The Dish

A caucus-goer writes:

It’s almost 4AM Iowa time. I got home from the Jefferson-Jackson dinner and tuned in C-SPAN to watch it replayed.  A couple of things were clear to anyone in the hall that did not translate to C-SPAN.

1.  The notion that Hillary is a candidate shooting for 50.1% never seemed fair to me… until tonight.  The speech tonight was held in the center of an arena.  Every candidate purchased certain sections and seated their supporters. When they spoke they’d give the occasional nod to their supporter sections. Hillary addressed ONLY her sections. I was seated on the opposite side and all I saw was her back.  She’s in an arena with 9,000 supporters but 95% of the time she was facing one direction.

2.  Obama made the most dramatic speech and he certainly had the most supporters. BUT, it was noteworthy that by the time he spoke many of his fans in the balcony cheap seats had left. Does it mean something that so many of them left? Will they flake off as Dean supporters did 4 years ago?

I am one of the undecided Democrats in Iowa. Nothing tonight swayed me to a candidate. I was close to sealing the deal with Hillary but her polarizing performance tonight reaffirms too much that you have written about her.

Joe Klein has a largely positive profile of Clinton here. Other reports on the JJ Dinner can be read here. My take on the strange Republican love-hate relationship with Hillary Clinton is here.

Here’s the partial text of Obama’s speech at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa last night. It brought the house down. You can see the video here. Blogger reax here. The Des Moines Register‘s David Yepsen:

Should [Obama] win the Iowa caucuses, Saturday’s dinner will be remembered as one of the turning points in his campaign in here, a point where he laid down the marker and began closing on Clinton, the national frontrunner.

Money Obama quote:

When I am this party’s nominee, my opponent will not be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq … And he will not be able to say that I waivered on something as fundamental as whether it is okay for America to torture because it is never okay. That’s why I’m in it!

… I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century … and I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says you matter to us, your future is our future, and our moment is now. America, our moment is now.

Our moment is now!

I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit red America against blue America. I want to be the President of the United States of America.

And if those Republicans come at me with the same fear-mongering and swift-boating that they usually do, then I will take them head-on. Because I believe the American people are tired of fear, and tired of distractions…we can make this election not about fear, but about the future, and that will not be just a Democratic victory, that will be an American victory, a victory that America needs right now!

I am not in this race to fulfill some longheld ambitions or because I believe it’s somehow owed to me. I never expected to be here. I always knew this journey was improbable. I am running in this race because of of what Dr. King called "the fierce urgency of now." Because I believe that there’s such a thing as being too late, and that hour is almost upon us.

I don’t agree with Obama on some issues. I’m more conservative domestically and economically. I’m closer to the Republicans on healthcare. I may be more hawkish internationally. Philosophically, I have more in common with Ron Paul than Barack Obama. But I hope I can see how someone meets a moment in history, even if I don’t fully agree with him. That’s how I felt about Bill Clinton in 1992 – and I don’t think in retrospect I was wrong, for all his faults. I also believe that it is good for the republic that the Democratic party regain its nerve and its soul again. Only Obama can do that. Only he still believes. And if the Democrats regain their soul and shuck off their fear, maybe – who knows? – the Republicans will be next.

(Photo: Yana Paskova/Getty.)

A question only a left-liberal could ask:

"How has the New York Times managed to pick Bob Herbert out of the 75 million liberal adults in America? It is a mystery."

Is he kidding me?

A wonderful omen, if it pans out:

"There is not a quick, easy solution. This is long-term work. We have to engage with these people continually. The key thing is talking to them every day. Never before has there been a Sunni-Shia fatwa against violence. It has never been heard of in history. Will it make a difference? Not immediately. But I hope eventually it will."

I doubt it; but history is full of surprises.

I, too, saw God through mud,-
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there-
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder. I, too, have dropped off Fear-
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging light and clear
Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation-
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships-
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips,-
But wound with war’s hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
Knit in the webbing of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

– Wilfred Owen, Apologia Pro Poemate Meo.

(Photo: US troops on a break in Iraq by Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty.)

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"It’s an absolutely trivial story – but its triviality is what’s telling."

No, it’s not telling. Anybody with an ounce of imagination could come up with multiple scenarios for what happened that fit the known facts, at least half of which would demonstrate that Clinton’s staff had the intention to tip and made an effort to do so that somehow went wrong.

When a story like this gets this convoluted, when there’s unlikely ever to be a way to document which scenario is the correct one, it’s totally absurd either to insist on pursuing it further or to claim any given scenario is the right one.

Esterday herself said it best: "You people are really nuts. There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip."

Andrew, you really are totally irrational on the subject of the Clintons.

I’d just like to know, in this small instance, why the Clinton campaign felt the need to lie immediately. That’s all.

Tbilisi, Georgia, 4.43 pm.

I’ve yet to meet a Republican in Washington who doesn’t believe that Hillary Clinton is already the Democratic nominee. Why, I wonder? My thoughts in the Sunday Times today:

The more cynical Republicans even believe that a third Clinton term – if you count the two in the 1990s – would be good for their party. They don’t believe Clinton would lead to a major shift from the status quo. She’s far too cautious, they think, to pull out of Iraq and stigmatise the Republican occupation as unnecessary and a mistake. She’s too conventional to do anything but tinker with climate change. They know some kind of expansion of the healthcare welfare state is inevitable – and with Clinton they can score more political capital off it if it leads to unintended consequences…

And in opposition to Clinton and a Democratic Congress the Republicans could engage in some healthy bloodletting, debate and regrouping, all the while confident that a Clinton presidency would mean a torrent of money into the party machine, a boon to conservative publishing and media, and a handy, reliable target against whom to direct all their ire. They can barely wait. Traffic for Drudge would soar. Ratings for Fox News would go through the roof. And it would be over soon, they assume.

Wishful thinking? That’s possible too. The Clintons tend to be lucky in their enemies. And they haven’t lost an election in a very long time.

An exhilarating performance at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, according to several accounts, out-classing Clinton who, in the view of Garance,

veer[ed] between a soft-spoken, almost tranquilized tone and grating crescendos that, regretably, can only be described as shrill.

Ana:

The most remarkable thing about it was that whatever she’s taking for that cold, it seems to have lowered her voice and octave and slowed her speech by half. She sounded vaguely high.

Money quote from Crowley:

Barack Obama’s speech at tonight’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa took him back to the roots of his stardom. Crucially, the setting was  similar to that of the 2004 Democratic national convention, where Obama’s keynote speech changed his destiny: Obama appeared onstage alone, before a roaring auditorium crowd, delivering an oratorically ambitious speech. It was a far cry from the candidate debates, with their silly questions and Mike Gravels, which have diminished Obama–or his sometimes lackluster town hall meetings with voters. Instead, Obama showed off his star power again and, for me at least, refreshed the logic of his call for "change that we can believe in."

Garance adds:

[Obama] finally gave the speech his supporters have been waiting for him to give all year. If anyone comes out of this dinner with The Big Mo, it will be him.

Here’s why:

Who else can do this? Know hope.