Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway/U.S. Air Force, via Associated Press. Senator John McCain at Baghdad’s airport on Sunday. The presidential candidate arrived in Iraq for meetings with Iraqi and American officials.
This should be an impossibility but slowly but surely you can see the swagger returning to Republicans.
They can sense that victory is now more than a possibility in November. After George W. Bush’s calamitous presidency, no Republicans should have a ghost-in-hell of a chance of coming close to the presidency.
But Democratcs are, seemingly, deadlocked. This does not help the Democrats in any way. But you’ll find no person in America more certain about McCain’s fitness to lead this nation than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He’s had “crossed the Commander-in-Chief threshold,” she famously said.
And then there’s the question of self-inflicted wounds in Florida and Michigan, Democrats’ racist rhetoric, visiting the alleged sins of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Sen. Barack Obama.
The Iraq war is five years old.
Hillary and McCain voted for it. No one would count Iraqi deaths, especially its civilian dead.
The shame of our nation.
Transcript of Keith Olbermann’s March 12 “Special Comment” on Hillary Clinton’
s tactics against Barack Obama.
Finally, as promised, a special comment on the presidential campaign of the junior senator from New York. By way of necessary preface, President and Senator Clinton and the senator’s mother and the senator’s brother were of immeasurable support to me at the moments when these very commentaries were the focus of the most surprise, the most uncertainty and the most anger. My gratitude to them is unbiding.
Also, I am not here endorsing Senator Obama`s nomination, nor suggesting in it is inevitable. Thus I have fought with myself over whether or not to say anything. Events insist.
Other than the one sentence I’d mustered, so far, I have not been able to muster any enthusiasm to kick Gov. Eliot Spitzer while he is down. It would be so sweet to dance on his political grave because he was so righteous and fearsome in his element. Yet, I could not bring myself to.
I don’t know that I can even say anything intelligent about his case because I cannot bring
myself to read little more than the broad outline of the story. I feel for his wife and children, this humiliation that they have had to endure.
A friend of mine, Jim Sleeper, brings a great deal of intelligence to any subject and the matter of Eliot Spitzer is no exception. I’ll quote extensively from his two columns at TPMCafe on the subject. Jim puts his finger on the essence of the matter in his first column on March 11:
And Seth Grahame-Smith is one funny guy.
Writing in Huffington Post, he has some pretty good advice
for Sen. Barack Obama regarding the embarassing mess of Geraldine Ferraro. Listen:
So if I were David Axelrod, I’d fire up the nearest edit bay and flood Pennsylvania’s airwaves with an ad that went something like this:
(Start with a nasty frame-grab of Ferraro and Clinton). “Hillary Clinton’s best friend, Geraldine Ferraro, says Barack Obama wouldn’t be where he is today if he wasn’t black.” (Cut to Ferraro giving the finger to a group of black Girl Scouts). “We couldn’t agree more. Barack Obama’s life as a man of mixed race taught him to respect people of all colors, faiths, and points of view.” (Cut to Obama clearing brush on his ranch). “It also instilled a great love for America as the land of opportunity. A land where people from different backgrounds could come together and achieve the impossible. Barack Obama is proud of being black.” (Cut to a beautiful Obama family portrait). He even fathered two black babies — twice as many as John McCain. Don’t the working families of Pennsylvania deserve a president who’s proud of his heritage — and proud of America? (Cut to a smiling Obama). “Barack Obama…you’re damn right he’s black.”
This is a quote by Democratic Political Consultant Jim Carville from Wikipedia:
Between Paoli (one of Philadelphia’s westernmost suburbs) and Penn Hills (one of Pittsburgh’s easternmost suburbs), Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks. They didn’t film “The Deerhunter” there for nothing — the state has the second-highest concentration of NRA members, behind Texas.
And what she has to say would not cheer Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY).
Asked about the possibility of the so-called “Dream Ticket” of Clinton sharing the ticket with Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL) in the fall, Pelosi said:
I think that the Clinton administration has fairly ruled that out by proclaiming that Senator McCain would be a better commander in chief than Obama. I think that any, that ticket – either way – is impossible.
I am losing hope.
For us as a country, whether we could ever truly become a nation. Will we always remain divided?
I know what the lure of history holds for Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY). At one time I wanted it for her, too, that she becomes the first female president of the United States.
But Hillary Clinton’s message must be rejected now. Rejected not because she’s a woman, but because she is divisive and obsessed with power. Rejected because she has used racial fears to attract votes.
I know now she will get this nomination. I’m just waiting to see how.
Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, re-examines Sen. Clinton’s the “red phone” ad:
I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.
* * *
Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs. Clinton.
There you are, cryin’ again
But your loveliness won’t cover your shame
There you are, you’re takin’ true love
And while you’re takin’ true love, you given the blame
(How could I …) Could I be so wrong
To think that we could get along?
Days I wasted with you, child
If I count there’ll be a million or two
Now I stand alone through the memories
That haunts me, that haunt
Yeah, and I walk alone through the rhapsodies
That taunts me, that taunts me, me
There you are, cryin’ again
But your loveline-ness won’t cover your shame
There you are, you’re takin’ true love
And while you’re takin’ true love, given the blame
(How could I …) How could I be so wrong
To think that we could get along?
Days I wasted with you, child
If I count there’ll be a million or two
Now I stand alone through the memories
That haunts me, that haunts (… me)
And I walk alone through the rhapsodies
That taunts me, that taunts me
Now, there you are, cryin’ again
But your loveline-ness won’t cover your sham-ame, hey
There you are, you’re takin’ true lo-love
While you’re takin’ true lo-love, given the blame
Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), could still win the so-called “beer track” Democrats. I don’t see Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), making much headway with Mr. Obama’s core voters, the so-called “wine track” Democrats. So, where do we go from here? A fight to oblivion?