The Cranky Backlash

David Frum was nothing compared to James Wolcott:

I have nothing against Obama–I’ve donated money to his campaign, as I have Hillary’s–I’ll vote for any Democrat over any Republican–but as obnoxious as is the chortling, crowing misogyny of a Chris Matthews or the rightwing buffoon (Michael Graham, I believe) Imus had on his show this morning (or Imus himself, for that matter), the rah-rah gaga Beatlemania oozing out of the Huffington Post over Obama is even more revolting. Watching middle-aged men reclaim their innocence and idealism is like having to retrace Kevin Costner’s steps through a field of dreams all over again–it was corny enough the first time.

One thing we won’t ever have to worry about: James Wolcott reclaiming his innocence.

The Clintons Will Not Go Quietly

Hillarysupporterjoeraedlegetty

Obama will win tonight; but the euphoria of the past few days will be impossible to sustain. It is inherently unstable. Clinton’s naked appeal for sympathy yesterday may well rally some older female voters to her side. A victory for Obama in single digits is more likely than a blow-out. Then we’ll have the Clinton campaign shake-up stories. Then she and her husband will unload whatever dirt they can on him – using the classic arms-length 527 Rove techniques. Then they will try to use their party muscle to intimidate Democratic loyalists to stay with the establishment in California and Florida and New York.

This is not over by any means. The Clintons have too much to lose and they have no scruples in fighting to keep their power. If they can destroy Obama, they will. His job is to stay calm, cool and determined. And all of it is good training for the fall. What we’re seeing is if Obama can survive brutal attacks. It’s a good system for testing future candidates. So far, he has shown he can out-organize, out-argue and out-fund-raise the Clinton machine. Can he now outlast their bile and rise above their anger? That we will soon find out.

(Photo: Terance Gallagher shows her support for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) January 6, 2008 in Manchester, New Hampshire. By Joe Raedle/Getty.)

The Cure For Obamamania

Is … Obama. His appeal is not faith-based. I certainly don’t believe he is going to change the world. I think he has the ability to lead this country in a pragmatic and unifying way, and to move us past the often pointless polarization of the Rove years. Headline Junky gets it:

The irony might turn out to be that while America might be yearning for a demagogue, Obama is unwilling to become one.

Obama’s “Waffle” On Iraq

A reader writes:

This is exactly this sort of thoughtfulness and intellectual honesty that makes Obama so appealing.  Rather than give a facile political answer, he was open to the possibility that more information could affect his opinion.  To me this is not a waffle at all, just a recognition that one’s position should be determined by the available facts.

This came out during Saturday’s debate, during the health care discussion.  Clinton tried to claim he had changed positions; he calmly explained that in a hypothetical sense, the single-payer system made sense, but given the practical reality in the US, a different approach was required.  This is nuanced and transparent, and I’m in favor.

And that is why a conservative of doubt can support him.

Dissent Of The Day II

A reader writes:

I share your opinion of Romney, but I’m afraid the graphic showing the relative net worth of  is a classic example of how to mislead with graphics.  The chart purports to show the net worth using the height of the candidates– a simple bar graph where the bars are replaced by images of the candidates.  In this case, Romney  is 7x the net worth of his nearest competitor.  However,  the images are two dimensional, so the *area* of the Romney image is 7 times 7 = 49x, giving the impression that Romey’s worth is 49x larger.  Furthermore, humans infer that other humans are three dimensional (even Romney!), thus we intuit that Romney’s net worth correlates with his *volume*, which is 7 times 7 times 7 = 343x larger.

Moore Award Nominee

"Who wouldn’t like to see an end to the vicious, violent partisanship of our times? (I’ll tell you who: the ignorance-worshipping sociopaths of the Far-to-the-Nth-Degree Right who created that violent partisanship–utterly deliberately, I believe, for the express purpose of taking over the government and imposing their wingnut sociopathology on the rest of the country. Which come to think of it, they’ve done.)," – keninny.