They can’t help themselves. Here’s Clinton surrogate Robert Johnson:
"I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won’t say what he was doing but he said it in his book."
I guess they’ve been told not to use the "cocaine" word any longer, but code will work just as well.
"Rhythmically, it’s quite alluring. It can make anything, even, for example, a simple chair, seem magnificent. Why vote for someone who says: ‘See that chair. You can sit on it’ when you can have someone like Obama say: ‘This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl’s behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America’s huddled arse,’" – Armando Iannucci, the Guardian.
Ed Helms explains it all for you:
The conventional wisdom is not to make too much of endorsements, and the CW is basically right. But Josh is also onto something when he notes how many serious, senior Democrats have chosen to back Obama in the wake of a Clinton come-back. Yes, they’re mainly from the conservative wing of the party, and from the more purple end of the blue states or in red states. And yes, I think many are just voicing a genuine desire for the Democrats to regain their soul again from the calculations of Penn and Blumenthal and McAuliffe. But they are also politicians, judging the impact of their decision. I think they believe that Obama has already shown he is the future of the Democratic party. And Clinton’s surprise come-back in New Hampshire is the exception to her eventual defeat, not the rule of her imminent victory. One good cry does not a campaign win. And some Democrats are looking to their party’s future, not a dynasty’s ambition.
For the past several months, those of us skeptical that the surge is big enough or powerful enough to put the genie of a unraveling sectarian Iraq back into the bottle have had little evidence to gainsay us. The reduction of violence to 2005 levels remains a great achievement, but it is not directly related to the professed point of the surge, which was national political reconciliation. In fact, in some ways, Petraeus’ pragmatic responses to local and regional forces have made greater calm more dependent on a fractured and decentralized Iraq, with various militias, tribes and politicians in various areas making their own deals with the US and one another to secure local control.
But the passage of the law allowing for more Sunnis and former Baathists to take part in the national government’s structure is new. It’s a genuine success of the kind we were once promised. It’s the first actual data point that suggests some kind of reconciliation may be possible in Baghdad. Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s churlish to be cautious. There are many, many caveats in the press, let alone in the Byzantine and treacherous currents of Iraqi politics. There’s a chance that reigniting these issues at the center could spark more violence in the regions. Then there’s doubt about the actual law itself:
While the measure would reinstate many former Baathists, some political leaders said it would also force thousands of other former party members out of current government jobs and into retirement — especially in the security forces, where American military officials have worked hard to increase the role of Sunnis. One member of Iraq’s current de-Baathification committee said the law could even push 7,000 active Interior Ministry employees into retirement.
I guess we’ll find out soon enough what’s really there. Petraeus has wisely refrained from triumphalism of any kind and seemed to emphasize local, bottom-up efforts rather than national ones:
"Reconciliation is more than national legislation. It is also what we’re seeing in the provinces and around the country. There is more political activity. There is more cross-sectarian political activity."
What does all this mean? No one can know for sure. Except for this: if there is any indication of national reconciliation, even if it is fleeting and ephemeral and qualified, the argument for sinking more money and time into Iraq will, it seems to me, gain strength.
If the Congress couldn’t force withdrawal in the circumstances of last summer, I can’t see how it will do so in the future when the war’s objectives seem marginally less out-of-reach. In other words, I suspect that the fundamental quid-pro-quo offered to the anti-war forces – once we get calm, we can withdraw – is in fact the reverse of the truth. The more calm there is, the more the basic rationale of the neocons will revive: this is part of an empire we can keep. So why go anywhere?
Since the failure of nerve by the opposition last summer, the US has effectively decided to occupy Iraq for the rest of our lives. We had a choice: ten months or ten years, and by default we picked the latter – and, according to McCain, it’s more like a hundred years. This is very hard to undo, given the quicksand of a Muslim country that requires you either get out quickly or settle in for a looong occupation. Whether the Iraq that emerges is a meaningful state, or whether it is an effectively dismembered hodge-podge of regions held together by US troops and local forces, becomes less relevant once you accept Bush’s premise that the US has absorbed the area as a client state for the indefinite future. He has had five years to entrench this into the global order and American politics and, simply by not budging, he has changed the facts on the ground. Iraq, I suspect, is now America’s for ever – something Iraqis will always resent but never be able to reverse.
Some withdrawal of troops may well be possible in the years ahead, if we’re lucky. But the only real question will be the prudence and method of various ways to lighten the load. I doubt Bush will withdraw below the pre-surge level in the next year. A president McCain would be able to but seems unable to tolerate any indication that we’re cutting our losses. A president Clinton will be the most constrained: terrified of being tarnished as soft on terror, the Clintonites will retain their defensive crouch and be forced to keep more troops there to protect their right flank than even a Republican might. Obama? He’s a pragmatist. He won’t be able to get us out of there as quickly as he now seems to imply. Perhaps, he can negotiate a better deal. But he’s not a miracle worker, and six years of occupation make the interlocking destinies of both countries more and more hard to disentangle.
Welcome to Empire: an endless, grueling slog in treacherous places where no one loves us, but which we cannot leave. Fewer casualties perhaps (and that, of course, is a wonderful thing); but more debt, more money, more treasure, more risk, more Muslim resentment and more blowback in the end. But marginally cheaper oil in the long run, perhaps. Lovely, isn’t it?
(Photo: A US soldier from the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, is reflected on water logged on a street during a patrol at an area in Baghdad, 13 January 2008. By Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.)
Hard to argue with this:
The unmistakable message from this national exercise (surveying 840 voters on January 9 and 10th) is that Mitt Romney unequivocally qualifies as the weakest candidate the G.O.P. could field.
In the head-to-head contest with Barack Obama he is utterly wiped out, losing by a margin of 22 points (59% to 37%). Against Hillary Clinton, Romney fares little better, falling 18 percentage points behind (58% to 40%).
The results for other candidates show that this is a Romney problem, not a Republican problem.
Publius worries about and yet cannot resist this phenomenon:
Obama seems to be filling a spiritual void that many modern secular progressives (like all humans) tend to develop. Whether the enthusiasm stems from youth’s susceptibility to romantic idealism, or instead from the longing caused by the slow lonely grind of professional life, something is causing these people to see in Obama something more than politics. They’re seeing – and feeling – something higher.
There is nothing wrong with seeing in a future president a public discourse that could uplift us and perhaps mitigate the unnecessarily magnified ideological positions. But if a candidate is mere uplift, it’s a worry. I don’t think that’s what Obama is. He has detailed proposals on healthcare, climate change, taxes, and a clear position on withdrawing from Iraq as swiftly as prudently possible. But any candidate can get some policy wonks to fill in the blanks. The ability to execute such policies, to bring people together to debate and pass them, is what a president needs to have. On the critical question of the war, only McCain and Obama will be able to execute different strategies and still reach to those beyond their core support. I think that matters. I think having a capacity to transcend pure partisanship in wartime is a good thing.
Yes, there will be partisan scraps in many areas. The divides within America will not evaporate overnight. The roots of that divide are there for a reason. The point is simply this: who will best be able to work against rather than compound this often toxic dynamic? Clinton, Giuliani and Romney would be the worst. Obama and McCain the best.
(Photo: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty.)
She wept because, for a brief moment, she was asked about herself:
"I spend my time out on the campaign trail — it’s usually about what I can do for somebody else. I’m very ‘other’ directed — I don’t like talking about myself. … For me, it’s always about, ‘What can I do for you? How can I help you?’ And I was very touched when that woman said, ‘How are you doing? How do you get up in the morning?’"
It must be so hard to be so selfless for so long, to sacrifice your life for the benefit of humankind, to go through so many travails purely for the sake of others, only to have some misguided people actually challenge you for the nomination. Perhaps they don’t understand that they are running against the forces of good and progress. So good to hear the truth, then, from the lowly voters. And how moving it must suddenly have been to get support from a woman who, for some reason, then voted for Obama. The people know the real selfless Clinton behind the media’s hatred, the selfless balm for the poor and hope for the oppressed, the woman who endured all the trials of being First Lady and a multi-million book contract just for the sake of others. And they reached out and touched their merciful benefactress.
How could she do anything but weep?
Perhaps most tellingly: her eighteen year-old daughter pushed her over the top. The next generation doesn’t want to return to Mark Penn’s voter micro-bribes.
It’s striking how identity politics has suddenly come roaring back in this campaign: gender, race and, of course, religion:
"I don’t presume that you automatically support me because of a common faith. I know I have to earn that. But I also recognize that there is a unique kind of opportunity. For a long time, those of us who are people of faith are asked to support candidates who would come and talk to us. But rarely has there been one who comes from us."
Some cultural identification is inevitable in America, and not the worst thing in the world. What’s worrying is when candidates do not just accept this, but seek to exploit it directly. Huckabee’s appeal to Christianists is the most troubling; but Clinton’s on gender grounds is not that much better. So far, Obama’s campaign has resisted crude racial appeals, but this has seemed to unravel a bit in the wake of the Clintons’ rhetorical slips this past week. Less is more, on this front. Or we begin to lose the capacity to see ourselves as equal participants in a democracy, rather than interest groups fighting for what’s and who’s ours.
My Sunday Times column on Clinton, Obama and the race and gender wars can be read here.
