Two political satires - One for Hillary-haters & one for CDS-haters

As the Democratic nomination contest moves into its final phase ... here are two satirical items that approach Hillary Clinton's campaign from different directions. Satire can be cruel, of course, so these may not be suitable for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

=> For all you Hillary-haters out there, HERE is a savage parody of Clinton's arguments for why she should be nominated, from Saturday Night Live. (Perhaps it is intended, in part, to compensate for the Hillary-friendly sketch that SNL ran on March 1, 2008.)

Depending on your perspective, you may find it penetrating & hilarious or unfair & defamatory to the point of being semi-deranged ... or maybe a bit of both. It does do a good job of capturing some key themes in the current discussion.

=> And for all you fed-up Clinton supporters, THIS CARTOON offers a nice satirical take-down of CDS in the news coverage of the campaign.

Yours for democracy,
Jeff Weintraub

Obama's Jewish problem?

As Matt Yglesias correctly pointed out, the message of the most recent Gallup poll on the subject is that Obama doesn't have a significant Jewish problem--at least, not against McCain, which is where it really counts. (Obama Beats McCain Among Jewish Voters)

Overall, Jewish voters do seem to prefer Clinton over Obama, though not by a huge margin (50%-43%). But they prefer either Democratic candidate over McCain by very large margins:

Clinton: 66%
McCain: 27%

Obama: 61%
McCain: 32%

=> OK, let's add a small qualification. The 61% figure estimated here does not match the proportions of the Jewish vote that have gone for the Democratic candidate in the most recent Presidential elections.

According to standard estimates, the last Presidential election in which the Republican candidate carried a plurality of the Jewish vote was in 1920 (not even a majority, since a lot of Jews voted Socialist that year), so for political aficionados the relevant question is not whether the Democratic candidate commands a Jewish majority but whether it is an overwhelming majority.

Normally, one would consider a roughly 2-1 majority pretty overwhelming. But Kennedy in 1960, Johnson in 1964, and even Humphrey in 1968 all got over 80% of the Jewish vote. McGovern, Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis fared less well (and so did Adlai Stevenson, sad to say). But then Bill Clinton got just under 80% in both 1992 & 1996, and Kerry's percentage in 2004 was in the mid-70s. That puts Obama's estimated 61% down in so-so territory (with Adlai Stevenson).

=> However, the fact remains that Obama commands a very solid majority among Jewish voters--and, as usual, his level of support among Jews is dramatically higher than his support in the overall electorate (see below). One should also bear in mind that the polling on which these figures are based was done in April, which was a difficult month for Obama and for the Democrats. And Jewish Democrats who support Clinton, like other Democrats who support Clinton, are likely to rally around the party's candidate once the dust has settled.

Of course, we shouldn't make too much of any one poll, and the final results will depend on how the general election campaign works out. But my guess is that this 61% will turn out to represent a floor for Obama's Jewish support, not a ceiling.

Meanwhile, some highlights from the Gallup report are below.

--Jeff Weintraub

Republican panic in Mississippi (Dick Polman)

In today's special election for "Mississippi's deeply Republican 1st Congressional District," Democrat Travis Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis by a stunning margin of 54%-46%.

Why is this a big deal?

Political reporter Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer explained it earlier today:

The hottest election tonight is not taking place in West Virginia (a state that hasn't staged a truly consequential presidential primary since 1960, when Jack Kennedy knocked out Hubert Humphrey, reputedly with some help from mob money). Rather, you'd be better advised tonight to keep an eye on the northernmost congressional district in the state of Mississippi.

That's where you can best gauge the woeful status of the Republican party in the dying days of the Bush era.

Consider what's going on tonight in Mississippi's First Congressional District. A special election is in the works, a competition between Republican Greg Davis (a local mayor) and Democrat Travis Childers (a chancery clerk and businessman) to replace Roger Wicker, who was recently elevated to the U.S. Senate, replacing the retired Trent Lott.

Big deal, right? In normal times, this kind of musical chairs would be a slam dunk for the GOP; in normal times, Republican candidate Greg Davis would win this special election in a yawn. After all, Wicker won his seat seven straight times, with never less than 63 percent of the vote. President Bush carried this Mississippi district four years ago with 62 percent of the vote. The district has been a safe Republican seat ever since the heady days of the Newt Gingrich conservative revolution. [....]

And yet, the GOP has felt compelled to treat even this race as if it was a four-alarm fire. [....] What worries Republicans is that the Mississippi situation so closely mirrors recent special congressional elections in Louisiana and Illinois - both of which were embarrassments to the GOP. [JW: See here & here.]

[....]

So watch this race. A Republican loss in Mississippi would be devastating; a win would be a massive relief, although the party should never have to expend so much money and manpower to salvage a seat on its home turf. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra: If they can't make it there, can they make it anywhere?

Well, they lost.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Philadelphia Inquirer
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Republican panic in Mississippi
By Dick Polman

The hottest election tonight is not taking place in West Virginia (a state that hasn't staged a truly consequential presidential primary since 1960, when Jack Kennedy knocked out Hubert Humphrey, reputedly with some help from mob money). Rather, you'd be better advised tonight to keep an eye on the northernmost congressional district in the state of Mississippi.

That's where you can best gauge the woeful status of the Republican party in the dying days of the Bush era.

Consider what's going on tonight in Mississippi's First Congressional District. A special election is in the works, a competition between Republican Greg Davis (a local mayor) and Democrat Travis Childers (a chancery clerk and businessman) to replace Roger Wicker, who was recently elevated to the U.S. Senate, replacing the retired Trent Lott.

Big deal, right? In normal times, this kind of musical chairs would be a slam dunk for the GOP; in normal times, Republican candidate Greg Davis would win this special election in a yawn. After all, Wicker won his seat seven straight times, with never less than 63 percent of the vote. President Bush carried this Mississippi district four years ago with 62 percent of the vote. The district has been a safe Republican seat ever since the heady days of the Newt Gingrich conservative revolution.

And yet, the GOP has felt compelled to treat even this race as if it was a four-alarm fire. Lott and Wicker and Mike Huckabee have all been flooding the zone. So has Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Barbour's lieutenant governor, senior Mississippi senator Thad Cochran, and even Dick Cheney (this is presumably one of the few congressional districts in America where Cheney actually might be an asset). Meanwhile, back in Washington, the GOP's cash-strapped House campaign committee has felt compelled to spend in excess of $1.3 million on direct mail and TV ads, just to prop up Davis.

If the Republicans need to scramble this way, to save an ostensibly safe congressional seat in a deeply-red southern district, consider what this says about the prevailing national mood - and about the GOP's dim November prospects for trimming their current House minority status (199 Rs, 235 Ds).

They have reason to feel a tad panicky. Childers, a Democrat with conservative values, has been showing a lot of strength. Under Mississippi rules, there was already a first-round special election last month; Childers finished on top, beating Davis and some minor candidates - a stunning result in itself - and nearly attracted 50 percent of the total vote. If the Democrat had hit 50 percent (he came within 400 votes), he would have won the seat outright, with no need for tonight's runoff with the number-two finisher.

What worries Republicans is that the Mississippi situation so closely mirrors recent special congressional elections in Louisiana and Illinois - both of which were embarrassments to the GOP. Ten days ago, Democrat Don Cazayoux won a Louisiana congressional seat that had been held by the Republicans for 20 years, in a district that had supported Bush with 59 percent of the vote in 2004 and 55 percent of the vote in 2000. And back on March 8, as I have previously noted, Democrat Bill Foster won the Illinois congressional seat formerly held for two decades by departed GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and by two Republicans prior to him. [JW: See here & here.]

Some Republican spinners have come up with excuses for the losses in Louisiana and Illinois - the GOP candidates in those races were flawed, it's all their fault, and thus the defeats are no barometer of the national party's fortunes - but the fact is, those two seats are normally so safe that any Republican with functioning brain cells should be able to win them.

Yet the task proved difficult, because of the political landscape. Bush is an albatross, the war is a drag, the economy is a burden, and Republicans are still viewed as somewhat lacking on the ethics front (latest example: "family values" conservative congressman Vito Fossella of Staten Island has been outed for having two families). It's instructive right now that, in the congressional matchups for November as measured in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, a generic Democratic candidate beats a generic Republican candidate by roughly 15 percentage points - roughly the same spread that pollsters recorded on the eve of the November '06 elections, when the GOP wound up losing both chambers.

And special congressional elections typically foreshadow the main event in November; this happened in 1974, when some early Republican losses turned out to be a portent of massive party losses in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate scandal. And it happened early in 1994, this time to the other party, when Bill Clinton's Democrats coughed up a few safe seats in special elections that foreshadowed the Gingrich revolution in November.

What also bears watching tonight is whether the GOP's tactic for retaining the Mississippi seat turns out to be effective. Lacking much of anything good to say, the Republicans are falling back on their old reliable: painting Democrat Childers as a stooge of the liberals...and, in this case, casting Barack Obama in the role of bogeyman. Childers has actually never met Obama, or sought his help, but linking the pair might be the GOP's best option in this conservative district - unless the tactic winds up energizing African-Americans, who reportedly comprise 26 percent of the district's population. It should be noted that, two weeks ago in Louisiana, the GOP tried to tie Cazayoux to Obama - and Cazayoux won anyway.

So watch this race. A Republican loss in Mississippi would be devastating; a win would be a massive relief, although the party should never have to expend so much money and manpower to salvage a seat on its home turf. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra: If they can't make it there, can they make it anywhere?

Chris Matthews: "We're not sociologists, we're Americans."

A new milestone in buffoonery by the TV blowhard and alleged political journalist Chris Matthews.

Throughout the Democratic nomination race, in which there has been a good deal of nonsense from journalists and political pundits, Chris Matthews of MSNBC has distinguished himself for commentary blending frequent absurdity with out-of-control Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Matthews also played a fairly significant role in introducing the race-card theme into coverage of the campaign--and, in the process, into the campaign itself.

I had more or less decided to ignore Matthews, but tonight he really outdid himself.

=> Matthews, we should note, has always made a habit of talking about "working class" people (along with the standard pseudo-populist disparagement of "elitist" Democrats). On his April 1 "Hardball" show, for example, Matthews had an exchange with Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an Obama supporter, and his introductory remarks were fairly typical in this respect:

Obama — that’s Senator Obama — has taken a different tone in Pennsylvania, where I’m at right now. He faces an aging blue-collar electorate, one of the oldest states. I think it’s the second oldest state, in terms of demographics. People want details about how he plans to improve their lives, keep their kids from moving out of the state, and creating jobs down the road for their grandkids. Can he win over working-class voters here in Pennsylvania? Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is an Obama supporter. Senator McCaskill, did you advise Obama to go out and try to bowl the other day?

And this rather bizarre question that he then went on to ask is also par for the course with Matthews:

Let me ask you about how he — how’s he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?

(Apparently, neither African-Americans nor people with college degrees are "regular people". Whom does that leave? Well, no doubt that's not exactly what he meant to say....)

=> Tonight, Matthews suddenly decided that even mentioning class and race in connection with elections is for "sociologists," not "Americans." Using phrases like "blue-collar" is "elitist talk." And simply by talking about "white working-class voters," Hillary Clinton is almost "like the Al Sharpton of white people."

If you think I'm making all that up, watch this VIDEO.

--Jeff Weintraub

P.S. As for the line from Matthews contrasting "sociologists" with "Americans" (yes, that's a direct quotation), I guess I should feel reassured by John DiIulio's insistence that even sociologists are "entitled to all the rights of citizenship." On the other hand, as I pointed out in that connection,

even if believing sociologists are entitled to the same legal rights as other Americans, I do think it would be very difficult for a self-confessed sociologist to get elected President of the US.

Why should we be in a rush to use up all our oil?

According to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, back in the 1970s Malcolm Forbes--publisher of Forbes magazine and father of the economic flat-earther and two-time Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes--made a very sensible point about this matter which is still worth paying attention to:

LOOKING FOR more oil.

Complaints about the drilling bans in ANWR and offshore are a staple of right-wing talk radio. But I remember Malcolm S. Forbes, back in the 1970s, saying that we should drill as little domestic oil as possible. Pump the Arabs' oil as long as it lasts, then -- when oil has become really scarce and valuable -- we'll be the only ones with any left!

OK, "as little domestic oil as possible" is a bit exaggerated (and I gather that some expansion of refining capacity might be useful, which is a different but related point). But the basic idea, however chauvinistically expressed, makes good sense.

A more sensible immediate priority would be to focus on dramatically improving the efficiency with which we use oil. Just for a start, this would include raising fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, investing in better and more extensive mass-transit systems, and the like. Unlike drilling in ANWR, steps like these could begin to yield significant results in the fairly short term, as well as being valuable both economically and environmentally in the long term. (We should also be working on the development of viable alternative sources of energy, but my guess is that this solution will take a while before it begins to pay off significantly, so that's a more medium- to long-term solution.)

Just a passing thought ...

--Jeff Weintraub

Will Hutton argues that America is not ready for history's scrap-heap just yet

The Decline of the West is a perennial theme, with intermittent moments of plausibility. Odd as it may now seem, for example, the Soviet Union and world Communism were once widely seen as serious challengers riding the wave of the future while the western model sank (for good or ill) into terminal crisis and decline. As late as 1976 Raymond Aron felt moved to write a book entitled, only half-ironically, In Defense of Decadent Europe--and a fair number of activists and intellectuals, believe it or not, looked to Chairman Mao for inspiration.

During the 63 years since the end of World War II, the US in particular has been the object of recurrent waves of declinist talk. Whether in hope or alarm, these describe the US as a country going downhill both in its own terms and with respect to various competitors. (I have a memory from the summer of 1967 of reading a piece by a British journalists touring the US who gleefully described 1967 as "the year of the great American crack-up." Well, it did look that way to a lot of people at the time.) Leaving aside the periodic re-emergence of the Soviet Threat, remember the mid-to-late 1980s, when Japan was going to take over the world and sweep by the US with its stagnating economy, its collapsing educational system, its ever-rising crime rates & other social pathologies, etc.?

Or maybe Europe, in its post-nationalist EU version, will have the last laugh? There are still currents of declinist self-analysis in various European countries, of course. But there have been countervailing tendencies, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which often include (mild or intense) anti-American overtones. Or, at least, they involve self-congratulatory comparisons between Europe and the US and try to use a contrast between putative "European" and "American" models as part of an effort to forge (or claim, or define) a common European identity. In this type of discourse, "Europe" represents the superior model--more advanced, enlightened, humane, egalitarian, cosmopolitan, post-nationalist, post-militarist, and so on--while the US remains trapped in an increasingly outdated socio-economic, political, and ideological model that makes it increasingly unattractive, internally dysfunctional, and threatening to the rest of the world. Of course, these European discourses of US dysfunction and decline--nicely delineated by Andy Markovits and others--have been matched by various anti-European declinist narratives emanating from sectors of American public discussion.

At some point, these assessments of imminent US (or western) decline are bound to be correct. But according to this cheerfully argumentative piece by Will Hutton, at the moment they remain premature.

Hutton, for those of you who don't immediately recognize the name, is a prominent British social-democratic intellectual whose best-known work is probably still his influential 1995 anti-Thatcherite polemic, The State We're In. Not everyone who fits that general profile is feeling well-disposed to the US these days. But Hutton argues that, contrary to some appearances and a good deal of commentary, American society remains dynamic, resilient, and in important ways even inspiring. Some highlights:

The more I visit the US the more I think the pundits predicting the US's imminent economic and political decline hugely overstate their case. Rather, the next 50 years will be as dominated by the US as the last 50. The US will widen its technological and scientific dominance, sustain its military hegemony, launch a period of reindustrialisation and continue to define modernity both in culture and industry.

The fashionable view is that the American economy is a busted flush, a hollowed-out, deindustrialised shell housed in decaying infrastructure that delivers McJobs and has survived courtesy only of a ramped-up housing market and the willingness of foreigners to hold trillions of dollars of American debts.

China and India are set to overtake it in the foreseeable future. At best, the US will have to get used to living in a multipolar world it cannot dominate. At worst, it will have to accept, along with the West, that the new economic and political heart of the world is Asia. [....]

What counts is the strength of a country's universities, research base, commitment to information and communications technology and new technologies along with a network of institutions that supports new enterprise. Here, the US is so far ahead of the rest of the world it is painful. [....] Of the world's top 50 companies ranked by R&D, 20 are American. Fifty-two of the world's top 100 brands are American. Half the world's new patents are registered by American companies.

This year, American exports have grown by 13 per cent, helped by the falling dollar, so that the US has reclaimed its position as the world's number one exporter. Moreover, and little remarked on, two-thirds of America's imports come from affiliates of American companies that determinedly keep most of the value added in the US.

[....] There is a dynamic readiness to fix things in a tight economic corner, irrespective of ideology, that can only be admired.

It is a dynamism that infects the political process. I was in the US on the day Indiana and North Carolina went to the polls in the Democratic primaries. The conventional wisdom is that Obama and Clinton's fight is self-defeating and it would be better if Clinton had stood down earlier. I disagree. It has brought politics alive. Democrats are enrolling to vote in their hundreds of thousands because their vote and opinion now count. They will stay enrolled and vote in November. [....]

It is this strange cocktail of argument, of plural institutions that check and balance, of investing in knowledge and of a belief that no problem can't be fixed that underpins American strength. China is the only country in the world with a similar continental-scale economy and bigger population that conceivably could mount a challenge, but it has none of these institutions and processes. Despite its size, it has only three universities in the top 100, not one brand in the top 100, not one company in the world top 50 ranked by R&D and it registers virtually no patents.

China has no tradition of public argument, nor independent judiciary. Unless and until its institutions change, it will always trail the US in the 21st century knowledge economy and experience upheaval and possible revolution along the way. India, a democracy with the right institutions, is much better placed - but with income per head 2 or 3 per cent of that in the US, a challenge will take centuries rather than decades.

It is the maligned EU that has the institutions and economic prowess to emerge as a genuine knowledge economy counterweight to America.

Sure, the US has problems. [....] But none of those problems can't be fixed and the US is about to elect a President who will promise to try, in a world in which it remains the indispensable power. [....] The greatest danger is that we start believing the pessimism. The United States is - and remains - formidable. Which is just as well for all of us.

Well, maybe. Parts of this account strike me as possibly over-enthusiastic and over-optimistic (or maybe even too good to be true). But overall, and with appropriate qualfications, Hutton's diagnosis strikes me as basically right, and many of his prognoses strike me as at least plausible.

We do have a lot of very serious problems, pathologies, and dilemmas to face here in the US. Many of these were building up for some time, but they've been dramatically exacerbated by the disastrous consequences of the Bush/Cheney administration, so in 2009 we'll have to begin by trying to repair a daunting mass of accumulated damage. However, it's too early to throw in the towel.

(Perhaps this would be the point to insert: "Yes we can!")

--Jeff Weintraub
==============================
The Observer (London)
Sunday May 11 2008
Forget the naysayers - America remains an inspiration to us all
By Will Hutton

Browsing through an American bookshop does not lift the spirits. Books that chart the end of American supremacy, predict wars over finite natural resources, study the squeezed middle class or the catastrophic Bush presidency proliferate. The United States is going through a period of introspection and the Boston bookshelves, at which I spent part of last week, heave with the results.

In one respect, it is hardly surprising. Iraq, Afghanistan and the rise of China. The credit crunch. The $124 a barrel oil price. The unbelievable unfairness of Bush's tax cuts. The racism and violence that still pockmark American life. Yet the pessimism is overdone. The more I visit the US the more I think the pundits predicting the US's imminent economic and political decline hugely overstate their case. Rather, the next 50 years will be as dominated by the US as the last 50. The US will widen its technological and scientific dominance, sustain its military hegemony, launch a period of reindustrialisation and continue to define modernity both in culture and industry.

The fashionable view is that the American economy is a busted flush, a hollowed-out, deindustrialised shell housed in decaying infrastructure that delivers McJobs and has survived courtesy only of a ramped-up housing market and the willingness of foreigners to hold trillions of dollars of American debts.

China and India are set to overtake it in the foreseeable future. At best, the US will have to get used to living in a multipolar world it cannot dominate. At worst, it will have to accept, along with the West, that the new economic and political heart of the world is Asia.

The US economy is certainly in transition, made vastly more difficult by the spreading impact of the credit crunch. But the underlying story is much stronger. The country is developing the prototypical knowledge economy of the 21st century, an economy in which the division between manufacturing and services becomes less clear cut, in a world where the deployment of knowledge, brain power and problem-solving are the sources of wealth generation.

What counts is the strength of a country's universities, research base, commitment to information and communications technology and new technologies along with a network of institutions that supports new enterprise. Here, the US is so far ahead of the rest of the world it is painful.

The figures make your head spin. Of the world's top 100 universities, 37 are American. The country spends more proportionately on research and design, universities and software than any other, including Sweden and Japan. Of the world's top 50 companies ranked by R&D, 20 are American. Fifty-two of the world's top 100 brands are American. Half the world's new patents are registered by American companies.

This year, American exports have grown by 13 per cent, helped by the falling dollar, so that the US has reclaimed its position as the world's number one exporter. Moreover, and little remarked on, two-thirds of America's imports come from affiliates of American companies that determinedly keep most of the value added in the US. The US certainly has a trade deficit, but importantly it is largely with itself.

The US will recover from the credit crunch. Already there is an aggression and activism about how to respond that makes the British look limp in comparison. Four-fifths of new mortgages are underwritten by public mortgage banks, interest rates have been slashed and a bank bail-out was launched instantly. More activism is planned. There is a dynamic readiness to fix things in a tight economic corner, irrespective of ideology, that can only be admired.

It is a dynamism that infects the political process. I was in the US on the day Indiana and North Carolina went to the polls in the Democratic primaries. The conventional wisdom is that Obama and Clinton's fight is self-defeating and it would be better if Clinton had stood down earlier. I disagree. It has brought politics alive. Democrats are enrolling to vote in their hundreds of thousands because their vote and opinion now count. They will stay enrolled and vote in November.

There is also a great maturity about the process. It is a political argument that necessarily demands respect for your opponent because if you win you will need their support in November. Americans do public argument well. The tradition might have corrupted since de Tocqueville made the same observation in 1835, but it lives on. And it is a vital underpinning of American success.

It is this strange cocktail of argument, of plural institutions that check and balance, of investing in knowledge and of a belief that no problem can't be fixed that underpins American strength. China is the only country in the world with a similar continental-scale economy and bigger population that conceivably could mount a challenge, but it has none of these institutions and processes. Despite its size, it has only three universities in the top 100, not one brand in the top 100, not one company in the world top 50 ranked by R&D and it registers virtually no patents.

China has no tradition of public argument, nor independent judiciary. Unless and until its institutions change, it will always trail the US in the 21st century knowledge economy and experience upheaval and possible revolution along the way. India, a democracy with the right institutions, is much better placed - but with income per head 2 or 3 per cent of that in the US, a challenge will take centuries rather than decades.

It is the maligned EU that has the institutions and economic prowess to emerge as a genuine knowledge economy counterweight to America.

Sure, the US has problems. It runs its financial system like a casino. It is a grossly unfair society. Its road and rail systems have been neglected for decades. University entrance has become too expensive. It has fetishised deregulation. Money corrupts its political process. To compromise the rule of law in order to 'win' the war on terror was stupid. But none of those problems can't be fixed and the US is about to elect a President who will promise to try, in a world in which it remains the indispensable power.

Anybody who would prefer China's communists needs to see their doctor. The greatest danger is that we start believing the pessimism. The United States is - and remains - formidable. Which is just as well for all of us.

"At least he admits it" ...

... was the heading used by Instapundit, from whom item this is borrowed.

The bit of dialogue captured here was a semi-digression during an exchange between two pundits, Jonathan Alter and Mickey Kaus. They had just been talking about Hillary Clinton's ill-fated gas-tax holiday proposal (a bad idea which Alter described, with wild exaggeration, as "the worst pander ever in modern politics").

Let me make it clear that I am re-posting this snippet purely for comic relief, and not to make any grand point that isn't already obvious. I guess it also has curiosity value. Mickey Kaus (the pundit on the right) is so rarely right about anything that one shouldn't miss one of those rare moments when he happens to be on-target.

To find out what I'm talking about, watch this VIDEO.

--Jeff Weintraub

Should Clinton drop out now? - Some pros & cons from Marc Ambinder

Since Tuesday's primaries, as we know, the buzzards have been circling around Hillary Clinton's campaign. A consensus is settling in that there is no longer any reasonable hope for Clinton to win the nomination. And once this consensus does harden, it will become self-fulfilling anyway.

On the assumption that this assessment is correct--which it probably is--does that mean that Clinton should drop out of the race right now, before the remaining primaries have been held? A number of people (not exclusively Obama supporters) would say that if you grant the premise, then the correct answer is obviously yes. But that conclusion is actually not quite so self-evident as it might seem.

No, really, it's not. Earlier today Marc Ambinder, in his political blog at The Atlantic, dashed off two nice posts spelling out 7 reasons why Clinton should drop out and 7 reasons why she shouldn't, both starting from the premise that her chance of winning the nomination is almost certainly over. Some of you might find them, at the very least, intriguing and thought-provoking to consider ... while we wait to find out what actually happens.

--Jeff Weintraub

P.S. For some updates, speculation. and insider scuttlebutt about what the Clinton campaign is actually planning to do, see Clinton's Next Moves.
==============================
TheAtlantic.com
Marc Ambinder's Blog
May 7, 2008

7 Reasons Why Clinton Should Stay In The Race**

**One is perfectly capable of acknowledging that the identity of the nominee is no longer in dispute and still find that, aside from morbid speculation and existential unknowability, there are reasons for her to postpone any plans for a concession. Some of these reasons may be unpalatable for Democrats and for Obama, but they are not entirely irrational.

1. Florida and Michigan. Clinton, not Obama, is identified with the cause of seating those delegations. Since FL and MI won't decide the nomination now, Clinton has every reason to push for a negotiated settlement. It way well be that Clinton refuses to officially drop out until she is satisfied that the voices of Florida and Michigan are heard.

2. Her voters. Almost half of those voting in the Democratic primaries chose Clinton. Certain parts of her support base -- older women, for example -- are as fervently in her corner as Obama as college kids are in Obama's corner. For these women, Clinton has succeeded in convincing them that her candidacy is just as historic as Obama's. Forget about the nomination: Clinton has a much deeper political base than when she started to campaign for the presidency. She needs to tend to this base whether she continues to represent New York, becomes Senate Majority Leader, becomes the vice presidential nominee, or runs in 2012.

3. Embarrassment. If she drops out tomorrow and winds up winning in West Virginia and Kentucky, Obama will be mightily embarrassed. Having her in the race gives him an excuse for losing those two states. (I ran this by an Obama adviser who said, "We'll take our chances.")

4. The Ask. Does Clinton want to be Obama's vice president? Who knows? But does Clinton want to be asked whether she wants to be his vice president and this be in a position to decline it? Surely. The more Obama is reminded that Clinton cannot not be dispensed with, the more pressure he will feel to at least solicit her views on the subject of the vice presidency.

5. The Party. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, said again this morning that he is confident that the entire party will unify around Obama. If that's the case, then giving Democrats in the remaining states the chance to exercise their vote -- and by exercise, I mean it in the conventional sense -- to practice voting -- will be a boon for Democrats in the fall. 1.5 million Democrats voting in Indiana is spectacular; the primaries are serving as a dry-run of sorts for the entire party. It wouldn't hurt to extend those dress rehearsals to West Virginia and Kentucky either, not to mention Oregon and Montana.

6. Superdelegates. If they're so eager to end the race, they can end the race. They haven't.

7. Unity. If Clinton campaigns appropriately, she can help Obama begin to help heal the party.

--------------------
7 Reasons Why Clinton Should Quit, Now

1. It's over. Forget the sideshows and the hypotheticals. Once the party has its nominee, and only then, can the process of healing begin. The longer Clinton stays in the race, the more she postpones the point at which the party comes together.

2. The reality principle. "Anything is possible," is what campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said today. Well, no. Something things are impossible; many others are highly improbable.

3. Her legacy. In many quarters, it's been damaged by the presidential race. The sooner she exits, the more gracefully she exists, the better the chance is for her to shake off this presidential race and resume her Senate career.

4. Bill's legacy. In many quarters, it's been irrevocably (and perhaps unfairly) damaged by this presidential race.

5. Obama. Even if there are plausible, selfish reasons for her to stay in, her duty to her party should trump them. She should devote herself fully to the service of Obama.

6. Her staff. They are tired and many are demoralized, even as they love and lionize their boss. Give them a rest.

7. Florida and Michigan. The sooner she drops out, the sooner those states will find their delegations seated.

What did yesterday's primaries mean? (Josh Marshall)

I have some thoughts on this matter, which I may share soon. Essentially, I share the widespread perception that the results marked the end of the road for Clinton, or at least the beginning of the end. She may or may not continue to stay in the race through June--and if she does she may well win several more primaries in West Virginia, Kentucky, and possibly Puerto Rico. But in terms of the ultimate outcome, Tuesday's primaries were probably decisive. Or so it seems to me ...

Meanwhile, this VIDEO by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, recorded at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, offers a compact roundup and analysis that strike me as intelligent, illuminating, and probably right.

--Jeff Weintraub

What will today's Democratic primaries mean?

Hard to say, really. It's a good bet that the results won't be decisive, but then who knows?

The official results won't be announced until tonight. But in the meantime, here is a useful overview of the main possibilities from Adam Nagourney in the New York Times. Some highlights:

It’s almost over.

Well, not quite. But the Democratic presidential primaries taking place on Tuesday in North Carolina and Indiana have more delegates up for grabs than any of the remaining contests. For political, demographic and mathematical reasons, those states have the potential to reshape the competition between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

It will be an opportunity for Mrs. Clinton to make the case that Democratic sentiment is swinging in her favor, and to slice into Mr. Obama’s lead in pledged delegates and in the popular vote (putting aside the disputed contests in Florida and Michigan). For Mr. Obama, it is a chance to tamp down talk that Mrs. Clinton has exposed him as a flawed general election candidate.

[....] But to say that both sides are anxious would be an understatement, and with that in mind, here are three possible outcomes to watch for Tuesday, in no particular order: Mrs. Clinton wins both states, Mr. Obama does, or they split:

1) Mrs. Clinton wins Indiana and North Carolina.

Given the obstacles that face her, a sweep by Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday is one outcome that could, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Obama, change the world, or at least begin to. [....]

2) Mr. Obama wins North Carolina and Indiana.

A double Obama victory would almost certainly mean lights out for the Clinton campaign. [....]

3) A split decision.

The most likely split would be Mrs. Clinton winning Indiana and Mr. Obama winning North Carolina. That would almost surely mean the race would go on.

But it would not be easy for Mrs. Clinton to fight on if she cannot use Tuesday to make some progress in the battle for pledged delegates and the popular vote. Her own advisers say her best hope of getting superdelegates to vote against pledged delegates is if, after the final primaries on June 3, she is close to Mr. Obama in pledged delegates and ahead in the popular vote. [....]

It is not impossible for Mrs. Clinton to catch up, but it would require a series of lopsided victories — or a successful effort by the Clinton campaign to convince superdelegates and the party at large that the popular vote totals in Florida and Michigan should count in determining the will of the people, even though Mr. Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot in Michigan and neither candidate actively campaigned in either state. (If Florida and Michigan are counted, Mrs. Clinton has a slim lead in the popular vote by some calculations.)

“The math still favors Senator Obama, no matter what happens Tuesday,” Mr. Klain said.

But then he offered a caveat that could work in Mrs. Clinton’s favor. ‘This is the ultimate what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business,” he said, “and the more recent victories are going to count in people’s mind more than those older victories.”

Stay tuned. The rest is below.

--Jeff Weintraub
==============================
New York Times
May 6, 2008
For Primaries in 2 States, a Variety of Scenarios
By Adam Nagourney

It’s almost over.

Well, not quite. But the Democratic presidential primaries taking place on Tuesday in North Carolina and Indiana have more delegates up for grabs than any of the remaining contests. For political, demographic and mathematical reasons, those states have the potential to reshape the competition between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

It will be an opportunity for Mrs. Clinton to make the case that Democratic sentiment is swinging in her favor, and to slice into Mr. Obama’s lead in pledged delegates and in the popular vote (putting aside the disputed contests in Florida and Michigan). For Mr. Obama, it is a chance to tamp down talk that Mrs. Clinton has exposed him as a flawed general election candidate.

You can tell where Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama think they have their best shot by where they will be on Tuesday night: Mrs. Clinton has a hotel ballroom in Indianapolis, and Mr. Obama, after some last-minute debate, finally decided on a rally at a coliseum in Raleigh, N.C. But to say that both sides are anxious would be an understatement, and with that in mind, here are three possible outcomes to watch for Tuesday, in no particular order: Mrs. Clinton wins both states, Mr. Obama does, or they split:

1) Mrs. Clinton wins Indiana and North Carolina.

Given the obstacles that face her, a sweep by Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday is one outcome that could, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Obama, change the world, or at least begin to.

“That’s a sign that she is gaining momentum in the race,” said Ron Klain, a Democratic consultant who has not taken sides. How much such a result would change the race would depend on the contours of her victories.

A month ago, Indiana was considered relatively even, with perhaps a slight edge to Mr. Obama, of Illinois.

“Indiana is the first state that borders Illinois, and 25 percent of our primary electorate get their television news out of Chicago,” said Dan Parker, the Indiana Democratic chairman, who is backing Mrs. Clinton.

By contrast, Mr. Obama seemed to hold such an advantage in North Carolina that Mrs. Clinton’s aides debated making only a token effort there.

Now, though, both campaigns see both states as highly competitive, as evidenced by the amount of time Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have spent there in recent days. Mrs. Clinton has said she expects to win in Indiana; candidates do not normally do that.

If Mr. Obama loses in Indiana because of white blue-collar support for Mrs. Clinton it would be the third time in a row, after Ohio and Pennsylvania, that he has lost a big state because of an inability to win over enough of those kinds of voters.

Mrs. Clinton has argued that those losses in a primary augur poorly for Mr. Obama in the fall; historically that is debatable, but another defeat at the hands of middle-class white voters in Indiana would add to the perception that he could lose in the general election.

And should Mrs. Clinton win North Carolina, or come close, with white support for her overwhelming Mr. Obama’s presumed strength among blacks there, that would fuel the argument that he has been hurt by his ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Steve Jarding, a Democratic consultant who has not taken sides in the race, said, “If he loses both — and don’t forget he had a 25-point lead in North Carolina — then you’ve got to look at what has happened over the past four weeks, and Reverend Wright comes to the fore.”

The race at this point is at least as much about superdelegates as it is about voters in the remaining primary states, and a double Clinton victory could bolster her argument to superdelegates that Mr. Obama may struggle in November against Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee.

Whether that is enough to get them to make the leap of voting for Mrs. Clinton if Mr. Obama leads her after June 3 in the overall popular vote and pledged delegates is another question, which is why her campaign has renewed efforts to get Florida and Michigan delegates, elected in primaries carried out in defiance of the Democratic Party rules, seated at the convention.

One thing to keep in mind: the next contest is a week from Tuesday in West Virginia, another state where the demographics would seem to favor Mrs. Clinton.

2) Mr. Obama wins North Carolina and Indiana.

A double Obama victory would almost certainly mean lights out for the Clinton campaign.

“That would signal the end of the Clinton campaign,” said Jerry Meek, the chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, who has not endorsed anyone in the race. “I don’t see how she could continue.” He added, “She’d be fighting a losing battle.”

The ever-tenacious Mrs. Clinton has proven so eager to keep fighting that she might try to soldier on. It could be a tough, lonely road. Several of her advisers have said they would counsel her to quit the race if she lost both.

Even if she resisted, twin victories by Mr. Obama would go a long way to addressing concerns about the damage Mr. Wright inflicted on him, as well as his ability to “close the deal,” as Mrs. Clinton likes to say.

It is difficult to envision what her argument would be to stay in the race should that happen. More than that, Mr. Obama would no doubt encourage superdelegates, many of whom have been holding back to see how the voting plays out, to rally around him and bring the race to a close. And if there ever was a moment for the party’s big leaders to step forward, this would be it.

Matthew Dowd, the senior strategist for President Bush’s campaign in 2004, said, “It makes it almost impossible for her to win the Democratic nomination.”

3) A split decision.

The most likely split would be Mrs. Clinton winning Indiana and Mr. Obama winning North Carolina. That would almost surely mean the race would go on.

But it would not be easy for Mrs. Clinton to fight on if she cannot use Tuesday to make some progress in the battle for pledged delegates and the popular vote. Her own advisers say her best hope of getting superdelegates to vote against pledged delegates is if, after the final primaries on June 3, she is close to Mr. Obama in pledged delegates and ahead in the popular vote.

Mrs. Clinton now has 1,338 pledged delegates, according to a count and projection by The New York Times, compared with 1,493 for Mr. Obama. On Tuesday, another 187 delegates will be chosen, and after that, there are only 217 left. Under Democratic delegate allocation rules, Mrs. Clinton would have to win most of the remaining states by huge margins in order to chip into Mr. Obama’s delegate lead.

Mr. Obama’s total popular vote, including projections from the caucuses, is 14.8 million, compared with 14.2 million to Mrs. Clinton, not counting the votes in Florida or Michigan (his lead is slightly smaller if the caucus states are excluded).

It is not impossible for Mrs. Clinton to catch up, but it would require a series of lopsided victories — or a successful effort by the Clinton campaign to convince superdelegates and the party at large that the popular vote totals in Florida and Michigan should count in determining the will of the people, even though Mr. Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot in Michigan and neither candidate actively campaigned in either state. (If Florida and Michigan are counted, Mrs. Clinton has a slim lead in the popular vote by some calculations.)

“The math still favors Senator Obama, no matter what happens Tuesday,” Mr. Klain said.

But then he offered a caveat that could work in Mrs. Clinton’s favor. ‘This is the ultimate what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business,” he said, “and the more recent victories are going to count in people’s mind more than those older victories.”

Al-Qaeda's complaint: How dare those Shiites accuse us of not being mass murderers? (BBC News)

Ever since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, there have been widespread anti-Zionist (or straightforwardly anti-semitic) conspiracy theories claiming that those attacks were carried out by Israel. The people who really carried out this act of mega-terrorist mass murder, al-Qaeda, are understandably indignant about the suggestion that they were not responsible. Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently denounced this slander and characterized it (a bit tendentiously) as malicious Shiite propaganda.

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has blamed Iran for spreading the theory that Israel was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US.

He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden's network. [....]

In response to a question about persistent rumours in the Middle East that Israel was involved in the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri said the rumour had begun on the Hezbollah television station, Al-Manar.

[JW: According to reports by Snopes.com and others, Al-Manar does seem to have been the original source for the widely disseminated myth that 4,000 Israelis--or, in other versions of this fantasy, 4,000 Jews--who worked in the World Trade Center were warned to stay away on September 11, 2001.]

"The purpose of this lie is clear - [to suggest] that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no-one else did in history, he said.

=> Among its various interesting aspects, this statement by al-Zawahiri represents one more step in the evolution of al-Qaeda's public-relations strategy concerning the September 11 attacks.

For a while, bin Laden maintained a studied ambiguity about whether or not he was responsible for those attacks--hinting strongly that he was, but not saying so explicitly. This ambiguity allowed a great many people to argue that there was no real proof that bin Laden or al-Qaeda had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. And throughout the Middle East and the wider Islamic world, there was a pervasive tendency simultaneously (a) to express admiration for bin Laden for carrying out the 9/11 attacks, and (b) to deny that he (or any other Muslim) had anything to do with them.

Over time, various secondary figures in al-Qaeda gradually acknowledged, directly or indirectly, that al-Qaeda was indeed behind the attacks. And then in a November 2004 video bin Laden himself explicitly admitted (or boasted) that he was responsible. Curiously enough, as I noted at the time, the fact that bin Laden had just made a detailed and explicit confession of having planned and ordered the crime of the century got remarkably little attention.

And in many quarters, it's almost as though he had never confessed. According to international public opinion polls (for example, the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Survey), solid majorities of Muslims around the world have continued to deny that bin Laden & al-Qaeda had anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks--not only Muslims in Muslim-majority countries, but Muslims in most western European countries as well. Those denials might seem a bit bizarre, especially after bin Laden himself has already admitted having done the deed ... but we all know that when the will to believe or disbelieve is strong enough, no amount of evidence can overcome it.

It would appear that, for various reasons about which we can only speculate, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri increasingly view this kind of ambiguity and semi-denial as a problem that needs to be addressed. So now al-Zawahiri is not just insisting on al-Qaeda's responsibility, but complaining that any suggestions to the contrary are malicious slander.

Aside from the fact that al-Qaeda is engaged in a struggle for prestige with Shiite Islamist radicals like Hizbullah (not to mention the fact that they genuinely hate Shiites and regard them as dangerous heretics), one other factor might be a growing realization among Muslims that the great majority of the victims murdered by al-Qaeda and related terrorist groups are ... Muslims. So it's important for al-Zawahiri & Co. to insist on the fact that they have also carried out mass murders of non-Muslims, and specifically of Americans.

(Jews too, naturally. According to other reports, some questioners have tried to needle al-Zawahiri by asking pointedly why al-Qaeda isn't out murdering more Jews. Al-Zawahiri responded, a bit defensively, that al-Qaeda has destroyed "the synagogue in Jerba in Tunisia, attacked a group of Jewish tourists in Mombasa in Kenya, and launched missiles against the Israeli El-Al airline," to mention only some of its anti-Jewish exploits. Furthermore: "We promise our Muslim brothers that we will do our utmost to strike Jews in Israel and abroad with help and guidance from God.")

Of course, despite all the efforts of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to set the record straight, there are still plenty of people in western countries--and not just Muslims--who continue to deny that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, or who at least pretend that their involvement remains an open question. (What about those 4,000 Jews who didn't turn up at the World Trade Center, for example?) Life is tough all around, and sometimes mass murderers just can't get the recognition & respect they deserve.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
BBC News
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Al-Qaeda accuses Iran of 9/11 lie

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has blamed Iran for spreading the theory that Israel was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US.

He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden's network.

Correspondents say the comments underline al-Qaeda's increasing public hostility towards Iran.

In a two-hour audiotape posted on an Islamist website, Osama Bin Laden's chief deputy responded to questions posted by al-Qaeda sympathisers.

In response to a question about persistent rumours in the Middle East that Israel was involved in the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri said the rumour had begun on the Hezbollah television station, Al-Manar.

"The purpose of this lie is clear - [to suggest] that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no-one else did in history, he said.

"Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it."

Sunni fears

Zawahiri went on to criticise Iran for co-operating with the US in its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, that helped to oust the Taleban.

"Iran's aim here is also clear - to cover up its involvement with America in invading the homes of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said.

This is the second verbal attack on Iran, a predominantly Shia Muslim country.

Earlier this month, in an audiotape marking the fifth anniversary of the fall of Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein, the al-Qaeda deputy accused Iran of planning to annexe southern Iraq and the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula.

BBC security correspondent Rob Watson says such messages appear designed to play on Sunni fears throughout the region of growing Iranian influence, and to present al-Qaeda as the best bulwark against Tehran.

Gas tax follies (Paul Krugman et al.)

In a reasonable world, the amount of noise and attention generated by the overblown mini-controversy about a proposed gas-tax holiday would be amazing. I suppose that at least it's a substantive issue, which lifts it one step above the idiotic pseudo-scandal about Obama's "bitter" remarks in San Francisco. As Steve Benen of Politico put it:

One of the awkward realities of the Democratic presidential race is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama really don’t disagree on much. Their platforms are not identical, but in several key areas, the two Dems are generally on the same page. This, as much as anything, leads the campaign [JW: and, more to the point, news coverage and public discussion of the campaign] to focus on trivia, mini-scandals, personalities, and process questions like “electability” — because it’s easier than highlighting the relatively few differences between them.

With this in mind, I am absolutely delighted to see a new, genuine, Grade-A policy conflict between the two candidates emerge. It has nothing to do with a gaffe or a flip-flop or guilt by association. It’s an actual disagreement over substance. I think I’m feeling faint.

But in itself it's a relatively minor issue, with more symbolic than intrinsic significance, and it's ludicrous and discouraging that it should be blotting out discussion of so many much more important & urgent issues. Well, so it goes. Better this than William Ayers or Reverend Wright or flag pins or Hillary's laugh or bogus race-card baiting, I suppose.

On the substance of the matter, there seems to be a remarkable degree of consensus among sensible analysts that Barack Obama is right to oppose this idea, that he deserves credit for explaining why it is an empty political gimmick, and that both Clinton and McCain are guilty of shameless demagogic pandering on this issue. (And in this case the consensus happens to be right, in my opinion.)

The way that the Clinton campaign has responded to economists' near-universal condemnation of this proposal with pseudo-populist economist-bashing and fake anti-"elitist" rhetoric has only made matters worse. That whole gambit is stupid, embarrassing, and pernicious. (And if it turns out to be electorally useful, that doesn't make it any less stupid, unhelpful, and reprehensible.)

At the same time, it's also worth noting--since this point often seems to be lost in the discussion--that Clinton's version of the gas-tax proposal is different from McCain's original version. As Paul Krugman put it a week ago:

John McCain has a really bad idea on gasoline, Hillary Clinton is emulating him (but with a twist that makes her plan pointless rather than evil), and Barack Obama, to his credit, says no.

It's also interesting to note that, so far, Clinton has been the target of almost all the criticism on this issue, while McCain has pretty much gotten a free pass. Double standards? I suppose part of the reason may be that, as long as the bulk of attention in the news media (and the blogosphere) is focused on the Democratic nomination contest, McCain is relatively inconspicuous ... which has advantages as well as disadvantages from his perspective.

=> With respect to the underlying substantive issues, Paul Krugman pretty much nailed it in two recent items on his New York Times blog--see below. (Regarding a few passages, readers might want to bear in mind that Krugman is a Clinton supporter.)

=> And for further elaboration on the Big Picture ... last week Mark Kleiman (an Obama partisan, but--like Krugman--someone who is seriously concerned about the substance of public-policy issues) posted a useful roundup of pieces explaining why the gas-tax proposal is a bad idea not just in itself, but also in terms of its larger implications. Here are some highlights from a few of them.

James Fallows:

The pandering and ignorance-across-party-lines represented by the John McCain-Hillary Clinton united front for a temporary reduction in the gasoline tax should make Americans hold their heads in their hands and moan. No one who has thought about this issue thinks that it will actually reduce prices or -- more important -- help the the people disproportionately hurt by $100+/barrel oil and $4 gasoline. And to the extent it has any effect on America's long-term approach to energy policy, transportation, oil dependence, and climate change, the effect will be perverse.

I can imagine that John McCain, who boasts about his sketchy command of economics, might consider this a good idea. But the master of policy, Hillary Clinton??

Please. This is embarrassing. [....]

Steve Benen:

Now, it’s worth remembering that Clinton and McCain have similar approaches to this, but their plans are not identical. McCain would waive the tax over the summer, and let the Highway Trust Fund suffer with less money. Clinton, in contrast, would impose a new tax on oil companies to make up the difference, so the Highway Trust Fund would be fine. Her approach is obviously more fiscally responsible.

That said, in the broader sense, Clinton and McCain are on one side of this debate, with Obama on the other. In this case, I think the evidence is overwhelming that Obama’s right.

Indeed, I’ve been criticizing McCain for the idea, so it’s only fair that I criticize Clinton for adopting the same idea. A “gas-tax holiday” wouldn’t address the real problem, and might actually make matters worse. [....]

Everything about the McCain-Clinton proposal is just a mess. It wouldn’t address the problem at hand; it would encourage consumption instead of conservation; it would boost oil company profits; it pushes a bogus conservative frame (government taxation is partially responsible for high gas prices); and at least under McCain’s version, it would undercut much-needed transportation funds. Ultimately, it’s part of a search for a short-term quick-fix, but in this case, it’s likely to make matters worse, not better.

It’s nice to be arguing about something substantive for a change, though, isn’t it?

Tom Friedman (when was the last time Mark Kleiman approvingly linked to Tom Friedman?):

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite. [....]

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. “Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets.”

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

The pieces by Benen and Friedman, in particular, are worth reading in full ... and Krugman's discussion below.

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub
=========================
The Conscience of a Liberal
Paul Krugman's New York Times blog
April 29, 2008
Gas tax follies

I’ve been on the road (actually doing a public dialog with Barney Frank on financial reform), so I’m just catching up. Anyway, John McCain has a really bad idea on gasoline, Hillary Clinton is emulating him (but with a twist that makes her plan pointless rather than evil), and Barack Obama, to his credit, says no.

Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.

Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that.

So it’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.

The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.

Add: Just to be clear: I don’t regard this as a major issue. It’s a one-time thing, not a matter of principle, especially because everyone knows the gas-tax holiday isn’t actually going to happen. Health care reform, on the other hand, could happen, and is very much a long-term issue — so poisoning the well by in effect running against universality, as Obama has, is a much more serious breach.

-------------------------
May 6, 2008 - 9:19 am
Gas tax hysterics

OK, this has gone overboard.

Hillary Clinton’s proposed gas tax holiday is not, in my view, a good idea. But the furor over what is, when all is said and done, a small and temporary policy proposal is entirely disproportionate. What’s going on?

Part of it, clearly, is the fact that many people in the media really, really want Obama to win and Clinton to lose — read Kurt Andersen — and have seized on the gas tax as their latest proof that she is ee-ee-vil.

But there’s also something going on with economists, a phenomenon I recognize wearing my other hat: the tendency to place excessive weight on issues where professional judgment differs from lay opinion.

The classic example is free trade versus protectionism. Economists are justly proud of the close reasoning that produced the classical case for free trade, and love to skewer dumb protectionist arguments. I’ve done it myself.

But all too often, economists then become like the little boy with a hammer, to whom everything looks like a nail. Because protectionism is an issue on which they believe they have some special insight, they inflate its importance, and make free trade versus protectionism THE crucial issue in economic policy — which it isn’t. Trade barriers are a minor issue for the United States today; even small wrinkles in health care policy, like overpayment to Medicare Advantage plans, probably matter more to public welfare than all the trade restrictions now in place.

Yet economists talk much more about trade than they do about health care policy, because they think they know something about it in a way the laity don’t.

The gas tax holiday is in this category. Economists really do know something about tax incidence that the laity don’t. So when a presidential candidate says something that conflicts with economistic wisdom, it becomes THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE EVER. Except, you know, it isn’t.

There’s a lot of troubling stuff in both Democrats’ proposals. Mandates aside, Obama is seriously low-balling the cost of health care reform, and promising way too much in middle-class tax cuts. Clinton’s numbers don’t quite add up either, though she’s probably closer to the mark — and both Dems are towering figures of responsibility compared with McCain. Amid all this, the gas tax holiday is a real issue, but a small one; don’t let economist’s tendency to overemphasize their areas of expertise distort your view.

Electoral upset in Louisiana - Another bad omen for the Republicans?

Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo reports:

In a further indication that the Democrats are well-positioned to expand their House majority this November, Democrat Don Cazayoux has won a special election tonight for a Louisiana seat that has been in Republican hands for over 30 years. [....]

In a district that voted 59% for President Bush in 2004, that is simply a stunning result.

This is on top of another big Democratic pick-up two months ago, when Bill Foster (D-IL) won the suburban Illinois seat of former GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert.

I guess it's possible that this result was a fluke, with purely local causes and local significance. Or more likely, as Kleefeld suggests, it may be one more sign that the Republicans are probably headed for catastrophe in the November 2008 Congressional elections. That outcome has long seemed plausible--for reasons that were cogently summed up in January by none other than George Will--and further omens pointing toward a Republican debacle this fall continue to accumulate.

(My guess is that this will include the Presidential election, too, whatever the polls say right now.)

Of course, when it comes to elections, anything can happen in 6 months (yes, believe it or not, there are still 6 months to go) ... so let's hope for the best.

--Jeff Weintraub

P.S. For one anti-Cazayoux ad run by the National Republican Congressional Committee, see this VIDEO. What's interesting about this ad is that the main targets are Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Cazayoux plays only a brief and secondary part toward the end.

Update (5/5/2008): My friend Rick Weil, a heavyweight political sociologist who has been at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge since 1987, and who therefore counts as an expert local informant, has now been good enough to fill in some of the background.

This is my district. The local bit is that Cazayoux is a very conservative Democrat, de-emphasized party, identified himself with John Breaux; while Woody Jenkins is a well-known ultra-conservative, who bought David Duke’s (KKK) mailing list & used to give speeches on the statehouse floor with a plastic fetus in a jar (anti-abortion). This district contains the state capital, LSU, & a growing medical & tech sector. There’s still a fair amount of back-woods, but Jenkins would have made lots of people feel like a laughing stock; plus he failed to paint Cazayoux as a liberal. A more centrist Republican might have won. Also, the black Democrats are angry because Cazayoux beat their guy in the primary, & they may split the Dem vote in November, when the seat has to be run again.

The conclusions I would draw are that (a) the Democrats do have some cause for satisfaction about this election result, but (b) they shouldn't get too carried away.
==============================
TPM Election Central
May 3, 2008
Dems Capture Long-Held GOP House Seat In Louisiana
By Eric Kleefeld

In a further indication that the Democrats are well-positioned to expand their House majority this November, Democrat Don Cazayoux has won a special election tonight for a Louisiana seat that has been in Republican hands for over 30 years.

With 99% of precincts reporting, Cazayoux leads with 49,371 votes, or 49% of the vote, followed by Republican Woody Jenkins at 46,554 votes, or 46%. In a district that voted 59% for President Bush in 2004, that is simply a stunning result.

This is on top of another big Democratic pick-up two months ago, when Bill Foster (D-IL) won the suburban Illinois seat of former GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert.

In short, this year isn't going very well so far for the NRCC.

From Istanbul to London ... via the British election

As most of you probably know, there was just a round of local elections in Britain (minus Scotland), which resulted in a comprehensive disaster for the Labour Party. The main beneficiaries were the Conservatives.

The biggest single election of this bunch was the one for Mayor of London. A directly-elected Mayor of London was a post introduced in 2000 by the then-fairly-new Blair government as part of its devolution program. To Blair's dismay, the winner in 2000 was the one-time radical firebrand Ken Livingstone, who managed to get elected despite having been denied the Labour Party's endorsement. Livingstone got re-elected in 2004 as the official Labour candidate But this time Livingstone was defeated by the Conservative candidate Boris Johnson, a slightly odd character, invariably described as "colourful," who was once editor of the right-wing Spectator and has also been a Conservative MP and member of the Conservative shadow cabinet.








(There were various other candidates, including the Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick, a highly respected--and openly gay--former Deputy Commissioner in the London police force. But they got buried by the top two candidates.)

The New York Times report opened with the standard line on Johnson:

Boris Johnson, the floppy-haired media celebrity and Conservative member of Parliament who transformed himself from a shambling, amusing-aphorism-uttering figure of fun into a plausible political force, was elected mayor of London on Friday. [....]

In his colorful career, the new London mayor has survived public airing of an extramarital affair whose existence he originally denied as an “inverted pyramid of piffle”; has apologized to whole cities, like Liverpool, that he offended in one way or another; and has been prone to saying things like: “Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.”

He has developed a reputation for having a fearsome but un-serious intellect and for wading into and out of embarrassing scrapes. But a man who has previously poked fun at the political process, saying: “I can’t remember what my line on drugs is. What’s my line on drugs?” and “I’m backing David Cameron’s campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest,” has been kept under a tight rein this time around, sticking to issues like crime and transportation. [....]

The Guardian put it this way:

Boris Johnson last night notched up the Tories' greatest electoral success since John Major's surprise victory in the 1992 general election when he unseated Ken Livingstone as mayor of London.

Ecstatic Conservatives cheered at London's City Hall, at the end of a count lasting more than 15 hours, as the man who had been dismissed as the Bertie Wooster of British politics took charge of one of the biggest political offices in Britain. [....]

A pre-election piece by Martin O'Neill in the left-wing New Statesman gave it a slightly different spin:

Boris Johnson is a dishonest, incompetent clown, whose life has been a story of contemptuous, self-serving privilege. The fact that he may on 1 May be elected Mayor of London tells us something very unsavoury about the ways in which Britain continues to be disfigured by social class.

The facts about Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson are well-known, and should be more than sufficient to stop him being a plausible candidate for any kind of elected office in a mature democracy. He is a man who has lost a number of jobs for lying: he was sacked from The Times for making up a quotation from his godfather, the Oxford historian Colin Lucas, and lost his front-bench role, under Michael Howard, for lying about his four-year extra-marital affair with his fellow toff journalist, Petronella Wyatt. (For men like Johnson, with friends in high places, serial sackings are no bar to advancement.)

As well as being a famous liar, Johnson has skirted the borders of criminality when it has suited his interests or those of his foul, larcenous and over-privileged friends. [....]

Boris Johnson is not only shady, dishonest and incompetent. He is also a particularly offensive kind of clown, as is evidenced by his absurd litany of gaffes and insults. The people of Papua New Guinea are, according to Johnson, “cannibals,” while Portsmouth is “full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs”.

Worst of all is Johnson’s casual racism, although it is perhaps not wholly surprising from someone of his class and background. It takes a particular kind of bad judgement, as despicable as it is revealing, to think that there could be anything funny about describing the participants in the Congolese civil war as having “watermelon smiles” or talking of “crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies” (with conscious echoes of Enoch Powell?), yet both phrases appeared in a Daily Telegraph article by Johnson as recently as 2002. Such a man simply does not belong in modern, multicultural London.[....]

In any sane society, Boris Johnson would not be a plausible candidate for Mayor, even within the Conservative party. Yet he is odds-on favourite to win the mayoralty. [....]

Can't please everyone, I guess. For some background information on Johnson, including photos, see this fairly extensive BBC News profile, along with this and this.

The London election was important in practical and even more in symbolic terms, and I can't feel good about the Conservatives winning it. On the other hand, while Ken Livingstone has done some good things as Mayor, he has been increasingly odious in some ways himself, so I can't feel entirely crushed by his defeat. (For a genuinely ambivalent farewell to Livingstone, by a former supporter eventually pushed over the edge, see "Goodbye, King Newt" by David T. at Harry's Place. If the newt reference doesn't ring an immediate bell, the piece will make it clear.)

But be that as it may ... one angle that some of you may find more intriguing (though it will be no news to others) is Johnson's Turkish connection.

=> Boris Johnson--more precisely, as Martin O'Neill reminds us, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson--is correctly described by his long-time pal Andrew Sullivan as "an extremely wealthy Etonian." And as you can see from the photos, he looks the part--almost like a caricature of a blond ultra-posh upper-class Brit (straight out of "Brideshead Revisited").



However, it so happens that Johnson's paternal great-grandfather was the prominent Turkish liberal journalist and politician Ali Kemal Bey (who, among other things, condemned the Armenian genocide). Ali Kemal opposed both the Young Turks and then, after World War I, the followers of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), and was killed by the latter in 1922. According to the Wikipedia mini-bio:

On November 4, 1922, Ali Kemal was kidnapped from a barber's shop at Tokatliyan Hotel in Istanbul, and was carried to the Asiatic side of the city by a motor boat en route to Ankara for a trial on charges of treason. On November 6, 1922, the party was intercepted at Izmit by General Nureddin, then the Commander of the First Army which was aligned with Mustafa Kemal. Ali Kemal was lynched by a mob set up by the General. His head was smashed by cudgels and he was stoned to death. As described by Nureddin personally to Dr. Riza Nur, who with Ismet Inönü was on his way to Lausanne to negotiate peace with the Allies, "his blood-covered body was subsequently hanged with an epitaph across his chest which read, 'Artin Kemal'". This bestowal of a fictitious Armenian name administered a final indignity to the victim.

Ali Kemal's first wife was an Anglo-Swiss woman, Winifred Brun, whose mother-in-law's maiden name had been Margaret Johnson. Winifred died in childbirth in 1909. Ali Kemal's second marriage was to a Turkish woman, Sabiha Hanim. His son and daughter by his first marriage were recognized as British subjects, settled in England in the 1920s, and adopted their maternal grandmother's maiden name of Johnson. Since then that branch of Ali Kemal Bey's descendants have been English Johnsons.

I can't help being reminded of the way that, during WWI, the Battenbergs took the more English-sounding name of Mountbatten--but you really can't get more English-sounding than Johnson. Ali Kemal's son Osman Ali became Wilfred Johnson; his grandson Stanley Johnson is a former Conservative Member of the European Parliament as well as an author and, apparently, a noted environmentalist and animal-welfare campaigner; and his great-grandson Boris Johnson is the new Mayor of London. From one great cosmopolitan city to another ...

Cheers,
Jeff Weintraub

P.S. According to Boris Johnson, the genetic background for his blond hair may not come entirely from the English side of his family tree. He claims that his great-great-grandmother was a Circassian slave girl who was bought and later married by his Turkish great-great-grandfather. There's nothing inherently implausible about this story, but whether or not there is any truth to it is a matter of some uncertainty.

Immigration "reform" suggestions - Bring back indentured servitude?

I recommend watching this VIDEO. But first, some background.

=> From the Denver Post (4/7/2008):

Calling America a country perfectly "capable of multitasking," [Colorado] Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer said the U.S. ought to be pursuing a guest- worker program at the same time it fortifies its borders. [....]

"It's a practical impossibility to contemplate rounding up 15 or 20 million illegal visitors and deporting them," said Schaffer, who as a congressman was a member of Tom Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus and co-sponsored a bill severely reducing allowable numbers of family-related legal immigrants.

In his first extended remarks on the issue as a candidate, Schaffer called for tamper-proof IDs for immigrant workers and tougher workplace enforcement, and even suggested giving federal grants to sheriffs and local police for immigration enforcement.

But he said the U.S. should take a "broad, comprehensive approach" to the problem of illegal immigration and suggested that workers brought in on temporary visas should be allowed to eventually apply for citizenship, a position out in front of many in his party. [....]

Schaffer is clear to say he doesn't support amnesty for illegal immigrants now in the U.S. Instead, guest-worker visas should be available only to those who have not broken the country's immigration laws, he said.

The millions now in the country illegally would likely go home through tougher enforcement and as a legal avenue for more immigrant labor became available — a process of attrition that he suggested could take 25 years. [....]

One of the difficulties that Schaffer now faces is that his current views are at odds with more hard-line positions he has staked out in the past. In Congress, he praised Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus as the "only organization in Washington looking at finding balanced, sensible solutions." And in 2006, as National Republican Committeeman, he supported a resolution that called for the elimination of automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.

On the face of it, this does sound like a more reasonable and "moderate" position than the one Schaffer used to take. But the heart of his new position is the advocacy of an expanded "guest-worker" program for importing non-immigrant labor on a temporary basis. A number of western European countries tried this approach in the decades after World War II (the euphemistic term "guest worker," or Gastarbeiter, was coined in what was then West Germany), and it didn't work out brilliantly for them. But Schaffer has another model in mind:

He pointed to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate that imports tens of thousands of foreign textile workers, as a successful model for a guest-worker program that could be adapted nationally.

"The concept of prequalifying foreign workers in their home country under private- sector management is a system that works very well in one place in America," he said of the islands' program. "I think members of Congress ought to be looking at that model and be considering it as a possible basis for a nationwide program."

Even in the best of circumstances, I think that for the US to embrace large-scale reliance on "guest-worker" programs, the whole point of which is to separate participation in the labor market from the prospect of citizenship and full membership in American society, would be unwise and un-American. (As Paul Krugman correctly pointed out in 2006, this would mean taking "The Road to Dubai".)

But part of the problem is precisely that guest-worker programs don't always operate under the best of circumstances. In practice (remember those Persian Gulf countries) they are often exploitative, oppressive, and otherwise inhumane. And it so happens that Schaffer couldn't have picked a better example to illustrate these dangers. A subsequent article in the Denver Post pointed out that the Marianas guest-worker program has long been notorious for its systematically and pervasively abusive character:

At the heart of the issue is the islands' massive textile industry, which is exempted from the U.S. minimum wage as well as most American immigration laws. The Northern Marianas economy is built on thousands of workers from China, the Philippines and Bangladesh, some of whom pay labor recruiters as much as $7,000 to land a job on U.S. soil.

A class-action lawsuit filed [in 1999] alleged that many of those workers lived in slum conditions, housed seven to a room