SECOND EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 4,  2008

Posted at 8:29 p.m. ET

THE OBAMA PUZZLE

The Wall Street Journal asks the right questions about Barack Obama.  Less is known about him than perhaps any presidential nominee in recent history, maybe more-than-recent history:

Think about this in historical context. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were relatively unknown, but both had at least been prominent Governors. John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and even George McGovern were all long-time Washington figures. Republican nominees tend to be even more familiar, for better or worse. In Mr. Obama, Democrats are taking a leap of faith that is daring even by their risky standards.

And...

For all of his inspiring rhetoric about bipartisanship, his voting record is among the most partisan in the Senate. His policy agenda is conventionally liberal across the board – more so than Hillary Clinton's, and more so than that of any Democratic nominee since 1968.

We can't find a single issue on which Mr. Obama has broken with his party's left-wing interest groups.

And...

There is also the matter of judgment, and the roots of his political character. We were among those inclined at first to downplay his association with the Trinity United Church. But Mr. Obama's handling of the episode has raised doubts about his candor and convictions. He has by stages moved from denying that his 20-year attendance was an issue at all; to denying he'd heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks; to criticizing certain of those remarks while praising Rev. Wright himself; to repudiating the words and the reverend; and finally this weekend to leaving the church.

Most disingenuously, he said on Saturday that the entire issue caught him by surprise. Yet he was aware enough of the political risk that he kept Rev. Wright off the stage during his announcement speech more than a year ago.

Finally...

The young Senator has been a supernova exploding into our politics, more phenomenon than conventional candidate. His achievement in winning the Democratic nomination has been impressive. Now comes a harder audience. The presidency has to be earned, and Americans have a right to know much more about the gifted man who is the least tested and experienced major party nominee in modern times.

So true, so true.  Senator Obama must introduce himself to the American people, and do so personally, not through the filter of a grand speech before a huge audience.  People must feel they know him, and can trust him.

June 4, 2008.      Permalink          

EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 4,  2008

Posted at 7:04 p.m. ET

THE STAKES IN IRAQ

Bringing us back to the real world, Fouad Ajami, one of the sanest scholars writing about the Middle East, gives a superb, clear-headed analysis of the situation in Iraq, and our prospects.  I strongly recommend this:

Of all that has been written about the play of things in Iraq, nothing that I have seen approximates the truth of what our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, recently said of this war: "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came."

It is odd, then, that critics have launched a new attack on the origins of the war at precisely the time a new order in Iraq is taking hold. But American liberal opinion is obsessive today. Scott McClellan can't be accused of strategic thinking, but he has been anointed a peer of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. A witness and a presumed insider – a "Texas loyalist" – has "flipped."

And...

We don't need to overwork the stereotype that Arabs understand and respond to the logic of force, but this is a region sensitive to the wind, and to the will of outside powers. Before America struck into Iraq, a mere 18 months after 9/11, there had been glee in the Arab world, a sense that America had gotten its comeuppance. There were regimes hunkering down, feigning friendship with America while aiding and abetting the forces of terror.

Liberal opinion in America and Europe may have scoffed when President Bush drew a strict moral line between order and radicalism – he even inserted into the political vocabulary the unfashionable notion of evil – but this sort of clarity is in the nature of things in that Greater Middle East. It is in categories of good and evil that men and women in those lands describe their world. The unyielding campaign waged by this president made a deep impression on them.

I wish more people would study those words, especially "deep impression."  There must be a reason why the jihadists, according to recent reports, are losing popularity.  Maybe the Arab world really is impressed by Bush's resolve.  More:

It is not easy to tell people of threats and dangers they have been spared. The war put on notice regimes and conspirators who had harbored dark thoughts about America and who, in the course of the 1990s, were led to believe that terrible deeds against America would go unpunished. A different lesson was taught in Iraq. Nowadays, the burden of the war, in blood and treasure, is easy to see, while the gains, subtle and real, are harder to demonstrate. Last month, American casualties in Iraq were at their lowest since 2003. The Sunnis also have broken with al Qaeda, and the Shiite-led government has taken the war to the Mahdi Army: Is it any wonder that the critics have returned to the origins of the war?

Very well said.  Read the whole thing.

June 4, 2008.      Permalink          

EARLY EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 4,  2008

Posted at 6:31 p.m. ET

TRACKERS

The tracking polls out today were probably completed before last night's declarations and speeches.

Rasmussen has Obama up two over McCain.  Gallup has McCain up one over Obama.

Rasmussen has apparently stopped polling on Clinton.  But Gallup has Clinton three up over McCain.

Those Clinton people aren't giving up.

I'll be interested to see if poll numbers change as a result of last night's events, especially Senator McCain's awful speechmaking. 

June 4, 2008.      Permalink             

WEDNESDAY:  JUNE 4,  2008

Posted at 6:41 a.m. ET

WEIRDNESS

What a weird political night that was. 

According to the script, Hillary Clinton was supposed to concede, or at least acknowledge that Obama had become the nominee.  Instead, she did a modern variation on the famous Jack Benny line, "I'm thinking about it."

Exactly what she's thinking about, no one quite knows.  The vice presidency?  Obama's support for a race for governor of New York?  The post of Senate Majority Leader?   Presumably, we'll get a better picture as the days advance.  Maybe Hillary is aware of something that will come out about Obama.  There's a great story, for you.

The other element of weirdness was John McCain's thoroughly inept speech launching his campaign.  The substance was fine, but the speech was poorly delivered, and to a crowd that was much too small and a bit unruly.  It was not a good opening act.  Some commentators pointed out that McCain's strength is in debates and town meetings.  That's nice, but he will have to speak alone at times, and needs practice.  He also needs to memorize key lines so he can look directly into the camera, instead of looking at the teleprompter.

Actually, Clinton gave the best speech last night, her non-concession special.  Obama delivered his usual stemwinder, very good at the start, but a bit tedious toward the bolt-from-Heaven end. 

Two questions emerged last night:  What will become of Hillary Clinton?  And can McCain mount a successful campaign against Obama's well-oiled machine?  The great mass of the voters won't concentrate on the race until after Labor Day, so there's time for repair and revision.

June 4, 2008.      Permalink          

OUR CRITICS

Well, you just knew this was coming.  The New York Times, gushing over Obama, reports that the anointed one's speech last night was carried by TV around the world.  He has come!  He has come! 

...as Senator Barack Obama reached the end of the long road to the Democratic presidential nominee Tuesday night, viewers all around the world were indeed watching.

On Al Jazeera, on CNBC World, on the BBC, and on many other news channels, Mr. Obama’s speech was telecast live. Anchors and commentators repeatedly nodded to the historic nature of the night.

“Simply put, Barack Obama has made history in the United States tonight,” the Canadian anchor Peter Mansbridge told viewers on the CBC newscast “The National.” “It’s a moment some said would never come: An African American leading a major party into a presidential election.”

And there's more:

On British Broadcasting Corporation’s news channel, the Washington anchor Matt Frei said that the Iowa caucuses, five months ago, were a turning point for the United States. At that time, “a lot of people around this country thought to themselves for the first time, can it be that a black man might become president? It will be another five months before we learn the answer to that question, but have no doubt, history is being made tonight,” Mr. Frei said.

His colleague, the correspondent Katty Kay, summed it up in four words: “Who would have thought?”

Oh please.  In blunt terms, who the hell do these people think they are?  They talk about us as if we're some backward society that has just had a breakthrough leading us to the enlightenment of, well, of their countries.  Really?  Where, pray, is the British Barack Obama, or the Canadian version?  And Al Jazeera?  Aren't they kind of cozy with societies that call Christians and Jews apes and pigs? 

Let these people deal with their own bigotries before judging this country, and expressing wonderment that we could nominate an African-American.  We do wonderment very well in America, all the time.

June 4, 2008.      Permalink          

BUT THE PROBLEMS CONTINUE

We reported here yesterday on problems that Barack Obama has with various groups in the electorate.  Exit polling from yesterday's primaries in South Dakota and Montana confirm that he hasn't solved these problems, despite speeches, ads and greater focus on those who may not love him.  The Politico reports:

On the night that Barack Obama clinched his party's nomination, one-third of Hillary Clinton's supporters in Montana and South Dakota said they would not vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Exit polls from both states demonstrate that Obama inherits a fractured coalition after the longest primary race in modern history. Demographic divisions dug by class, race, gender and political philosophy haunted Obama until his last contests, effectively forcing the Illinois senator to limp across the finish line Tuesday night.

The cappuccino versus coffee Democratic divide between upper class and working voters continued. Coffee Democrats were more likely to back Clinton while cappuccino Democrats were more likely to back Obama. That these divisions were also deepened by gender and racial identity — rooted in long-sought historic firsts for women and blacks — means that there exists an unprecedented intra-party burden that befalls Obama.

And...

Roughly one quarter of Clinton voters in Montana said they would vote for McCain in November if Obama were the Democratic nominee; about one in 10 said they intended not to vote. When South Dakota Democratic voters were asked how they would vote if Obama was the Democratic nominee, about 15 percent of Clinton supporters said they would back McCain and an equal portion said they intended to sit out the general election.

Finally...

Obama won the nomination by winning some of the whitest states in the union, from Iowa at the outset of the race to the final night in Montana. However, the asterisk beside that feat now follows Obama to the general election. Obama never was able to make sustainable inroads with working-class, female, and older whites.

Obama is running as a uniter.  But George W. Bush ran as a uniter as well, but it didn't quite work out.  No election will test America's cultural divide as this one will.  The greatest problem we may have after the election is how we deal with the anger.

June 4, 2008.      Permalink