Wes Clark is still alive!

K: First of all, allow me to congratulate you for predicting the use of Wes Clark as a cudgel to Walnuts' war record...get the stiff to spend so much time reminding us of his glorious service in Vietnam that he can't talk about anything else. Whereupon we remember that he was sent to bomb civilians, never sat ass-deep in swamp water, and it took him seven years to get out...which is faster than McCain would extricate us from Iraq...

I think everyone is heartened by the second half of Obama's "I will not besmirch" sentence...the Party has been saying "No Scrubs" for years...so i like the preemptive strike, the muscular defense, etc.

But I don't think it's a winning plan. The whole artificial controversy actually gave McCain a bump over the last week. On 6/16 we were watching McCain fall of his own weight. The 'nuts had spent months offering babies hot water, touting NAFTA in Canada, hiding his wife's income, and calling for offshore drilling while claiming to have been decades out in front on global warming. And claiming New Jersey would bolt Republican. No longer. Now we're back to hero-worship.

Don't get me wrong, this is the high electoral ground Barry's got here...on some battle of Vicksburg shit...Based on June and July polls, BHO has a 10-point lead or better in 10 states: CA +10, CT +20, MA +20, ME +22, MN +15, NH +11, NJ +16, NY +20, WA +16, WI +10...and a statistically significant lead in six more (PA, MI, NM, IA, OR, and Montana as of 7/1!)...andhe's in a dead heat in Nevada, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana. Indiana dude.

Walnuts is a dead horse. No reason for Wes to go on whacking it. Indiana should not be in play, and it is, because what did Pat say? Still, if anything can lose it for BHO, it's the numbnut commentariat bringing the conversation back to questions of character...no matter how artificially-plumped it may be...
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Obama to Lieberman: Get your ugly fucking goldbricking ass out of my beachfront community...

BHO can put the LBJ on Poor Joe Lieberman because Leebs doesn't have any friends in the Senate. And he doesn't have any friends in the Senate because everyone realizes that by January 2009, Virginia is going to have two Democratic Senators for the first time since the era of Harry Byrd. That's a clear majority, my friends, even if all six of the seats in play go red. I drink your milkshake.

Viz., Joe on a McCain conference call:

"If Israel is in danger today, it’s not because of American foreign policy which has been strongly supportive of Israel in every way, it is not because what we have done in Iraq, it is because Iran is a fanatical terrorist, expansionist state and has a leader and a leadership that constantly threatens to extinguish the state of Israel." (emphasis mine)

See how energetic he gets by the end? Weird, right? Nervous about something...

Assuming he's off the squad, how will Republicans swallow his pro-labor, pro-choice, pro-amnesty platform? What will it be like to be the most junior Republican Senator?

What's it going to be like for Joe to sit between Jim Bunning and Tom Coburn? Won't Jim De Mint kick his ass every day for his lunch money?

Joe is wrong about The Consequences of Leaving Iraq, The Persian Menace, and The Rise of Islamofascism; won't the Republican Party be seeking people who can read the international tea-leaves a trifle better? Don't they need fewer, rather than more such braying jackasses? Lieberman has virtually the same foreign policy weltanschaaung as Rick Santorum, who now writes unfunny op-eds in the vein of his wrestling commercial...

I'm saying Lieberman's future is bleak.

So what was in that conversation on the Senate floor?

"Joe. Come here. Let me explain something to you. Personally, I don't give a shit if you work for the old man. Your conscience is free. Kill babies, run over old ladies in the Piggly Wiggly. Whatever. My position is this. If you persist in sniping at me from my side of the aisle, you will live out the rest of your term in agonizing fucking pain."

"B-but --"

"Agonizing pain. No reason why you should rank. No reason why you should have a nice office, or your own sub-committees --"

"B-but, Rules --"

"Rules? Fuck Rules. This is what I'm saying to you. You go make peace with those Ku Klux across the aisle. Because you know what? Fuck your seniority. Lyndon Johnson said fuck your seniority --"

"But I'm the decider --"

"You're not deciding shit Lieberman. You haven't been all Congress. I don't like your jerkoff name; I don't like your jerkoff face; and I don't like you, jerkoff."

Exeunt
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Walls come tumbling...

...i also want barryhussein to end a few more speeches with "god bless america." i think this subtle addition, which he can pull off well, does two things. one- it sounds damned presidential. two- it helps dispel the nagging muslim rumor and endears him subtly to the christian center-right, whom i'm convinced he shoudl [sic] make a run at this election. the man can give a sermon. we set him loose on the evangelicals and we watch them flood in. of this, i am certain.
-Ya Boy Koan, February of 2008

We here at the Dark Steer Report bring this demented missive from a disturbed mind to your attention, Dear Reader, because news has leaked of the coming Evangelical Incursion:

...Barack Obama's campaign will unveil a major new program to attract younger Evangelicals and Catholics to their campaign.

It's called the "Joshua Generation Project." The name is based on the biblical story of how Joshua's generation led the Israelites into the Promised Land.

A source close to the Obama campaign tells The Brody File the following:

"The Joshua Generation project will be the Obama campaign's outreach to young people of faith. There's unprecedented energy and excitement for Obama among young evangelicals and Catholics. The Joshua Generation project will tap into that excitement and provide young people of faith opportunities to stand up for their values and move the campaign forward."

The official rollout won't be for another two weeks or so, but The Brody File has been told the activities will include house parties, blogging, concerts and more.

The Joshua Generation, eh? Well, potential legal issues aside, it is our (not so) humble opinion that the Evangelical Incursion stands a strong chance of being a smashing success. Strong potential here that Obama could pull off the scummiest ninja moment of the summer and slip a mickey to Christ at his own supper. There is a great potential for seismic shift in the Evangelical poiltical landscape, as the good, God-fearing folks at numerous other blogs have noted:

But from where I sit, Obama shouldn’t have too much trouble getting 40% of the evangelical vote. He might even get more.

Consider how the landscape has changed over the last four years. Howard Dean is breaking bread with Richard Land. Barack Obama is hanging out with Rick Warren. The entire religious-right establishment decides early on that John McCain is completely unacceptable as the Republican presidential nominee, and yet, McCain wins the party’s nod fairly easily.

Can Obama get 40% of the evangelical vote? Of course he can.

Walnuts the Baptist (kudos, again, to the Carpetbaggers) has proved to be unable to capitalize on the massive head start he had in consolidating his base. The Christians don't trust him. His position on abortion is shaky at best and his protestations to the contrary ring false and forced. If Obama can engage in a sustained outreach to this voting group, there's a serious chance of upheaval in this group. I mean, moreso than the overall potential for seismic political shift.

He's throwing rocks this year. Those guys're dead in the water.

Obama and the Politics of (You'd Better) Hope (I Don't Kick Your Ass...)

An event in the hallowed chambers of the Senate made the rounds of the internets last week. Seems good old BarryHussein cornered noted human paraquat Joe(mentum) Lieberman in the Senate and proceeded to drink his milkshake. Right in front of him.

Furthermore, during a Senate vote Wednesday, Obama dragged Lieberman by the hand to a far corner of the Senate chamber and engaged in what appeared to reporters in the gallery as an intense, three-minute conversation.

While it was unclear what the two were discussing, the body language suggested that Obama was trying to convince Lieberman of something and his stance appeared slightly intimidating.

Using forceful, but not angry, hand gestures, Obama literally backed up Lieberman against the wall, leaned in very close at times, and appeared to be trying to dominate the conversation, as the two talked over each other in a few instances.

Smilin' BarryHussein... intimidating? Noted internet madman and fabulist Warren Ellis, between posting horrifying snippets of the true nature of the universe, took time to comment:

Kelly Sue and I just said “LBJ-style!’ at exactly the same time. Kelly Sue, however, has breeding, and didn’t follow it up with “Obama should have shanked the prick and left him to bleed out.” No, that was me.

"LBJ-style"? Saints preserve us. Surely this arugala-munching, non-bowling, big-eared naif can't be... oh my stars and garters... a tough guy?

This is in keeping with Dark Steer Theorem #4432... "The politics of hope is a sham."

The "Politics of Hope" (Patent Pending) is the shiny, smiling face Obama and company have put over what is really a hardscrapple political operation. You look back on his political career and you'll see some arm twisting and pretty cynical political operations. He elbowed his way into his first Democratic nomination in Chicago, clearing the field via technicalities. And check this choice quote:

"To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up..."

Sound familiar? Yep, that's pretty much smilin' BarryHussein's canned response to the Florida/Michigan fiasco: This is not 'Nam... there are rules.

So BHO [Dark Steer Aside, here: Wouldn't it be fun if the Obama campaign did some iPod style marketing time'a'time? Standard platform positions ending with "It's not a politician. It's BHO"] goes on to the next round robin and he's smiling all the way. Arm-twisted his way onto the national stage, got the Clintons into a submission hold. The Clintons were complaining the whole way that the Obama campaign was underhanded, race-baiting, Rovian even. But Smilin' BarryHussein comes out of it with but the slightest bits of dirt on the shoulder.

So what if he is this mudflinging, underhanded, shiv-happy politicoschemer? That means the Dems have got a vicious streetfighter in sheep's clothing. A brawler with a happy face. Isn't that exactly what the Dems need?

If I had some nuts on a wall, would those be...

Agreed. The prospect of this John McCain winning the presidency is laughable. The one who tours a Baghdad market, proclaims it safe, whereupon it is swiftly carbombed; the McCain who can't tell the difference between the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and the Shiite Mehdi Army; the McCain whose strictly pro-business position on immigration will doom his party, this McCain will lose.

But I can't help but think that only people who pay too much attention to the game see this kind of thing happening. I find it far more likely that most voters -- call them what you will, the people who purportedly cling to Guns and Religion: "downscale whites," the Axl Roses -- haven't tuned in yet. They woke up when the nightly news claimed they were being dissed by some Ivy-league half-foreigner candidate at a gay-folks kaffeeklatsch. But they've been asleep since.

(I'd like to think that's why HRC has a double-digit lead in West Virginia: folks paid attention to the Ohio primary and haven't had a reason to follow anything since. Are the stories of Hillary's imminent demise actually not on the air in the Wild, Wonderful? Why was Monday the second total time BHO has visited the state? This makes me crazy. West Virginia is Indiana on stilts. Use the template of small-format speeches and massive student turnout at the state universities. If Barry contested even Morgantown, he'd pull within six, right?)

So McCain's chances depend on which McCain shows up in the media at the last possible instant. Joe Lieberman's 1988 Senate run offers some relevant instruction. Joe ran as a Reagan Democrat against the liberal Republican Lowell P. Weicker; he wasted Weicker for not supporting Reagan's invasion of Grenada and bombing of Libya; he picked up support from William F. Buckley; he dissed LPW for missing votes, ran goofy cartoon attack ads of Lowell as a sleeping bear. A screwy confusing campaign. But the fundamental point was this: Lieberman said Weicker was not a maverick, but a misfit. In effect, the Democrat did ideological housecleaning for his opponents. No Republican in 1988 wanted to seat on their side of the aisle the only GOP Senator to call for a boycott of the South African Apartheid regime. The net effect was that the Connecticut GOP (like everywhere else) swung to the right, and the Democrats only gained seats by seating conservatives.

Which McCain shows up in the media? Maverick or Misfit? More importantly for our futures bidness, which would be the preferred outcome for Obama Democrats? (Let's ignore the fact that no one knows what an Obama Democrat is. I think we ODs are post-grad educated Northeasterners-Rustbelters who are willing to "diss partisan politics to get a gig," thanks Martin Sheen. But discuss amongst yourselves.) After McGovern purged the party (part by accident; he sure didn't intend to lose urban whites in the Northeast), McGovernism became the default Democratic position for a generation: mercy for the underclass, negotiate for peace. McCain's ability to draw support from the moderates of 2006 is a boon to the ODs.

Check it: the Democrats elected to the House in 2006 got in because two camps of opinion about the Iraq War shook hands: "I don't think we should be there," and "I think we should win." As an OD, I want the "I think we should win," camp to bolt, because their ideology is transparently bogus. They do not belong in my tent. Frank Rizzo and Dick Daley can come back into my tent, so long as they denounce the Iraq War, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, "coercive interrogation" and warrantless eavesdropping. Five points of light. My tent might be 20 percent of the electorate, but at least I know who's in it. The numbers come later. The whole point is to align party and ideology in your own camp, and disorient party and ideology in the opposition.

And Walnuts makes that real easy: right now he's got free-traders and protectionists, comprehenisvists and Minutemen, dudes hung out to dry on the end of the "surge" and dudes who want war with Iran yesterday, fiscal conservatives who hate giving atropine to the economy over and over again and reps whose constituents are losing their homes. It's not a Big Tent. It's a total clusterfuck.

That is the outcome of "McCain is a Maverick." But his biggest problem this week is convincing people that Toby Ziegler and Josh Lyman heard him wrong, he definitely voted for the guy who gave him le shaft royale in SC. Problems occur for McCain when "McCain is a Misfit." On the reel f'reel. If McCain doesn't belong in his own party, how can he be trusted? If the Misfit is the standard-bearer, well, what does the party believe? If it's just an aggregate of fractious interests, what did the McCain Democrats sign up for?
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Seal the deal, BHO

K:

You should read Ross Douthat's review of Nixonland at the Atlantic.

Also, we should email Christopher Beam at Slate some scenarios for their "Obamapocalypse" contest. Sounds like Politico has their entry in already:

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.

It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, with one candidate claiming to be the nominee while the other vigorously denies it, all predicated on an argument over what exactly constitutes the finish line of the primary race.

What's interesting here is that today an Obama campaign meltdown is fantasy, whereas yesterday the meltdown was fact. Or at least news...Whither Bittergate? Why was it significant that Barry called Matt Lauer "Tim"? (NBC thought it was about the incipient meltdown, but clearly Barry just lost his Kenneth: "If you leave the entourage, who's gonna help me tell white people apart?") Also, wasn't I just reading an appeal to BHO to quit? Yes, I was! Who's writing that type shit today?

Me, evidently. Nightmare scenarios for Obama? We're living through them: Barack spends a month dealing with bogus guilt-by-association smears. He fails to seal the deal in either Indiana or Pennsylvania (or Ohio or New Hampshire) despite having a 3-to-1 TV presence and a 4-to-1 bank account advantage. Clinton is allowed to hang on and bleed him to death all spring. Barry doesn't see it, is focused on the math, doubts that Clinton would suicide-bomb the party, realizes too late that he's running against Clinton and McCain. Spends May and June in regal seclusion, sits on his war chest. Both Barry's opponents lambaste him on all manner of strange bullshit; watch for the return of the turban-and-polo-shirt photo. Clinton shows up at the convention the underdog champion of the working-class, trying to do right by the great people of Michigan and Florida, blocks Obama's nomination, waits for fatigue to set in. Obama gets tired of fighting, accepts Clinton's promise of the VP. Obama's delegates from states Clinton won are released. Clinton gets the nomination and picks Evan Bayh for VP. Obama retires to the Senate in shame and disbelief. Clinton loses to McCain by 5%, her hate-factor killing off any hope of Democratic gains in the midwest and rust belt...

Barry needs to start a scorched-earth counterinsurgency now, or yesterday. Al Sayyid Hillary al-Amriki has already riled up the dispossessed majority, staked her claim to the heartland, and issued fatwas against the occupier. The Jaish-el-Clinton cannot be allowed to have safe harbor in Kentucky. Nor can it be permitted to import weapons from the McCainians...

Offense outruns defense

I love this shit:
On Tuesday, Media Matters ran this history of the Lieberman Hack , essentially asking ABC, CBS and CNN to apologize for uncritically passing on false allegations. Betty Nguyen of CNN is the worst offender, first reading verbatim two paragraphs of campaign text:

"[...]Let me just read you a statement from the Lieberman campaign, this from the campaign manager, saying, 'For the past 24 hours, the Friends of Joe Lieberman's website and email have been totally disrupted and disabled. We believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the U.S. attorney and will be filing formal complaints reflecting our concerns.'

Also goes on to say, 'This type of dirty politics has been the staple of the Lamont campaign,' referring to Ned Lamont, the challenger, 'from the beginning, from the nonstop personal attacks to the intimidation tactics'

Now, was Sean Smith chanelling Abe Ribicoff there? That started life as "gestapo tactics," right?

'and offensive displays to these coordinated efforts to disable our website.'

...then Nguyen gives it the full Hindenburg:

"Basically, the situation is: Joseph Lieberman is saying that his website was hacked and that there are major problems with it. People can't even access it, especially on voting day. Today is the primary.[...]"

and delivering the coup-de-grace, emphasis mine:

"And Ned Lamont, as you well would assume, says he has nothing to do with it. There's no tampering of the website. So, we'll see."

CNN clearly did Lieberman a solid by passing along the attack, but what I love is the "all thieves also lie" tone of Nguyen's last comments.

As you well would assume, CNN has nothing to say about throwing the race to Lieberman. Here's CTBob's archive of Liebermania.

Attacks run faster than our ability to verify them. This brings us back to the present and to Barry. The killer in the debate -- man, nearly two weeks ago now -- was his excessively delicate, elevate-the-discourse jive on Wright. This emboldened HRC and Wright to, ironically, go on the road saying the same thing: "This is who I am; I dunno about Barry, but this is me." Barry's pimpslap to Wright should have been much harder, and should have come sooner. He knows he has to be twice as good in order to get half as far.

Willie Horton forever! I mean, if only Dukakis in 1988 had said something like, "If George Herbert Walker Bush is so scared of Massachusetts he can windsurf somewhere else," or, "Willie Horton never made it onto any country club, so I don't know what George Bush is worried about," idunno, something. Nip these things in the bud, people! The time to kill the attack, like a newborn wildebeest, is before it gets its legs under it...

I fear, K, we've drunk the kool-aid on the Wright issue. I don't understand why the Rev is a problem for Obama when dudes like Rev. Hagee and Chuck Keating aren't a problem for McCain. Obviously, we're just missing what Pennsylvania and Ohio and Indiana are getting. And seriously, I have no idea what that is. How the Ivy-educated scioness of Scranton gentry managed to be the candidate of blue-collar whites is beyond me. Do they vote for the boss? In making this election about identity -- rather than, idunno, war, recession, water, food, shelter -- we've handed it to McCain.

McCain by 5 over Clinton.

Bush league

K:

Barry may indeed weather whatever storms emerge. It seems clear that Gibson and Stephanopoulos are getting the worst of the debate coverage, for instance. John Dickerson says Obama was doomed to look petulant; and I think the stick-to-your-guns strategy is what doomed him. Because we've seen it before.

It's Bush 101 : Double Down. It may or may not enable the campaign freedom of maneuver. I tend to think not, based on Barry's flaccid attempts to thread the needle on Rev. Wright in the debate, but prove me wrong. (He was pushy and above-the-fray while delivering byzantine rationalizations of his relationship with Wright. It was cringe-inducing. There are so many ways to deal with the Rev., and he has to pick the morally upstanding one? Barry can't say, "Look, I was living in Chicago's South Side. I need this man and every other vintage militant every day of the week, because I'm from Kansas."? He can't plead expediency? Ahh, because that would be the old politics rearing its ugly head...)

There is maneuverability on the Bitter score, so fine, maybe the tactic works. Elevate. Got it. But it's a shit way to make policy. Elevation is fine for discourse; but in policy, it's called escalation. It's a perpetual raising of the stakes.

To take your abortion prediction, what does an elevation speech sound like?

***
Leebs will speak at convention if McCain can't find his keys.
Related! McCain anger okay! Not pissed enough to "blur his judgment," says Leebs!

Also, not senile enough to fumble the nuclear football! Not drunk enough to confuse Sunnis with Shiites! Still funny! Don't you quit on me...

Also related! One-third of Iraq veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder or a major brain injury. That's 19 percent with depression, 19 percent with probable brain damage, minus 7 percent with both. What's the record for Vietnam POWs?

And, forty years after: the sacrifice-shall-not-be-in-vain meme is back to shame us all...Will President McCain blockade Vietnam until the return of all captive US servicemen is accomplished? I'm for it! US out of Vietnam!

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'Eey, aowye doughin'!

****update****

Okay, for real, I'm not that tired of futures. I take it back. There are fears of failure here that the delegate math has done nothing to alleviate. Plus, I tend to take my Dad's advice on these matters, and he's calling a brokered convention. He had Allen beating Webb in 2006, though, so...

Still...fears! What happens when the core left decides phased withdrawal is too goddamned slow and boycotts the election? I mean, what happens when I and my class hop off the wagon? [I like to pretend there's a whole crop of us out there...] I don't like war on ghosts -- and an Obama presidency guarantees continued predator strikes on blind targets in Central Asia? Alternately, what happens when suburban whites abandon the era-of-good-feeling and vote their prejudices? Or, what happens when Republicans stop registering as Democrats in order to vote against Hillary Clinton? Sure we have Obama-McCain polls and Clinton-McCain polls, but no one is really, literally out of the race yet. Where is the long arm of the Bradley Effect? Fears!

Or: Hey, how we doing! Thass Chaka and Bob! Thass Philadelphia, bee! How exciting. But typically, the paper covered the scrum surrounding the speech, said "Obama spoke for more than half an hour," and left. Like he was talking about his new living-room set or some shit...

Also, here's Kaus. It is, as the man says, a Category II Kinsley Gaffe, i.e., a true statement.

The only trouble is no one likes being psychoanalyzed, viz.:

I think that when people ascend socioeconomically, they tend to spend less time with their families, and so issues of family become very important to them, and pretty soon everything Ivy-educated people do starts to become a search for a missing family life. People like Senator Obama are clinging to their own ambition in order to compensate for the loss of his father, for instance. It's the same impulse behind all of Paul Simon's work, Juno, so forth. Wes Anderson is the first satirist of what i call "yuppie remorse." [snip]

Now, that's not a quote from anyone, but it should have been. I think BHO's survival has less to do with his ability to thread the rhetorical needle than with the impotence of his opponents. The point of bittergate is that it's not over. It's the first sentence in the doomed-by-his-class narrative. I walked by Geno's the other night, which was blasting right-wing talk radio, and the guy used the word "elitist" seven times in a minute. This is the tip of the oiceberg.

And the point of the video, sadly, is visual: Barack and Chaka and their thug bodyguard, Bob. Not at all reassuring to Overland Park KS or Montgomery County PA or Fairfax VA. O for a radio age...

hasta
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The recent hullabaloo over "Bittergate" seems to me indicative of exactly why we won't see good ol' Al Gore stepping into the ring. Gore's had a lot to say about the smallness of our politics. He actually sounds a lot like BarryHussein when he talks about it. But this just seems to be a perfect example of it. Seize on one inconsequential comment and blow it up to gigantic proportions.

How dare he look down on us?!

Is he an elitist?

Is he a Marxist?!

(Joe Lieberman is scum, by the way. Not that any of us needed reminding. But I'd be remiss if I didn't say it.)

And soon this will blow over. The media and various camps will try to hold onto it, just like they've done with the Wright "controversy." But it will fade in importance unless he very quickly follows it up with some equally maladroit phrasing. If Hillary wins in PA, "Bittergate" will enjoy a brief resurgence before being put to rest by an Obama victory in North Carolina. The Republicans will try to make some hay out of it in the fall, but hopefully the Obama team will have come up with a way to put the kibosh on it. He weathered the Wright storm, he'll make it through this one.

So, political future... Crystal Ballin'... what to look for? I'm gonna step out past the nomination battle. The abortion question gets raised. Repubs will say BarryHussein voted against making doctors save born-alive babies from botched abortions. We get the shots of protestors with their ugly signs. Maybe a special here or there on some one-armed kid that was the result of a botched abortion. Shots of a little blonde girl plunking away on a piano with her one arm. Et cetera. BarryHussein gives a speech on abortion in America. Balanced, reasoned. Tamps down controversy. I think this is actually the way he should approach these things. Organize rallies in response to "gaffes." Speak plainly and openly about the issues that trouble us so much as a culture. Make it simple and plain. And press the shit out of the media to cover them.

Eh. So, hubbub over abortion sometime in the fall. Of course. I'm still not afraid. I've my apprehensions and anxieties, yes, of course. But I'm not afraid. I don't think the other side realizes precisely what's going on this time around. There's the possibility of a grand realignment. Stark differences between the two candidates this time around. One for continuing the war as long as it takes. The other for ending it in a responsible manner. ("Responsible manner": look for that to be a key phrase in the Obama pitch. Talk of meetings and UN and regional responsibility.) One for expanding military spending to four percent of GDP, the other for rebuilding the American infrastructure. (I hope to GOD this is a central part of the Obama pitch. Reinvestment in infrastructure will create jobs and deliver a remarkable return on investment. If we put it right, this will sell hugely.) We'll have a clear contrast, and I think the American people will pick the side that's telling them they'll bring the troops home and give folks jobs.

More later.

The Wes Wing

K:

The Inquirer this morning had a front-page above-the-fold David Petraeus, offering the sage counsel that we stay in Iraq until it is no longer unstable. We have Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden running the CIA. Vice Admiral McConnell (USN Ret.) is DNI. So while one commander in the field runs a rearguard defense of a failing surge -- a policy, it bears repeating, whose so-called gains came at the cost of paying and arming Sunni militants, turning a blind eye to SCIRI/Ministry of the Interior death squads, and calling Moqtada Al-Sadr "Al-Sayyid," in other words, the cost of setting up its own demise -- the other two set picks for the president's drive to the basket on wiretapping and torture.

Deferring to the wisdom of commanders is the last desperate act of an administration with no support in the populace. Saying we will "listen to our commanders in the field" is tantamount to breaking out the batons.

So I ain't part of the Wes Wing. I was pissed that his bumper stickers in 2003 had Clark and four stars. Like fucking Noriega was running for president.

I think it's awesome that you and Larry are on the same page. How he does that cut-to-the-chase dialogue thing is, obviously, beyond me. Plus the piece had some bitchin' cartoons.

But f'reel f'reel, the shit will hit the fan if we as a nation keep assuming that civilians are crass guttersnipes bent on building an impressive retirement portfolio. Civilians aren't, by and large, doing a good job contradicting the only-military-has-gravitas meme. Why is Larry Craig still in the Senate: pensions!

(Can't we stop using the hyphenated-phrase-followed-by-"meme" meme? -- Eds.)

Brian Williams, 08/05/2013: Today in Los Angeles El Jefe Clark declared a condition of unrest, ordering the mobilization of 22 thousand of his controversial new paramilitary clones. Bred from birth to quell violence, able to subsist on a thin gruel of oats and cocaine...

...okay I'm mostly thinking of the Dominion here. My much-maligned secret sci-fi past exercises its long arm, and all the unsettled debts of history come back into play...

But isn't Obama supposed to be the definition of civilian competence? He's so competent, so motivated to solve problems, bind wounds, etc. that his Republican buddies in the Illinois Senate are stumping for him. The advice of a general, the silent presence of Clark's hand on the rudder, contradicts that posture.

I also didn't like the caricature of Gore. Only fat sodomite lieutenant governors want this guy to be president? Was this a Tim Kaine-Haley Barbour composite? That was cold. I think the possibility of his presidency is real, it's just up to him to grab the ring.

Anyway, I could have summed all this up by saying the Obama-Clark power play is an excellent way to run against Hillary Clinton. But it's a shitty way to run against John McCain. By which I mean it's a losing strategy. Picking someone to shore up your credentials is a tacit admission that you lack whatever he has. It's also a Reagan classic: a regrettable echo of this president's hands-off, CEO, don't-mind-me-i'm-just-the-Decider mimcry of the Great Sleepwalker. "The president is going to listen to the counsel of his advisers" is always code for "The president is way way out of his depth. Shit, the president couldn't run the Texas Rangers..."

And what problem does Obama have with rural whites? I mean, the boys here in South Philly are for Rudy Giuly; it's urban whites he's going to lose, like McGovern in 1972. Man won Iowa, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, the Texas caucus...somebody factcheck me quick....I honestly don't know what Obama needs. I feel like constituencies can't be grabbed by identity alone. Urban and ex-urban whites are going to vote BHO when he disses welfare, disses illegals, disses identity politics. He needs to tack right, and hard, not just as a matter of expediency, but as putting into practice his cross-the-aisle rhetoric. He needs to shape up on Israel -- not for my benefit; shit, he needs to shape up on Palestine for my benefit.

Therefore I give you the next vice-president of the United States: Pat Buchanan! A man who believes the war was botched from the start; who is the greatest attack dog since Spiro Agnew; shit, who wrote "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "effete snobs" and "pusillanimous pussyfooting"; who will probably cause China to call in its T-notes by saying some shit about poisoned toothpaste; who favors a ruthless crackdown on the undocumented; who had the best diss of McCain ever: "The McCain campaign is this: The jobs are never coming back; the illegals are never going away; plus, we're going to have all these wars."

Shit, if you wanna roll right, roll hard...

Be Ready to Sacrifice...

Quickpost. Since we're gonna occasionally pull out snippets from old emails and hope our reader(s) trust us enough to believe we're not making shit up, seems only right to bring up this li'l vulgar snippet...

...biggest concern, of course, is national security credibility. barryhussein's got no service experience. shouldn't be huge, but it is. sucks, but, what can you do?

...other concern is the clintons. yeah, they say they'll fall in line. and they likely will. but i wanna placate those scheming fucks. i want them totally on board with as little bitterness as possible.

...so who's that give us? well, i'm thinking clark. national security cred in the bag. more importantly, he's a clinton man. endorsed hillyclint. was rumored to be the clinton stalking horse in the 04 contests. mentioned time and again as a veep for hillyclint. you tell the hick and hte [sic] harridan we'll give them a gracious concession for the good of the party and they'd better fucking fall in line with full out support. no sour grapes. full on support and doing their best lying to excuse the attacks they made on barryhussein in the primaries. i want billyclint and barryhussein with joined, raised hands in front of a crowd of 30 thousand in arkansas. i want hillyclint and wes and barryhussein arm in arm in madison square garden with twenty thousand alternating chants of yes we can and u.s.a...

And then we've got Lawrence O'Donnell, writer for The West Wing, dropping this gem:

Barack: When you walk out of here I’m going straight to a press conference and announce that when I get the nomination, my choice for VP will be Wesley Clark, and—
Hillary (laughs): Not gonna happen. Wes has been with my campaign from the start.
Barack (continuing): —and on the next ballot, the possible Obama-Clark ticket’s gonna get me the Arkansas delegation and another—what do you think—200 superdelegates at least?
Hillary: I’m not gonna let you have Wes for a phony unity ticket.
Barack: Too late. Michelle is meeting with him right now.
Barack’s iPhone buzzes. He checks it.
Hillary: He won’t accept anything without my—
Barack holds up the iPhone. close on text message: CLARK DEAL DONE. LUV U, M. Hillary looks pained—as much by the Clark deal as by the love in the Obama marriage. Barack gives her a moment to process the shock, then …
Barack (softly): I want you to come with me to the press conference.
Hillary: No way.
Barack: I need—
Hillary (bitterly): You don’t need me. You’ve got my biggest supporter as your VP. He’s got you covered now on foreign-policy credentials, military experience.
Barack: It’s not a unity ticket unless you say it’s a unity ticket. I want to tell the press that I asked you to be VP, you turned it down and suggested General Clark. I want to give you credit for saving the day, saving the party. I want you leaving Denver with your head held high.

Now, imaginary scripts for future scenarios ain't exactly sound political analysis, but I've got the general view that there's been little "sound political analysis" this election season. Maybe the American public can't take it. Maybe the American public ain't smart enough to take it. Maybe the American public thinks it's getting sound political analysis but is really deceiving itself about the pertinence of what really amounts to little more than "oooooooh! he say whaaaaa? oh no he didnnnnnnnn'". Don' matter to Jesus. What do matter to Jesus is making sure this ticket is solid. So Clark gets the Clintons a surrogate in the Oval Office. And he works best. HillyClint as veep doesn't bring much to the ticket IM(ns)HO. Most of the Dem partisans, no matter what they say right now, will fall back in line once the nominee is chosen. The rest will trickle back as it becomes apparent to the nation what a McCain administration will look like. Party unity ain't a question. We want white males, though, don't we? We want to try to pull the South, now, don't we? Clark's the way to go.

Now what to do about HillyClint? She ain't gonna totally be happy with ClarkVeep. No, no, no. She's sacrificed too much, endured too much. And she deserves a reward. She put up with Bill and Chris Matthews and whoever the hell else. So I've been saying for a while now: Senate Majority Leader. [No email to cite here, gotta trust me.] We knock the eunuch Reid out of the spot, dust it off nice, and give it to her. She gets a nice, visible perch from which to watch BarryHussein like a hawk. And rightly so. His ass better not mess up. But, if he does, Hillary is...
Untarnished. Gets to be a walking "I Told You So" in 2012. Still runs on the competence issue. Gets some notches on her belt for accomplishing things. Perfect positioning to beat Mitt in '12.

And now, I must needs find some way to get access to the NBAs live streaming of the Laker game. Lakers-Celtics final. This will be beautiful. You should watch the playoffs this year.

-k

"Oh, but be ready to sacrifice.
If you love 'em you should tell 'em twice..."
-Gnarles Barkley, "Surprise"

Gore-Obama Reprise

Kevin,

First of all, I think we should run this as a work of correspondence. Partly to structure the rambling; partly also to let my 20th century mind handle the medium. That said:

Joe Klein wrote this on 27 March 2008.

On Tuesday, 10 July 2007, I wrote to you:

all hell breaks loose at the convention when HRC can't win on the third ballot. Al Gore moves through the crowd, suddenly less Taftian. signs pop up. banners unfurl. dissatisfied electors realize they are about to install a female candidate. chairmen cut new deals with the Gore insurgents. Gore calls Obama: "Hello Senator, good to get a holt of you." Obama knows the score: "My pleasure, Mister President." Gore is appreciative but cool: "I have an idea, I wonder if you'll hear me out." BHO releases his chairmen to Gore, who wins the nomination by a nose, taking the South on principle -- nobody trusts the Hairdo anyway, they jump ship -- taking in others by nostalgia, or a sense of order. Gore Obama. stickers that just say GO GO GO. Al defeats his despised HRC, giving a final fuck you to the Clinton empire that so brutally fisted him in 1998 -- i'm thinking of the Lewinsky, the bombing of Iraq, and swallowing a Republican increase in ballistic missile spending that became the cornerstone of the Bush defense plan. Gore gets to play the tough, since BHO is so sweet and gentle, and tough Gore is fascinating. Skilled fundraiser, brutal in the debates, cold, smirking, lunging in for the kill, making fun of Romney's hair (or McCain's Iraq, or Thompson's colostomy bag, or Rudy's ignorance), refusing to repeat the smug performance of 2000, the wonkery, he goes all out full-bore arrogant, knowing his power. He's the only Democrat to pull 50-plus percent in this generation. The one man who could bend other men to his will, the kind of man who would kill his own family, the kind of man who could kill Edie Finneran -- that's right Verbal...

Let it be known: I was on that shit.

Problems with what I wrote back then? For starters, I was sure Clinton would be the presumptive and Obama the insurgent nominee. I thought for sure Romney would win the nomination. And chairmen; who was I thinking of? I also thought that Al Gore was Keyser Soze...

But the full-bore arrogance is in effect: Gore called Cheney a flat-earther and a conspiracy theorist in his 60 Minutes interview...steps in the right direction...