Charge it to my head but not to my heart

Two weeks and two conventions later, this much is clear — Democrats love with their heads and Republicans love with their hearts.

How else do you explain Democrats working themselves up into a lather by repeating a litany of facts and stats to point out all the failures of the Right? Or the Republicans who gather to worship at the altar of 9/11, claim America as their exclusive own, and celebrate an anti-abortion neophyte as their next best hope? It's clearly a head vs heart phenomenon.

I admit that I'm biased. I do my political thinking with my head. I enjoy a little heart on the side, but I vote based primarily on what my head thinks. That's why I was completely miffed that a major party nominee could give an acceptance speech that paints no vision of the future, that offers no specific prescriptions for the nation's ills, or that looks longingly backwards while trying to convince us that they are the party of the future.

We can cede the hero argument to John McCain. John, 40 years ago, you were the man. You were a bad ass's bad ass. Lord knows not many of us could continue flipping the bird for five years at people who were treating us like a doggie chew toy. For me that would get old quickly. You win that argument hands down.

Forty years later however, you run under a theme called "Country First" that only talks about you the individual. Republicans are frothing and crying, and I'm scratching my head. You pick a running mate whose primary qualification seems to be that she is a spunky hockey mom of five kids with quirky monosyllabic names.

Speaking of running mates, how do you nominate someone and keep them from granting a single interview for a full 10 days now? How are you going to stare down Vladimir Putin when you can't even do a soft shoe with Wolf Blitzer?

How? Because she is an anti-abortionist. It seems a Republican could nominate an axe murderer as long as he/she was committed to overturning Roe v Wade. Speaking of the he/she story, how do you do you nominate a woman and laud it as a giant step forward for women and then have conventioneers wearing buttons that say "I'm voting for the hot chick from the cool state?" Isn't that one step forward and three steps back? That's like saying "I'm voting for the night-Black guy from the sunny state." Doesn't strike me as flattery.

Finally, if fighting your own party is such a great thing, why are you with them in the first place? What's wrong with a guy agreeing with the party he has chosen. Isn't that the point?

Of course these are all head arguments that only prove that when it comes to the Republicans, my heart just isn't in it.

The dance Obama is doing

There's an old saying. When you get to the dance, you stick with the one who brung you there. For Barack Obama, it seems he was devoted to Democrats on his way to the dance, and once there, has begun flirting with everyone else.

The line of recent reversals of positions has been well chronicled. Faith based organizations, FISA, gun control, campaign finance, all casualties of the deliberate pivot right. While some recasting as a centrist was expected, Obama is doing it on all the issues that are near and dear to his base.

In addition, he has rejected comments from Gen. Wes Clark, that from all accounts were accurate...and being used in Obama's defense. He slammed MoveOn.org's Petraeus ad, even though the group has mobilized three million people to work for Obama's election.

So now his supporters are miffed and his enemies are gleeful. I'm not sure what Obama is thinking, but someone should tell him that people who flirt with others at the dance usually go home alone.

The audacity of nope

It's no less than amazing that the entire Democratic party has waited five days past the unofficial selection of a nominee to let Hillary Clinton finally accept what most people have known since the end of February -- that voters had the audacity to choose Barack Obama over her.

Much has been written about the strategy that allowed Barack Obama to rack up 11 straight wins in February and in the process, build an insurmountable lead. But the legendary No Surrender campaign told us that the 11 state sweep and 100 delegate lead didn't matter. Ohio and Texas were the states that were important. So we all waited for those two, and after she won the popular vote in both --and lost the delegates in Texas -- the basic math had not changed. Neither had the audacity.

We were told to look to Pennsylvania, to ignore caucus states, to count the censured Florida and Michigan, to focus only on the large states she won, to focus exclusively on the popular vote. And while we focused on the incredible morphing metrics, we conveniently overlooked that the delegate count remained insurmountable.

Superdelegates began eroding in March. A 100 plus superdelagate lead began dwindling to the point that it was completely erased. We settled the Michigan and Florida debacles. Networks began the delegate countdown clocks. And early Tuesday evening, virtually every news organization made it official, Barack Obama was the nominee.

Yet here we are five days later, waiting for Hillary to admit what has been general knowledge around the globe. The election was hers to lose, now, despite losing, she acts like it is hers to confer.

The audacity.

This was the moment

It's been a couple of days since Barack Obama's triumphant acceptance of the presumptive Democratic nomination, but I had to hear the speech one more time. This was the moment.

Clinton: Nuke, nuke Iran

I shuddered when I heard John McCain singing, 'bomb, bomb, Iran,' but I never thought he would be outdone by a Democrat.

Repeating a line that most people seemed to miss during the Philadelphia debate, Hillary Clinton promised to nuke Iran if it threatened Israel. And when asked if that's what she really meant to say, she took it up a notch and said the US could obliterate them:

"The question was, 'If Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be?' And I want the Iranians to know that if I'm president, we will attack Iran" to retaliate against an Iranian nuclear hit on Israel.

She added: "And I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Wow! Whappened to diplomacy?

Obama took a more restrained view in the Guardian's report.

Obama, responding to Clinton's interview, said: "One of the things that we've seen over the last several years is a bunch of talk using words like 'obliterate'. "It doesn't actually produce good results. And so I'm not interested in sabre-rattling."

So now I'm wondering, what in the world would cause her to say something so hawkish that she is even appearing to be to the right of McCain? Is this her attempt to triangulate his message? Am I the only one who finds this just a little bit disconcerting? You'd think promising to nuke a Middle Eastern country would be the lead story, but it still seems to be buried. What gives?

Obama's debate debacle; grappling with the gotchas

I think we were beyond the halfway point of last night's debate when Charlie Gibson announced that 'now we will move to the issue Americans care most about, the economy.'

An interesting admission from anchors who seemed to glee in the endless stream of gotcha questions. From bitter, to Rev Wright, to Bosnia sniper fire, the debate seemed to deliberately avoid anything that looked like a substantive issue.

Too bad for Obama because he never fares well in those kinds of formats. Positioning himself as the gentleman of the race, he clings (yes, I said it) to being civil when the situation clearly calls for a street fight. A gentleman will never hit a lady, even if she is backhanding him with the broad side of a shovel.

I've often wondered why, after leading for so long, he can't or won't knock her out already. If Clinton had the advantages that Obama has presided over for the last few months, I'm sure she would have ended him in a grand a brutal fashion by now. Obama's the guy in the coliseum who has his opponent down on her back and rather than deliver the final blow, he turns and walks away. Everyone in the stands knows that were the situation reversed, she wouldn't hesitate to lower the hammer.

Clinton smells blood. The beating Obama got last night will pale compared to the beating to come. That is, unless he learns to shed the nice guy image and fight back. We all want to think optimistically about the new, diplomatic era of politics, but it ain't here yet. And you won't get to the big dance until you master the old fight.

I guess this is what the ABC anchors realize when they tossed both candidates into the ring and let them pummel each other for the first half of the debate. It's not the substance we hoped for but it's probably a fight they were destined to have.

I like the way Gail Collins sums it up in a NY Times op-ed:

I know it’s been a hard couple of weeks, people. You were all excited about this election and now you feel like someone who got all dressed up for a great event and wound up at a B-list party with a cash bar. You never want to hear the words “bitter” or “Bosnia” again. And the only political story that you’ve really enjoyed lately is the one about Cindy McCain’s list of favorite recipes being cribbed from The Food Network.

Clinton and the credibility gap

It's probably not fair to call the latest Hillary Clinton dust up a lie, but it fits so neatly into the narrative, it's not surprising why so many people do.

A New York times article, Ohio Hospital Contests a Story Clinton Tells, details yet another Clinton story debunked by the people who were there. Naturally, when it follows the Bosnia bungle so closely, observers start connecting the dots.

I've never had a problem with a Hillary pile-on, but I don't think she deserves it here. Unlike her Bosnia 'misstatement', we can clearly establish where she got this story:

The sheriff’s deputy, Bryan Holman, had played host to Mrs. Clinton in his home before the Ohio primary. Deputy Holman said in a telephone interview that a conversation about health care led him to relate the story of Ms. Bachtel. He never mentioned the name of the hospital that supposedly turned her away because he did not know it, he said.

Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel’s story only secondhand, having learned it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel’s relatives did not return phone calls Friday.

As Deputy Holman understood it, Ms. Bachtel had died of complications from a stillbirth after being turned away by a local hospital for her failure to pay $100 upfront.

“I mentioned this story to Senator Clinton, and she apparently took to it and liked it,” Deputy Holman said, “and one of her aides said she’d be using it at some rallies.”

At worst, she's guilty of not checking the story out before using it, which is a stunning oversight. Negligence but not necessarily dishonesty.

But that's the problem that results when you are caught deliberately saying things that aren't true. Clinton's well deserved credibility gap has made an issue out of what looks like an honest mistatement.

We should give her a break on this one. I'm sure she'll earn our scorn soon enough.

Hillary channels Rocky

Maybe someone forgot to tell her how the movie ends.

Yesterday Hillary compared herself to Rocky Balboa, the fictional gritty boxer from Philadelphia.

Speaking on April 1 at an AFL-CIO event at a downtown Sheraton, Mrs. Clinton suggested that Mr. Obama lacked the stomach for a prolonged primary fight.

“Senator Obama says he’s getting tired of it—his supporters say they want it to end,” said Mrs. Clinton. “Well, could you imagine if Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those Art Museum stairs and said, ‘Well, I guess that’s about far enough?’ That’s not the way it works. Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up.”

Rocky? Really Hillary? Will someone tell her the movie didn't end when he ran up the stairs? The movie ended when he got pummeled to death and lost to Apollo Creed, a Black man. Let's not make too much of analogies to that movie, shall we?

The mute Chelsea...

Love this line from Maureen Dowd...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/opinion/23dowd.html?ex=1358830800&en=39ab771d166ef64c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Bill's transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy.

After Bill's success trolling the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, Hillary handed off South Carolina and flew to California and other Super Tuesday states. The Big Dog relished playing the candidate again, wearing a Technicolor orange tie and sweeping across the state with the mute Chelsea

That's too funny. I've been wondering why I see Chelsea everywhere and have never heard her voice once.

Crybaby Clinton

The buzz today was a boohoo from former front runner Hillary Clinton.

In a Boston Globe article Clinton is quoted as saying:

"It's not easy. It's not easy," she said. "This is very personal for me. It is not just political. It is not just public. I see what's happening. We have to reverse it. And some people think elections are a game; think like who is up who is down. It's about our country.

"Some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. Some us know what we will do on day one and some of us haven't thought it through enough," she said.

Even through her tears, she is on message.

So what do we make of it? The staff was quick to put the spin on the sob. 'It’s because she’s so passionate. This is the Hillary we know. She cares so deeply, she’s emotional.'

Right. She’s human behind closed doors. It reminds me of when President GW Bush's staff tries to convince us that he is really intelligent and articulate behind closed doors. It’s the cameras that make him sound like a doofus.

I don’t buy either one of them. They are who we see they are. They have all been too calculating and consistent through too many different situations to convince me otherwise.

For Clinton’s good fortune, she seems to be getting sympathy for her outburst of emotion. It’s a time honored tradition from every playground in the world: If the girl cries, she can usually get the boys to stop picking on her.

F stands for Hillary

It happened today. Wolf Blitzer used the F word when discussing Hillary Clinton.

For weeks, we have been watching the second half of the media’s favorite Comfort the afflicted then afflict the comforted. Since the race began, Hillary has been comfortable. She was the clear frontrunner -- annointed by the Republican brain trust as the defacto nominee.

Barack Obama was the neophyte who didn’t stand a chance. A funny thing happens when voters get involved, however.

Barack gave an electrifying speech at the Iowa Jefferson Jackson Dinner, and he as been on the rise ever since. The latest polls either have him ahead or dead even with Hillary Clinton, not just in Iowa, but New Hampshire. Next stop, South Caroline.

And so Wolf, CNN’s Captain Obvious suggested used the F word to describe her candidacy.

Freefall.

Don’t get to comfortable, Barack. The media will come after you. :-)

Oprah-bama for Black people?

I had to chuckle when I heard a white pundit say that Oprah's endorsement will help Obama appeal to Black people.

Really? Black people?

It seems like the same kind of simplistic thinking that assumed that Barack Obama would automatically get the Black vote. The kind of simplistic thinking that was so wrong that Oprah is now necessary.

I'm not sure what kind of pull Oprah will eventually have, but in many African American circles, it's long been long understood that Oprah has moved on from being reliably Black.

By reliably Black, I mean the kind that most people of color will identify as being in synch with their daily struggles. If you think back to Oprah's comments when she launched her school in South Africa, she defended not opening it in the United States by saying at risk kids here would rather get iPods than books.

Many Black people took that as a direct insult. That is something a reliably Black person would never say (out loud). That's just one example, of course, but it betrays a mindset.

All that said...reliable or not, Oprah is Black. Proudly so, it seems. Black enough to be comfortable endorsing a Black man. And that might translate to some support. More importantly her endorsement might carry cred, not just with African Americans, but with women. Wouldn't it be interesting if Hillary got the Black vote and Barack got the women vote?

It's been hard to predict many things in this race, and the Oprah-bama move isn't making the crystal ball any clearer.

Hillary Clinton, girl of convenience

She’s sugar and spice and everything nice, especially when she needs to differentiate herself from all the other boys in the race.

She, of course, is Hillary Rodham Clinton, lone female presidential candidate and leading contender for the Democratic nomination.

Much has been written about Sen. Clinton’s convenient playing of the gender card but none struck me as more outrageous than a comment she made during her speech at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Iowa last weekend.

Here’s the line:

Now, we are getting closer to the Iowa caucuses. They are going to be earlier than ever before. I know as the campaign goes on, that it's going to get a little hotter out there. But that is fine with me. Because, you know, as Harry Truman said, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. I'll tell you what, I feel really comfortable in the kitchen.

Huh? Did she really say that she felt comfortable in the kitchen? That kind of blatant pandering might have palatable if it weren’t for her famous line in 1992.

When she was defending her husband during his presidential run, the good senator said this:

I suppose I could have stayed at home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.

Doesn’t sound like a kitchen dweller to me. In fact, I’d be willing to argue that, spending most of her adult life as first lady of Arkansas and the US, the only time she was in a kitchen was when the secret service was whisking her in and out of speaking engagements with her husband.

The kitchen is now convenient, as now her website portrays her as Mother & Advocate, First Lady and US Senator — in that order.

Speaking of her site, remember when she was asking for a theme song for her campaign? I know it’s late, but I’d like to formally offer one. Maybe she could come out of the kitchen long enough to hear it.

Obama: Our moment is now

I must admit that I had been becoming a bit disappointed at Barak Obama's performances lately. I remember how he started with so much energy and optimism. But lately his interviews and debate performances are showing the effects of senatorial speak -- lofty rhetorical and cumbersome explanations rather than the pointed and pithy that you need to grab headlines and generate interest. The interview and debate venues aren't his best formats.

But when he delivers a speech, you remember why he became so popular so quickly. I just finished listening to his speech at the Iowa Jefferson Jackson Dinner a few days ago. It's Barak Obama at his best and worth a listen.

Kucinich impeachment resolution killed but who’s the real kook?

Republicans know that Kucinich comes off as a kook, that's why, when he introduced a resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, they wanted Kucinich to be heard.

Democrats also know that Kucinich tilts on the kook factor. They'd just heard him admit in a televised debate that he believed in UFOs. And with that performance still relatively fresh on many mind's, Reps. Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi wanted no parts of it.

And while we all snickered at the messenger, a message or two slipped past us. One, it was an issue worthy of debate. If anyone remembers the Washington Post's exhaustive series on the vice president, you would remember that there is fertile ground to plow on whether he stretched the boundaries of his power to circumvent the law. The series seemed to make it fairly obvious that the vice president is thumbing his nose at the constitution and doing whatever he pleases.

Second, Democrats, knowing all these facts, did nothing. That's right, in an effort to avoid the label of a do nothing congress, they sent the resolution to the House Judiciary Committee where everyone agrees it will do — nothing.

For those of you who missed the resolution, here is a Cliff Notes version:

Vice President Cheney should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors:

Article 1: He purposely manipulated the intelligence process to fabricate a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He did this to deceive the US citizens and Congress and justify using our military in a war against Iraq that has damaged our national security interests.

Article 2: He purposely manipulated intelligence to deceive America about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify his war.

Article 3: He openly threatened aggression against Iran without any real threat to the United States. He has done so while proving he has the capability to act on those threats.

Anything really kooky there? The resolution documents each of the articles of impeachment with a bibliography of references, not that we need it. A simple Google search can confirm most of the facts. But Kucinich is a kook. How can anyone take him seriously?

Meanwhile, I think Dick Cheney is having the best laugh. Who are the real kooks here?

Dems, don't count out the white man yet

Hey Dems, here is a prediction you won’t hear every day. While all the other pundits are focused and frothing over the Hillary vs. Barak battle for the nomination, John Edwards will come straight up the middle and overtake them both.

Hillary is too divisive. Barak is too inexperienced. In the end, voters will survey the most diverse group of candidates and, for “legitimate” reasons, go with the white man. Of course, it will spawn a chorus of “Was American not ready?” stories. John Edwards will be forced to pick a minority (Barak Obama) to preserve the narrative.

Breaks my heart, too, but call me a cynic.

Edwards/Obama 08. You heard it here first. Sorry Hill and Bill.

When ads attack

Let's get one thing straight. The moveon.org ad didn't kill more than 2,700 US troops in Iraq. It didn't injure the more than 27,000 others who left that country disabled. It didn't attract an active al qeda insurgency. It didn't mire the country in a civil war. It didn't cause acid rain, global warming and the decline of western civilization as we know it.

It doesn't even cause whiter teeth or fresh breath.

You'd think it did all those things if you listened to the rhetoric spewing from war supporters this week.

The left leaning activist organization and website with the same name, moveon.org this week took out a full-page ad in the New York Times where it mocked Gen. David Petraeus as Gen. Betray Us. MoveOn called it factual and sticky. But the political right came unglued.

Rudy Guliani, denounced it, while taking out his own ad. Republican candidates tripped over each other to portray the ad as a disrespectful attack on a good man...and the military. The fever pitch built this week to the point that the president felt the need to weigh in and a Democratic controlled Senate passed a resolution 72-25 expressing its outrage. Let me repeat that: a Democratic controlled Senate passed a resolution 72-25 expressing its outrage.

All this commotion for an ad? An ad?

This, my friends, is the politics of distraction. Having trouble defending the substance of the good general's testimony? Put the messenger in the cross hairs. His supporters seem to suggest that he is so thin skinned that any strident disagreement is over the line. A decorated general who is fighting in a war zone where sniping and road side bombs are the order of the day can't take a shot from an advertisement?

Gen. Petraeus is a public figure, not just reporting out on the state of affairs but making a recommendation on the path forward. He's lending his voice and expertise to a national debate on the future of our country. To the extent that he uses any facts or figures to back them up, they should be open to scrutiny. And if they don't hold up under scrutiny, then he ought to be prepared to have them called into question. And if it appears he is knowingly misleading the country, we ought to be able to point that out too. Even if it is in an ad.

Sen. Larry Craig is not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that?

Sen. Craig is not gay. The way the Seinfeld bit goes, you’re supposed to immediately follow with “not that there’s anything wrong with that."

Since the good senator spent most of his career preaching that there was something wrong with that, he was willing to confess to anything but being gay. In fact, he was so focused on not being gay that he forgot that there was something wrong with pleading guilty to soliciting sex from a man in a bathroom.

Here's the thing. I can't think of any straight man who would plead guilty to soliciting sex from another man in a bathroom...especially if the only evidence was that he stomped three times and waved under the stall.

His defense is that he was so scared of bad publicity that he was willing to cop to anything to make it go away. He pleads it out, pays his fine, goes on his way.

He's now a convicted criminal, a hypocrite, and a pervert. But he's not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Both Democrats and Republicans want Clinton. Shouldn't one of them be concerned?

GOP activists root for Clinton win - Jonathan Martin - Politico.com

Why are Democrats flocking in record numbers to the one candidate Republicans are sure they can beat? This is the thing that puzzles me.

In most national polls, Sen. Hillary Clinton enjoys a comfortable lead over her closest rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and John Edwards. The pundit elite seem eager to coronate her as the Democrat nominee, while gushing about her "flawless" campaign.

On the other side, Republicans are making no secret of the fact that their best chance at winning would be by unifying their base against another Clinton presidency. Yet, in all the pontificating, I've not heard much of a Democratic response to how they think she would compete against the Republican machine. How can that not be a serious part of any calculation?

In the 2004 election, it was all about winning. About being electable. That's why Sen. John Kerry could easily outpace Gov. Howard Dean. Kerry had more electable qualities. It seems that if the Democrats applied the same litmus test today, they would have a more competitive race.

Perhaps another lost lesson from the 2004 election is that when Republicans don't want to run on their record, they will run on yours, or a caricature of yours. With Clinton as the nominee, they won't have to invent a caricature, it already exists. The Clinton that failed so spectacularly with the Healthcare issue, isn't so far from memory that she can't be revived. And when she is revived, it won't matter who the Republicans select as their nominee. If Clinton represents the Democrats, the election will all be about her.

So now you have Republicans openly giddy about a Clinton candidacy, and Democrats setting the table for the feast. Am I the only one who sees this?