The Dish

A blog is born.

A reader writes:

I have read your blog multiple times a day since the primary season began.  I am a “maxed-out” Obama supporter from Illinois and the suggestion of a combined ticket with Clinton has been abhorrent to me . . . until know. The timing of your article is spot on.  So tick me off in the “supports Andrew’s Times article”  column. I never thought I would type this but, they need to be Obama-Clinton (I still shudder at that) sooner rather than later.

Another:

You are right on every point.  I hope the Obama campaign reads your column.  I emailed them, saying basically appease HRC with the VP slot and give her health care.  If she refuses she would only show her true colors to the country.  She would almost have to say yes and Obama might actually have the Clintons kind of cornered!  I never thought I would vote for HRC in any circumstance, but in the VP slot, now as things stand, it makes good sense.

A reader writes:

I love you.  I truly do.  But I have to ask – what the hell are you trying to do to us?  We need a fresh start.  We need change.  We need to get away from the corrupt Clintons.  What are you doing?

 

Obama appeals to Republicans (like yourself) and Independents.  Do you think he will still appeal to them with Cruella on the ticket?

 

Putting her on the ticket will also mean putting all the Clinton scandals on the ticket.  How will that be helpful?  She has nothing positive to offer. 

 

Democrats will vote for the dem. Without her on the ticket we’ll also get some repubs. and some indies. With her on the ticket we’re destined to lose both to McCain.

 

Andrew, I read your every word.  I listen to your every word when your on Chris Matthews or wherever I can find you.  But on this one, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.

 

Don’t plant that thought in people’s minds.  I cannot vote for a ticket with Hillary Clinton’s name on it…not even with Obama at the top.

 

I wrote to you several months ago about how discouraging this primary has been.  You responded something to the effect of don’t be discouraged. Well, Andrew, how can I not be discouraged when we’re on the verge of finally getting real change and folks are trying to muddy it up with one of the biggest and most blatant liars I’ve ever seen in a senator or presidential candidate.  You can’t trust anything that comes out of Sen. Clinton’s mouth.  If her mouth is open you know she’s spewing lies. 

 

And I will NEVER forgive Sen. Clinton and former Pres. Bill Clinton for playing white against black, and hispanic against black.  NEVER will I forgive them for doing that. How could I vote for someone who tells the white and hispanic part of our great country that there’s something wrong, something bad about being black?  You will never know how much this hurt me. I feel a sharp pain inside.  I used to think they were good decent people.  I’ve been made a fool.  I’ve been humiliated.  I stood up for them.  I defended them. 

 

Like I told you before, I’m a 46 year old uneducated black woman without much hope and with nothing to lose.  I either want a real opportunity for change or I’m willing to allow 100 more years of war or whatever the hell the evil-doers want to do with our country.

 

I’m not voting for a ticket with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name on it.  That’s final.

Where does the Democratic race go from here? I think out loud here. Bottom line:

It is for many in the Obama camp an unthinkable thought. But politics is sometimes the art of adjusting today to what seemed inconceivable yesterday. I’m talking about the possibility — and the powerful logic — of a unity Obama-Clinton ticket for the Democrats.

I know, I know. But one thing we have learned is that the Clintons can do damage to Obama and are prepared to:

The old political adage that you should keep your friends close but your enemies closer therefore seems appropriate. Clinton will not be running for president in 2012 if she is vice-president in 2009. The same could not be said if she were consigned back to the Senate to lick her wounds and plot her future.

And there’s a way to frame such a grim compromise in a way that resonates with the message Obama has been conveying from the beginning:

His model in this should be Abraham Lincoln. What Lincoln did, as Doris Kearns Goodwin explained in her brilliant book, "Team Of Rivals," was to bring his most bitter opponents into his cabinet in order to maintain national and party unity at a time of crisis. Obama — who is a green legislator from Illinois, just as Lincoln was — could signal to his own supporters in picking Clinton that he isn’t capitulating to old politics, he is demonstrating his capacity to reach out and engage and co-opt his rivals and opponents.

Done deftly, picking Clinton could even resonate with Obama’s supporters as a statesmanlike gesture, a sign of the kind of reconciliation he wants to achieve at home and abroad and energize his own party for the fall. It is consonant with his core message: that he can unify the country in a way few other politicians can. It would even help heal the gulf that has opened up between the Clintons and black voters in this campaign. It’s win-win all round.

I hesitate to propose this, but I do think it is now worth actively considering for the first time in this campaign. The test of a president is his ability to recognise his own weaknesses and adjust to them. If he can do that while strengthening his core message, and make his own election close to unstoppable, what would hold him back?

The full column is here.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

The Weekly Standard bows down before the new right-wing Clinton. My own view is that the neocons now see her as the main way to defeat Obama and the possibility of real change in the occupation of the Middle East. They know how vulnerable McCain is – and fear Obama, because they have not gotten into his head. But Clinton’s politics have been forged in the crucible of far right attacks, and while, in the past, her liberalism was reactive, it now seems she has utterly internalized the Rove dynamic:

She’s running a right-wing campaign. She’s running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan–"The Bear in the Forest"–ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she’s doing it with much the same symbols.

If she can also bring down the most promising Democrat in a generation, the neocon right would be thrilled. Check this out:

And better–or worse–she is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush.

Against an opponent who shops for arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances, she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now, she’ll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or at her posh mansion on Embassy Row…

Continuing the war is the prize, of course:

She might run to the right of McCain, if she makes it to the general election, and get the votes of rebellious conservatives. Or she, Lieberman, and McCain could form a pro-war coalition, with all of them running to pick up the phone when it rings in the small hours.

Or to put it another way:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

The news blackout of perhaps the most violent and desperate battle for years in Baghdad is baffling. What’s going on is an extremely bloody fight between one Shiite faction and another. And yes, the US is now a central part of this internecine bloodbath. The Sunday Times of London has a riveting first-hand account from Sadr City of Maliki’s attempt to destroy the Sadrites ahead of the fall elections:

The fight between Sadr and Maliki, between the dirt-poor who look to the firebrand cleric for inspiration and the relatively secure who support the prime minister, is one that neither side can afford to lose.

Last week the Mahdi fighters took advantage of the sandstorms, which grounded US helicopters, to blast the Iraqi army’s front line positions with roadside bombs, mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire.

Embedded with them for four days and three nights, I witnessed the fighting at close quarters, learnt of preparations being made by Mahdi special forces to spread the violence to other parts of Baghdad and heard their commanders swear to paralyse the government and destroy Maliki if their own leader authorises all-out war.

The battle of Sadr City, with all the human misery it entails, is in danger of spilling out across the capital, reversing the security gains that followed last summer’s American troop surge.  

It is little wonder that US commanders say the Shi’ite militias backed by Iran now pose a greater threat than the Sunni insurgents who were their deadliest enemies when Al-Qaeda in Iraq was at its peak.  

“We can bring Baghdad to a standstill,” boasted one Mahdi commander. “Be assured that when all-out war is eventually declared, we will be able to take over the city.”

(Photo: An Iraqi family looks on May 3, 2008 at a-blood stained shirt belonging to a man killed the day before in clashes between US-backed Iraqi security forces and Shiite fighters in Baghdad’s Sadr City, the bastion of hardline cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. US forces killed at least eight Shiite fighters in a series of firefights in Baghdad’s Sadr City, the military said today. By Wissam Al-Okaili/AFP/Getty.)

A reader writes:

I just watched the latest Obama clip on your site.  As a lifelong cynic (whose cynicism, unfortunately, has always proved prescient) I find myself able to believe in this man.  It is truly extraordinary.

The Wright affair seems to have impacted Republicans the most:

A large number of voters – three-quarters – say that what Wright has said has not changed their opinion of Obama. However, Wright has caused 24 percent to change their view, with 22 percent saying their view of Obama is less favorable. Republicans are more likely than Democrats or Independents to describe the Wright impact negatively.

I think the association has given many Republican-leaning voters permission to stay away from Obama. That’s a shame – because Obama clearly represents, whatever his faults, a different racial politics than that of Jackson, Sharpton and the past. Insofar as he represents a repudiation of the last eight years, he is also a gain for conservatism, properly understood – because his election would force Republicans to rethink where they have gone so awry.

A reader writes:

Never mind depression; Ketamine has already found important clinical use in emergency departments. We use it all the time for “procedural sedation” – when we want to make patients comfortable before reducing a dislocated shoulder, fixing a broken bone, or maybe incising a draining a painful abscess. It starts working quickly after injection, acting as a powerful analgesic but also putting patients into a trancelike state. It wears off quickly, too – and patients won’t remember the event procedure, afterward.

Ketamine is safer than etomidate for blood pressure regulation during procedures, and doesn’t carry the same risk as the old standby, fentanyl and versed, on respiratory depression. One risk of ketamine is called an “emergence phenomenon” – really a bad trip, Sometimes patients emerge from the sedation very agitated and confused. To prevent this, we usually give a small dose of a benzo and patients feel fine.

From the annals of mischievous online editing:

And the beat goes on. One post-Wright wrinkle: if Obama does win both North Carolina and Indiana, he’ll get a big and probably definitive boost. Zogby also shows Obama holding steady in North Carolina and gaining in Indiana. But Zogby’s record is pretty dreadful this year. One stat worth noting: Clinton’s only solid bloc in North Carolina is among those over 70.