Category: The Dish

"We talk a lot about so-called pledged delegates, but every delegate is expected to exercise independent judgment," – Senator Hillary Clinton.

Solar paint and solar clothes.

According to Ambers, the Clinton campaign is now distributing an article in the American Spectator accusing Obama’s adviser, Merrill McPeak, of being an anti-Semite. From the TAS piece:

"Obama has a Jewish problem and McPeak’s bigoted views are emblematic of what they are. Obama can issue all the boilerplate statements supporting Israel’s right to defend itself he wants. But until he accepts responsibility for allowing people like McPeak so close to his quest for the presidency, Obama’s sincerity and judgment will remain open questions."

More on Obama’s largely fabricated "Jewish problem" here.

A CBS follow-up:

Mark Blumenthal on daily tracking polls – and why much of the variation we’ve been seeing before during and after the Wright foofaraw can be explained by random variation.

A same-sex couple celebrates an anniversary. And our president actually believes it threatens the family.

Loyal – for now.

Jeremiah Wright is now the moral equivalent of David Duke? The latest Clintonite ratchets up the Wright issue still further. However dim a view you take of some of Wright’s rhetorical excesses, and I’m not defending them, to compare a man whose church has such a long history of social work, black self-help, outreach to people with HIV, and inclusion of gay people to a rank neo-Nazi is another step too far. Comparing the first potential black president’s pastor to a man who represents some of the worst racism in America is also bound to impact African-Americans. If the Clintons keep this up, they will not only destroy Obama’s chances in the fall, they may also make it very hard for black Democrats to vote for a Clinton again. Josh comments here. I think Clinton has decided to use race in the way that Republicans have for the past couple of decades, to play on white resentment of what are regarded as double-standards on race and to fuse the integrative, dignified campaign of Obama in the minds of some white ethnic Americans with demagoguic soundbites from Wright.

The goal is to win a huge margin in Pennsylvania and to use that as an appeal to the super-delegates that Obama cannot be elected in key swing states with white working class voters. If that won’t work, Clinton will have done all she can to ensure Obama’s defeat by McCain in the fall, which she will then use as vindication for another run in 2012.

It’s called destroying the party (and wounding the country racially)  in order to save the Clintons. It doesn’t surprise me, but I can’t help but feel it is going to enrage many Democrats, especially those who felt that this time, a candidate they loved had a chance to bring the country together. Not if the Clintons can help it.

It is very hard to know what to make right now of the clashes in Basra and Baghdad between US and Maliki government forces and various Shiite militias. It is not hard to figure out that this is an extremely significant development:

Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the Mahdi Army’s power, was sealed off by a cordon of Iraqi troops and what appeared to be several American units. A New York Times photographer who was able to get through the cordon found more layers of checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily armed Mahdi Army fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts. Tires burned in the city center, gunfire echoed against shuttered stores, and teams of fighters in pickup trucks moved about brandishing machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The great question these past few months has been how long the Shiite calm would last. I guess we’re beginning to find out.

Scott Horton:

If one single act marked the rise of the educated elites against Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf, then it was the defiance of his rule that came from senior judges and the bar. It is not surprising then, that one of the first acts of the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, a protégé of the late Benazir Bhutto, was to direct the release of the judges held under house arrest…The new government’s focus is now expected swiftly to turn against Musharraf and his extraordinary powers, which will, in all likelihood, quickly be disassembled.

One of the sad facts of the Bush administration’s incoherent foreign policy is that it’s very hard to promote it abroad when you have such contempt for it at home.