Category: The Dish

After the Packer piece, James Joyner responds to Drum and Jonah Goldberg.

Matt Welch writes about McCain’s polyps. By the way, peniciilin is younger than John McCain.

One of many, many readers writes:

No! First of all, there’s a real chance that the VP would become president.  So if you think she wouldn’t be a good president, you can’t support her for VP for political purposes. Second of all, she’s been totally and thoroughly dishonest during the campaign.

Third of all, she’s trying to blackmail Obama.

They were doing a scorched earth campaign to win, then got quieter when it became clear she had lost.  Then over the past couple of days, she turned it back on again — talking about counting all the votes, and that sort of thing — to let Obama know that was her lever.  She’s saying, I’ll take my people and go home if you don’t put me on the ticket.  Caving into that sort of thing betrays weakness, and a president can’t afford to be weak.

Obama has to impose discipline on the party. It has to come from him. The Clintons have refused to get on board, and if they continue to behave in this way, they’ve got to get smacked down.  Not just because hillary as vp is bad for the country, and not just because she’s an awful person.  But because it has to be clear who’s running things.

People are saying that obama has to put Hillary on the ticket in order to solve an artificial political problem that’s all of hillary’s making.  And she’s pumping that problem up to increase her leverage. Obama simply can’t cave in to that.

If I wanted to vote for someone who would betray his core beliefs for political expediency, I’d vote for McCain.  We don’t need that sort of thing from Obama.

Jonathan Cohn on the McCain medical record release:

By the time you read this, a select group of reporters–apparently numbering about a dozen–may be inside a conference room at a Phoenix resort hotel, going over some 400 pages of Senator John McCain’s medical records….rather than make all the records public, the campaign has chosen to make them available to the pool reporters for a three-hour window. According to this account in the New York Times, the reporters can take notes but not make photocopies. The campaign is also making McCain’s doctors, from the Mayo Clinic, available for interviews.

This is absurd. Release all of it online. When a man is a cancer and torture survivor at 71, the health question is sadly relevant. I wouldn’t want this for almost anyone else – but he’s running for president of the US. You give up your medical privacy under those conditions. And any attempt to conceal anything will only fuel worries, not allay them.

Heh:

Obama insisted on a campaign with a low-drama quotient, and that’s basically what he’s gotten. If he wants to see a flurry of outrageous memos, suicidal bullying of the press, and prolific backbiting, he should pick Clinton.

A story from the antipodes:

When two New Zealand pilots ran out of fuel in a microlight airplane they offered prayers and were able to make an emergency landing in a field — coming to rest right next to a sign reading, "Jesus is Lord."

Clinton’s leading fundraising chair:

"There’s a risk that if she isn’t invited on the ticket, Hillary’s political and financial supporters may not feel compelled to be as integrated and involved in the Obama campaign in order to provide the maximum support that he’ll need to prevail in November."

So it gets clearer that they’re bargaining for the veep slot. More straws in the wind here. But the money angle is an absurd lever. Obama’s money machine doesn’t need Clinton in any way. And the Democrats would be suicidal to turn off that spigot by handing the nomination to Clinton.

Nonetheless, the logic I laid out a few weeks ago still holds. The upside of an Obama-Clinton ticket would be considerable. I know I’ve been all over the place on this. My fear of an Obama-Clinton ticket is because of what I think of the Clintons. My interest in an Obama-Clinton ticket is because of what I think of the Clintons. They’re dangerous to Obama – the overthrown dynasts who are pulling a Richard II right now. But they’re just as dangerous in the tent and out of it. Obama needs to figure out which is the greater danger. I don’t envy him.

But when you think about it, the Clintons’ popular vote argument is not an argument for winning the nomination. You can’t change the rules in the fourth quarter. But it is an argument for the veep slot. Put this way, the dead-ender act is not so psycho. The Clintons, like it or not, do have a base in their party. They’ve been beaten but not destroyed. Obama has to do something about it.

There are a lot of voters in his party for his opponent. And the signals the Clintons have been sending are that they will not go easily. When Obama says, "I’m very practical in my thinking. I’m a practical guy," this seems to me what he’s thinking.

This really is the first major presidential decision Obama has to make. How he handles it, and what he decides will tell us a huge amount about the kind of president he would be. My hunch is that he will try to conciliate – and that, if he’s shrewd, that will be the theme of his campaign. A Clinton pick would instantly relieve the Democrats and create a demographic landslide potential for the fall. It would immediately force an entire army on the right, now making the Clintons’ arguments for them, to eat their words or find themselves praising the Democrat. It would reassure some voters that Obama has a running mate with more Washington experience. It would help the women’s vote.

One more thing: for Obama to pick Clinton needs to be – and be seen to be – an act of strength, not weakness. It must be diplomacy not appeasement. That requires some class on both sides. And so far, only one side has shown any.

A candidate creates an atmosphere, no? A round-up of pro-Clinton bloggers. Taylor Marsh:

Tumulty, like so many others, are ignoring Clinton’s only goal, which is to make the case to SuperDs that she would be the best nominee against John McCain, the traditional media, as well as the Obama blogs, are missing one of the greatest political dramas ever to unfold, second only to the 2000 election.

Clinton is campaigning on counting every single vote. But also that every Democratic delegate should be focused on who can win in November.

Obama is campaigning on disenfranchising voters so he can win, regardless of whether he’s got the strongest case for November, which he does not.

TalkLeft:

While the Obama blogs are having a conniption because Hillary Clinton is talking about counting the votes in Florida and Michigan, it remains striking to me that these same blogs have never expressed much concern about the Media’s disgraceful behavior in this campaign. Indeed, any mention of the sexism and misogyny in the Media and elsewhere makes them look down at their shoes, or worse, even defend the perpetrators.

Here’s a writer at No Quarter going after Josh Marshall:

One is immediately stumped when searching for words that aptly describe the bilge sinking the increasingly cumbersome and tedious vessels that comprise the patently venal fleet of Obamablogs. According to one writer who has a predilection for reinscribing misogynistic tropes in almost every essay he pens, Hillary Clinton is “[t]oxic,” for she has the temerity to situate the controversy surrounding the seating of the delegates of Florida and Michigan within the august traditions of Voting Rights and Civil Rights that define the modern Democratic Party

Wolcott:

I’m still for Hillary, though I recognize that the flag flapping above the fort is tattered and the time is drawing near for the bugler to sound the blue notes of valedictory.

Is Tucker going to make a run at the libertarian ticket? Go Tucker.

Obama in Florida: