EVENING UPDATE:  APRIL 23,  2008

Posted at 7:35 p.m. ET

THE PROBLEM THAT IS CARTER

It gets worse and worse with Jimmah Carter.  First, he makes an unrequested visit to the Mideast and gums up everything.  Then he claims that Hamas has agreed to recognize Israel, only to be corrected by Hamas.  Now he essentially calls the secretary of state a liar:

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of not telling the truth about warnings she said her department gave Carter not to speak to Hamas before a Middle East trip.

The State Department has said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, issued the warning before Carter, a veteran of Middle East diplomacy, went on his trip last week.

Rice said in Kuwait on Tuesday: "We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas."

"President Carter has the greatest respect for ... Rice and believes her to be a truthful person. However, perhaps inadvertently, she is continuing to make a statement that is not true," a statement issued by the Carter center in Atlanta said on Wednesday.

I wasn't there, but I'll have to go with Rice on this one, in part because the administration's position was so well known, and announced publicly.  The notion that they'd announce it publicly but never tell Carter privately is a bit of a stretch.

What to do about Carter?

Well, there are those brochures about long-term care.

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

DOROTHY ACES IT AGAIN

Dorothy Rabinowitz, of The Wall Street Journal, is one of our most perceptive observers.  Here she dissects what may be the biggest problem for both Hillary Clinton now, and John McCain down the line - Barack Obama's media army:

Nothing in the hysteria over last week's Democratic debate – including the unprecedented opprobrium press critics heaped on the ABC moderators – should have come as any surprise. That doesn't make it any less fascinating a guide to current strange notions of what is and is not a substantive issue in a presidential contest, or any less striking an indicator of the delicate treatment Mr. Obama's media following have come to consider his just due.

Moderators Charles Gibson's and George Stephanopoulos's offense was to ask questions Mr. Obama didn't want to address. Worse, they'd continued to press them even when the displeased candidate assured them these were old and tired questions.

The sinners, the sinners!  It goes on:

The uproar is the latest confirmation of the special place Mr. Obama holds in the hearts of a good part of the media, a status ensured by their shared political sympathies and his star power. That status has in turn given rise to a tendency to provide generous explanations, and put the best possible gloss on missteps and utterances seriously embarrassing to Mr. Obama.

And...

Offered a chance to explain the meaning of his remarks about the reasons people living in small towns cling to guns and religion, he went on to repeat them all over again in different words. What there was in those remarks, what attitudes shown, that had offended people, he had still not grasped. In short, what he had said that day he'd meant to say. "What you are, picks its way," as Walt Whitman told us.

The way has been a long one for the candidates, and what they are is, indeed, picking its way on the campaign trail and during events like that instructive debate. About which, we now learn, there is to be a protest campaign against ABC and the moderators, mounted by assorted journalists and bloggers.

We are at the beginning of a contest likely to repeat itself through November: between that part of the press prepared to put hard questions equally, and all the rest, including those who'll mount the barricades when their candidate is threatened with discomfiture. Let the wars begin.

Indeed.  The problem, of course, is that many journalists will now be intimidated, which is exactly what the campaign against ABC is about.  The people who want to silence tough questions asked of Barack Obama come from the same tradition as college deans who establish speech codes to prevent unpopular speech or speech that "offends" certain constituencies. 

They are improving democracy, of course, by keeping focus on the "correct" issues and the "correct behavior" that will improve us all as a people.

Where have we heard that before?  And in what languages?

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

THE LURKING ISSUE

John Kass of The Chicago Tribune has been one of the most effective journalists during this campaign season, especially in monitoring Barack Obama.  Kass believes, and I agree, that the issue of Obama's strange associations will return in the fall, and will do damage.  And he introduces a new term that you might just be hearing - "Broadway Baby":

Broadway Baby was not mentioned during the Democratic infighting in Pennsylvania.

But Broadway Baby—once a chic children's boutique in Manhattan's Upper West Side—is the future, if Barack Obama is the presidential candidate in the fall.

This story involves two Chicagoans, former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn and her husband, William Ayers, both Obama supporters who blessed his initial foray into politics.

And...

According to a 1982 New York Times report, Broadway Baby was implicated in an investigation of a series of violent armed robberies in New York—netting more than $2 million over a two-year span—committed by former Black Panthers and Weather Underground members in the early '80s.

Their aim? Global revolution, naturally. They needed cash, but the rich white parents weren't in a giving mood. So their privileged offspring grabbed guns, pointed them at the faces of the working man and, sometimes, they pulled the trigger.

At Broadway Baby, customers often paid by check and used driver's licenses for identification. On Dec. 28, 1979, information from two customer files was used to apply for two driver's licenses at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. The fraudulent licenses were used to rent getaway cars for the gang.

Investigators tracked the identities on two licenses for the getaway cars. The names belonged to women who had shopped at Broadway Baby in December 1979. But they weren't robbers.

And who was the manager of Broadway Baby during that period of the customer ID theft?

Dohrn, the future wife of Ayers, identified by investigators as taking customer information from one, and possibly both, of the women shoppers. Dohrn was never charged in that case.

It goes on.  Read the whole piece and make your own judgment.  This material is in the public print, and Obama has to be aware of it.  Yet, he is casual about his association with Ayers and Dohrn.  If people see this association as part of a larger pattern, there could be trouble ahead for Obama, especially if he assumes the aloof attitude he has thus far in dealing with the issue.

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

LATE AFTERNOON POSTING:  APRIL 23, 2008

Posted at 5:03 p.m. ET

HANSON

Victor Davis Hanson gives us a quick but deadly analysis of where the Democratic race stands.  It's pretty clear that VDH thinks the Dems are driving off a cliff.  Why stop them now?

The Second Coming of McGovern

Hillary won just enough to show that it is ludicrous to oust a 10-point winner at this late junction, but not quite the blow-out that might cause a stampede to her in the next few states.

The Democrats are tottering at the edge of the abyss. They are about to nominate someone who cannot win, despite vastly out-spending his opponent, any of the key large states — CA, NJ, NY, OH, PENN, TX, etc. — that will determine the fall election. And yet not to nominate him will cause the sort of implosion they saw in 1968 or the sort of mess we saw in November 2000.

Hillary won't quit, since she knows that Obama, when pressure mounts, is starting to show a weird sort of petulance, and drops the "new politics" for snideness.

And...

There seems something unfair, after all, for someone to win these mega-states and end up only with a few extra delegates for the effort. The more this drags out, the more Obama and Hillary get nastier and more estranged from each other — at precisely the time one must take the VP nomination to unite the party.

On the plus side, Hillary is showing a scrappy, tough blue-collar talent that is critical for November — but apparently it will be all for naught, or worse, cause lots of these Middle America "clingers" to go over to McCain.

More and more, McCain will want to run against Obama and his far weaker coalition of elite whites, African-Americans, students — and closets of skeletons. More and more, we will start to see the buyer's remorse of midsummer 1972.

The problem, of course, is that many in the Obama crowd regard 1972 as a noble moment, where souls were cleansed, although in defeat. 

It must be wonderful to be so pure.

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

PENNSYLVANIA AFTERMATH:  APRIL 23, 2008

3:51 p.m. ET:  As we examine a number of sites and news outlets, a recurrent theme is that yesterday's Clinton win in Pennsylvania has changed nothing fundamental in the Democratic race.  Statistically that is true, but that fact has within it the seeds of major frustration, division, and even revolt inside the Democratic Party.  Many Democrats will understandably ask how Hillary Clinton can win virtually all the major industrial states, yet still be behind in delegate votes, and make so little progress with each victory.  The answer, of course, lies in the party's absurd system of proportional representation.  The electoral college and the Republican primary system are based on logical winner-take-all rules.  You win the state, you get all the delegates.  Under the Democratic rules, delegates are divided in proportion to a candidate's showing.  Sounds fair, but it isn't.  It leads to factions and obstruction, and weird math.  Theoretically, a candidate can win all the primaries except one by narrow margins, and lose that one by a large margin, and then lose the nomination because of proportional representation. 

Party rules have also nullified the primary results in Florida and Michigan, both Clinton states.  If those results were counted, the race would be much tighter.

If the Democrats lose this year, look for a major push to modernize the rules.  The problem is, powerful groups are in favor of those rules, for it gives them veto power over the nomination.

You can sense an anger building within the party, especially among Clinton voters.  If the Democrats nominate Obama, that anger can boil over and benefit Senator McCain.  If Obama loses to McCain, I wouldn't be surprised to hear talk of a "new" Democratic Party, split off from the old. 

2:24 p.m. ET:  Look for the big buildup, by the Clinton camp, of the Puerto Rico primary, scheduled for June 1st.  Now, I know there'll be some laughter out there, but this is serious stuff.  Puerto Rico has 63 delegates, in the same range as Arizona, Louisiana, or Kentucky.  More important, it's the one exclusively Hispanic primary.  One Clinton operative this morning called the primary "huge."  It's huge because Hispanics have not been particularly supportive of Barack Obama, but have supported Hillary Clinton.  If Clinton can survive until June 1st, then win decisively in Puerto Rico, she can legitimately claim that Hispanics won't vote for Obama in November, especially as John McCain is seen as a moderate on the immigration issue.  But the question is whether Hillary can survive until June 1st.

If Clinton wins in Indiana a week from Tuesday, she definitely goes on.  If she loses, especially by a small margin, she could justify continuing if only to get to West Virginia, a week later, and Kentucky, two weeks later, both considered strong for her. 

1:18 p.m. ET:  Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, has just claimed, in an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, that the campaign has raised ten million dollars since Clinton's Pennsylvania victory, not the three million claimed earlier.  In addition, the Clinton campaign is now asserting that Senator Clinton actually leads in the popular vote, if Michigan and Florida are taken into account.  The votes of both states have been nullified by national Democratic leaders because their primaries violated party rules.  Look for this Clinton claim to become a major talking point.  If the exclusion of those two major states changed the popular vote result, it provides a powerful grievance for the Clinton forces, who can legitimately cry "unfair." 

11:48 a.m. ET:  The Democratic governor of conservative Oklahoma, Brad Henry, has just endorsed Barack Obama for the nomination.  Endorsements by governors are not made in a vacuum.  Their timing is coordinated with the candidate's campaign.  Clearly, Obama wanted a headline today featuring the endorsement of a major figure from a state that isn't inside the liberal orbit.  Will it have an impact?  Minor. 

11:41 a.m. ET:  Hillary Clinton raised three million dollars in overnight contributions, following her Pennsylvania win.  She is cash short, and this helps.  According to her campaign, this was her best overnight showing.

11:29 a.m. ET:  We've been talking about the importance of Indiana, which votes a week from Tuesday.  North Carolina votes the same day, but almost certainly will go to Obama.  There are no up-to-the-minute polls in Indiana.  However, the last two taken provide some sober warnings for Hillary.  A Downs Center poll (not familiar with it) completed on the 16th showed Obama up five.  An L.A. Times-Bloomberg poll completed on the 14th showed the same result.  However, a Survey USA poll completed the day before showed Clinton up by 16.  So take your pick.  There have been no poll results in a week. 

One poll in North Carolina, completed Monday, shows Obama up nine.  Another, completed the day before, shows him up 25.  Yet Clinton is making a major effort in the state.  It's possible that her internal polling shows progress.  Polling in both Indiana and North Carolina should be refined and relatively constant by this weekend. 

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

WEDNESDAY:  APRIL 23,  2008

Posted at 6:56 a.m. ET

PENNSYLVANIA

It is over, isn't it?  They have voted in Pennsylvania, have they not?  And, unlike Michigan and Florida, the Pennsylvania votes will be counted.  Right?

Yeah, I think I've got it right.  There'll be plenty of fallout today from Hillary Clinton's ten-point victory in Pennsylvania.  Yes, she has a new political life.  How long it will last will depend on her showing in Indiana, the next symbolic state, which votes a week from next Tuesday. 

Give Clinton her due.  She's a fighter, and the voters seem to like that.  I wonder why.  Do you think they understand, more than the money crowd in Manhattan and San Francisco, that the fall campaign will be hard fought, brutal, and a test of endurance?  You think?  Do you think they realize that Obama's commencement-speech rhetoric is getting tiresome, especially to people who've never had a commencement?  You think? 

Pennsylvania showed how split the Democratic Party really is.  The split isn't over philosophical concepts of nation-building and nuclear deterrence.  The split is cultural.  You look at where the Clinton votes came from - the blue-collar workers, the small communities - and you see people who are invisible to much of the Democratic Party's modern, chic leadership.  These are what some of the diploma class call "the flyover people," those who'd never be invited to parties at the solar-powered homes of leading activists.  Don't expect George Soros to sit down and have a beer with a steelworker anytime soon.

Clinton carried the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania's counties.  Looking at a CNN map last night, and listening to the excellent John King, we saw only a few areas that Obama won.  They were, with few exceptions, the big cities with substantial African-American populations.  And the academic crowd joined them.  Obama carried the Modern Language Association. 

The Reagan Democrats were at the polls yesterday.  Will the party elders care?

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

THE NUMBERS

David Paul Kuhn, in The Politico, gives an excellent statistical analysis of how Clinton took Pennsylvania.  She did it the old-fashioned way, with the old-fashioned, and well-proved, coalition.  And Kuhn sees dangers for Obama:

Obama did win more than nine in 10 black voters, continuing his unbroken support of African-Americans. And Clinton continued her trend of winning white women in all but a couple of contests. But other trends may prove disconcerting for Obama.

Obama won six in 10 voters age 29 and under. But Clinton split young white voters, as she did in Ohio. In early February, Obama heavily lost whites in Missouri but narrowly won the state with the help of 57 percent of the white youth vote.

Young Democrats made up only 12 percent of voters, however. In comparison, fully 22 percent were age 65 and older. Clinton won more than six in 10 senior voters while winning a majority of all voters 40 and older.

Also similar to Ohio, Clinton won nearly six in 10 of those voters without college degrees, a strong indicator of working class status. Obama’s bus tour and advertising blitz targeting working-class voters appears to have had little effect. The same can be said for the row over Obama’s remarks about “bitter” Midwestern small town voters, though that too was expected, as polling indicated that it was mostly non-Democrats who were offended.

Obama won only a slight majority of voters with college degrees, again largely reflecting the Ohio results. That is a disconcerting result for Obama, as the Illinois senator needed to dominate voters with higher levels of education to overcome Clinton’s advantage in the state. It has been Obama’s base of blacks and highly educated whites that has formed the bedrock of his victories throughout the primary race.

Substantial combat ahead.  What good fun.

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

SWITCHING SIDES?

The New York Times surprised many when it endorsed Hillary Clinton in the New York primary, despite The Times's very liberal reputation.  Some attributed the endorsement to the feminist presence in the paper's newsroom.  Now The Times, in what has to be an example of awful timing, apparently is suffering buyer's remorse.  It is shocked, shocked, that Hillary got tough in Pennsylvania:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Oh, my heavens, get the children out of the room.  Please!

There is a mild criticism of Barack Obama in the editorial, but The Times is clearly upset that Senator Clinton is so...so political. 

Oh, grow up, editors.  It's a contact sport.  If you can't stand the heat, get out of the...  No, your feelings have been hurt enough.

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

NO CLASS

There's poor taste, and there's really poor taste.  The Los Angeles Times "exposes" the fact that John McCain receives a tax-exempt disability pension from the Navy, based on the physical damage he suffered at the hands of the enemy while a POW in Vietnam.  Among other things, McCain can't raise his hands above his head.

Get this quote:

McCain would be the oldest man to enter the White House if he is elected president, and questions have been raised about his health.

McCain has twice developed melanoma, a potentially deadly form of skin cancer.

The fact that he is legally designated with a disability pension may raise further questions.

Apparently, the L.A. Times is trying to compete with The New York Times in finding hit pieces to throw at the Republican nominee.  The practice will no doubt continue.  But this story is nothing short of vulgar.  McCain's disability pension is based on specific injuries, but they are not the kind that bar him from public service.  The man has been a congressman and senator for 25 years.  Hasn't the L.A. Times noticed?

Whether you agree with his political stands or not, John McCain has served this country in ways most of us cannot fully comprehend. 

At the end of World War II, Samuel Goldwyn produced an Oscar-winning movie called "The Best Years of Our Lives," about American soldiers returning home, and what they'd experienced.  Maybe the Hollywood types at the L.A. Times can rent the DVD, and learn why their story questioning McCain's disability pension is so contemptible.

April 23, 2008.      Permalink          

APPRECIATION

Finally, a thank-you to Urgent Agenda readers.  You made yesterday our most successful day, in terms of readership, since we began on January 7th.  Our readership has grown dramatically since that first day, and it's important that it continue to expand.  Our readers are highly intelligent and well-informed.  To service this distinguished group means constant attention to quality, and that means time.  The site has become, essentially, a full-time operation.  To justify that, and expand our features, we will eventually open Urgent Agenda to unobtrusive advertising.  The higher our readership base, the better financed we'll be, allowing us to do more for our readers.  Your loyalty is deeply appreciated.  If you find the site worthy, we hope you recommend it to others.

Be back later with more on the Pennsylvania fallout.  We'll try to have items throughout the day.

April 23, 2008.        Permalink