Speaking Truth to Clinton's Power

Via Talking Points Memo, we learned of a particularly engaging Kos diary entry by JDodsonvls, whose profile suggests he's a young lawyer.

A day after moving into Florida's 19th Congressional District, Dodson wound up attending a town hall meeting in Palm Beach County sponsored by the district's incumbent Democratic congressman, Robert Wexler. Apparently, most of the Democrats in his district support Hillary Clinton.

Wexler supports Barack Obama. "I thought I could feel some tension in the room, but maybe it was just me," he writes.

After some preliminary remarks, Wexler himself pointed out "the elephant in the room." And then things got very interesting....

Blogger Injury

How were we hurt? Well you see, doc, it's like this....

We were at home, quietly working on this little essay for our blog. It was all about how George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson turned last week's ABC presidential primary debate into a travesty by devoting the first fifty minutes to inconsequential minutia. How that demeaned the candidates as well as the audience. And, indeed, the entire democratic process.

You know what we mean, doc? Asking Barack and Hillary why they dress like they do. Like, "Where's the flag in your lapel, boy?" Or, "Hey, honey! Isn't that a bit too much cleavage?"

And more questions like these: "Who did you befriend three decades ago? The despicable Mark Penn? The former Weather Underground organizer Bill Ayres?"

Or, even, "How do you spend your free time, candidates? Listening to angry Sunday sermons? Hearing your spouse confess his infidelities?"

Y'see, doc, we thought Stephanopoulos and Gibson had reached a new low. ABC should be deeply ashamed. They were treating two candidates for the highest office in the land like some two-bit entertainers who didn't have a serious thought in their heads. It was as if they'd been brought into the ring at the Roman Coliseum for the ABC lions to eat, just for our entertainment.

Why, the very foundation of democracy in the digital age might be hanging in the balance, we wrote.

It was a pretty good piece, even if we do say so our self. We wrapped it up with a ringing series of rhetorical but penetrating questions. Questions like, "Is commercial TV determined to turn everyone in America into a bunch of dopes so they can sell us more stuff we don't need, like drugs that put our legs to sleep and vaginal spray deodorant?"

No! we wrote. Say it ain't so!

Presidential elections are a serious business. Lives are at stake. The nation's safety. The world's future. The media should treat all the candidates with the highest degree of respect and seriousness, not just the Republican all the reporters want to win. Etc., etc., etc.

At last we were done. We reached for the mouse, ready to click it and publish. But then this email alert flashed up on our screen. It was from someone known as WWE.

"News from the campaign trail," it said. "Watch the video now."

And that's when we were injured. By a slap to the forehead. The mouse was still in our hand.

Take a look, doc. You'll see. Just be sure you aren't holding anything hard in your hand.

Reconsidering the Democratic Campaign

Hillary Clinton has totally pissed off half the Democrats in American by seemingly campaigning for John McCain. Meanwhile, Barack Obama's chief foreign policy advisor resigned today after calling Mrs. Clinton a "monster." And another of his advisors says neither Hillary nor Obama is "ready to have that 3 am phone call." Do you happen to have another resignation form handy?

Says a Kos contributor, "The only one happy" about all of this "is John McCain." What we say is, it's time to reconsider this idea from a month ago:

He foresaw global warming. He "took the initiative" on the Internet. And he knew exactly how Iraq would turn out. Who's to say that Al Gore hasn't known all along that the Democratic race would descend into some weird state of gridlock--and that only he, the Goracle, could rescue the party from civil war?

As a Pennsylvania blogger points out, that's what "super-delegates" are for.

Hillary Heads Out With Class

“No matter what happens in this contest—and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored.”

-- Hillary Clinton, Feb. 21, 2008

We haven't had much to say about the Democratic primary race because we type too slowly. For some time, now, it seemed the moment something noteworthy happened before we could even finish digesting it something else would occur to make whatever had happened seem old and irrelevant. So, the Recyle Bin is full and our campaign year diary is nearly empty.

This on-line piece by Hendrik Herzberg of The New Yorker, however, strikes us as having a core truth that may well last right up to the Democratic Convention, or at the least through the Texas-Ohio primaries of March 4.

Judging from the latest debate with Barack Obama, he says, Hillary Clinton "has recognized that there are no magic formulas that can win this for her, and she has decided that if go out she must she intends to go out with class."

Clinton will continue to talk about her differences with Obama on questions like an individual mandate for health insurance, the proper balance between conciliation and confrontation with Republicans, and the conditions under which a President should meet with nasty foreign leaders. She’ll talk about her experience and her diligence.
* * *
This kind of thing hasn’t “worked” for her, but at least it is her. She’ll give it her best shot, not her worst shot, and let the chips fall where it looks like they’re falling.

“Going negative” has been a bust. It could never be anything but a bust, because there is no audience for it in the Democratic Party. Her supporters (almost all of them) like him; his supporters (most of them) like her. The finger-pointing has already begun: she spent too much money on fancy hotel rooms, her husband made too many blunders, she never settled on a theme, and so on ad infinitum. But all that may be beside the point—the point being that Barack Obama is a phenomenon that comes along once in a lifetime. Unfortunately for Hillary, it’s her lifetime; fortunately for the rest of us, it’s ours.

Hillary Clinton is a very classy act, when left to her own devices, and always has been. One hopes that she will stay, at least formally, in the race right up to the Convention even if she comes up short on March 4 and Obama looks like a shoe-in.

Too much that was unpredictable at the start of the year has happened already. More is likely. This isn't 1968, thank god, but the passions and confusions and hatreds of our time are running at least as high. As Glenn Greenwald wrote this week, after Bill O'Reilly entertained talk of "lynching" Michelle Obama and the equally vile Lisa Schiffren seized on Obama's racial heritage as circumstantial evidence he's "probably" a communist:

It’s vitally important to remember that our political life is suffuse with lowlifes and hatemongers like this. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter — the heart and soul of the right-wing — aren’t going anywhere, nor are the media-connected, Swiftboat-spewing operatives who function in the shadows and the sewers.

Nelson's Clumsy Endorsement

Bill Nelson's apparent intent to endorse Hillary Clinton today is puzzling. If he was to do it, why wait until the last day voters go to the polls?

Substantial numbers of Florida voters have cast their ballots early and we would judge many who might be influenced by what Nelson thinks are not likely to hear about it until late today or tomorrow, anyway. It's a small pebble thrown on the pond that will make no waves.

Nelson's endorsement can't help Hillary much in Florida; certainly not as much as a full-throated endorsement might have done two weeks ago. And Nelson's influence hardly extends a millimeter beyond our borders, so it will have even less impact on Super Tuesday.

So, Hillary can't be all that thrilled. Neither can Barack Obama, of course. It all seems rather clumsy, ineffectual, and counter-productive, especially for someone who surely yearns to be on the short list for V.P.

Avatar for Pensacola Voters

Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times thinks she's found the avatar for Northwest Florida's electorate. Sad to say, it may be so.

The stand-in for typical Pensacola voters are Charles and Rhoda Harding, a debt-ridden pawn shop proprietor and his wife. Their business is located "across the street from Dinosaur Adventure Land, a 'Bible-based creation museum."

They twice voted for George W. Bush, hate Hillary Clinton for no reason they can articulate, and are drawn to Mike Huckabee because "he sounds like he wants to help people."

The Hardings, who are in their early 60's, have suffered greatly under the Bush administration. "By almost every indicator," Roug writes, their "quality of life... has worsened since 2004."

When the Hardings voted for Bush, they trusted the war would end once U.S. troops uncovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were hopeful their wrecked world would return to normal once the insurance company paid to repair the roof blown off by the storm.

Though the couple believe in minimal government, they expected there would be emergency help -- perhaps a loan to cover the hurricane damage. Their insurance company paid only half the cost of repairing the roof, and federal officials turned them down when they applied for assistance. They never returned to an even keel.

The Hardings, who earn about $2,000 a month, could no longer afford health insurance. When their son Ronnie started suffering from bouts of fatigue, he refused to get tested because it would strain family finances, and his leukemia went undetected.

Ronnie died July 28. He was 43.

The week Ronnie spent in a hospital cost almost $100,000, and the Hardings are already $50,000 in debt. All they got from the government was $250 in assistance for their son's cremation. "That's what you're worth here in America," Rhoda says.

After two decades of running Adams Pawn, they are trying to sell their business. But in this depressed economy, there are no buyers.

So there you have it: they're anti-war, pro-national health care, for a competent FEMA, and against Bush's consumer bankruptcy law amendments. In other words, their political views almost exactly match those of a liberal Democrat -- and they don't even know it.

It's a phenomenon that we've seen before. Years ago, a legal aid worker of our acquaintance happened to win a hard-fought Social Security disability case for a horribly injured unemployed blue collar worker. What should have been an open-and-shut case -- the guy couldn't walk and was dying of an incurable lung disease -- was made extremely difficult because of changes in federal disability law forced through Congress by the Reagan administration.

The client was, of course, grateful for our friend's devotion to his case. He also was thrilled that he'd won. After profusely thanking our lawyer friend, his family loaded the man's wheelchair into their broken-down van and started off for home.

"As I was waving good-bye," our friend recounted, "I happened to glance at the bumper sticker on the back of the van. It said, 'Re-elect Reagan.'"

What makes this scene double ironic was that at the very same time, the Reagan administration also was fighting to abolish funding for the legal aid society.

The source of the disabled man's legal problems was the Reagan administration. And the only avenue for a cure was under attack by the Reagan administration. Yet, just like the the Hardings in today's LA Times story, the disabled man and his family were about to vote against their own interests -- and they didn't even realize it.

Don't Cry For Thee, Maureen Dowd

Jon Swift plagiarizes the vile Maureen Dowd.

New Hampshire Effects

So, how to explain the New Hampshire surprise? Some posit the "Bradley effect."

White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the black candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate.

Digby, channeling Pam Spaulding, says it might be the "Tweety effect."

where the misogyny of a talking head in the MSM so enrages a demographic that they go out and vote in a manner that will put egg on the face of the talking head.

Jane Hamsher wonders if it the unexpected vote surge was due to what might be called the Edwards effect.

Clinton took them from Edwards. Did his pivot against her during the last debate and his comments yesterday contribute to what happened?

Brad Friedman is worried it might be the Diebold Effect. It seems three quarters of all paper ballots in New Hampshire --

are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates.

We don't have enough facts to form a useful opinion, other than this: There is much to be thankful for in seeing both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama take their erudite, informed, and important dialog on the issues of the day out of the cornfields of Iowa and New Hampshire's woods into the heart of the nation.

An early end to the Democratic primary season, as the mainstream media was predicting, would not have been in the public interest.

The Obama Phenomenon

The BBC's James Coomerasamy, who has been covering with distinction the Iowa presidential caucuses for BBC World Service Radio and BBC America News, reported early this morning that the chief lesson of last night is the huge turn-out of Independents and fallen-away Republicans for the Democratic victor, Barack Obama.

Our own Iowa sources confirm this. Precinct chairmen called to tell us that nearly fifty percent of the record-breaking turn-out they saw at local party caucuses were there to register as Democrats for the first time ever. "I've never seen so many Independents and Republicans," Democratic precinct chairman Roger Kuhle said. "Almost all of them went for Obama. They were genuinely enthusiastic."

The numbers verify the anecdotal reports. In 2000, the last time there wasn't an incumbent president running for reelection, 60,760 Iowans attended the Democratic Party caucuses. The best Democratic turnout in state history was just 125,000 in 1988.

By contrast, last night over 234,000 Iowans braved sub-freezing weather to attend the Democratic caucuses. That's nearly twice as many as in state history.

As the Des Moines Register's respected Iowa Poll foresaw shortly beforehand, likely "60 percent of Democratic caucus goers " were first-time attendees and "72 percent of Obama's support" came from those first-timers.

It was because of that record-breaking turn-out, as Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson reports, that Obama beat Hillary "eight ways to Sunday."

He edged her out among Democrats 32/31, and cleaned her clock among independents (44/17) and wayward Republicans (41/10). He beat her among people making less than $15,000 (37/30) and more than $100,000 (41/19). He beat her among health-care voters (34/30) and suburban voters (30/25).

Most astounding however, he beat her among her core supporters, women, by five points. What more can I say than — in a night of mind boggling statistics — that that’s the stat of the night.

A black man did this. In a state that’s 96 percent white. This is truly a historic night in America.

Of course, Iowa is only the start of the presidential primary process, not the end. Regardless of Iowa, or New Hampshire or South Carolina for that matter, as Josh Marshall acutely observes, Hillary isn't going away any time soon.

Nor, it would seem, is John Edwards.

Once again, the Iowa caucuses have defeated conventional beltway wisdom and given the nation good cause to rethink who it is we really want to lead our nation.

Rule of Law In Senate Trial

UPDATED BELOW

In many ways that matter, the rule of law is on trial in the U.S. Senate today. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) explains in TPM Cafe.

This morning, another U.S. Senator, Chris Dodd (D-CT), interrupted his Iowa presidential caucus campaign to address the Senate in straight-forward, candid terms not often heard inside the Beltway much less in media available to the public at large. Immediately at stake is whether retroactive immunity will be granted for giant telecom companies for helping the Bush administration violate the Constitution by secretly invading the privacy of tens of thousands if not millions of private citizens.

In the event the Bush administration prevails in today's vote, Sen. Dodd has promised an old-fashioned "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" filibuster. Think of it as an early Christmas present to those who value our Constitution -- now, in the past, and most especially in the future.

Concerned citizens want to know -- where is Hillary? And is Obama still dawdling in Iowa?

You should go here, too.

UPDATE
12-17 noon

Lawyer Christy Hardin Smith at Firedog Lake has the transcript of Sen. Dodd's "barnburner" opening speech.