That’s it?!?

John McCain’s campaign raised $12 million in February.
That may sound like a lot, and it is, but when you consider that Hillary Clinton raised $35 million and Barack Obama raised close to $50 million during the same time period, it’s chicken feed.
But this is consistent with how the entire election season has been going. Three to four times as many Democrats are turning out to vote in the primaries as Republicans. When McCain holds a campaign rally, he attracts just a fraction of the number that either Hillary or Obama attract.
Just imagine when the primary race is over and the Hillary people come on board with the Obama campaign (the most likely scenario). They are going to swamp the Republicans in November. Most of the Republican’s big money men know this and that is why they are keeping their wallets closed for this election. They don’t like to throw away their money on losing causes. And the Republican presidential campaign is a lost cause no matter who the nominee is.

Whose side are they on??

One reason I’ll be glad when this primary campaign is over is to put an end to garbage like this. Why is Hillary cutting ads for John McCain? Sheesh!

I was thinking the same thing yesterday when I heard Hillary supporter Henry Cisneros on the logal wingnut radio station WOAI 1200 being interviewed by Joe Pags. Pags is one of those “John McCain is not conservative enough for me” nut jobs who will end up supporting McCain in the fall anyway. And here he was interviewing Cisneros and delighting in getting the former San Antonio mayor and HUD secretary to take cheap pot shots at Obama.
The only good things is that these “my opponent doesn’t have enough experience” attacks are largely ineffective. Otherwise, George W. Bush would never have been almost elected in 2000.

But when it comes to internal bickering, I don’t think Democrats can hold a candle to the kind of vicious dog-eat-dog battles that go on in the Republican primary. I heard a radio ad for Republican state Rep. Nathan Macias that made it sound like his Republican opponent is running on Ralph Nader’s Green Party ticket. The ad is mean and nasty and vicious, and then it has the audacity at the very end to accuse Macias’ opponent of “running a negative campaign.” Go figure.

And listening to Quico Canseco’s radio ads makes me hope Lyle Larson will pull off a victory despite being outspent nearly 10-1 in the race. Canseco is shamelessly and ignorantly demagouging over the illegal immigration issue. Not only do the demogouges make the illegal immigration issue into a bigger problem than it really is, but their proposed solution is fanciful nonsense that will only exacerbate the problem over the long run. You CANNOT deport 12 million people who are already here and have long ago enmeshed themselves into our society. Providing them with a means to obtain citizenship is not just doing them a favor (not to mention their children), it is doing society in general a favor. Giving them citizenship means they will be able to serve society as well as benefit from it.

An endorsement (not)

I am constantly amazed that I actually have a U.S. Congressman representing me who I like and can support - Ciro Rodriguez. And a state senator too - Carlos Uresti.
But my state representative is a little rightwing toad by the name of Frank Corte Jr.
I just heard an ad for Corte today on the local wingnut radio station (WOAI) and it reminded me that he actually has a primary opponent this year, the equally loathsome and dumb as a brick Tony Kosub.

So I just wanted to take a minute to announce my endorsement of Tony Kosub in his bid to take down Corte Jr. in the Republican primary. Not because I want Kosub representing me any more than Corte Jr., but because on a tactical level it would be easier for a Democrat to run against Kosub in the fall. Kosub has not built up the name recognition, the campaign warchest or the legislative experience that Corte Jr. has. Therefore he would be easier to knock off in the general election, and, in the event that he does get into office, God forbid, he would be less effective and less able to screw things up.

The Hagee-Farrakhan double standard

Glenn Greenwald has another excellent post up today in which he calls attention to what I would call the Hagee-Farrakhan double standard in our political discourse.

Why is Louis Farrakhan deemed by our political establishment to be so radioactive as to not be fit for good company -- black candidates are required to repudiate his support even when they haven't sought it and denounce his views even when they've never advocated anything close to those views -- but John Hagee is a perfectly acceptable figure whom mainstream GOP politicians are free to court without any consequences or media objections?

John Hagee is the pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church which is just down the road from my house. The first thing you should know about Hagee is that he is a hypocrite. Like many religious right preachers, Hagee loudly denounces people who commit sexual infidelity (especially the homosexual kind) and says that “Christians... don’t get divorced...”
And yet, Hagee’s first marriage of 15 years ended in divorce in 1975 as a result of his own infidelity. Rather than acknowledge this, Hagee tries to cover it up today as he does on his web site where he claims that he and his current wife Diana “have five married children.”
But two of those children were actually with his first wife who has apparently been excised from his memory.
In addition to being an adulterer, Hagee reportedly rakes in millions of dollars each year through his tax-exempt television ministry.
But Hagee is most controversial when it comes to his extreme views on the Middle East. He is downright racist when it comes to Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular - having claimed that all “who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.”
Hagee also claims that there is a Biblical imperative for the U.S. to attack Iran and supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran as a first step toward fulfilling his twisted interpretations of Biblical prophesies.

But, as Greenwald notes, none of these extremist views have made Hagee (or Robertson or Falwell or Dobson) the kind of political pariah that Louis Farrakhan has become.
Farrakhan has made many controversial statements over the years that have been deemed both racist and anti-semitic. The difference that I can tell, however, is that today Farrakhan denies having said many of these things or simply does not say them anymore, whereas Hagee continues to make the same controversial statements again and again without consequence.
Thus we have the situation we saw just the other day where on the one hand Barack Obama is being hounded by Tim Russert to denounce Farrakhan despite never having sought his favor or endorsing his views; while at the same time John McCain is openly accepting the praise and endorsement of Hagee at his church in San Antonio.
A shameless double standard if ever there was one.

Vote cast

I cast my vote yesterday. I went to an early voting site at the library nearest to my house. It was around 5 p.m. when I arrived and there actually was a bit of a line, but not too bad and I was in an out in about 10 minutes. I couldn’t find my current voters card, so I brought my old one that had expired in November and they were perfectly fine with that. That and my driver’s license was all I needed.
They gave me a slip of paper with my name on it that I can use to attend my precinct caucus meeting after the polls close next Tuesday. I may try to go just out of curiosity. I bet that it will be crowded.
This is only the second time I’ve been able to vote in a contested presidential primary in Texas. The first time was in 1988, and ironically I voted for a black man then too. Four years prior to that, I had cast my first vote ever for Ronald Reagan. But by 1988 I had done a complete about face. I voted for Jesse Jackson in the primary not because I thought he could actually win, but because I wanted to send a message that I wanted a strong liberal candidate. We ended up with Michael Dukakis instead, but I enthusiastically backed his campaign to the bitter end.
This time I was not sending a protest vote. Rather, I think my candidate will actually win.
A actually got to vote in one other contested presidential primary, but that was while I was living in Connecticut in 1992. I cast my vote for Bill Clinton that year largely because I had been so impressed after seeing him in person give a speech to the Middletown Chamber of Commerce. He ended up losing the Connecticut primary to Jerry Brown, but won the overall election nonetheless.
I also got to see Hillary Clinton speak at a campaign rally on the Yale University campus that year as well. We lived close to New Haven at the time. I remember being impressed by her as well. They made quite a team.
Hillary will be back in San Antonio this Friday for a campaign rally and so will Barack Obama. It will be ineresting to see who can draw the larger crowd, although I think it won’t be any contest.

William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

William F. Buckley Jr. was one of those conservatives for whom I had a great deal of respect. I admired his willingness to engage the other side in debate. His TV show Firing Line provided a national outlet for prominent liberals of that era such as Gore Vidal, John Kenneth Galbraith and Noam Chomsky to gain some badly needed exposure.
Conservative commentators today, by contrast, are much less educated and very much unwilling to engage the other side in a direct debate. Can you imagine Rush Limbaugh inviting someone like Chomsky or Vidal onto his radio show and actually allowing them to talk?
I saw Buckley in person once when I was at Texas A&M in the mid-1980s as part of a current affairs program at the university. It was a live debate between Buckley and Galbraith on the merits or demerits of Big, or as Galbraith corrected, Strong Government. At the time, I think I was siding with Buckley. I have long since switched to Galbraith.
When I lived in Connecticut, Buckley’s newspaper columns were widely distributed and I would read him every week. I remember my impression at the time was that he would cram as many big words as he could into each column and often times not come to any clear point.
In his later years, as the modern conservative movement was becoming more and more radicalized, he stayed grounded in the conservativism of the past. He was highly critical of President Bush and the war in Iraq and was thereafter largely sidelined by his ideological heirs.

Steroid obsession

Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!! Why is Henry Waxman still wasting time on this?

Congress asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Roger Clemens "committed perjury and made knowingly false statements" to a House committee.

This is all “he said-she said” nonsense. They can’t prove squat! I hope that Mukasey throws this back in Waxman’s face and tells him to stick it in his ear.
I know that investigating all the myriad Bush scandals is not as glamorous as going after a baseball superstar, but I’d really appreciate it if Waxman would go back to doing his real job.

Even temperment

One thing that has impressed me about Barack Obama lately is his even temperment. Nothing seems to ruffle his feathers or break his stride. He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t get testy or perturbed. In fact, he seems to have handled all the pressures of the campaign amazingly well.
Glenn Greenwald has a good post about how Obama effectively handled a rightwing attack on his patriotism without getting defensive and agitated.
So far, this is one of the qualities I like best with Obama and it contrasts well right now with the shrill tone that Hillary Clinton has lately adopted as she desperately tries to salvage her presidential prospects.
Clinton’s “outrage” the other day over the content of some Obama campaign fliers was clearly a tactical effort on her part to try and link Obama to someone most Democrats despise - Karl Rove. You know that Clinton did not just pick up one of these flyers the other day and fly into a rage. Rather, there was probably a strategy session where they came up with the idea of trying to link Obama to Rove, followed by a search through the campaign literature for something that they could pretend to get upset about. It all came across as very fake and very staged. But the point was not to reach out to politically astute people, but rather those who don’t pay much attention to these things and would be more likely to be persuaded by such mock outrage.
Needless to say, I’ll be glad when this is all over and the Democrats can all kiss and make up and stop all the sniping and backstabbing.

Running Mates

An interesting column today from George Will speculating about who John McCain is likely to tap as his VP choice. After briefly toying with and then dismissing the ideo of a woman (Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) and a black man (Gen. Colin Powell), Will gives us a list of five or six WASPy males who are currently preening for the job.
Before reading the Will piece, I was prepared to make a bold prediction that McCain would try and exploit the Hispanic community’s reluctance to support Obama by picking a right-wing Hispanic as his running mate — someone like Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida.
But that didn’t seem to cross Will’s radar screen, so perhaps it is something McCain will not consider. Maybe they are afraid it would further enrage the anti-immigrant wingnut faction of the party.

Meanwhile, on the other side I have said before that Bill Richardson would be a smart choice for Obama and would go a long way at bridging the black-Hispanic gap that currently exists. But they may also decide that having one minority on the tickets is groundbreaking enough and play it safe by going with a white male. I hear that John Edwards is available.

Oscar impressions

Yawn! I wasn’t terribly interested in the Oscars this year. Once again, I have yet to see any of the major category nominees and it is unlikely that I will rush out and see them anytime soon. The only one I wouldn’t mind seeing sooner than later is Johnny Depp in “Sweeney Todd”.
I wouldn’t mind eventually seeing “No Country For Old Men” “There Will Be Blood” and “Michael Clayton”, but I’ve said the same thing in the past about other Oscar films that I have yet to see. I’ll probably never see “Atonement” or “Juno”.

The best film I saw all year (which I finally watched over the weekend) was the “Bourne Ultimatum”, which I was delighted to see win three Oscars, a sweep of every category it was nominated for. I was also happy that “Ratatouille” won for best animated film, although it should have been nominated for Best Picture as well.
But the Academy has even less respect for action/adventure movies than it does for comedies. Thus the past oversights for all time great films like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I thought the acting awards were fairly predictable except for Best Supporting Actress which I figured would go to Cate Blanchett. I was disappointed with the Oscar choice for Best Song going to some independent film no one has ever heard of and no one will ever see, passing over three Disney songs from “Enchanted”. I can pretty much guarantee that I will soon own a copy of “Enchanted” and know all those songs by heart, while I will probably never hear the other song again.

But that is what the Academy likes to do these days. Diss the big megaplex movies that most Americans get to see in favor of little known independents that you would be lucky to find at your local video store in a year. This somehow demonstrates the Academy’s superiority and elite tastes compared to the mongrel hordes who shell out most of the money that supports the industry in the first place.
If the Academy wants to honor these kinds of movies every year, then they should put their money where their mouths are and back these films from the get go. Give them enough financing to get better distribution and advertizing and marketing budgets so that people will actually have a chance to go see them during the year instead of only having a choice of films that the Academy typically turns its nose up to.

McCain’s run of bad luck

No, I’m not talking about the NYTimes story today about John McCain’s close ties to a female telecom lobbyist.
What caught my interest while reading through McCain’s Wiki bio entry was the number of times he was involved in a flying mishap that resulted in the loss or near loss of his airplane. There are five all totaled, four of which resulted in the loss of an aircraft and one that was “a close call.”
Not all of these were McCain’s fault, in fact, it’s not clear if any could be directly blamed on him (except possibly the close call incident). But it sure does seem like an amazing run of bad luck for one pilot. How common was it for pilots to lose aircraft like this?

The first incident occurred sometime prior to 1960 while McCain was in flight school in Texas.

During a practice run in Texas, his engine quit while landing, and his aircraft crashed into Corpus Christi Bay, though he escaped without major injuries.

Next came the “close encounter” in 1962:

His aviation skills improved, but he had another close call when he and his plane emerged intact from a collision with power lines, after flying too low over Spain.

The third incident occurred in December 1965:

...he had his third close call when a flameout over Norfolk, Virginia led to his ejecting safely, and his plane crashed.

Then, perhaps the most bizarre and deadly incident occurred onboard an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin in July 1967:

The crew was preparing to launch attacks, when a Zuni rocket from an F-4 Phantom was accidentally fired across the carrier's deck. The rocket struck McCain's A-4E Skyhawk as the jet was preparing for launch. The impact ruptured the Skyhawk's fuel tank, which ignited the fuel and knocked two bombs loose. McCain escaped from his jet by climbing out of the cockpit, working himself to the nose of the jet, and jumping off its refueling probe onto the burning deck of the aircraft carrier. Ninety seconds after the impact, one of the bombs exploded underneath his airplane. McCain was struck in the legs and chest by shrapnel. The ensuing fire killed 132 sailors, injured 62 others, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and took 24 hours to control.

Wow! Talk about bad luck! This guy seemed to be destined for trouble. It makes me wonder if anyone was really surprised when McCain got shot down and taken prisoner just a few months later:

McCain was flying as part of a 20-plane attack against a thermal power plant in central Hanoi, a heavily defended target area that had almost always been off-limits to U.S. raids. McCain's A-4 Skyhawk had its wing blown off by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile[48] while pulling up after dropping its bombs. McCain fractured both arms and a leg in being hit and ejecting from his plane.

He parachuted into a lake where he nearly drowned before being dragged out by an angry mob that nearly beat him to death. He might have died from his injuries, except that the Vietnamese figured out that he was the son of an Admiral and decided to keep him alive so that they could torture him and try and use him as a propaganda tool.

Legislative achievements

Wow. Obama really kicked some butt last night in Wisconsin. He blew out Hillary worse than John McCain blew out Mike Hucakbee. Just think about that for a minute. And then consider that Hillary recieved more votes than McCain and Huckabee combined, and still lost by nearly 20 points. The Republicans better wake up and smell the coffee, because they are heading toward the short end of a Reaganesque landslide in this fall’s general election.
The Obama phenomenon is continuing to surge ahead and it looks like it will finally swamp the struggling Hillary campaign right here in Texas. If Obama wins in Texas, it’s all over for Hillary.

On a slightly different topic, I want to comment about political hit that MSNBC’s Chris Matthews pulled on Texas State Sen. Kirk Watson who was on air last night as a surrogate for the Obama campaign. Watson had obviously been prepped with the latest campaign themes to regurgitate in short bursts, but instead got hoodwinked by Matthews who wouldn’t let him talk about those things and instead insisted that he list Obama’s “legislative accomplishments” in the Senate. Poor Watson could only stare blankly because he did not know what to say and had obviously not been prepped for that question. Matthews clearly knew this and made great sport of embarrassing Watson over it.
First, if Watson had been a little quicker on his toes he would have shot back and turned the tables by asking Matthews to list the legislative accomplishments of John McCain, who has been in the Senate much longer than Obama, and has no better track record of authored legislation signed into law. He could have also pointed out that if people were interested in who had the biggest list of “legislative accomplishments” they could have gone with any one of the other candidates with far more experience in the federal legislature (Dodd, Biden, Richardson).
But Obama really does have some “legislative accomplishments” under his belt despite his short time in the Senate. And the interesting thing is that most of them were achieved by cooperating with and co-sponsoring legislation with Republican lawmakers - including John McCain on at least two occassions. Obama co-sponsored immigration reform legislation with McCain. He also co-sponsored with McCain a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Other interesting bi-partisan efforts include the Lugar-Obama act that expanded a cooperative threat reduction agreement to include conventional weapons; and the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act which funded a website run by the Office of Management and Budget where people can see how federal funds are being spent. He has also worked on legislation with Republicans Kit Bond and Chuck Hagel.
I think the fact that Obama seems to work so well with Republicans speaks well of his sincerity in building a broad coalition that can actually change the partisan tone in Washington.
I’m sure the next time the Obama campaign sends out a campaign surrogate on MSNBC, they will be stuffed full of talking points about Obama’s “legislative achievements” and it is probably a good think in the long run that Matthews rubbed their noses in the dirt now rather than saving it for later when it might have hurt more.

Obama endorsement

Is this what it was like in Iowa and New Hampshire?
San Antonio, and the rest of Texas, is being inundated by the political campaigns. We’ve already had Hillary Clinton make an appearance here. Today we have Barack Obama conducting two townhall-style meetings. On Thursday, Sen. Ted Kennedy will be here on behalf of Obama and Gov. Mike Huckabee will also drop in as part of his Quixotic crusade against Republican frontrunner John McCain. Then, on Sunday, Hillary Clinton is supposed to be back again. I’ve also heard that former President Bill Clinton will be campaigning here on behalf of Hillary soon. And I’m sure that is not all. This thing is just getting started with two weeks before the make-or-break primary.
Obama is expected to continue his post-Super Tuesday winning streak today with primary victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii. Unless a miracle occurs for Hillary in Wisconsin, she will have her back against the wall in Texas and Ohio where she will have to win by large margins to avoid being forced out of the race. By contrast, Obama does not HAVE to win here, but if he fails to knock off Hillary then, it will probably mean that we are headed for a brokered convention and that could end up being a lot uglier than anyone wants to see.
I tried to stay neutral in this race for as long as I could, believing that either Hillary or Obama would make an excellent president. But I don’t want to see anything happen that could damage the Democrats chances of retaking the White House in November. Another four years of the Bush presidency with his surrogate John McCain would be unspeakably disasterous. Our nation’s superpower status is hanging in the balance.
Therefore, I’ve gone full bore toward supporting Obama because I see him as having the best chance of winning the nomination outright at this point, and of going on to victory in November. I’m hoping for a clear Obama victory in Texas on March 4 followed by a gracious withdrawal by Hillary so that the Democratic Party can come together in time to weather the onslaught of political attacks being put together by the rightwing spin machine.

Update:
It looks like Obama is sweeping the San Antonio Progressive Bloggers Alliance here and here.

Meanwhile, the local wingnut blogs have endorsed: Rudy! Huckabee! Fred! Romney! ummmm Huckabee?

Political comebacks

As someone who had written John McCain off long ago (just like everyone else did), I’m wary of dismissing other candidates too early. While it would seem that Hillary is in a heap o’ trouble right now (and indeed she is), things could still turn around for her on a dime as this article makes clear.
Still, the people who are saying that Hillary can win in Wisconsin next week are the same ones who said she could win in Washington and Maine and Virginia, etc. So I’m not convinced, but I’m also not going to write anybody off.

Meanwhile, I love to read stuff like this where the Republican Party realists are forced to face up to the reality of their dismal election prospects in November.
With both Obama and Hillary drawing twice the number of voters as all the Republicans combined in a Red state like Virginia, it is very clear that the general electorate is swinging very heavily to the Democratic side this year regardless of which candidate ultimately wins the nomination.

By the way, Hillary was in San Antonio last night for a rally at St. Mary’s University where she got introduced by County Judge Nelson Wolff. The crowd seemed big and enthusiastic, but that is to be expected in a state that has been starved for some attention from these national candidates. I’m sure a lot of people who went may end up voting for Obama, but just wanted to be at the rally to see a Democratic superstar.
And I think the archbishop showed extremely poor judgement by sticking his nose into it and whining about how some candidates’ views don’t match up to all of the Catholic church’s hardline dogma. It was reported that the archbishop had been prompted to speak by local Catholics upset by Hillary’s presense at a Catholic university. I would’t doubt that one of those people complaining most loudly is my old friend Mark.
I just want to hear the archbishop next dress down Sen. McCain for his support of the death penalty and the War in Iraq. Fat chance.

E-N endorses McCain, trashes Hillary

I just caught up on my newspaper reading and saw today that the San Antonio Express-News made their presidential endorsements on Sunday here and here.

Boy! If it wasn’t alreadly plainly clear which side they are coming down on there can be no doubt after this.
The first clue is the prominent placement of the McCain endorsement on top of the Obama endorsement. Sure, this might be quibbling, but the visual impact is unmistakeable.
Then when you read the “endorsements” the contrast becomes distinctly clear. They practically gush over McCain calling him a “war hero” and “political maverick” in the subhead.
There are no such gushing descriptions for Obama. Instead, they set up a rhetorical trick in the lead sentence saying that “America needs a president that tries to create unity out of diversity...” and then follow that by saying that Obama is “the Democratic candidate that offers the best chance to reach that lofty objective.
In other words, they don’t really think Obama can do it, it’s just that he has “the best chance” among the Democratic candidates (i.e. not Hillary).
By the third graph they jump into the political fray, mentioning that Hillary Clinton is “bracing for the fight of her life.”
By contrast, in the McCain editorial they never once mention the name of any of his primary opponents. Instead, they wax philosophically about how all of McCain’s “maverick” positions will prove to be “attractive points for independent voters.”
The only good things they have to say about Obama are done when making a negative contrast toward Hillary.
The main difference, they claim is that “Obama expresses a message of hope that emphasizes what is good for the country, not the party.” With the implication being that Hillary is doing the opposite.
Then they claim, incredibly, that “Obama tends to falter in debates” which is clearly a matter of perception on their part. Before noting that Obama is a powerful speaker on the campaign trail.
From that point on the editorial deteriorates into what can best be described as an anti-Hillary screed. They bring up the failed health care reform of the Clinton years. They talk about the “polarizing baggage that undoubtedly would hamper a Clinton presidency.” They talk about how Hillary and Bill have run a campaign “that has been, at turns, nasty and undignified.” They mention Hillary’s “win-at-all-cost approach” that “is a turnoff to many voters.”
And they wrap it all up with this doozy:

Obama may have a hard time translating his words into action. But embracing his message of hope and a new approach to American politics is a far preferable gamble than the prospect of another era of Clinton politics.

Sheesh! Thanks for that backhanded endorsement E-N.

We Can’t Do It

Atrios is right. This is wonderfully funny in a scary kind of way...

Inspired by the new Obama video making the rounds on the Web, some talented satirists did this competing video for John McCain.

A bad week for Hillary

Obama swept all of the Demcratic primaries and caucuses over the weekend - Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, Maine and even the Virgin Islands.
And he is favored in the polls to win in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. this coming Tuesday.
The only thing Hillary did to make news was to dump her campaign manager in the biggest shakeup of her campaign so far.
Hillary’s campaign is now saying that they expected Obama would win all of those states and they are concentrating on the big states like Texas and Ohio coming up in March. But that is not entirely true. It was thought that Obama would win Louisiana because of the large number of African-Americans there, and in Nebraska because of its close proximity to Kansas where Obama is considered a favored son - his white mother’s family lives there. But Hillary was supposed to have a good shot at Washington where she had the endorsement of the state’s two female senators, and everyone said without question that Hillary would win in Maine and that it would at least be the one bright spot she could hold up after a long hard weekend.
But the endorsements in Washington didn’t make enough of a difference and she got blown out in Maine.
Quite frankly, I think Hillary has her work cut out for her if she expects to win this nomination race. Obama clearly has the momentum and the advantage right now. Saying that she is waiting for Texas and Ohio makes her sound too much like that other New York politician who claimed that he would jumpstart his flagging campaign with a big win in Florida. If Hillary doesn’t start to turn things around now, she will continue to bleed support in the other big primary states coming up.
I’m not ready to write her off quite yet, but she is getting close to the point where I may have to declare that it’s all over.

Voters prefer Democrats 3-to-1

This is the most telling result from Super Tuesday.

Democrats turned out more than twice as many voters as Republicans did. Just look at the vote totals recieved by each of the major candidates:

Clinton: 7,347,971
Obama: 7,294,851

McCain: 3,611,459
Romney: 2,961,834
Huckabee: 1,796,729

Clinton and Obama each recieved more than twice as many votes as McCain did and nearly as many votes each as all Republican votes cast period. Simply put, there is great enthusiasm for the Democratic candidates and much less enthusiasm for the Republican candidates. If this trend continues through November, it should be a blowout election regardless of who the Democratic nominee is.

And then they blew it....

Good post over at The Agonist: The influence of conservatives has collapsed, and they have no candidate for president

The conservatives have lost their influence in the U.S., and that loss has been quick and dramatic. There is no better proof of this than having no viable conservative candidate for president.
I don't recall ever seeing an enfranchised political group so quickly blow their franchise. After 2000 and 9/11, I was fully ready to expect that liberals and Democrats could face decades of minority power, like the Republicans did during and after FDR. In 2000 conservatives secured the presidency and both houses of Congress. They re-elected their president by a better margin in 2004, and kept both houses of Congress in 2002 and 2004. They successfully nominated and approved new conservative members to the Supreme Court. They promoted and undertook a pre-emptive invasion of a country on the other side of the world, unsupported by NATO, the UN, or world opinion. They were looking unstoppable.
But the invasion of Iraq was no victory. And as the occupation of Iraq continued with no end in sight, thousands of Americans were killed, tens of thousands were critically injured, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed and displaced. The war is expensive in so many ways, and it drags at our economy, at our standing in the world, and at our image of ourselves as a friendly and accepting nation.
So now conservatives don't have a candidate. They really don't. John McCain's record on immigration, campaign finance reform, global warming, and Native American issues has never been conservative. And Mitt Romney's record in Massachusetts is moderate to liberal, no matter how hard he panders to conservatives. In Massachusetts Romney actually approved the first state-wide program for comprehensive healthcare coverage. He also made no attempt to roll back gay marriage in the only state where it's fully legal.
So the conservatives don't have a candidate, and are shut out from influencing who the Republicans nominate for president. They are shut out because they lost touch with what Americans need. They need safer and cheaper healthcare, and conservatives offer nothing. They need solutions to Peak Oil and global warming, and conservatives go into full denial. They need home loan regulation and banking reform, and conservatives turn a deaf ear. They need the Iraq war over and their children and spouses home from it, and conservatives want to keep fighting. They need less government expense, but conservatives have spent monstrous sums on two wars and hundreds of earmarks. They want reasonable and fair taxation, and conservatives gave the richest Americans a huge and unfair tax break.
Conservatives don't represent most Americans, and independent voters and many Republicans know this. Which is why only McCain and Romney are left standing as viable candidates for the Republicans. (Although after Feb 5, even Romney's viability has faded.)
Now Rush Limbaugh, along with conservatives like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, are screaming that McCain has abandoned conservatives. They have got the truth turned around, though. It's conservatives who abandoned America, by forgetting a vision and practice of America that is fair, kind, equable, open, and generous -- just like its founders wanted it.

Making sense of Super Tuesday

Just kidding!!
I don’t have a clue as to what happened last night or why. It makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I’m completely confused.
Other than the obvious ones - Hillary wins New York and Arkansas; Obama wins Illinois and Kansas (where his mother’s side of the family is from) - I’m at a loss as to why any of the states voted the way they did.
Overall, it would seem that Obama did exceedingly well despite losing some of the big delegate states like California and New York. But, as Kos pointed out, he won enough of the other states to make California almost irrelevant. In fact, if Hillary had NOT won in California she would have been in trouble.
You could say that Obama won in states like Alabama and Georgia with large black populations, but he also won in lily white states like Utah, Alaska and North Dakota. One concern for Obama is that he seemed to have trouble in states with heavy Hispanic populations like California, Arizona and New Mexico (although it looks like he may have squeaked out a victory in the latter state).
I think Hillary has her work cut out for her. Although she is winning the delegate race so far, thanks mostly to the fickle super delegates, she is almost out of cash and facing an energized Obama campaign that has been striking a chord with a large segment of the population. I guess my biggest fear is that Hillary will ultimately prevail, bloodied and broke, only to face a Republican Party that is suddenly enegized at the prospect of facing off against their favorite punching bag.

Lame Duck Budget

It is hard to look at Bush’s lame duck budget and not be totally disgusted.

But I don’t think I could say it any better than the New York Times did this morning:

President Bush’s 2009 budget is a grim guided tour through his misplaced priorities, failed fiscal policies and the disastrous legacy that he will leave for the next president. And even that requires you to accept the White House’s optimistic accounting, which seven years of experience tells us would be foolish in the extreme.

Just read the whole thing.

Bush's Legacy of Deficits

There has been so much that I’ve wanted to blog about lately, but I just haven’t had the time. It’s very frustrating.
Like the story in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal titled “Bush Legacy of Deficits will Constrain His Successor”. I mean, that headline says it all, doesn’t it?

George W. Bush took office in 2001 with budget surpluses projected to stretch years into the future. But it's almost certain that when he returns to Texas next year, the president will leave behind a trail of deficits and debt that will sharply constrain his successor....
Mr. Bush failed to work out a deal with Congress to tackle the spiraling costs of government health and retirement programs. The next president, if he or she serves two terms, could find the U.S. government so deeply in hock that it would face losing its Triple-A credit rating, something that has never happened since Moody's Investors Service began grading U.S. securities in 1917.
As a result, the ambitions of Mr. Bush's successor to cut taxes, institute universal health care or aid troubled homeowners might have to give way to the reality of soaring costs for Social Security, the Medicare program for the elderly and the Medicaid program for the poor.

Mission accomplished!!! Woohoo!!!
This is precisely what the movement conservatives wanted with their “starve the beast” prescription for massive deficits combined with mega-tax cuts. Make it so that future presidents will be “constrained” and unable to push forward with new initiatives.

The president's critics say his failings are twofold: He has squandered surpluses that could have helped pay down the $5 trillion federal debt. And he has let two terms pass without persuading Congress to take action that would preserve the government's social programs. According to the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group, the shortfall in Social Security and Medicare through 2080 will total $72.3 trillion, a number that dwarfs the impact of Mr. Bush's spending and tax cuts.

I’d say his failings are more like twentyfold or a hundredfold. In fact, his “failings” are what define his entire presidency.

When Mr. Bush took the oath of office in 2001, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected $5.6 trillion in federal budget surpluses through 2011. Through most of his tenure, the president managed to have his guns, butter and tax cuts without creating enormous budget deficits, at least as measured by their share of GDP. One reason was a surprise increase in federal tax receipts from corporations over the last couple of years. Now those revenues have flattened out and the economy is teetering on the edge of recession.

Mr. Bush and Congress, meanwhile, increased federal spending by 25% between 2001 and 2007, adjusted for inflation, according to Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation. By Sept. 30, the U.S. will have spent almost $800 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A new Medicare prescription-drug benefit for seniors costs almost $80 billion a year. Mr. Bush's signature tax cuts, in 2001 and 2003, sapped tax receipts and sliced the projected budget surplus by about $1.7 trillion through 2011, according to the CBO.

And then there was this story in the WSJ on Monday: Rising Cost of Iraq War May Reignite Public Debate

Boosted in part by rising fuel prices and the expense of repairing or replacing vehicles worn down by the long war, U.S. spending on Iraq hasdoubled in the past three years. Last year's buildup of U.S. troops -- known as the "surge" -- and the military's growing use of expensive heavy munitions to roust Iraqi insurgents also have contributed to the cost increase. According to a recent Congressional Research Service report, the average monthly cost of theconflict -- by CRS's measure -- hit $10.3 billion in the year ended Sept. 30, 2007, up from $4.4 billion in fiscal 2004.

$10.3 billion per month. PER MONTH!!!!! That’s more than $125 billion a year!!!!
And despite all that massive spending, the Republicans still claim that if we pull the troops out anytime before Hell freezes over it will constitute a defeat for the U.S.
We cannot win with this crowd. There is no objective definition of victory that they can point to. So we have these bizarre debates where the Republican candidates dither about who will leave the troops mired in Iraq the LONGEST!!!
Good luck winning the election with that campaign theme.

Obama is a Liberal!! Eeeeek!

Did you hear that Barack Obama is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate? At least according to the National Journal, a wonkish political magazine that circulates mostly around Washington, D.C.

While I don’t have a problem with people being “liberal” per se, I am highly suspicious of this latest designation by the magazine which seems to always determine that whoever is the Democratic Party nominee for president is also “the most liberal”. In 2004, the magazine determined that John Kerry was the “most liberal” member of the Senate.
Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly explains the flaws in the National Journal’s methodology.

Sure, Obama is liberal. I think that is fine. But you can’t tell me he is the most liberal in a Senate that includes Bernie Sanders, the avowed Socialist from Vermont. Plus, there are a number of other Senators who are known to be more highly partisan and ideological than Mr. Obama. So how did he get tagged as the most liberal?
Simple, he spent a lot of time last year campaigning for president and missed a lot of votes. And because the National Journal’s methodology is screwed up and doesn’t account for missed votes, he came out on top. The same exact thing happened four years ago with John Kerry.

But don’t expect to hear that explanation attached to all the media reports about this. And, of course, it will become the standard line in every Repubican stump speech and political ad from here on out.