Michelle Obama Does Not Want To Talk About Rev. Wright
(Who blames her?) An excerpt, courtesy of NBC News, from tomorrow morning's Today Show.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: Michelle, do you feel that the Reverend Wright betrayed your husband?
MICHELLE OBAMA: I think Barack has spoken so clearly and eloquently about this.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: But do you personally feel that the Reverend Wright...
MICHELLE OBAMA: You know what I think Meredith? I think we gotta move forward. You know, this conversation doesn't help my kids. You know, it doesn't help kids out there who are looking for us to make decisions and choices about how we're going to better fund education.
CBS and the New York Times also polled the general election.
At this stage, we're all poststructuralists; the horse race numbers have little to do with the reality of the November election. But again, the differences between the candidates reveal a lot about how the candidates are perceived by the electorate. Hillary Clinton does a little bit better than Barack Obama over John McCain, holding a lead outside the margin of error. (48 to 43 with leaners pushed for Clinton, 45 to 45 with leaners pushed for Obama.) The poll finds that a number of white women have left Obama's campaign to take a look at McCain, who actually ties (leads by 3) Obama among women overall. When was the last time there was gender parity in the electorate? Independents split between Obama and McCain and between Clinton and McCain; Clinton's margin comes from women.
THIRTY-NINE percent of Americans believe that Barack Obama would comport himself well in an international crisis, seven points lower than Clinton's score and 14 points lower than McCain's score. 31% of Americans think Obama would be swayed by special interests, but McCain scores equally well. Cindy McCain has a national favorability score of 50; Michelle Obama has one of 32, although Americans know her much less well.
THE PARADOX of the war continues to vex. 62% of Americans want to end the war within a year or two. Clear enough. But 77% want "flexibility" added to the decision-making rubric of their commanders in chief. That flexibility is predicated on the conditions in Iraq.
52% of Americans have a favorable impression of the Democratic Party. 33% of Americans feel the same way about Republicans. And Democrats lead by 18 points on the generic congressional ballot.
The CBS News/New York Times poll out tonight is a high resolution snapshot of what the Democratic race looks like right now. The poll was taken over the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday, so some of the sample had yet to digest the full effects of Rev. Wright.
Propelling Obama forward more than any other force at this point is the expectation that he will be the nominee. When last polled by CBS and the Times, 70% of Democratic primary voters – a larger set than registered Democrats – said they thought Obama would receive the nomination. That figure, at that time, demonstrated quite nicely that contrary to claims, most Democratic primary voters could do the delegate math and were well informed about the likely course of events. That number has declined to 51% today. Presumably, those Democratic primary voters have not lost their math ability. Less than half of Democrats believe that Obama would have the best chance of beating John McCain, down eight from last month.
NONE OF THIS IS TO SAY that Clinton is doing all that much better. In fact, she’s down overall – losing to Obama among primary voters 46% to 38%. A third of Democratic primary voters expect her to win, and 37% believe she has the best chance of beating John McCain. A better measure here might be the smaller orbit of registered voters, where Clinton trails Obama by five points on this most important question, the question that serves as the central organizing principle for superdelegates. The potential minefield for Obama can be found when voters are asked to judge his personal qualities. He no longer wears a halo; Democrats view Obama and Clinton equally as favorably. But they view Clinton as much more patriotic – 55% say she is “very patriotic” versus 39% who say the same thing about Obama. Correspondingly, he remains much more trustworthy and honest in the eyes of Democratic voters.
THE CONVENTION is where most Democrats surveyed believe that the nomination will be settled, an expectation that helps Hillary Clinton enormously, as it indicates that voters will not be unpleasantly surprised by a hot summer of, well, something. A majority say they do not want party leaders and superdelegates to step in and end the race early, although Obama supporters are much less likely to support this view than Clinton voters are. I've written elsewhere that petulance, by which I mean a gathering ‘round effect common to polarizing enterprises, explains why a fair number of Clinton and Obama supporters right now say they would not support the opponent. It’s assumed that Clinton would have a harder time integrating Obama’s coalition into hers, but the data shows something else: 64% of Obama supporters would be satisfied if Clinton were the nominee, versus 50% of Clinton voters who say they'd be satisfied if Obama were the nominee. Indeed, 35% of Clinton supporters still say that they’ll support John McCain in the fall versus 23% of Obama supporters. The FACT of the support for McCain is not what’s interesting; it’s the disparity between Obama and Clinton. A slender majority of both candidates’ supporters are in favor of a dream ticket.
Here is Barack Obama's response to Hillary Clinton's ad on a gas tax pause. You can tell by the text that it was shot on the road within the past two days. It's expensive -- 60 seconds -- and will run in rotation in both Indiana and North Carolina.
“I’m here to tell you the truth. We could suspend the gas tax for 6 months, but that’s not going to bring down gas prices long-term. You’re gonna save about 25, 30 dollars…or half a tank of gas. That’s typical of how Washington works. There’s a problem, everybody’s upset about gas prices – let’s find some short-term, quick-fix, that we can say we did something even though, even though we’re not really doing anything. We cannot deliver on a better energy policy unless we change how business is done in Washington. We’ve got to go out to the oil companies and look at their price-gouging. We’ve got to start using less oil and that means raising fuel efficiency standards on cars and developing alternative fuels. That’s the real honest answer to how we’re going to solve this problem. That’s what you need from a President someone who’s going to tell you the truth.”
THAT'S THE Republican Party of Florida having some fun.
About 200 Democrats from Florida did indeed picket outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters building on Ivy Street in Southeast Washington today. According to my colleagues at CongressDaily, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL) threatened to "shut down the convention" unless the full delegation were restored. Many of the protesters were members of LULAC, a Latino-rights group.
MISSING from the demonstration: Michigan Democrats.
A few metrics to consider this afternoon. Fox News has a poll showing with a fount of good news for Hillary Clinton, which should not surprise since it was fielded on Monday and Tuesday -- they're capturing the height of Obama's bad week. For six days, Gallup's track has indicated a tie in preferences. That's support for the theory that the party is, and will be, fairly evenly divided. And Clinton's stock is rising on the Intrade Prediction Markets (play along here), although Obama still commands a higher price.
Obama's Name Now Toxic In Mississippi For One Democrat
Travis Childers, the Democratic congressional candidate who has the chance to flip Mississippi's first congressional district from Republican to Democrat, is so concerned with Mississippi voters falsely believing that he's been endorsed by Barack Obama that he has decided to cut an ad calling that claim "an attack."
Republican Greg Davis links Rev. Jeremiah Wright through Obama to Childers using a silly but apparently time-tested guilt by association advertisement. Childers's new ad protests. . His family, he says in the spot, "has heard the lies and attacks linking me to politicians I don't know and have never even met." (The Davis ad also refers to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi as well as to Obama, but the context of the past few days makes it clear that it's Obama Childers is referring to.)
LAST SUMMER, Obama bragged about his ability to expand the map for Democrats, to turn red states blue. He said that "If we just got African-Americans in Mississippi to vote their percentage of the population, Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state." As was pointed out at the time, the problem in Mississippi for Democrats isn't black voters not voting their proportions -- it's the white voters who don't vote for Democratic candidates. (Actually, blacks voted well above this threshold in the 2004 general election.) Is Barack Obama's name now political poison in Mississippi?
1. In describing a superdelegate who pledged her support to Hillary Clinton today, I used the word "automatic," which, while accurate, is generally a term associated with Clinton campaign adviser Harold Ickes, and thus, not precisely neutral. This is less of a correction than an acknowledgment of the semiotic complexities of covering this race.
2. I described Jon Ham, who reported receiving a call from a pollster asking about Rev. Wright and Obama, as a Republican. I assumed he was a Republican because the organization to which he belongs and blogs for is known as a bastion of economic conservatism and libertarianism. Our brains have an heuristic for partisan sorting. In this case, it failed me. Mr. Ham informs me that he's been a registered Democrat since 1968.
3. A post yesterday on committee chairs who've endorsed Clinton and Obama missed quite a number of endorsements. Dorgan (Indian Affairs), Rockefeller (Intelligence) and Conrad (Budget) endorsed Obama. So that's eight chairs for Obama and three for Clinton.
On his Radio Factor program this afternoon, Fox's Bill O'Reilly called his interview with Hillary Clinton "the toughest" she's ever done. He implies that the two mix it up over sanctuary cities.
New NC Clinton Ad Features Maya A Using The P-Word
A "prayer."
Here's the script:
"Maya"
TV :60
Maya Angelou: Hillary Clinton is a prayer of every American who really longs for fair play.
Working men and women have had their jobs snatched from underneath them, their homes snatched away from them. And what we need, I think, is a person, a President who can make a difference in our country.
She intends to help our country become what it can become. She dares to say human beings are more alike than we are unalike.
I watched her become interested in public health and in education for all the children.
And I watched her stand.
I have found the person I think would be the best president for the United States of America.
Hillary Clinton: I'm Hillary Clinton and I approved this message.
Chelsea Picks Up A Puerto Rico Superdelegate For Her Mother
Chelsea Clinton just bagged a superdelegate for her mother. The youngest Clinton is campaigning today in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A few moments ago, at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon, Luisette Cabanas, an unpledged superdelegate, announced her support for Clinton, giving the campaign the majority of automatic** delegates on the island.
Chelsea and her entourage are being hosted by superdelegates Fransisco Domenech and Senate President Kenneth Mclintock.)
** Obama supporters don't use the word "automatic" anymore, not even, I'd suspect, in normal conversation. So here's what I'll do: when Clinton picks up a superdelegate, I'll use the A-word. When Obama picks up a superdelegate, I'll use the S word. The semiotic complexities of the Democratic primary race are confusing.
MoveOn.org today announced a month-long one-million dollar ad campaign designed to tie John McCain to President Bush on Iraq. The subject of the ad is straightforward enough, as is the response to the ad that the RNC has issued (MoveOn. Liberal group endorsed Liberal Obama for Liberal Reasons. Liberal.) The ad will air on national cable to jones up the influencers and donors, and in Iowa and New Mexico. Unless groups like MoveOn are willing to release their specific buy schedules, it pays to be a bit skeptical about the size and scope of their effort. In this case, I suspect that MoveOn will rely on contributions generated from those who approve the ad (the "right on, dude! effect) to reach their million dollar target.
THE TAG LINE of MoveOn's ad is superficially unremarkable and contextually misleading:
"100 years in Iraq? And you thought no one could be worse than George Bush." That the DNC and MoveOn and the Obama campaign have no compunction about taking John McCain's words out of context suggests to me that the battle to rectify the deliberate misinterpretation of McCain's remarks is over, no matter how times those of us with no real dog in the fight point that McCain really said something a bit different than what his opponents wanted him to say.
Barack Obama has taking a beating in the press and in the public polls, but the party's superdelegates don't seem to have been swayed. Today, Obama picks up the endorsement of Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) and Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN), while Clinton was endorsed by a Pennsylvania delegate, the head of the state's AFL-CIO.
CLINTON HAS picked 9 superdelegates since her win in Ohio. Obama has picked up 40. Since Pennsylvania, Clinton has picked up 5; Obama has picked up nine. There are 237 left. The trickle of superdelegates to Obama reflects two forces. One is that superdelegates are becoming more and more concerned with that if the party fails to unify quickly, it won't be able to unify, ever. The second is a conviction that because Obama will win (cross-reference the mathematical arguments), the party must draw hermetic circle around him as quickly as possible in order to avoid allowing any more of his magic to escape. This pressure is crossed by the superdelegates' own personal political concerns and their own personal preferences. So one one hand, the superdelegates face peer pressure and public pressure to coalesce around Obama; on the other, they nurture their private doubts.
A small, perhaps unrepresentative tidbit that points to a strong fundraising month for John McCain. A GOP source says that John McCain raised $1.5 million at a single fundraising event on Sunday at the Biltmore in Coral Gables, FL. Accouterments included a pig roast, salsa singer Willy Chirino, and even Jeb Bush, making a rare public appearance. Several prominent fundraisers for Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani attended.
An independent survey for Howey Politics Indiana conducted by Gauge Market Research gives Barack Obama 47% of the vote to Hillary Clinton's 45 percent. (The margin of error is 4.1% with a 95% degree of confidence.) Those of you following the gubernatorial race should note that Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) beats both potential Democratic opponents and Indiana University is the favorite Hoosier institution of higher education.
HILLARY CLINTON's new Indiana ad is tough. The Obama campaign calls it the "first attack ad" in Indiana. What they really mean is that they think it's demagogic. But these are facts: Clinton supports a gas tax pause and a freeze on foreclosures and Obama doesn't. He's said that both ideas are expedient and potentially harmful. The ad implies that Clinton favors action NOW and Obama does not. Clinton does not do Obama the courtesy of explaining his positions. Generally, you don't do that in political ads. Indeed, it's hard to do that even in a 30 second rebuttal ad, though I suspect that Jim Margolis already has one in the can, probably citing Paul Krugman.
Here's the script.
Hillary Clinton: I'm Hillary Clinton and I approved this message
Announcer: The economy's in trouble.
When the housing crisis broke, Hillary Clinton called for action: a freeze on foreclosures.
Barack Obama said, no.
Now, gas prices are skyrocketing, and she's ready to act again.
Hillary's plan: Use the windfall profits of the oil companies to pay to suspend the gas tax this summer.
Barack Obama says no, again
People are hurting.
It's time for a president who's ready to take action now.
Had Barack Obama not interrupted his day to denounce his former pastor, he would have used some new language to describe the gas tax holiday proposed by John McCain and Hillary Clinton.
"This is the problem with Washington. We are facing a situation where oil prices could hit $200 a barrel. Oil companies like Shell and BP just reported record profits for the quarter. And we’re arguing over a gimmick that would save you half a tank of gas over the course of the entire summer so that everyone in Washington can pat themselves on the back and say that they did something."
Economist Jonah Gelbach weighs in:
"....one point that has gone largely unreported in the regular media is that a brief gas tax holiday would likely do little to reduce prices for consumers simply because in the short run the supply of gasoline is relatively fixed (in econese, the short run supply curve is close to vertical). As a result, a cut in the gas tax of brief duration will simply cause the pre-tax price of gas to rise. This would mean that the price paid by consumers would change relatively little, if at all (tho James Hamilton's post, linked below, suggests the consumer price might fall by as much as half the gas tax, which I think would be about 9 cents). Instead, the price received by oil companies would simply rise, providing them with windfall profits."
Gelbach is an Obama supporter; for more analysis that backs up his reading of the inelasticity of oil prices, see here.
Clinton's proposal, of course, would target the windfall profits and would in theory be revenue neutral, depending on how the tax is set up and collected. McCain's proposal would add to the deficit.
All questions were about the Obama-Wright relationship and whether that made me think more unfavorably about Barack Obama. Then they asked if I was more inclined now to vote for Hillary since this blew up.
The pro-Clinton 527s are operating in Indiana, not North Carolina. Yet. I know the Obama camp is polling regularly in North Carolina and I know they're conducting focus groups. But I do not know whether they've polled the Wright question. Maybe a media organization is doing this? Maybe the North Carolina GOP is testing for another ad?
DEMOCRATS IN Michigan want Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to sign on to a compromise that would allocate a net of ten delegates to Hillary Clinton. Sen. Carl Levin, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick,UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, and DNC Member Debbie Dingell outlined their proposal in a letter to Michigan's Dem chair, Mark Brewer.
The four want to allocate 69 pledged delegates to Hillary Clinton and 59 to Barack Obama. The approach splits the difference between the equal delegate proposal coming out of Chicago (g4 for each) and the 73-to-55 delegate split that the Clinton campaign would obtain from the results of the primary, with almost all of the uncommitted delegates being pledged to Obama. The four also write that they oppose the challenge by DNC member Joel Ferguson, which would give superdelegates a full vote and pledged delegates half of a vote.
THE PROPOSAL represents a climbdown of sorts for Michigan Democrats and is not likely to be well received at the Clinton campaign. DNC officials have said that, absent a deal between the two candidates, only the credentials committee can sanction a solution.
A senior Obama official said of the proposal, "we'll look into it."
OK, I'll engage in a smidgen of psychoanalysis. I'll do so through reader K., who supports Obama:
"It may be cynical, but I've started to think that Wright sees Obama as, in a way, a threat to his ministry. It would be difficult for him to preach that the government systematically destroys the lives of black people if a black man is sitting in the White House."
I know that many people inside Obama's campaign share this belief.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton, has endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Here's a statement from Skelton, released through his House campaign: "It is my intention as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton because of her support in rural America, her commitment to National Security, and her dedication to our men and women in uniform."
A Democratic Candidate Distances Himself From Obama
A play from the National Republican Congressional Committee's playbook is executed to perfection. Travis Childers, a candidate for Mississippi's first congressional district, told reporters yesterday that Barack Obama hasn't endorsed his campaign, despite an ad by his opponent linking the two and Rev. Wright. Said Childers: "I've not been in contact with his campaign, nor has he been in contact with mine." The ad refers to efforts by Obama supporters to raise money for Childers through the MyBarackObama.com portal.
Here's a news reporter about the distancing. (Ignore the provocative headline).
CHILDERS NEARLY won a majority of the votes cast in the district, which would have allowed him to beat Republican Greg Davis and flip the seat without a run-off. Childers has a good shot of picking up the seat. Elections in Mississippi and Louisiana in two weeks may be the first real tests as to whether Republicans can turn into Obama into an effective boogeyman. Childers's eagerness to shrug off his party's frontrunner is a sign that some Democrats scare easily. A Democratic loss in that seat would not be helpful for Mr. Obama. The special election is set for May 13.
EARLY THIS MORNING, after a long day of campaigning, aides showed Barack Obama extended excerpts from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's jaunty and freewheeling press conference in Washington. Obama, the aides said, was deeply, visibly angry. Two said he "insisted" that he hold a second press conference today to unequivocally denounce Rev. Wright's conduct and sever himself from Wright's fulminations. Obama did not want to let Wright hijack his campaign any longer. Five days was enough.
Judging by his square jaw and his posture -- rigid -- and his tone of voice -- elegiac and sad at points, and hard and resolute at others, Obama felt aggrieved and disrespected, especially by Wright's implication that Obama's speech on racial politics in Philadelphia was mere politics.
"I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that obviously whatever relationship I had with Rev. Wright has changed, he said. "I don't think he showed much concern for me ... and what we are trying to do in this campaign."
"My reaction has more to do with what I want this campaign to be about.... in some ways, what Rev. Wright said yesterday directly contradicts everything that I've done during my life. It contradicts how i was raise and the setting in which I was raised; it contradicts my decision to pursue a career of public service. It contradicts the issues that I've worked on politically."
In Philadelphia, Obama said he "can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother." Obama has changed his mind, even to the point of insisting that Wright was not his spiritual mentor.
OBAMA HAS used the power of his rhetoric to end controversies before, and the campaign hopes now that Obama's angry soundbites will now replace some of Wright's more radical utterances on the cable news. The campaign won't say whether, in their North Carolina tracking polls, they discovered any fall-off among white voters. The bet they're making is that by extending the active phase of a story for at least one more day, they can prevent its long tail from influencing too many votes next Tuesday.
ALREADY THOUGH, the cable news coverage of Obama's speech is off on a different tangent: psychological pornography. They're scrutinizing the thoughts behind the thinking; whether Wright felt Obama was an ungrateful upstart; whether Obama felt betrayed by Wright; whether Obama is more embarrassed than ashamed.
Obama: Wright's "Rants" Show "Complete Disregard" for Obama. American People
Barack Obama is holding a remarkable press conference right now about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama is angry. Wright's "rants," he said, were "a show of disrespect to me," and have created a "spectacle."
"I felt as if there was a complete disregard for what the American people are going through and the need for them to rally together to solve these problems. It not is the time for us not to get distracted, now is the time for us to pull together."
Gov. Mike Easley, known to Obama supporters now as "Hillary's top NC surrogate," used the word "pansy" this morning to favorably compare Hillary Clinton to Rocky Balboa. Eyebrows were raised; Clinton said nothing. The pansy, is, of course, a flower of exquisite delicateness, which is probably where the 19th century taunt originated. It's now seen as a slur, albeit a slur of a lesser register than others. Not the most comfortable choice of words, but was Easley really saying that Clinton made Balboa look like a gay person? Or just an effeminate weakling? Who wrote that line for him?
Not only does Barack Obama have more Senate endorsements than Hillary Clinton, he has more senior endorsements as well:
Reader MB writes:
So am I missing someone, or has Obama shut Hillary out among endorsements from Committee Chairs in the body in which they both serve? Kerry (Small Business), Leahy(Judiciary), .... Kennedy (Health, Education & Labor), Dodd (Banking), and now Bingaman (Energy.) I guess if you count the Rules Committee, Hillary has Feinstein.
Other readers who know better write in: what about Sen. Barbara Boxer? Daniel Inoyue?
Jeffrey Goldberg takes the plunge. The threefold benediction: may his blog keep him and sustain him; may it not drive him prematurely gray; may his name be inscribed forever in the scroll of brave souls who dared to read the comments.
With gasoline averaging $3.60 a gallon, not surprisingly, President Bush says he's willing to take a look at "any ideas" that Congress puts forth to help consumers, including a gas tax pause -- the same proposal that spokesperson Dana Perino said yesterday was a non-starter.
JOHN MCCAIN likes the idea; he's been hammering Barack Obama for allegedly being insensitive to the economic despair faced by average driver-Americans. To pay for it, McCain would divert money from "general revenues," which is a fancy way of saying that he'd find other federal programs to cut. Hillary Clinton supports a temporary tax pause, too. She's fund it with a tax on oil company profits above a certain amount. Of course, suspending the gasoline tax would probably help oil companies a bit given the inevitable rise in demand that accompanies such incentive tinkering. At $18 cents a gallon, a consumer might save two bucks a pop on gas -- enough for a newspaper and a stick of gum. The CBO concluded that the average consumer would save $30 bucks over the course of the summer, assuming they fill out about 15 times. Why doesn't Obama support this? For one, it didn't help the economy all that much when it was tried in Illinois in 2000. Two, he sees it as a gimmick that will give consumers the impression that Washington is fixing the problem while in point of fact not fixing or even tackling the real problem at all. His environmentalist allies oppose a pause because they don't want people driving more than they already do.
COMESTIC PANDERING is one explanation for what Clinton and Obama are doing. But on another, even more sensitive issue, it's hard to argue that McCain is taking the politically expedient route. He opposes the "Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act," essentially a GI Bill for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Why? It can't be the cost -- about $4 billion a year, or less than one half of the cost of his gas tax pause. It can't be the company -- the bill is authored by Jim Webb and cosponsors include John Warner and Chuck Hagel. McCain's aides say he opposes the bill because the military fears that the incentives contained within it would persuade too many active duty soldiers to leave their service early and would, during a time of two wars, hurt overall readiness. (The U.S. military formally opposes the Webb bill.) McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham have sponsored a competing bill (though they insist it is complimentary) that would tie the level of benefits given to the amount of service rendered.
IN THE END, McCain will face enormous pressure to vote for the GI bill that Webb (and 56 other senators) will debate on the floor toward the end of the month. His Senate office wants to work with Webb to find ways to provide more incentives to those who stay in the military longer. The core proposals of the Webb bill are likely to reach the White House, with or without McCain's support.
Did McCain Reject A Longterm Presence of U.S. Troops?
Sam Stein at the Huffington Post has the quotes, the video and the headline: "Shocking McCain Quotes Unearthed" to suggest that he was skeptical of the idea, but the transcript of the interview, given in 2005, is more equivocal:
Here:
MATTHEWS: As a policy suggestion, is it something that we all want the world to know we`re eventually coming home and we might as well argue about when or...
MCCAIN: Sure we`re going to come home.
But the fact is that the key to it is not when the troops come home. It is when we stop reading -- today, Shuster just reported four brave young Marines were killed. It is the casualties that creates the discontent amongst Americans. We`ve been in Bosnia for, what, 10, 12, years, Kosovo for 10 years, South Korea for 50 years. Americans aren`t upset about that.
But we have got to get the casualty rate down. And that`s the transfer of well-trained and well-equipped Iraqis to handle the security situation.
Followed by this paragraph, parts of which are included in the YouTube video that the Huffington Post obtained from a Democrat:
MATTHEWS: Would you be happy -- we`ve been there to help get them democracy started. But would you be happy with that being the home of a U.S. garrison, like Guantanamo or Germany all those years, where we have 50,000 troops permanently stationed in that country?
MCCAIN: No. I would hope that we could bring them all home. I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: But you`ve heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I`ve heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German -- the North Korean -- the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?
MCCAIN: I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence.
And I don`t pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be.
One can question the wisdom of what McCain's proposing, but the full context of the interview he gave in 2005 suggests that he modeled a long-term US commitment to Iraq on South Korea, albeit with a big difference: a major corps would not necessarily have to embed itself in the country. Soldiers, euphamized as "military advisers," would maintain a presence. But McCain has never said that he favors keeping combat troops in Iraq for an indefinite period of time. Major questions remain: what constitutes an appropriate level of casualties? How will the US know when Iraq is stable enough for us to begin withdrawing troops? What will McCain's "military advisers" do? If Iraq erupts into chaos after troops leave, will the US retrench?
Will Barack Obama's campaign reach its goal of 1.5 million donors by May 6? Does it even matter? 1.5 million is a nice, whole number and a great talking point, but 1.45m isn't exactly a failure. At $50 a pop, 1.5 million donors can fund a $75,000,000 general election campaign. The Obama campaign has kept mum about its plans for the general election, but here's betting they've done the math, too.
Sen. John McCain's campaign will air this health care ad in Iowa starting today. It features McCain talking to an unseen subject just off camera, explaining in sober tones the features of his health care plan. There are a few implicit messages: McCain understands the problem; he's optimistic about solving it; he's not going to cede the terrain to the Democrats.
Once again, the top Republican House strategist has said publicly that Hillary Clinton would be the tougher Democrat for his charges to run against in the fall, and Obama would be the weaker candidate. The question imposes itself: why on earth would Tom Cole admit this? A large crowd will assume that he is attempting a fumbling Jiujitsu move by luring the Democrats into a false sense of remorse about almost nominating Obama because Obama, in fact, would be the more difficult candidate. Indeed, Democratic superdelegates might actually pay attention to what Tom Cole says. Or he could be telling the truth. I suspect that the actual difference in drag between Clinton, once nominated, and Obama, once nominated, would be fairly minimal, perhaps only a few knots' worth of headwind. In any event, the Democrats are likely to pick up House seats, so even assuming that Cole is telling the truth, what we're debating here is the size of the Democratic margin over Republicans.
Expect the $2.3 billion in earmarks that Sen. Clinton requested (a new record, it seems) to receive due attention from Sen. John McCain's campaign today. Most of Clinton's high-ticket requests involve homeland security funding and military construction and the Clinton folks will have no problem justifying the specific line items. But the overall amount turns them into a nice talking point for McCain.
Sen. John McCain's campaign will air this health care ad in Iowa starting today. It features McCain talking to an unseen subject just off camera, explaining in sober tones the features of his health care plan. There are a few implicit messages: McCain understands the problem; he's optimistic about solving it; he's not going to cede the terrain to the Democrats.
Here are excerpts from Sen. John McCain's speech in Tampa later today. He will unveil his national health care policy.
The key to real reform is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves. Right now, even those with access to health care often have no assurance that it is appropriate care. Too much of the system is built on getting paid just for providing services, regardless of whether those services are necessary or produce quality care and outcomes. American families should only pay for getting the right care: care that is intended to improve and safeguard the
