Bush flummoxed, Hillary aides stumped

We interrupt your leisure time to bring you the latest chapter in the Lame Duck Chronicles.

While finally getting the chance to scan the transcript of President Bush's Thursday press conference, I was struck by his response to the question about rising gasoline prices. Economic analysts, as well as spokespeople at AAA, have been predicting that the '08 price of a gallon in some states could hit close to $4. This has been well reported, but, not surprisingly, one particular person didn't have a clue:

Q: "What's your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing -- "

THE PRESIDENT: "Wait, what did you just say? You're predicting $4 a gallon gasoline?"

Q: "A number of analysts are predicting -- "

THE PRESIDENT: "Oh, yeah?"

Q: " -- $4 a gallon gasoline this spring when they reformulate."

THE PRESIDENT: "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that."

If Bush wants to at least appear to be in touch with the concerns of the average American (who, unlike Bush, needs to fill a car tank on a regular basis), he might request that his aides beef up his briefing books. Failing that, maybe he should borrow the index card that his father used on the stump in 1992. It was a reminder that the senior Bush needed to exude empathy. The card said simply, "Message: I Care."

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A priceless moment yesterday, during a conference call between Hillary Clinton aides and reporters:

In the wake of the new Clinton TV ad - one of those "red phone" motifs, where we're asked to believe that this is the candidate best equipped to handle a 3 a.m. national security crisis - a reporter asked, "What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?"

Had somebody hit the mute button? The three aides were tongue-tied for six long seconds. Finally, strategist Mark Penn said this:

"Well (throat clearing), I think that she has been tested, you know, throughout her life, uh, in so many matters. I think that she, again, has the experience and the strength that people see through her work on the Armed Services Committee, uh, and her work extensively on the military matters. I think it was a moment of test when she was in China (in 1995) and stood up and said women's rights are human rights, that she showed the kind of, the kind of, wisdom that it takes to know when to, when to, push basic elements, uh, basic elements in difficult circumstances. She has highlighted, you know, participated, in a number of international things."

Translation:

"A foreign policy moment? Sorry, we're stumped."

Memo to Dems: Don't pop those corks

Grassroots Democrats who are giddy at the prospect of taking on John McCain might be wise to consult the results of two new national polls.

The general assumption, on the blue side of the national divide, is that McCain is highly vulnerable because he has so vigorously aided and abetted the biggest foreign policy disaster of our generation, thereby making it easy for Democrats to brand Iraq as a "Bush-McCain" production. After all, as the polls have noted for several years now, most voters view the war as a mistake, and believe that Bush's sales pitch was fraudulent.

And yet, the latest New York Times-CBS News survey tells a far more nuanced story. Despite McCain's staunch cheerleading for the war; and despite the fact that he has suggested that U.S. troops may have to remain in Iraq for 100 years; and despite the fact that senior Pentagon figures are publicly complaining that our military is being dangerously stretched because of the war, 58 percent of the surveyed registered voters said, nevertheless, that they have confidence in McCain to make the right decisions about Iraq. That's one point higher than Barack Obama (whose antiwar stance is supposedly more in sync with general public sentiment), and eight points higher than Hillary Clinton.

In the same poll, 56 percent said they had confidence in McCain's ability to deal wisely in an international crisis. That's nine points higher than Obama, and 17 points higher than Clinton. And when asked whether McCain "would be an effective commander in chief of the nation's military," 80 percent said yes. That's 11 points higher than Obama, and 26 points higher than Clinton.

The latest Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows similar results. Among independent voters - who have been strongly antiwar for the past 18 months - the hawkish McCain is still viewed more favorably than either Obama or Clinton. When all respondents were asked which candidate would best protect the country from terrorists, McCain beat Obama by 37 percentage points. When asked who has the "right experience" to be president, McCain beat Obama by 31 points. When asked who would "best handle the situation in Iraq," McCain still won, beating Obama by 13 points.

This tells us several things: (1) Voters' base-line respect for McCain's character trumps whatever string disagreements they may have with his Iraq stance. And (2) Democrats who are pumped for the autumn election would be well advised not to pop the champagne corks prematurely, because McCain's abiding popularity among independents could make some of the blue states more competitive. In other words, this race could be very close.

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Speaking of McCain, his new best friend is John Hagee, founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. McCain flew into town the other day to garner Hagee's endorsement, and said how proud he was to receive it. No doubt McCain believes that Hagee will give him some evangelical street cred with recalitrant Christian conservatives.

But here's a sampling of what Hagee really believes. In his 2005 book, entitled "What Every Man Wants in a Woman," Hagee wrote this: "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist." And he wrote in 1992 that the feminist movement was "a rebellion against God's pattern for the family."

During an NPR interview in 2006, Hagee blamed gay people for Hurricane Katrina: "All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans."

In that same interview, he also said that all Muslims, by definition, are enemies of America because "those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews." But apparently only some Christians are acceptable; in other venues, Hagee has taken aim at the Catholic Church, calling it "The Great Whore," and a "false cult."

So here's what I want to know: Given the fact that Hagee has made insulting remarks about women, gays, Muslims, and Catholics, are McCain's friends in the media going to insist that he denounce and reject Hagee, just as Obama was asked this week to denounce and reject Louis Farrakhan?

Update...Here's what McCain said today: He lauds some of Hagee's ideas, but "that does not mean that I support or endorse or agree with some of the things that Hagee might have said or positions that he may have taken on other issues. I don’t have to agree with everyone who endorses my candidacy. They are supporting my candidacy. I am not endorsing some of their positions."

I guess that counts as a semi-denunciation.

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The Clintonian spin these days is downright dizzying. For weeks, Hillary's people (starting with the First Spouse) had been telling us that the candidate absolutely needs to score solid victories in Texas and Ohio next Tuesday in order to remain viable. But today they have moved the goalposts. Now they're telling us that if Obama doesn't score solid victories in those states, as well as in the two minor contests (Rhode Island and Vermont), it means that he is the one in trouble. Here's the word, from strategist/pollster/spinner Mark Penn:

"Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear: Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer."

In other words, they're trying to establish a rationale for staying in the race even if they extend their losing streak to 15 consecutive contests. It now appears that they're prepared to say, in essence, "Obama may have beaten us by a few points in some of these states, but since we don't consider those results to be decisive, we will soldier on."

Or, as Bill might have said it, "It all depends on what the meaning of the word decisive is."

William F. Buckley, an appreciation

I want to mark the passing of William F. Buckley, intellectual godfather of the modern conservative movement, who died on Tuesday night at the age of 82. But rather than offer the standard celebration of his wit and significance and contentious iconoclasm, I prefer to resurrect a long newspaper profile that I wrote about Buckley 22 years ago, around the time of his 60th birthday. I spent a delightful day with him in New York, and one of the last things he said to me - a quote which I used to close this article - now seems apt. "Heaven," he opined, "is a place where you cannot be unhappy."

If you don't know much about Buckley, here's one place to start. From the Philadelphia Inquirer, April 17, 1986:

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"Hhhaaa, hhhaaa, hhhaaa ..."

William F. Buckley Jr. was indulging his languorous laugh in the rear of his limousine as it whisked him through Central Park - past the cabbies with their caustic tongues and the vendors with their leather lungs.

Not one dissonant decibel intruded on Buckley's trip; the windows took care of that. With nary a nod at the world beyond the glass, the celebrity conservative sank into the cushions and pondered the meaning of life and death.

"I wouldn't want to be 30 again," said Buckley. "It's the exertion. It's the fatigue, too. It makes me think of the last letter Whittaker Chambers (the communist who became a conservative scholar) wrote to me before he died. 'I'm fatigued, Bill,' he said. 'It hasn't hit you, but it will. History has hit us like a freight train. We've tried to put ourselves together again, but at a price - weariness.' No, I couldn't bear to do it all again."

His immediate destination, on this April day, was a radio talk show - just another episode in the never-ending adventure of being Bill Buckley, of buffing and polishing the image of the aristocrat in overdrive, at turns affable and acidic, with nose tilted skyward as if straining to sniff the sea at Nantucket.

He just turned 60. His magazine, National Review, is now 30, and his TV show, Firing Line, is now 20 - both surviving in a world marred by what the magazine calls "liberal degeneracy." History, with its clash of ideologies, has hit him like a freight train, but he perseveres. His Cold War rhetoric still soars like a hawk. He still thinks some Americans are too dumb to deserve the vote. And now he thinks AIDS-virus carriers should be tattooed on their buttocks.

There are conservatives who say his influence has waned, but he has never been known to cede ground to his critics. He has a lust for the last word, and he will get it at all costs, as fecund dictums drop like overripe fruits from his darting tongue, and woe to the listener who cannot invoke the words of saints and scholars six centuries dead.

"I don't stoop to conquer," he quipped, while lounging in the radio station lobby. "I merely conquer."

As he spoke, his talk-show host was already on the air, announcing Buckley's arrival. The original plan was for Buckley to plug his latest spy novel, but instead the host was now telling listeners that his guest would be on to defend "the Buckley treatment" of AIDS carriers.

"Uh oh," said Buckley. "Did you hear that?" There was a glint in his eye, like a diamond turned toward the light, and he flashed a naughty grin that gave him the look of a schoolboy who'd just been caught clipping the wings off the family parakeet. He could hardly wait for the scolding to commence.

***

But one cannot say that Bill Buckley, with all his wealth and fame and friends in the White House, is a happy man. It's more complicated than that.

An hour before the radio show, he was ruminating on this in his Park Avenue maisonette, sipping coffee brought on a silver tray by a servant.

"You must screen 'happiness' through the Christian understanding of the word," he said. "In G.K. Chesterton's biography of St. Francis of Assisi, he concludes that St. Francis was happy when he died. But it was ambiguous whether St. Francis was happy due to a retrospective view of his life, or whether it was because he was nearing an imminent reunion with God. Happiness, in the form of a (temporal) 'high,' is not reconcilable with Christian orientation."

So to avoid melancholy, he just stays busy. He said, "I probably inherited that from my father, who was very successful and very industrious." Indeed, William Buckley Sr. was a self-made oil magnate and devout Catholic who loathed socialism and embraced elitism. ("The mass of people have not the ability to think clearly," he told a Senate panel in 1919, referring to a Mexican revolution that hurt his oil holdings.)

Young William wound up at Yale, where, upon graduation, he wrote a book charging that the teachers were anti-God and "collectivist" in their politics. In 1955, he founded National Review to provide a forum for right- wing thought - thus plowing the intellectual ground for a resurgent American conservatism. In 1966, he launched Firing Line, proving that conservatives can be witty, too. This was no small achievement; said Richard Brookhiser, a National Review colleague, "Buckley broke the liberal monopoly on style." At one point in 1971, during a taping break, he leaned over to a long-haired guest and whispered, "Hhhowww's the revolutionnnn?"

John Judis, who has spent 30 hours interviewing Buckley for a forthcoming biography, says: "Bill was brought up to be at odds with the outside world. There was a sense of being embattled. That's why Bill was best in the '50s and '60s, when he thought liberals controlled the country. I don't think he functions as well when things are going his way (politically)."

Nevertheless, Buckley remains vexed by much of modern life. After all, this is a man who plays harpsichord music on a tape deck while sailing the Atlantic. Back here on dry land, he complains that democracy has become . . . how shall he put it . . . debased.

"All you have to do is exist, at age 18, in order to get the vote," he lamented, sipping his coffee. Recalling an old poll, he said that "apparently 30 percent of the American people have never heard of the United Nations. I'd say those 30 percent are not ready to vote."

The cup was lowered to the silver tray. The eyes flashed, inviting a challenge. So it was suggested to him that the universal franchise is, by definition, a pillar of democracy. But he said, "You know, when the Statue of Liberty was erected 100 years ago, blacks were only nominally franchised, and women weren't franchised at all. And yet it didn't occur to a great many people that it was a fraud to hold her up as a symbol of liberty." Besides, too many voters care only about their "personal economic enhancement."

He cited Jose Ortega y Gasset - a Spanish philosopher who, in 1930, charged that "the masses" were debasing government and the arts. This was no surprise; Ortega y Gasset has long influenced him. As Buckley now put it, ''Ortega said the sin of the masses was their remoteness from their own patrimony. People get all these books to read, beautiful pictures to look at, beautiful music to listen to - but without awakening in them a sense of reciprocity. We have to do something for society in return."

Minutes later, he was bound for his limousine, knotting a rep tie around his throat in midstride. Ah yes, the limousine. When he first wrote about this car three years ago - about its dual-control air conditioning ("for driver and driven") and its palatial proportions - his critics howled, and a Buckley friend had to explain to the puzzled pundit that a limo is an offensive symbol to the average urbanite.

But Buckley cherishes his custom-made cocoon. He composes letters on the Dictaphone. He makes calls on the telephone. In short, he stays busy; he does not permit quietude in his life, because what he fears most, he says, is the thought, which might steal upon him in an unguarded moment of contemplation, that he has somehow failed to measure up in the eyes of his Maker.

All of which prompted former Sen. Eugene McCarthy to quip, on a recent Firing Line, that, "When I first met Bill, he was pursuing God. God's been running from him ever since."

***

"Hhhaaa-yyyiii!"

He greeted the talk-show callers as if they were old schoolmates joining him on a sailing cruise. But many were not amused by him. They'd just heard Buckley insist that AIDS-virus carriers be tattooed. "I suggest the buttocks and the upper forearm," he told his host, Barry Gray. "Matter of fact, you might call this a gay right." Healthy gays, he said, had a right to be protected.

He fenced effortlessly with his choleric callers - until one woman declared: "There were tattoos in Germany in World War II, and it doesn't seem right. . . ."

"I honestly resent that," he broke in. "I do wish you'd be a little more sensitive." Later, in the downbound elevator, the barb still smarted. "I'm sensitive about that (a Nazi analogy)" he muttered. "People should guard against that." When Gore Vidal made a similar analogy in 1969, Buckley sued and won.

Outside, his limo was waiting on West 56th Street, right where it was supposed to be. The next stop would be a restaurant; intellectual Irving Kristol and New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal were waiting. That night, he was due at a party for his spy novel. The next day, he would introduce a Mozart concert.

His is the life of a gadabout, and not everyone is charmed. Garry Wills, the writer, who got his start at National Review, calls Buckley "a dandy" who is "applauded for striking poses." Biographer Judis says, "He goes very fast on the surface of life, and he doesn't try to figure out what it all means."

"Not many people have spent more time than I have, writing on a central theme, and have seen a change in the political climate," Buckley said of his critics, as the mute traffic slid by the window. "I'm not uniquely responsible for that change, but I certainly had something to do with it. So for people to say they think of me as a sailor or a showman is the lazy way out."

He boasts that he writes his column in 20 minutes; critics say it reads that way. But he sees no reason to slow his pace. "Boredom is an enemy," he said. "When Sir Harold Nicholson (the English historian) was 75, his friends gave him a gift of a voyage on a steamer. But he wound up writing a book, because he couldn't find relaxation by spread-eagling himself to the sky."

Besides, there's still so much to take umbrage about. For one thing, he said, "the public sector is still marching." For another, too many gays ("sexual aberrants") are spreading disease. Too many people, even churchmen, are making moral judgments about nuclear weapons, whereas what's really important is to "risk death in pursuit of Christian life." And he can no longer lecture to high-schoolers, he confesses, because "I'm not particularly skilled at picking up their idiom."

As for being happy, he prefers to await the afterlife. "Heaven," he said, as the limo pulled up to the restaurant, "is a place where you cannot be unhappy. When I was a schoolboy in England, a Jesuit told us about an old lady who once told him, 'If my dog Fifi can't go to heaven, I won't be happy there.' He then said to her, 'If it's really true you won't be happy without Fifi, then that means he'll be there.' But, don't you see, he was implying that she might not even need the dog once she got there. Hhhaaa, hhhaaa, hhhaaa!"

But until then, he will content himself with his sailing - a master of his fate on timeless waters where the freight train of history cannot intrude. "It gives you such a strange sense of power," he said, oh so seductively. "You decide on the course, you decide what to do in a storm. It is such a distinct sensation, really, to be totally in charge of one's own destiny."

Defusing, deflecting, deferring, disarming

Hillary Clinton delivered a decent performance last night, as she and Barack Obama shared a debate stage for the 20th time. With the exception of one or two cringeworthy episodes, she was assertive without being strident, and she managed to score a few points at Obama's expense. But I question whether the voters in Texas and Ohio (particularly the former) will pave the way for a 21st meeting.

The problem for Clinton was that Obama seemed basically unflappable. He played defense for the most of the debate - such is the lot of frontrunners; it's the downside of success - but never seemed to break a sweat.

Compelled as he was, by both Clinton and the questioners, to explain himself on a number of fronts (his flighty rhetoric, his health care plan, his lack of foreign policy experience, his allegedly insufficient distancing from Louis Farrakhan), he even cheerily conceded a few points, defusing and deflecting and deferring and disarming at every turn. Particularly the latter. Taking various opportunities to flatter Clinton ("Sen. Clinton is right"..."Sen. Clinton speaks accurately"...Sen. Clinton is a "magnificent public servant"), he went into magnanimity mode to take the wind out of her sails. If her goal was to rattle him into making a game-changing error, she failed.

He was comfortable in the role of counter-puncher. When she noted (accurately) that she and Obama have basically the same Senate voting records on Iraq, and that, for all the foresight of his pre-Senate antiwar position, "he didn't have the responsibility, he didn't have to vote," Obama calmly countered with the kind of soundbite that viewers remember. On their Iraq similar voting records: "Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways to get out." On Clinton's '02 war authorization vote: "The question is, who's making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch?"

When she explained why she believes that Obama lacks the requisite experience to run our foreign policy, he countered by saying, "Sen. Clinton equates experience with longevity in Washington. I don't think the American people do" - and, indeed, voters have long demonstrated that they will elect outsiders, such as Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Clinton's spouse in 1992. Not to mention Woodrow Wilson in 1912, a governor of New Jersey and ex-professor who wound up running World War I.

When she squeezed him on Louis Farrakhan (who, unfortunately for Obama, has tendered his endorsement), it appeared for a moment that he might get defensive. But no. The episode began when Obama was asked whether he would accept this anti-Semite as a supporter. Obama sounded a tad shaky on the matter, even to the point of temporarily losing his gift for articulation: "I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That's why I have consistently denounced it...I obviously can't censor him. It's not support that I sought...I can't, uh, say to somebody that he can't say that he thinks I'm a good guy."

Clinton countered with an effective response that was firm without sounding too sanctimonious. Recalling an incident when her Senate bid was endorsed by an anti-Semitic party in New York, she said: "I made it very clear that I did not want their support...I thought it was more important to stand on principle....There's a difference between denouncing and rejecting...We've got to be even stronger."

Whereupon Obama, rather than taking the bait and digging in, simply responded this way: "I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word reject Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word denounce, then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce."

Clinton declared, "Good, good, excellent," as if she had just taught a pupil to shape up, while scoring a major victory. But Obama seemed to convey, with faint bemusement, that this political wordplay was not worth fighting about, all the while appearing conciliatory. I doubt he suffered any damage in this episode.

Clinton was articulate, as usual, on the issue of universal health care, but Obama hugged her on that as well ("95 percent of our health care plans are similar"). When she complained - accurately - that some of Obama's mailers have distorted some features of health care plan, he shrugged off the matter by saying that the Clinton campaign has sent out, or condoned, a fusillade of negative attacks, yet "we haven't whined about it because I understand that's the nature of these campaigns."

She nailed him on one point, however. While defending his foreign policy credentials, he mentioned his membership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But Clinton pointed out that, even though Obama chairs a subcommittee with jurisdiction over NATO and Afghanistan, "he's held not one substantive meeting" during his chairmanship. Obama's response: "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." Perhaps he gets kudos for acknowledging this without sounding defensive, but it does arguably prove the critics' point that Obama is a young man in a hurry who hasn't done sufficient spadework in the trenches.

Nevertheless, Clinton had her own shaky episodes. She has repeatedly refused to release her joint tax returns, and when asked about this last night, she said she would do so upon becoming the nominee, "or even earlier." Given the possibility that her candidacy could be effectively over by next Tuesday, that isn't much of a time window. Meanwhile, at another point in the debate, she tried to paint Obama as a reckless naif by claiming that he wants to "bomb Pakistan" - whereas, in reality, he has said no such thing. He has repeatedly made it clear that he's talking about special operations (last summer: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will"). Clinton's erroneous charge was literally out of the John McCain playbook.

But her worst moment, a self-inflicted wound, occurred in the 17th minute of the debate. The timing itself aggravated the injury. A rule of thumb in these events is that it's unwise to screw up during the first half hour, when the TV audience is biggest and when the journalists are still writing for deadline. Clinton has a habit of delivering leaden one-liners, and this was no exception. Asked a question about NAFTA, she started to whine about being picked on, claiming that debate hosts always "seem" to ask her questions while Obama can hang back and respond. "I don't mind," she said, although she clearly did, which was why she brought it up. "I'm happy to answer it," although she wasn't, thereby telegraphing insincerity.

Then came the pre-scripted clinker: "If anybody saw Saturday Night Live, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," a remark that predictably drew boos, all the while demonstrating that Clinton was prepared to hang her hat on a comedy show - which, while taking her side the other night, has just as often depicted her in skits as the queen of entitlement.

I doubt she shifted the dynamic of this contest; at this late stage, the trend lines are probably impervious to the impact of a single debate. For instance, the latest Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania now shows that Clinton leads by only six points in her alleged stronghold - assuming the race even goes that far. These pollsters attribute the narrowing of the Pennsylvania margin (from 16 points just two weeks ago) to young voters, and last night Obama the Unflappable did nothing to imperil their devotion.

The behavior of unhappy campaigns

Tolstoy wrote that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In American politics, however, it's the unhappy campaigns that are all alike. In their growing desperation to stave off defeat, they tend to behave in very similar ways. And the Hillary Clinton campaign is currently a textbook case, for three reasons:

1. The candidate is exhibiting multiple personalities, mellow one day and volcanic the next, seemingly incapable of settling on a consistent tone and approach. Last Thursday night, she said she was "honored" to run with Barack Obama; yet on Monday, she painted him as a clueless Bush-style naif who would imperil America in a dangerous world. All this reflects the fact that her advisors have no clue what will work best to slow Obama's ongoing momentum. When a candidate is reduced to throwing everything but the "kitchen sink" (in the words of a Hillary advisor), it's a sign of weakness. Which Hillary will show up at the Ohio debate tonight?

2. The campaign is blaming the media for its woes. Spokesman Howard Wolfson whines that "the press has largly applauded (Obama)...that is a fact of life we labor under," and surrogate/Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell grouses that "the media doesn't like the Clintons for whatever reason." Scapegoating the messenger is standard practice for losers. But the scapegoaters seem to have amnesia. As recently as last summer, Hillary's detractors were complaining that the media had already anointed her as the inevitable nominee, based on her universal name ID and the alleged prowess of her political machine. (To cite one of many examples, here's New York Times blogger/professor Stanley Fish, writing last August: "It’s time to start thinking seriously about Hillary Clinton’s running mate...this one is over before it’s over.") I don't recall the Hillary people having any problems with the coverage at that point in time. Their argument today, apparently, is that the media should ignore or downplay the fact that Hillary has lost 11 straight contests, all by landslides. That losing record is really the "fact of life" that they labor under.

3. Another standard practice for losers is to try and explain away primary defeats as either statistical flukes or aberrations. The Hillary people have been trying this all along, shrugging off caucus losses as unrepresentative of general Democraric opinion (whereas, in reality, their failure to organize for these grassroots events has been vivid proof of their ineptitude), and blaming a string of primary losses on the presence of independent voters (as if Obama's strength with independents is a bad thing).

Now it's happening again. The other day, the ever-helpful Bill Clinton began to pre-spin the next potential defeat, this time in Texas. That key state, which votes a week from today, has a complex arrangement - a primary all day and a caucus in the evening; delegates are awarded in acordance with both sets of results. Referring to the caucus, here's what Bill told a crowd yesterday: "The doors open at 7 (pm) and they close at 7:15. It would be tragic if Hillary were to win this election in the daytime and somebody were to come in at night and take it away."

Translation: Bill is pre-spinning the primary as legitimate, and the caucus (where Hillary's organization, as we know, is far weaker) as illegitimate. So if Obama wins Texas narrowly, thanks to the caucus results, the Clintons are prepared to say in effect, "Well, this loss doesn't really count either, because she won it fair and square until the Obama people came in under the cover of night and took it away."

And one other thing: Bill told a falsehood about the hours of the caucus. The doors don't open at 7 and close at 7:15. According to a spokesman for the Texas Democratic party, the doors actually open around 7:15 and close at 9. Did Bill misspeak on purpose, narrowing the caucus times perhaps in the hopes discouraging voters from showing up? Gaming the system is also a standard practice for losers.

Ralph Nader, tragedy and farce

In the apparent belief that he has not sufficiently damaged his own legacy, Ralph Nader now seems determined to wield the wrecking ball one more time.

Havng told himself - and the nation yesterday, on Meet the Press - that Americans are clamoring for a third-party candidate in 2008, Nader has decided to offer himself as the purist alternative. Even though, as Gallup makes clear, there is little empirical evidence that Americans are clamoring for a third-party candidate in 2008.

Nader is the living embodiment of the Karl Marx dictum that "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce." The tragedy for Democrats, of course, is that Nader (despite his persistent denials) played a pivotal role in the ascension of George W. Bush eight years ago. The math speaks for itself; Bush officially won Florida by 537 votes over Al Gore, while Nader drained away 97,488 Floridians. And exit polls showed that, if Nader had not stumped to be on the Florida ballot (while telling Floridians that there were scant differences between Gore and Nader), his voters would have favored Gore by a 2-1 margin.

The farce is what's happening now.

Nader had argued in 2000 that Gore was a corporate stooge, tethered to the centrist compromises of the Bill Clinton era. Nader had argued in 2004 that John Kerry was a corporate stooge, tethered to the compromises of the Democratis establishment. And Nader is now arguing that the new kid on the block, Barack Obama, is also a corporate stooge ("he has leaned toward the pro-corporate side of policy-making"), one who refuses to measure up to Nader's high standards because "his better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself."

No doubt many issues are getting short shrift in this campaign, and Nader plans to highlight them, from a liberal perspective, on what he calls his new "exciting, informative, participatory website." But he is badly misreading the national mood.

Consider this Gallup statistic: When voters in January were asked whether any of the '08 candidates would make a good president, 84 percent said yes - the highest share in 16 years, and nearly twice the share recorded in 1992, when Ross Perot ran as a third-party hopeful. Gallup's Frank Newport concludes that "the environment (in 2008) would not be nearly as propitious this year as it was for Perot that year. It is true that Americans are broadly dissatisfied this year with both the state of the nation and the economy, as they were in 1992. But Americans at this juncture seem much more willing to say that the current crop of candidates running in the major parties have discussed good solutions to the nation's problems, and, as a result, there is a high level of satisfaction with those currently running."

Indeed, while Nader was busy yesterday talking about how voters feel "shut out, marginalized, disrespected" (without, of course, acknowledging his own role in helping to install a president who has left voters feeling shut out, marginalized, and disrespected), he conveniently overlooked one of the key factors that potentially distinguishes 2008 from its electoral predecessors: Voter enthusiasm.

It stands to reason that if voters were truly yearning for Nader or another third-party candidate, they would not be storming the ballot box in record numbers during this primary season. Thanks largely to Obama's presence in the race, Democratic turnout has broken all previous party records, and has dwarfed the GOP turnout. If Obama does win the nomination, young voters and first-time voters are likely to marginalize Nader further. Even in 2004, the record turnout for John Kerry (who drew more votes than any losing candidate in history) overwhelmed Nader, reducing him to 0.38 percent of the popular vote, and reducing him to a non-factor in every state. It's hard to see how he would improve on that percentage in 2008.

What's truly sad is that the young Obama fans are likely to dismiss Nader as merely a cranky contrarian; the relatively few who study political history will see him as a parody of the perpetual also-ran, a latter-day Harold Stassen. They will remain largely unaware that Nader has favorably impacted their lives every time they drive their cars in safety; it was Nader, more than any other American, who helped pad their dashboards and strap them in.

But it is Nader himself who has consigned this estimable legacy to the mists of memory. And that is not farce, it is tragedy.

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Speaking of turnout, and the impending Democratic primaries in Texas and Ohio, here's a statistic worth noting in the Lone Star State:

Texans are already casting ballots for the crucial March 4 contest, thanks to the state's early-voting law. So I took a look at the state turnout figures thus far. I was stunned by what I saw.

I'll just focus on Collin County, in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth, reputedly the richest county in Texas. It's a place where Democratic voters have been virtually invisible in recent years. For instance, during the first three days of early voting in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, only 503 people bothered to do it.

Yet for the same time period in 2008, here's the turnout number for Collin County:

6845.

That's nearly 12 times the previous number for Collin County. And the pattern is similar elsewhere in Texas; for instance, in Harris County (Houston and adjacent suburbia), the '04 early turnout was 2392; today, it's 26,729. That's more than 10 times the early tally of 2004.

Are we to believe that Hillary Clinton, in her dire hour of need, is the candidate driving this turnout?

A sense that the end is near

I'll begin at the end, because somehow it seems most pertinent. At the close of last night's Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton conveyed the impression that she is preparing herself for defeat.

Some of this was communicated in her words: "And, you know, no matter what happens in this contest - and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored. Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends." More importantly, it was communicated in the way she spoke those words. She sounded wistful, as if resigned to her political fate.

Actually, she seemed to be going through the motions for much of the evening - repeatedly forfeiting opportunities to skewer Barack Obama, and reciting scripted attack lines with no apparent fervor. Perhaps the news yesterday of her latest 11th straight loss (roughly 20,000 voters living overseas, organized in a party-sanctioned contest called Democrats Abroad, had opted for Obama in another 2-1 landslide) had taken the stuffing out of her. Or perhaps it was the news that the polls in Texas and Ohio have tightened considerably, and that her latest firewalls may indeed fall to the prevailing winds. Even the Teamsters have now endorsed Obama.

Whatever the reason - and perhaps it's just plain fatigue, given the pace that she and Obama have been compelled to sustain - she seemed tentative at a time when she could least afford it. She needed to do something, or have something happen, that would dramatically change the dynamic of the Democratic race. But nothing changed. Obama wants his momentum to be the prevailing story line of the week, and nothing came out of the debate to change that.

She was repeatedly invited, by the moderators, to shake things up. She was asked, for example, to explain why she believes (at least in stump speeches) that Obama is just a guy who talks a good game. In Texas lingo, she was asked whether she believes that her rival is all hat and no cattle.

She launched into a laborious, cautious response, the verbal equivalent of tiptoeing in bare feet on hot coals ("I know that there are comparisons and contrasts to be drawn between us"), along with a rote observation about the hapless Obama surrogate who was hammered by Chris Matthews the other night for his failure to cite any Obama achievements. She didn't explain the reference. More significantly, she passed up a chance to confront Obama with an argument that might have made some news. She could have quizzed him on his thin Senate record, and asked him to cite a single instance when he has taken a leadership role on any of the big issues (poverty, education, immigration, health care). She didn't, and the moment passed.

Later, she was asked to explain why she believes (at least on the stump) that she alone is ready to be the next commander-in-chief. Why doesn't she believe that Obama has those qualities?

Again she punted. She launched instead into a long recitation of her own resume ("What I mean is that, you know, for more than 15 years, I've been honored to represent our country in more than 80 countries..."), and didn't say a word about Obama.

Perhaps, at this late stage of the debate, she was simply gun shy about assailing Obama; earlier, while talking about how Obama had borrowed some rhetoric from his friend and national co-chair, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, she had uttered one of her scripted attack lines ("lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox"), and the audience had booed.

But perhaps there's a more high-minded reason why she didn't question his commander creds: Facing the prospect of defeat in the primaries, she may not have wanted to undercut Obama on this key qualification and thereby give the Republicans ammunition. (The GOP has already been cranking out press releases contending that Obama is not ready to command).

Whatever the reason for her hesitance, she afforded Obama the luxury of responding in the manner of his choosing. And he took full advantage. Not only did he talk up his own priorities ("My number one job as president will be to keep the American people safe"), but he didn't hestitate to say a few words about Clinton. He shifted to the offense and whacked her for voting to authorize the Iraq war, weaving it into his overall response:

"And on what I believe was the single most important foreign policy decision of this generation, whether or not to go to war in Iraq, I believe I showed the judgment of a commander in chief. And I think that Senator Clinton was wrong in her judgments on that."

A year ago, when Obama was an untested debater, he would not have seized such an opening and twisted the knife so deftly.

Nor did Clinton show much fight on the sensitive issue of the superdelegates. When asked whether the superdelegates should choose a nominee in defiance of how the public voted in the primaries (an option that the Clinton camp has vigorously promoted), yet again she punted. Her full non-answer:

"Well, you know, these are the rules that are followed, and you know, I think that it will sort itself out. I'm not worried about that. We will have a nominee, and we will have a unified Democratic Party, and we will go on to victory in November."

And Obama took that open opportunity to put himself on the side of the people's will, and imply that the superdelegates should follow suit: "Well, I think it is important, given how hard Senator Clinton and I have been working, that these primaries and caucuses count for something. And so my belief is that the will of the voters, expressed in this long election process, is what ultimately will determine who our next nominee is going to be." And then he wove that into his larger theme about making politics and government work for the average citizen, and "knocking down the barriers that stand between the American people and their dreams."

Meanwhile, Clinton's aides were reduced to sending out press releases about how, for instance, Obama last night used a word that John Kerry had used four years ago. It seems that Kerry, while lamenting the loss of factory jobs in the Rustbelt, described how machinery had been "unbolted" from the floor and shipped to plants overseas...and last night, early in the debate, Obama said he has talked to Ohio workers who have seen their equipment "unbolted" and shipped to China.

If this is the best they can do, then it's no wonder that Clinton sounded so elegiac at the closing.

McCain to The Times: Thank you very much

John McCain should send a dozen roses and a thank-you note to The New York Times.

There he was, trudging from one primary to the next, racking up underwhelming victories because of his chronic inability to bond with the Republican right...and, lo and behold, The Times comes along today and provides him with a gift-wrapped opportunity to bond with the Republican right.

The Times is the enemy, the paper that conservatives love to hate. The Times has just published a front-page story insinuating that something unseemly (we know not what, exactly) may have occurred nine years ago between McCain and a Washington lobbyist who looks like Michelle Pfeiffer. Therefore, even though conservatives have generally viewed McCain as an enemy, they now have a visceral reason to bond with him.

As the old political adage goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Here's how conservatives feel today about their new friend: Rush Limbaugh, who for weeks has been assailing McCain as a nutty lefty, now declares that poor McCain is being victimized by "the Drive By media," which is "trying to destroy him." Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events, a popular conservative organ, says The Times is trying to smear the presumptive GOP nominee because "they're political activists posing as news people." David Brody, a conservative commentator with a big religious-right readership, points out that, in his circles, "if The New York Times does a 'hit job' on you, then you wear that as a conservative badge of honor."

Many others have leapt to McCain's defense, but the cleverest remark comes from publicist/author Craig Shirley, who says that "Ho Chi Minh was more professional in his dealings with John McCain than The New York Times," a two-fer that puts The Times to the left of a communist, while invoking the candidate's war-hero credentials. (Those creds will be invoked all year, to innoculate McCain against whatever charges may be hurled his way.)

Frankly, why shouldn't McCain spin this episode into gold? The Times story, reportedly in the works for many months, is ideal material for conservative base mobilization - precisely because, with respect to its allegations, it seems lighter than a souffle.

There was some cackling in Democratic circles today about this story - which suggests that McCain's undefined "relationship" with lobbyist Vicki Iseman had once threatened his image as a man of honor - but suffice it to say that if the same story, with the same sourcing and details, had been published about a leading Democratic contender, those same cacklers would be going ballistic right now.

The story says that, back in 1999, some McCain aides (unnamed) were "convinced the relationship had become romantic" (but it doesn't say what evidence, if any, led them to believe this). At the very least, these aides worried about "the appearance of a close bond" and the possibility of "potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest," since Iseman's telecommunications clients had business with McCain's Senate Commerce Committee.

But there's no evidence in the story that "the appearance" ever led to any actual conflicts of interest - beyond the fact that McCain once sent two letters to the Federal Communications Commission, asking that it rule soon on whether a key Iseman client, Lowell Paxson, should be granted a TV license. McCain himself has mentioned that episode in his memoirs, and it's old news anyway, because the press reported on it nine years ago - noting at the time that while the FCC rebuked McCain for writing those letters, there was no evidence that McCain had tried to muscle the agency into ruling a certain way.

But back to the Times story. It says that the unnamed aides got McCain to admit that he had been "behaving inappropriately" with Iseman, but there's no way to know whether that phrase refers to the behavior of lovers, or the behavior of platonic pals who are plotting to help a lobbying client in violation of the public interest, or the behavior of pals who are simply hanging too often in the gossipy world of politics. Meanwhile, at a press conference this morning, McCain said he had no such confessional conversations with aides.

And that's where we stand at the moment. The latest Fox News poll, which sampled voters earlier this week, finds that roughly one-third of the Republican base is still resistant to McCain. The Times story will help him, especially with Limbaugh and some of his confederates rushing to battle the common enemy. Still, I'd bet that some of the diehard McCain critics on the right - especially Mitt Romney's people - are wishing today that the common enemy had run this story six weeks ago, before the primary season began.

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The Democratic finalists debate again tonight, with Hillary Clinton still trying to figure out how she can go negative on Barack Obama in an effective fashion, without somehow alienating the millions of Democrats who have come to believe he walks on water. Whatever happens, rest assured that, when the event ends, Obama will not be chivalrously pulling her chair back this time...unless she's still sitting in it.

It's hard to spin when you don't win

Did I mention one week ago, in the wake of landslide losses in Virginia and Maryland, that the Hillary Clinton campaign resembled the Titanic just as the second-class cabins were starting to flood? I did indeed. But here's an update:

The water is ascending the grand staircase, and threatening the first-class dinnerware.

It's hard to imagine how the Clinton people can possibly spin away what happened last night in Wisconsin, when in reality the next round of voters, in Ohio and Texas, will awaken this morning to news stories declaring that Barack Obama has buried Hillary in yet another landslide; that, on a percentage basis, Hillary lost almost as badly as Mike Huckabee lost to John McCain on the Republican side; that Obama has now won 10 contests in succession (the 10th was Hawaii, last night), all of them blowouts; and that, most importantly, he has effectively whittled away at her electoral base, to the point where large chunks of that base seem poised to defect. It's hard to imagine that Texas and Ohio, voting 13 days from now, will not be influenced by the magnitude of Obama's achievements.

But hang on: The Clinton people did try to spin away Wisconsin last night. Lisa Caputo, a longtime Hillary ally and intimate, went on cable TV and insisted (just as I predicted yesterday) that the loss was partly attributable to the fact that Obama spent more money. But that wasn't the real spin. She proceeded to argue that Hillary bombed out because Wisconsin has "a different demographic situation. Wisconsin is very prone to the independents."

There were three fundamental flaws in that remark. First, a Democratic candidate's ability to attract independents is actually an asset (Obama topped Hillary among independents by 27 percentage points), because, after all, independents generally swing presidential elections. Which means that the candidate who is weaker among independents is arguably less electable. Caputo, by saying in essence, "We lost because Obama is strong with independents," implicitly admitted that her candidate is weak with swing voters.

Second, even if she wants to minimize Obama's Wisconsin victory by shrugging off the independents, here's something she failed to mention: The Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4 are also open to independents. Given that reality, how does Hillary expect to post the lopsided victories she so badly needs?

And third, by focusing only on the independents in Wisconsin, Caputo somehow omitted her candidate's more fundamental problem: the fact that her base is leaching away, courtesy of Obama's steady incursions.

Just as he did a week ago in Virginia and Maryland, Obama went deep into Hillary's strongholds. As evidenced in the exit polls, he won blue-collar voters, the people who make $50,000 or less, by 10 percentage points. He won the voters who didn't finish college, by 13 points. He won self-identified Democrats, by seven points. He split white Catholics, winning them by one point, and he won white voters overall, by nine points. He even captured 47 percent of white women (Hillary's Ground Zero constituency), whereas, just six weeks ago in New Hampshire, he only drew 33 percent.

He won every income bracket, and every region of the state. He won the cities, suburbia, and the rural regions. On the question of who is more qualified to be commander in chief, he won by four points. On the question of who is more electable in November, he won by 26 points. On the question of who would better unite the country, he won by 27 points.

Conversely, on the question of who was the most unfair attacker, Hillary outdistanced Obama by 20 points - which suggests that her last-ditch bid to paint Obama as a plagiarizer was akin to a grenade blowing up in her hand. Clearly, most voters were not impressed by her (accurate) complaint that Obama had borrowed some rhetorical flourishes employed by his buddy, the governor of Massachusetts. She and her aides had hammered Obama on that point during the final three days - yet it's instructive to note that Obama won 53 percent of the voters who made up their minds in the final three days.

So what can Hillary do next, now that she has fallen farther behind in the aggregate popular vote, and in the all-important pledged delegate count?

She'll obviously try to tweak or even overhaul her message, but mostly she may be forced to sit tight and hope for the best - hope that Obama makes a mistake in the next debate on Thursday night, or perhaps in the debate next Tuesday night; hope that some of the smarter criticisms of Obama (offered by respected commentators) somehow register with the besotted electorate; hope that she isn't hit with a speight of defections among the superdelegates who committed to her early (indeed, after last night, it's doubtful that any of the current fence-sitters are going to sign on with her during this hiatus before Texas and Ohio); and hope that she can raise new money from donors who might now be tempted to view her as damaged goods.

By contrast, Obama can now plausibly argue that he has national appeal; that he can win in northern swing states (Wisconsin), bellwether midwestern states (Missouri), and diehard Democratic states (Maryland), and even red states that are trending Democratic (Virginia). He can argue that his strength among independents and white males, combined with his apparently growing appeal to core Democratic voters, would make him the more effective November candidate. He can even point out, in the days ahead, that Ohio's demographics are roughly the same as Wisconsin's.

Which brings us back to the perils of lousy spin. Early yesterday, Politico reported that Hillary and her people, if facing defeat, might ultimately try to raid Obama's pledged delegates in a last-ditch bid to win the nomination. The story - which was actually a trial balloon floated by a Hillary operative - kicked up such a fervor that within hours the Hillary campaign felt compelled to deny it. Apparently the Democratic party rules do not explicitly require pledged delegates to honor the primary results in their states, but here's the thing:

It's hard to imagine, barring a miracle reversal of Obama's fortunes, that any pledged Obama delegate would volunteer to defy the popular will and sign up with a candidate who seems to be going down. More importantly, the Politico story itself demonstrates just how desperate the Hillary people have become. Ditto Hillary's new delegate website, which insists that "the race is currently a virtual tie." It's hard to serve up credible spin when you don't win.

And speaking of spin, a politically-wired Philadelphia lawyer has just emailed his own thoughts on what Hillary's people would be saying today if the candidates' situations were reversed:

"Imagine this. If Clinton had just won her 10th straight primary/caucus, and 24th and 25th out of 36 states, how much talk would there be from (her spokespeople) that Obama needs to 'step down' for 'the good of the party,' to allow the party to coalesce around its 'obvious frontrunner'?"

Exactly.

The stakes in the cheesehead primary

Ah Wisconsin, birthplace of the presidential primary (yes, nearly a century ago) and a state where so many candidacies have come to ruin (Hubert Humphrey in 1960, Mo Udall in 1976, John Edwards and Howard Dean in 2004, among many others). For the 2008 Democratic finalists, Wisconsin might ultimately prove to be a mere pit stop, but at the moment it looks like a potential fork in the long and winding road.

If Hillary Clinton wins tonight (defying most of the polls, as in New Hampshire), she would slow Barack Obama's momentum ahead of the Texas and Ohio showdowns on March 4, and calm the nerves of fans who have been laboring to come up with rationales for why she should be awarded the nomination in the absence of voter approval. If she loses narrowly and essentially splits the 74 Wisconsin delegates with Obama, she can always try to spin it as a comeback and insist that she always knew Wisconsin would be a tough state, that she nearly won even though Obama vastly outspent her, and that she is pleased with where she is in the race.

If Obama wins tonight in cheesehead territory (along with a victory in his native Hawaii), he heads toward Texas and Ohio with a 10-game victory streak and the aura of a winner - which matters in politics, because voters torn between two candidates often are tempted to go with a perceived winner. And if he wins big tonight - in a state, after all, where the demographics would seem to be friendly to Hillary - then he can spin it as further evidence (coupled with Virginia and Maryland last week) that he is steadily broadening his appeal to the greater Democratic electorate.

To gauge his appeal, I plan to check out these demographics, some of which overlap:

White working-class Democrats. They have been loyal to Hillary in most contests thus far, and they're numerous in Wisconsin (in the 2004 Democratic primary, 50 percent of the voters earned less than $50,000 a year), particularly in the old manufacturing towns on the east side of the state. The potential problem for Hillary, however, is that they've suffered heavy job losses and they blame NAFTA for accelerating the exodus of jobs overseas...the same NAFTA that Hillary's husband signed into law. One of the strongest NAFTA critics is Wisconsin Congressman David Obey, who represents a heavily blue-collar district and is stumping his turf heavily for Obama.

(In February 2004, during the Wisconsin primary campaign, I was visiting a laid-off union worker named Gary Miller, in the town of Manitowoc, when his phone rang. Miller's side of the conversation went like this: "Hello?...OK, you should know that our local went out of existence...Yup, a few months ago...The company we worked at is gone, took all the jobs to China and Mexico, we have no members now. We do nothing...Wish I could help you more, sorry." Then Miller hung up. The caller was a John Kerry organizer, looking for labor help.)

Voters who didn't go to, or finish, college. Despite Wisconsin's general reputation as a liberal academic bastion - thanks largely to its university in Madison - it's worth noting that, in the 2004 Democratic primary, 55 percent of the voters did not have a college degree. Hillary has generally outdueled Obama for these voters (although not in Virginia and Maryland), and if she can't hold them in Wisconsin, it will be evidence of further base erosion.

The golden-age voters. Hillary has generally fared better than Obama among seniors (although, again, not last week), and voters over age 65 are expected to comprise roughly 20 percent of the Wisconsin electorate. Supposedly, they would be strongly attracted to Hillary's detailed policy prescriptives for health care and other kitchen-table staples, as practical correctives to Obamamania.

Catholics. Close to 4 in 10 Wisconsin voters are expected to be members of the faith, and Hillary was routinely beating Obama among Catholics until last week. If they tilt to Obama in Wisconsin (or not), it probably wouldn't be attributable to anything he has said (or hasn't said) about religion, because there has been very little faith talk lately on the Democratic side. Catholics will likely be voting on the same grounds as everybody else - with respect to their wallets/pocketbooks, their impressions of the two candidates, and their thoughts about candidate electability.

Then there are the reliable Obama demographics. We all know that young voters will favor Obama; the question is whether they will turn out in greater numbers than before, particularly in the university towns (in the Wisconsin primary four years ago, voters aged 18 to 29 were 11 percent of the elecrorate). We all know that blacks will vote overwhelmingly for Obama in Milwaukee; the question is by how much they will exceed their '04 turnout (six percent of the electorate).

And since Wisconsin's primary is open to all voters, I plan to track the size of the independent turnout, and its share of the total electorate. This too is reliable Obama turf - many of the Wisconsin independents are downstate affluent professionals who commute to Chicago - and they are one big reason why Obama is favored to win. Wisconsin has been a tough state for the Democrats in the last two general elections - Al Gore and John Kerry barely won it in 2000 and 2004 - and a huge independent turnout tonight might provide clues about a candidate's autumn viability.

The Clinton campaign has been working hard to lower expectations in Wisconsin, but I think that Jeff Greenfield, the seasoned CBS political commentator, put it best the other day: "If Clinton cannot rally the beer-drinking Democrats in the state that gave us Pabst, Schlitz, and Miller, where can she?"

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As I noted yesterday, the Clinton people apparently assumed they'd wrap up the nomination on Tsunami Tuesday, thereby obviating the need for a Plan B if the race went longer. They never bothered to learn about the complex Texas delegate rules that could work against them on March 4. And now, as we see from this report (hat tip, John Baer), they couldn't even get their act together last week to file a complete slate of delegates for the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.

Even though the state filing deadline was helpfully extended for a day and a half by their ally-in-chief, Gov. Ed Rendell (official reason for the extension: bad weather), the campaign still came up short by around 10 delegates. By contrast, Obama's camp had no such problems.

For their own sake, while there is still time, the Clinton people might want to shake off the last vestiges of their coronation mentality and focus on nuts and bolts.

Dean's muted scream, Mac's new pander

As I noted in my Sunday print column, the Democratic presidential race (barring a miracle breakthrough by either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama) is careening toward a potential train wreck. Space did not permit me to explore an important question:

Are there any party elders, with the requisite clout and nonpartisan credentials, who can step forward to yank the brakes and prevent a derailment? Somebody, anybody, who can propose wise voting criteria for unpledged superdelegates, and who can come up with a solution to the emasculated status of Florida and Michigan?

The roster thins very quickly. Bill Clinton, the titular elder-leader, has a vested interest in the outcome. Al Gore would be suspect no matter what stance he took; if he came up with ideas that seemed to tilt against Hillary, he'd be widely accused of trying to stick it to the Clintons, as payback for the difficult 2000 election and for all the years he vied with Hillary for power and resources in Bill's administration.

What about other national-ticket alumni? John Kerry has already endorsed Obama. John Edwards will endorse somebody, as soon as he cuts a deal to his liking. Joe Lieberman, in the wake of endorsing John McCain, might want to call his convention hotel and make sure his bed isn't in the boiler room. Walter Mondale, landslide loser of '84, has endorsed Hillary. Jimmy Carter, whose clout expired roughly 30 years ago, has not even been available to issue a no comment. And Mike Dukakis...'nuff said.

The only one left - on paper, anyway - is Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean. And that's a problem as well. Despite his recent remark that a stalemate in April would trigger the need for "some kind of an arrangement," he has neither the clout, nor the inclination, to take the lead.

The Clinton people have long disliked Dean; four years ago, lest we forget, they scrambled to find an alternative to presidential candidate Dean, and came up with Wesley Clark. So Dean is currently ill-positioned to get the Clinton people to agree to anything. Nor has he tried very hard. After passively allowing the DNC's Rules Committee to strip Florida of all its delegates as punishment for holding a primary too early on the calendar, he said nary a word when the Clintons (after having won the meaningless primary) began to insist that those delegates be seated. And that, in turn, has ticked off the Obama people. All told, even Dean sympathizers say he's not particularly adept at conflict resolution.

In Dean's defense, contemporary party chairmen are generally not viewed as power brokers; they're supposed to be message cheerleaders and money-raisers. The image of the backstage party boss, the guy who knocks heads together, died nearly two generations ago, roughly at the time that power was entrusted to primary voters.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, however, they may soon suffer from this power vacuum at the top. A Clinton-Obama stalemate, a potentially historic rarity, hits the party where it's most vulnerable, and prompts the question:

If the primary voters have had their say, and still there is no nominee, what's supposed to happen next? The Democratic scream might be louder than anything Howard Dean once managed to muster.

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Following up on my post last Thursday, John McCain has done it again.

It's a mystery why he keeps getting media plaudits for "sincerity" and "authenticity." Judging by his appearance yesterday on ABC News, it can now be said:

He was for the wealthy paying their fair share of taxes, before he was against it.

In the midst of his "no new taxes" pledge yesterday, he ridiculed the idea that taxes should be raised on the wealthy. He did this by mocking the people who complain about the wealthy:

"Oh, yes, sure, 'the wealthy, the wealthy.' Always be interested in when people talk about who the, quote, 'wealthy' are in America. I find it interesting." For emphasis, he gestured with his middle and index fingers, tracing quote marks to underscore his use of the word.

Yet here's what McCain was saying just a few years ago: "I won't take every last dime of the (budget) surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy." He used to laud his Republican hero, Teddy Roosevelt, for having railed against "the malefactors of great wealth," a line that McCain quoted approvingly. He used to say that the federal government should have a major role in policing "the abuses or potential abuses of the capitalist system." He twice voted against the Bush tax cuts, because, as he told NBC, "you will find that the bulk of it, again, goes to wealthiest Americans."

But now he has again amended his authenticity in the pursuit of power. The latest version of John McCain needs to curry favor with the GOP establishment in order to cement his nomination. And there's no way that a Republican can be a nominee in good standing unless he stands up for the rich.

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By the way, here is further evidence of why Hillary is in so much trouble. According to this report, her top strategists only discovered this month that the complex rules in Texas might yield her an insufficient number of delegates in crucial Latino districts on March 4, thereby imperiling her latest firewall.

These rules have been in force for two decades, yet Hillary's people have just learned about them?

An ABC News reporter today asked Hillary's top two spinners about the Texas delegate rules, and the perils of coming up short on the delegate count...and they were both flummoxed. It should be noted that Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer, at least publicly, are not known to be flummoxed by anything.

ABC's David Chalian: "I'm asking would you consider it a victory if you don't win the delegate allocation in Texas that night?"

Wolfson: "Ummm, you know, I'd have to think about that. I don't know the answer to that."

Chalian: "Okay, thank you."

Wolfson: "That is a, ah, less than unequivocal, but I don't know, Phil, do you have a thought on that?"

Singer: "Umm, no."

Wolfson: "You've stumped us. The last question has stumped us."

This tells us something very important: Hillary was so confident of winning the nomination on Tsunami Tuesday that she and her strategists didn't think there was any need to focus on the subsequent states, or do the fundamental homework for a Plan B. Such are the perils of political hubris.

And with respect to the latest CNN poll in Texas, I have two words for the Clinton camp: Uh oh...

Does Obama have the right stuff?

Back to the Polman mailbag, where an emailer newly touched by Obamamania shares his deepest fears: "Are we high? Are we intoxicated by love? Are we casting Hillary aside for this dream boat, only to wake up in summer and fall to find a candidate who doesn’t hold up?"

It's a tad early for buyer's remorse. Still, many grassroots Democrats, chastened by experience in recent presidential elections, are already thinking hard about electability - and whether Barack Obama, so new to the national stage, has the right stuff to successfully withstand Republican attacks. Some of the primary voters in Wisconsin, Texas, and Ohio are surely wondering about this; some of the uncommitted superdelegates, who may be called upon to choose between Obama and Hillary Clinton in the wake of a stalemate, are undoubtedly wondering as well.

If he wins the nomination, here's what the Republicans are likely to say about him:

1. Obama can't be entrusted to keep us safe in the age of terror, because he is woefully inexperienced. Actually, they're saying that already. Strategist John Brabender (who is not working for John McCain) tells Harper's Magazine, "Russia is becoming an energy superpower, Iraq seems to be on the verge of getting a nuclear bomb, there's Iraq, China, Islamic fundamentalists. Who's going to be tough enough to deal with these threats: a guy whose only full terms were as a state senator from Illinois, or McCain, who has a lifetime of service to the country. That will be a long, drawn out comparison....These are turbulent times, and the safe pick might be the best pick."

In response, it would not be enough for Obama to assert that the Republicans are running on fear. The threats cited by Brabender are real. Nor would it be enough for Obama to assert that the Republicans have blown their credibility on national security, thanks to what he is already calling the "Bush-McCain" disaster in Iraq. he would have to articulate his own detailed blueprint for fighting terrorism - one that marks a significant departure from the Bush doctrine, but also reassures crucial swing-voting independents that he is no Bambi on matters of life and death.

2. Obama is liberal, liberal, liberal. The L-word has been a reluable Republican attack staple for more than a generation, and it would surface again, particularly since the nonpartisan National Journal has rated Obama the most liberal member of the Senate, in terms of his '07 voting record. One of McCain's top aides has already sniffed that Obama is "a conventional liberal," under the assumption that the word can still be spun as a synomym for wimp. They would highlight some of his votes in the Senate, and his positions back in Illinois, and contend that, behind all the hype and hoopla, there lurks an out-of-the-mainstream lefty.

For instance, Obama at one time supported a total ban on handguns. This was in 1996, back when he was running for the Illinois Senate. He no longer backs a ban, but one can envision the GOP telling gun owners in key states such as Pennsylvania - fair game - that Obama was for a gun ban before he was against it.

Again, it would not be enough for Obama to assert (as he did in a recent debate) that the GOP has lost the right to complain about liberals, given the way George W. Bush and the GOP Congress betrayed conservative principles by spending lavishly and racking up record budget deficits. Obama would need to articulate an affirmative, fleshed-out liberal vision, and frame it as patriotism. Running from the label, or trying to explain it from a defensive crouch, would not be good enough.

3. Obama is all rhetoric, and no substance. I question whether this would be an effective theme in the long run, because by the time the autumn campaign begins, Obama would have already provided more policy details than most Americans would even bother to read. (Just this week, in Wisconsin, he laid out an economic plan.) He still has months to get sufficiently wonky.

Besides, Republicans have long demonstrated that candidates win on the intangibles (character, values, inspiration, the flag), not on the issues. Brabender, the GOP strategist, acknowledged this: "Obama...brings a lot to the table in terms of electability. In a presidential race, the issues are somewhat seconday to leadership, hope and vision, which seem to be strong suits for Obama."

Lastly, here's how the Hillary Clinton campaign is questioning Obama's electability:

He would whither under fire from the Republican attack machine. Hillary's chief strategist, Mark Penn, is correct when he points out that Obama has no experience on that front, and that in fact Obama "has never faced a credible Republican opponent." Obama's '04 Senate race was a cakewalk; his strongest opponent had to quit the race in the wake of a sex scandal, and his autumn opponent turned out to be Alan Keyes, the right-wing rhetorician and perennial loser.

It's unknowable, of course, how Obama would deal with the fact-challenged rumors likely generated on talk radio, direct mail, and web videos. Some voters have already received mysterious emails that show Obama at an Iowa event, purportedly declining to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. (Obama says that the photo was taken during the playing of the National Anthem, when the hand-on-heart gesture is optional.) I've heard that this moment is already common grist in grassroots Republican circles.

But here's a thought: Can we necessarily assume that the noxious smoke from the GOP machine would be as strong, with McCain as the nominee? Would he be comfortable tolerating, or condoning, the same kinds of rumors and attacks that derailed his own candidacy eight years ago?

This past week, one of McCain's key advisors told NPR that he would stay on the sidelines rather than participate in any attacks on Obama; as Mark MacKinnon put it, "I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama. I think it would be uncomfortable for me, and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign." All this, from a guy who did ads for Bush in 2000 and 2004; clearly, he has no appetite for another season of slime, and I suspect that McCain feels the same.

And then we have this today, from the GOP-friendly commentator Fred Barnes: "Every poll I've seen this year shows that Obama would attract far more independents in the general election against a Republican than (Hillary) Clinton would. Indeed, there's a growing consensus among both Republican and Democratic strategists that Obama would be the stronger general election candidate. He may be more liberal than Clinton, but by almost every other yardstick he's a more appealing candidate."

Perhaps that might calm the nerves of Democrats who are fretting about the downside of Obamamania...unless they decide that Barnes is just playing with their heads, hoping to lure Democrats into picking the candidate whom the GOP secretly believes is weaker. Paranoid? Probably. But that's what happens to the mind after losing two close national elections.

McCain's rightward march

Since I'm tied up today with other deadlines, I'll confine myself to this little item that surfaced last evening:

McCain (R-AZ), Nay.

I found that on the list of senators who voted against passage of an anti-torture provision that seeks to bar the CIA from engaging in the practice of waterboarding. The sponsors of the provision - which is part of a bill that passed by a 51-45 vote, not nearly enough to sustain President Bush's inevitable veto - insist that the intelligence community should follow the interrogation rules that are spelled out in the U. S. Army Field Manual. Those rules prohibit waterboarding.

So, by dint of his vote yesterday, presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain is for waterboarding...but wait a minute...isn't he supposed to be against waterboarding?

Back in 2005, he said that waterboarding was "very exquisite torture," and should be outlawed. Last October, he told The New York Times: "All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today...It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."

And in a Republican debate last November, he stated: "I would hope that we would understand, my friends, that life is not 24 and Jack Bauer. Life is interrogation techniques which are humane and yet effective. And I just came back from visiting a prison in Iraq. The army general there said that techniques under the Army Field Manual are working and working effectively, and he didn’t think they need to do anything else. My friends, this is what America is all about."

So what gives? Why is he now for waterboarding after he was against it? Why is he now against hewing to the Army Field Manual after he was for it?

You guessed right, pun intended.

His first priority at the moment is to pamper his right flank and persuade the wary Republican base that, contrary to the "maverick" label routinely affixed to him by his media admirers, he can pander just like any other opportunistic pol, and to heck with such trifles as consistency and principles.

(McCain explained himself yesterday by trying to split hairs in the Bill Clinton tradition. Regarding his nay vote, he said: "I think that waterboarding is torture and illegal, but I will not restrict the CIA to only the Army field manual." I guess the first phrase is intended for moderate voters, and the second phrase for conservative voters.)

The problem is that, by flip-flopping so blatantly, he undercuts his image as a man of conviction (to the delight of Democrats who fear his appeal) - without even mollifying his conservative critics, some of whom seem to believe that today's pandering can never erase yesterday's heresies. He could be saddled with this dilemma well into autumn.

Poaching on Hillary's turf

Picture the Titanic in mid-crisis, just as the second-class cabins are starting to flood. That's how the Hillary Clinton campaign looks this morning.

Three more Barack Obama landslides have left her in a perilous position. She has coughed up her lead among pledged delegates nationwide (having lost 21 of 31 states), and she will have a difficult time getting it back - if only because, thanks to the party's proportional allocation rules, Obama will still garner new delegates even if he loses the primaries in Texas and Ohio on March 4.

Hillary could conceivably turn the tide in those big states if she blows him out in twin landslides, thereby winning a huge proportion of the delegates. But I doubt this will happen. In fact, it's hard to imagine at this point that Hillary can win the Democratic nomination without some last-ditch backstage maneuvers after the primary season is over.

What happened last night was basically Obama's dream scenario. What mattered most was not that he won big, but the manner in which he did it. He poached on Hillary's strongest demographics in two very different states - Virginia, a longtime Republican enclave that has been trending Democratic, and reliably blue Maryland, with its solid Democratic base. (His Washington, D.C. win was more predictable.)

In Virginia, for example, Obama won the white vote (52 to 47 percent). He won the suburban vote (61 to 38). He won the Latino vote (54 to 46). He won white Catholics (49 to 48), a traditional swing group that Hillary previously had been winning by 2-1 margins. And he won every income bracket, including the working-class/blue-collar categories where Hillary has typically held sway.

Obama swept all income brackets in Maryland as well, winning the working-class categories in a landslide. In Maryland, he won the white Catholics by two percentage points. And, for the first time, he won the senior vote (by four points).

White women have been very loyal to Hillary during this primary season, rescuing her in New Hampshire and in the big states on Tsunami Tuesday. More than any other demographic group, they have anchored her candidacy. But Obama has now invaded that turf as well. Last night, he won 47 percent of white women in Virginia, a southern state (by contrast, his share back in New Hampshire was 33 percent).

All told, the exit polls in Virginia and Maryland suggest that Obama is moving beyond his base (upscale liberals, blacks, independents) and beginning to put together a broad Democratic coalition. And it was also clear last night that Obama is viewed more enthusiastically. When the Maryland voters were asked whether they'd be satisfied if Hillary won the nomination, 69 percent said yes. When asked the same question about Obama, 79 percent said yes.

And there's more. Of those who said yes to the Hillary question, 45 percent still voted for Obama. Of those who said yes to the Obama question, only 26 percent voted for Hillary. In translation: the depth of emotional support for Obama is greater, and the depth of disappointment, if he lost, would be greater as well. (By the way, the same questions were asked in potentially swing-state Virginia, and Obama's numbers were even better there.)

And this too is noteworthy: In Virginia, when voters were asked which candidate is better qualified to be commander-in-chief, 56 percent chose Obama. In Virginia, no less. Hillary has long been seeking to convince voters that this was her strong suit.

So I'll again raise the issue that I mentioned the other day. Is it feasible that the next Hillary firewalls in Texas and Ohio will remain firm, given Obama's momentum in February? Is it realistic to believe that the unpledged superdelegates can be cajoled to bail her out if these firewalls ultimately fall? (One unpledged superdelegate, David Wilhelm, announced today that he intends to back Obama. Normally I wouldn't bother to single out one individual, but this happens to be the guy who served as national manager of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.)

Indeed, for Hillary, perhaps the worst indignity last night was John McCain's decision to ignore her and focus on Obama.

McCain gave a victory speech last night in Virginia, where he won his primary, despite (yet again) being waxed by Mike Huckabee among the religious conservative voters who comprise so much of the party base (nearly half the Virginia electorate was born-again or evangelical, and 60 percent of them voted for Huckabee). He also won in a primary where the turnout was less than half the size of the Democratic turnout. And his victory speech was unfortunately timed for television. Minutes earlier, Obama had delivered one of his trademark stemwinders to an SRO arena audience; then the camera switched to McCain on a small platform in a small room, looking very much Obama's senior by three decades, and he was surrounded by aging Virginia politicians, two of whom are leaving office this year. Not the best contrast for the presumptive GOP nominee.

Anyway, he poked at Obama, implying that the young man is all about himself ("I used to think that all glory was self glory"), and that the young man is full of hot air ("To encourage a country with only rhetoric...is not the promise of hope. It's a platitude").

Hillary had better recoup quickly if she wants to enjoy the honor of coming under attack. That's an honor generally reserved for frontrunners.

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Meanwhile, in the "Where Are They Now?" department, Rudy Giuliani is back on the speaking circuit. The '07 GOP frontrunner, whose disastrous candidacy deserves to be studied in political science classes, has been welcomed back to the Washington Speakers Bureau, and here's my favorite line in the official announcement:

"Giuliani galvanized the electorate by focusing much-needed attention on such issues as security, domestic and international terrorism and securing a future that's prosperous and beneficial for all Americans."

I never realized that losing repeatedly to Ron Paul was synonymous with galvanizing the electorate.

The lame duck chronicles

We interrupt the campaign news to bring you the latest quackings of our lame duck.

Seriously, amidst all the historic doings in the Democratic presidential race, with three more contests on tap for tonight, we do need to remember that President Bush is still on the job and wreaking havoc. Luckily for him, the multiple failures of his administration are drawing scant attention these days; most Americans have tuned him out, and the media is focused on the race to succeed him. But, lest we allow him to slip below the radar, some occasional coverage seems warranted.

Here's one little episode. This past weekend, Bush surfaced for nearly an hour on Fox News Sunday. At one point, he was asked whether his ambitious quest to democratize the Middle East had been undercut by the well-documented incompetence of his own war team, as evidenced by the inept occupation of Iraq. In other words, he was asked whether he had given democratization a bad name.

Specifically, host Chris Wallace said, "The idea is, that the principles you advanced were in at least some cases undermined by the way they were executed." Then Wallace buttressed his question by quoting one of Bush's former national security aides. He continued, "Kori Schake, who was a professor at West Point and served on your National Security Council, wrote this: 'I fear that the biggest foreign policy legacy of the Bush administration will be that it delegitimized its own strategy...'"

When that quote flashed on the TV screen, all I could think was, "Poor Kori Schake. She's in for it now." Sure enough, Bush dismissed her as inconsequential. Actually, it was worse than that: "Well, I don't know whether this person - sorry, I don't know who that person is."

Let's give Bush a little help: Kori Schake served him for three years on the National Security Council, as Director of Defense Strategy and Requirements.

She has also taught at West Point, taught at the National Defense University, held a fellowship at a conservative think tank, and worked on the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff when it was chaired by Colin Powell.

It's certainly possible that Bush has no clue who she is, since he doesn't breach his bubble very often. But here's what he was really saying: She's somebody I don't know, therefore her opinion is worth zilch.

In truth, of course, it has long been documented that Bush's democratization dream was fatally undermined by poor execution. The latest evidence is vividly rendered in the documentary film No End in Sight, which features a host of disillusioned Bush aides speaking on the record about the ineptitude of the Bush war planners. Indeed, much of this evidence first surfaced in a magazine article that was published 10 months before Bush stood for re-election.

And now comes the news - largely overlooked yesterday, thanks to our laser-like focus on the presidential race - that the Army has been suppressing, for the past three years, a federally-financed study that laid bare the war-planning incompetence of the Bush administration.

The study, authored by a team of specialists at the RAND Corporation, discovered (yet again) that the Bush war planners had vastly underestimated the challenge of democratizing Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein; in fact, said a draft of the report obtained by The New York Times, the poor planning had "the inadvertent effort of strengthening the insurgency."

There was constant tension between the State Department and Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department, and that further undermined the democratization planning. However, the report concluded, these tensions "were never mediated by the president or his staff."

But the report itself was kept under wraps, and remains so, because, in the words of one military source, "The Army leaders who were involved did not want to take the chance of increasing the friction with Secretary Rumsfeld" - whose basic philosophy, which he sold to Bush, was that postwar reconstruction could be done on the cheap. (Bush had designated Rumsfeld as his top postwar planner, even though the RAND report faults Rumsfeld for a "lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution.")

Fortunately for Bush, this news story was barely noticed yesterday, and won't deter him, or the Republicans generally, from suggesting that the two Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, will weaken national security if elected. The Republican National Committee has begun to crank out emails, plucking that particular chord.

...But wait, what's this: Another news story that was widely overlooked, just last week, perhaps because it ran on the same day as the Super Tuesday results. It seems that Bush's own intelligence chief, Mike McConnell, trekked to Capitol Hill last Tuesday and told lawmakers that al Qaeda is actually getting stronger, and is actively enhancing "its ability to attack the U.S." inside our borders.

Such is the record of Bush's tenure, one that should not be overlooked just because the spotlight is trained elsewhere.

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And here's another byproduct of the Bush years: Yesterday, Arizona Republican congressman John Shadegg became the latest member of the House GOP to call it quits this year. He said that even though his health is great and his campaign coffers are brimming, he will forego running for re-election in November.

He said, "I'd like to do something else with my life." Translation: I don't want to risk being drowned in a Democratic tsunami that will lock me into minority status for the rest of my career.

He's the 29th House Republican to cut and run in 2008; in other words, 14 percent of the current GOP roster is bailing out of the chamber. They don't need to read the news to know which way the wind blows.

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And as we await tonight's primary results in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C., here's one noteworthy political tidbit:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, meeting with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh newspaper, has offered a provocative reason why his presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, should do well in the state primary on April 22. Here it is:

"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate."

Not ready?...Rendell sounds like those baseball club owners, back in the 1940s, who always insisted that white fans were "not ready" for black ballplayers.

Rendell is probably right about some of the white voters, strictly speaking. But, in terms of politesse, there are far better arguments to make for Hillary's potential prowess in Pennsylvania (lots of senior voters, lots of suburban Democratic women). It seems a tad off message for the governor of Pennsylvania to suggest that Hillary is the stronger candidate because she can outduel Barack Obama for the racist vote.