Category: The Dish

It’s worth recalling what this primary came to be about, because of a self-conscious decision by the Clintons to adopt the tactics and politics of the people who persecuted and hounded them in the 1990s. It was indeed in the end about smearing and labeling Obama as a far-left, atheist, elite, pansy Godless snob fraud. That was almost all it came to be about. It was the Clintons’ core message and core belief. And if anywhere would have proved its salience, it would surely have been beleaguered and depressed central and western Pennsylvania; and it would surely have worked with white ethnic voters over 50.

It did work, it seems to me. It will work, to some extent. It’s valid in the sense that Rove is not stupid. But it works less and less the younger the vote is; and it is obviously losing some of its divisive salience even among the older generation. It is fading as a tool. Used by Democrats, legitimized by Democrats, embraced by Democrats, the Rove-Atwater gambits have been paid the highest compliment by the Clintons these past few weeks. But a single digit win against a young black man in a polarized race suggests that this compliment was past its sell-by date. It was an act of desperation, and one last grab back to the past. It didn’t quite do what it was supposed to do. Nearly, but not quite.

The past is receding; but the future has yet to be born. This is hard labor. Necessary labor. But the direction of this country is clear, it seems to me. And heartening.

(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty.)

Right now, the actual results suggest what I thought would be the worst possible result for the Democrats: a nine point win for Clinton. It doesn’t change the race’s dynamic or the math; but it will give Clinton just the tiniest sliver of an argument that she should not drop out. But what is striking in the exit polls is the polarization on three lines: gender, race and age. It was dead even with men; but a massive advantage for Clinton among women. The racial difference is obvious as well. But what really leaps out is age. Obama lost every cohort over 40; Clinton lost every cohort under 40. Race also affects the generations in turn: 67 percent of whites over 60 voted for Clinton – a massive 24 point advantage. Among the younger generation, there is much less racial polarization: under 30, whites split evenly. This is a fascinating result. It appears to me as the future struggling to overcome the past. On the process, I stick to my view that she needed double digits to have reason to stay in. Right now, she doesn’t have it. But she won’t leave. She will never leave. Ceding to someone younger is unthinkable to her. It’s a form of death for her.

But here’s what she does have: total shamelessness, and an absolute belief that she is the rightful nominee. Shamelessness: the appropriation of the message and even the words of her opponent; the portrayal of one of the most privileged and advantaged candidates in memory as an insurgent underdog; the eager embrace of the tactics – and message! – of the Rove right if it could help in any way; the picture of a candidate who saw a 20 – 25 point lead dissipate into single figures as a candidate for momentum. What sustains her is this deep, deep sense of entitlement and an absolute refusal to let the next generation take over.  She will take this to the last day of the convention if necessary.

If Obama thinks he has a right to actually be nominated by the Clinton Democrats because he has won more votes, more states and more delegates, he is sadly mistaken. They will never let such a person win without a death struggle. And that is where the Democrats are now headed.

A reader suggests:

The Right wing has Ann Coulter and Michael Savage. The Left wing has Ted Rall and Michael Moore.

I stumbled across this piece in today’s USA Today and it may tell us more than any half-assed exit poll leaks about what to expect tonight:

When I moved from the South in 1957 to work on a Philadelphia newspaper, I was startled by the racial hostility. I saw the city’s first black baseball star, Richie Allen, booed viciously. I saw Frank Rizzo, a nightstick-toting police chief who arrested Black Panthers and photographed them nude , become its iconic mayor. I learned the city has its encrusted bailiwicks: the Irish river wards, Italian South Philly, huge swatches of black North Philly, leafy Chestnut Hill.That’s a microcosm of the state — a collection of duchies from the Rust Belt across the middle’s red-brick towns to Philly’s steel towers, each frozen in its past.

Pennsylvania has barely elected a black or a female politician to state-wide office. But you know what tends to count most: race. There’s a reason Pat Buchanan has warmed to Clinton.

For Earth Day, a series of satellite photos from around the world. The Great Salt Desert:

More here.

"We said that, in the American TV drama 24, Jack Bauer, the counter-terrorism agent, resorted to electrocution to extract information. You cannot extract information from someone who has been electrocuted because they are dead," – The Guardian.

You begin to glimpse the mindset of the far right reading a say-anything apparatchik like Hewitt:

We have Ann Coulter and Michael Savage. They have Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

Leave aside the idiotic right-left, us-them crapola. Are we really supposed to believe that Chris Matthews is equatable with Michael Savage? That Olbermann, however partisan and shrill he can be, is the equivalent of the fag-baiting, Hitler-equating bigot, Coulter?

Al Gore to save mankind with second film.

Paulites for McCain riff off P-Diddy, er, Benjamin Franklin.

Bradford Plumer explains highway bias in transportation policy:

Under current law, the federal government usually covers about 80-90 percent of the costs for a new highway project, compared with only 50 percent of the costs for a transit system. Local communities have to pick up most of the rest of the tab for public transportation, with state governments chipping in what’s left. Since doing that usually requires raising property taxes, most local governments just prefer to build highways.