The Dish

Chris Beam On Pennsylvania:

We’re going to get to know Pennsylvania like it’s our college girlfriend. We’ll grow acquainted with her baggage from past relationships—electing Gov. Ed Rendell over Pittsburgh sports-legend Lynn Swann, perhaps because some were uncomfortable with an African-American governor. We’ll get to know her friends from home—cosmopolitan transplants in Philadelphia, steel-belt workers in Pittsburgh, and wacky, independent farmers everywhere in between. Plus, don’t forget about getting inside her head—nothing’s sexier than probing her feelings on NAFTA, change, and experience.

The Clinton campaign’s decision not to reject or denounce Geraldine Ferraro’s racial gaffe strikes me as a conscious and deliberate one. The Obama campaign saw Samantha Power resign for a less offensive remark. But Ferraro is now on the networks and airwaves amping up the volume, and Clinton, in classic passive-aggressive mode, is merely "disagreeing." Isn’t this obviously about Pennsylvania? Isn’t this classic Rove-Morris politics – to keep designating Obama a beneficiary of affirmative action and Clinton a victimized white woman in order to racially polarize a primary where Clinton needs white ethnic votes?

Ferraro’s original gaffe was an accident. The compounding of it is a strategy. A reader comments:

I’m willing to bet damn near anything Bill thought this up himself. As a white male Bill realized he couldn’t push Obama into the ghetto box, but what a brilliant strategy! – let’s have another "disadvantaged group" lambaste Obama through an elderly white female surrogate to divide and conquer in the victimology sweepstakes.  Since whites outnumber blacks, and white females in particular outnumber black voters, it’s an incredibly audacious gambit to win the nomination. Throwing the kitchen sink apparently means turning the Democratic Party into an all out race versus gender war, ultimately allowing Bill and Hillary to either emerge on top or for Obama to be so badly damaged that the Superdelegates will fear he’s lost the white vote in the general election. That’s exactly the game the Clinton’s have set in motion here.

(Photo: U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton chats with longtime-friend Geraldine Ferraro before commencement exercises for Marymount Manhattan College in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center May 20, 2005 in New York City. By Chris Hondros/Getty Images.)

With McCain’s nomination secure, Republicans are increasingly voting in the Democratic primaries … for the Clintons. Without Republicans, Obama would have won last night by 68 – 28. Who would have thought that Dixiecrats would be revived by Clintons? It could have made a bigger difference in delegates, perhaps up to ten.

The math just got even harder for the Clintons.

A reader writes:

We now have "medical marijuana".  Could we not have "medical prostitution"?

I recently saw a statistic that men who have 200 orgasms or more per year have a lower incidence of many maladies including prostate cancer.

I’m a busy wife. I adore my husband, Andrew, but 4 "shots" a week sounds like kind of a lot for me to handle. Could a man (not MINE, of course) get a prescription from his doctor for medicinal sex?

If you count sex as mental and psychological therapy for men, my reader has a point.

When Rush Limbaugh publicly implied that a football player was only in his quarterback slot because of his race, Wesley Clark, called on him to be fired. Limbaugh resigned:

 

George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports, issued the following response: "We accept his resignation and regret the circumstances surrounding this. We believe that he took the appropriate action to resolve this matter expeditiously."

The comments referenced by Limbaugh came during Sunday’s pregame show when the conservative talk show host offered the opinion that McNabb wasn’t as good as the media perceived him to be. "I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well,” Limbaugh said. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team."

Negative reaction did not come immediately. But on Tuesday, McNabb told the Philadelphia Daily News: "It’s sad that you’ve got to go to skin color. I thought we were through with that whole deal." From there, the firestorm spread quickly. Democratic presidential candidates Wesley Clark, Howard Dean and Rev. Al Sharpton called for ESPN to fire Limbaugh. Others in both political and athletic circles also lashed out at Limbaugh’s comments.

So when, one wonders, will Clintonite Clark call for Ferraro to be fired from her campaign position? Or is Rush Limbaugh now held to a higher standard than Geraldine Ferraro? (For good measure, Limbaugh called Obama "Barack McNabb" last summer.)

It does help to remember that she did once say:

"If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race."

George Neumayr notes:

Left-wing paternalists regard themselves as architects of racial progress, guarding and guiding blacks along the path of success — a role in which they assume to stand forever at the head of the march. But what happens when blacks overtake their enlightened white helpers? All hell breaks loose and the mask of progress drops to reveal the stricken faces of the white avant-garde. …

Ferraro’s condescension captures the tone of paternalistic liberalism perfectly. Its "victims" should know their place and plot their ascent according to the progressive charts set up by the white liberal establishment.

The most irritating but revealing trope from the Clintonites in the face of Obama’s success these past two months has been "Get real." By "get real," they mean, I think, that it is unimaginable that a young black freshman should beat a Clinton. That’s how she can offer the veep slot to a man who has beaten her. That’s how she can treat white ethnic voters in Pennsylvania as if they mean more than black voters in South Carolina. I’m not even sure that Ferraro or Clinton realize how unconsciously racist these assumptions are.

Kos crunches the math on primaries and caucuses and comes to this conclusion – which is, so far as I can tell, irrefutable:

Obama’s lead is about 833,000.

Unless Obama suffers an epic collapse, he should end this contest with a lead in the popular vote, a lead in the pledged delegates, and a lead in the number of states won.

Do the Clintons seriously intend to overturn that?

The campaign really is beginning to flush out the reality:

Is Clinton honest and trustworthy? 52 Yes, 48 No
Is Obama honest and trustworthy? 70 Yes, 30 No