from the comments, so don’t blame HRC or anything. Still, pretty hilarious.

Fuzzy Math On Behalf Of Team Clinton

Big Tent Democrat writes:

I think it is interesting that Bill Clinton actually won his elections by 5 and 9 points and yet someone like Meyerson talks as if Clinton was a 51-49 President. I also think it is interesting that Meyerson does not for a moment consider the SIMILARITIES between the Obama campaign and the Clinton campaign of 1992 especially. There is a willful blindness to this from some circles.

I don’t really remember the ‘92 campaign. I was 10 at the time. So I won’t try to jump into the discussion on the second part of the argument. However, the first part is ridiculous: Clinton won in’92 with 43% of the vote and in ‘96 with 49% of the vote. Neither time around did he manage to convince even 51% of voters to choose him; he merely won pluralities in enough states to hold a comfortable electoral college margin over his opponents.

“5%” and “9%” margins sound great, but they don’t mean that President Clinton won a sweeping mandate when they refer to a president who was actually less than “51-49″. He did an admirable job of squeaking into the White House as a Democrat in a conservative country. Nothing more, nothing less.

Stop Scolding Nutjobs And Tell Us Why Your Wife Would Make A Good President

Does anyone else feel like the former president has started to sound… well… really old?

He obviously doesn’t look anywhere near as good as he did ten, let ago twenty, years ago, but until very recently I always still saw Bill Clinton as the energetic ball of charisma he always was. Over the last few weeks he’s seemed much more like a grumpy old man. Take today’s incident with a heckler (much as I hate to turn one incident with a heckler into a big deal). Would the 90’s Clinton have ever bothered to respond to this guy, especially in such a dismissive tone, no matter how crazy the guy may be? I’m pretty sure the 90’s Clinton would have either ignored him for the loon he is or attempted to show some sort of empathy despite the man’s ridiculous ideas.

So: Am I totally in the tank for Obama to the point of obsessing over the Clenis like some deranged David Broder wannabe, or is Bill Clinton becoming distinctly crankier as this campaign wears on?

Random Yet 100% Right Thought Of The Day

I’m glad Floridians and Michiganians (Michiganers? who the fuck cares?) lost their votes in the primary. Guess what, assholes, my vote in a primary has never counted in my life. Remember that time I got to vote for Al Gore or a write-in because Bill Bradley was already finished*? Or that time I got to vote for John Kerry or John Edwards even though Kerry already had enough delegates to secure the nomination before I ever got to the polling place? How’s it feel now, bitchez?

If this gets two states who always supported our crackhead primary system because they happened to be in prime spots on the calendar to collectively rethink their positions, then I wish they could have lost their vote DOUBLE. Whatever that means.

OK, I’m done now. But I’m absolutely right about this.

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*Not that I should have voted against Al Gore, regardless. I’m just saying, it would have been nice to have gotten the same option as Florida and Michigan got.

Not My Top Choice Of Republican To Mock As He Slinks Away

I know I’m supposed to be happy about yet another Republican member of Congress’s decision to retire rather than face the anticipated Democratic tide in November, but I’m not. When it came to the most basic issue of democracy, enfranchisement for every citizen (or, at least, the 600,000ish citizens living in the Occupied Territory of the District of Columbia), Tom Davis was one of the very few consistent good guys on either side of the aisle.

There was certainly plenty on which to disagree with Tom Davis for me as well as for his increasingly liberal constituents in NoVA. Nonetheless, I can’t name another representative, Democrat or Republican (and non-voting Delegate Eleanor Homes-Norton does not count), who turned my enfranchisement into his or her signature issue in the way Davis did. How many Republicans were willing to fight the Tom DeLay machine and stand up for what was right in the face of a direct risk to Republican electoral gain? How many Democrats were willing to waste their oh-so-valuable time usually spent writing blank checks for Bush’s war in order to force their leadership to defend my basic rights?

Fairfax, I’d ask you to do your region a favor and demand that Davis’s (preferably Democratic) successor work equally hard on this issue. To be perfectly honest, though, I doubt you’ll find someone with quite the same commitment.

Stupid Mets And Their Stupid Money And Assests Worth Trading For

Spencer Ackerman is an exceedingly valuable voice among the young liberal political reporter/commentator class, but I’m astoundingly unimpressed by his baseball sense:

Maybe it’s the frustration talking, but Charlie evinces needless incredulity over Johan Santana’s likely move over to the Mets. The idea of being the undisputed best pitcher in the National League sounds pretty good to me. Omar Minaya is a brilliant GM, the Mets have a huge payroll, and a dominant, 28-year old AL pitcher is just going to look better in the NL. Obviously I would prefer Santana to go to the Yankees, just as Charlie would prefer he go to the Red Sox, but in the grand scheme of things, this might be best for all of us.

[Emphasis added]

Omar Minaya? The same guy who was hired by MLB explicitly to dismantle the Expos before their intended contraction and, when that contraction never happened, left the newly-minted Nationals with the worst farm system in baseball? Which part of his Mets record qualifies him as brilliant, putting together the best starting rotation of 80 year-olds in baseball and then watching all of those pitchers break down by the postseason, or lucking into his predecessor having drafted two of the best young position players in the NL East (Wright and Reyes)? Or was it giving away a talented young outfielder for the Nats’ overpriced leftovers earlier this winter? Aside from this Santana trade, I can’t think of a single move Minaya has ever made as a GM that rises above “pretty good”, let alone reaches “brilliant”.

And, in case you haven’t guessed, I’m pissed as hell that Johan may very well be winning Cy Youngs for a division rival of the Nats for the next ten years.

I Hope Hillary Clinton Starts Hitting Rocks With Sticks (Hey! A Biblical Reference From Me! You Never Saw That One Coming)

Oooh, great column from Harold Meyerson today. Really captures the whole “Is Obama truly transformative?” discussion that I think a lot of Democrats (as well as independents and worried Republicans) are now engaging.

As Walzer noted, both Maimonides and Marx, in very different ways, argued that the Jews who had lived in bondage had to die out, and a new generation that hadn’t known the habits of slavery take their place, before the people could cross over into Canaan and freedom.

For 40 years now, since 1968, the Democrats have wandered in a political desert. From Nixon to Reagan to the current Bush, it’s been a conservative era, and the genius of Bill Clinton, the most successful Democratic politician of that time, was primarily defensive — devising stratagems as a candidate to keep the Republicans from winning over Democrats on social issues, and then as a president to keep Republicans from abolishing government altogether while conceding that the era of big government was over. The times themselves mandated incrementalism and triangulation, wars without movement fought behind battlements and moats, and no one learned the lessons of that era more brilliantly than Hillary Clinton. In a 51 to 49 nation, she is probably the best the Democrats have to offer.

But can the Democrats ever push beyond the politics of entrenchment?

I’m not sure I would have intentionally used an analogy in which Democrats are akin to Marx’s theoretical communist revolutionaries (it’s way too easy of a target for wingnuts, apt though the argument may be intellectually), but otherwise, I think this is the exact question every Democrat voting in February needs to ask him or herself.

Edwards Out

My news reader is flooded with notes that Edwards will drop out today, although no further solid info seems to be coming to light yet.

Real mixed feelings on this one. As I’ve said, I like Edwards. A lot. Proudly voted for him in the ‘04 primary when he was the last man standing against Kerry’s impending train wreck. And I have nothing less than complete admiration for his wife, who has deservedly become something of a beloved figure in progressive circles over the last few years.

But we’ve all known for nearly a month that it wasn’t going to happen this year. Given the two other choices, I’m not really sure it should have happened for Edwards this year. He just doesn’t offer a whole lot that I can’t get from either HRC or Obama… And, as I’ve also said, Obama has genuinely inspired me since the primaries really heated up. Much as I like him, much as I think his presidency could be a great one for progressive goals, Edwards didn’t quite ascend to that same level.

No speculation from me, at the moment, about who Edwards helps the most by dropping out or about which candidate he might endorse. (Although I do have to note that the number of exceptionally coveted endorsements still available just doubled; Al has some company*.) Instead, a sincere thank you to the former senator for fighting the good fight, fighting it honorably, and helping to steer his opponents to a more progressive policy path whenever they drifted away from the debates our party needed.

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*Richardson arguably makes three, but the value of his endorsement strikes me as somewhat segmented. It would very likely significantly help Obama or HRC in courting or cementing the Latino vote, respectively, and especially in the Southwest. However, judging by his performance so far in the election, a nod from Richardson wouldn’t mean a whole lot to the rest of the party. On Cillizza’s scale, I think he falls in that nebulous gap between the Symbolic Endorsement and the State-Specific Endorsement.

Quick Recommendation

I just wanted to highly recommend Dahlia Lithwick’s latest for Slate. A pitch-nearly-perfect indictment of the Democratic Congress, not from an opponent or a concern troll but from someone who understands exactly why Congress’s approval ratings are at Dick Cheney levels.

Eggs, Meet Lone Basket

I’ve seen some minor disagreement today (primarily at TPM, off the top of my head, but elsewhere, too) about whether Florida really will/should be decisive for the Republicans. I think the following pretty much clears up the former version of the argument, although it does little for the latter:

As they fight for momentum on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have also spent the past week-and-a-half dueling it out on the airwaves in multiple Super Tuesday states, to the tune of $2.5 to 3 million each.

The outcome of the Republican contest may be just as uncertain – but no GOP candidate is currently on the air in any of the 21 states that will weigh in on their party’s presidential nomination next Tuesday.

So McCain and Romney are doing essentially nothing to capture the attentions of voters in New York, California, or any other Super Tuesday! Tuesday! Tuesday! state right now, despite the massive number of delegates available (mostly, on the Republican side, in winner-take-all state contests) on the fifth.

I’m pretty sure Romney has the money to be running ads outside of Florida, although McCain might have had to go in this direction for financial reasons. But regardless of whether it was a strategic decision or a necessity, it sounds to me like they’re both considering today’s primary to be the make-or-break point.

Come on, Mittmentum.

I Can’t Help The Constant Worshipful Posts, He’s Just So Dreamy

Via Andrew Sullivan, this is an awfully cool story about Barack Obama, told by Bill Richardson. I’m just going to cut-and-paste the whole thing:

“I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that.’”

Sullivan notes that while it’s not an endorsement, it may be a prelude to one. I suspect Richardson is unlikely to go that far and risk losing his status as a prime candidate to be HRC’s running mate should she win. But it is awfully cool that no one has yet been able to find a single negative (and true) thing to say about Senator Obama personally. Every Democratic official alive seems to respect him on at least some level.