The Dish

At some point, the binary abstractions of the Podhoretzes will have to give way to actual statecraft:

It’s not just Hizbullah. In dealing with many such groups—Hamas, the Taliban—the Bush administration has adopted a macho, exclusively military approach. All three of these groups have a political base in their societies that is deep and enduring. Denouncing them as evil and promising to destroy them will not change that; in fact, doing so only adds to their mystique of resistance and struggle. What we need is a political strategy to combat, contest and weaken the appeal of these groups or to marginalize their violent factions. Such a policy would naturally involve some contact with their leaders, but as part of a much broader effort to engage all groups in these societies politically.

We are trying to handle Lebanon with one hand tied behind our back. We will not make contact with the Syrians or the Iranians to find out if their interests are identical, or to discern the contours of a deal. We have little political leverage and we refuse to engage in a process that might give us some.

And, of course, we have talked to Iran and need to talk to Iran if we are ever to get out of Iraq responsibly. Yes, there are genuine debates about how and when to talk or meet with foreign leaders of enemy states. But most of them have to do with the prudence of a particular time and place. Ruling such possibilities our of bounds in advance is about electoral politics, not geo-strategy. Which is, one suspects, what motivates a lot of this White House.

Obama did too campaign in Kentucky. A reader writes:

As a Louisvillian that was at Obama’s rally the Sunday before last, I’ll be happy to inform Mark Levin that we had 8,000 people show up at the convention center where the rally took place and they had to turn away an additional 2,000 people outside. I got there an hour early and got sent to the overflow area inside because they’d filled the original space that was set up for the rally.

I took my 60 something mother and she was expecting a largely African-American crowd, thanks to the Clintons’ attempt to paint Obama as nothing more than a minority candidate and the MSM’s negligent failure to call them out for this ruse. Thankfully, I’d say the crowd was almost perfectly representative of the population of Louisville and my mother’s perception of this phenomenon was changed.  A diversity of ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds, a richness that is America and that only he can bring together this year.

And that sea of white faces in Oregon? Just keep playing Jeremiah Wright tapes. Levin is a modern conservative. They create reality, remember?

Clinton’s final gambit. Sorry to bring her up again, but it’s nearly over.
 

The proposed initiative to amend California’s constitution to discriminate against gay couples states baldly:

"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

But what does this mean exactly? David Link makes an important point:

If the constitutional initiative will only preclude same-sex couples from marrying, but still recognize their domestic partnerships, it may be able to muster its majority by drawing in some of the anti-marriage voters in that moderate middle third. However, if the language will exclude same-sex couples from any constitutional protection for their relationships–marriage, domestic partnership, or anything else–the initiative’s chances will not only be slim; they will be near fatal. No state has ever adopted legal protections for same-sex couples and then taken them away. The effect of this initiative would be to nullify the relationships of nearly 50,000 couples already registered as domestic partners.

The press needs to ask the initiative’s sponsors if they support removal of all domestic partnership rights from gay couples. That’s what the theocons want; and their strategy has been to wait until such amendments pass before lowering the boom on gay couples, removing their spouse-based health insurance, etc. Is that still their position in California – that even domestic partnerships need to be abolished? Californians should know very clearly before they vote.

It’s very, very white, has a big working class population, and appears to be leaning Obama by double digits. One Poblano nugget that struck me:

When the election cycle began, Obama was actually outperforming Clinton in Republican-leaning districts. In a district with a rating of R+10, for example (one where George Bush performed ten points better than his national averages), Obama would be expected to win by roughly 8 points. But now, the same district would be expected to go to Clinton by 8 points.  Conversely, however, Obama would be expected to win a Democratic-leaning district that he might have lost before.

This helps to explain how polling in New Jersey and California, two states with fairly liberal-leaning electorates, now suggests that Obama might have won those states. 

I think Obama’s more liberal base now – as opposed to January – is partly a function of the Fox-Rove right’s campaign against him, rather than any actual positions he’s taken since then. Same with Clinton’s new-found "conservatism." It’s all relative. But Obama needs to re-orient himself to the center to maintain the deep, independent appeal he had in the earlier days of the campaign.

Yuval Levin wants McCain to run as a reformer. My own view is that the candidate who wins this election will be the person who can most credibly articulate the need for change. McCain can do it – but, coming from the incumbent party, it’s a lot harder.

A reader writes:

Three and a half years ago, I was on my way to the Arlington courthouse to fetch a piece of paper. It was an errand, something to be remembered before the trip to Richmond and the wedding ceremony. But a funny thing happened on the way to the bureaucrat’s teller window. My mind left me and my heart exploded.

For a minute, my mind came back and I was embarrassed. I was a grown man on an errand. This was silly. Sarah looked up at me, saw me on the brink, and took my hand. Her heart won my heart again, for maybe the thousandth time. I held tight and I cried.

There is little space for a man’s mind in this debate. Go with your heart, the one you share with your husband.

If you’re addicted to this blog, you probably have this figured out already (via the Apostate):

The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.

The most perfect situation for structured procrastination

that I ever had was when my wife and I served as Resident Fellows in Soto House, a Stanford dormitory. In the evening, faced with papers to grade, lectures to prepare, committee work to be done, I would leave our cottage next to the dorm and go over to the lounge and play ping-pong with the residents, or talk over things with them in their rooms, or just sit there and read the paper. I got a reputation for being a terrific Resident Fellow, and one of the rare profs on campus who spent time with undergraduates and got to know them. What a set up: play ping pong as a way of not doing more important things, and get a reputation as Mr. Chips.

A reader writes:

I just got back from visiting family in rural East Central Minnesota.

My parents had been very Republican in the 80s and 90s, even being active in the county Republican party. Disillusionment began to set in, though, in the late 90s and 2000s, and not just with the Republicans, but with the whole political system–"nothing changes no matter who’s in charge".

Having personally bought into this presidential campaign to the point where I contributed money to a campaign for the first time in my life (and I’m in my mid-40s) I wanted to at least get a sense of where they were and maybe urge them to a little less disillusionment.

When I told them I’d contributed to Obama, my mother volunteered that she expected she’d vote for McCain, but she really kinda hoped Obama would win. I said what I could to encourage this, that it really looks like he wants to change the way politics have been done over the last two decades. Then she also told me that her sister-in-law had dropped in for a visit a couple weeks ago and told her "I don’t care, I’m voting for Obama!".

These women are very white, in their 60s, raised poor, made it up to working-class with their husbands, and are all now retired. And now looking that they might help carry Minnesota for Obama in the fall.

The Jed Report makes the case. The Clintons will never go quietly or gracefully. They couldn’t even leave the White House without pardoning a few sleazebags and stealing a few gifts. I know the dangers of provoking the wave of victimhood that Clinton will invoke if anyone dares to point out that she has lost. But at some point the sheer classless, graceless sore-loser tackiness of the couple requires an end to the enabling.

Obama, one fears, is too much of a gentleman. You can’t always maintain class with people who have none.