Who's the Elitist?

Charles Krauthammer parrots the Obama-as-elitist talking point as he extols the virtues of Clinton's culturally-based, racially-tinged campaign of attack. On the gas-tax holiday:

The gas-tax holiday was never an economic or policy issue. It was meant to position her culturally. It heightened her identification with her white working-class constituency. Obama played his part by citing economists in opposing it. That completed her narrative: He had the pointy-headed professors on his side; she had the single moms seeking relief at the pump.

What pisses me off is that Krauthammer has no affinity for the life of the ordinary American. He was born in New York City to Jewish parents of French citizenship, and was raised in Montreal, where he attended The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, or McGill University. Then he attended Harvard Medical School. He's a board-certified psychiatrist who ascended from HMS to the Carter Administration in 1978, writing speeches for Mondale before leaving in 1981 to start writing full-time for The New Republic.

Has this man ever found himself shopping at Wal-Mart or comparing truck tires for his Chevy half-ton? He's about as far removed from working class America as his beloved president. Which makes his commentary about Clinton's transformation from a Bush-bashing leftie to a centrist Everywoman all the more pernicious. As he sees it, Clinton understands that "the way to run against Obama [is by going] back to the center — not ideologically but culturally, not on policy but on attitude." On attitude. Screw policy, screw issues. This is the Rove maneuver of political warfare. Make the other guy wrong to rely on economics, science, and reason. Call him out of touch for forgoing unhealthy foods at the local eateries. Paint him as a clumsy gork for bowling gutter balls; ridicule his playing an urban game like basketball.

And of course we all know which way those "pointy-headed professors" lean. McCain should kiss her ring and pick up the next round of Crown Royal with a beer back.

Scary Statistic

From Nicholas Kristof at the NY Times. Seems that in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, the candidate who was nominated first won the general election. In 1980, Ted Kennedy held on until August, believing he had a real shot against Jimmy Carter when his chances had long since faded. As Kristof notes, Carter would probably have lost to Reagan anyway given his very strong negatives and the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, but Kennedy's hanging on did do some lasting damage to the party.

Hillary needs to bow out, and very soon (as in the next two weeks). Someone on NPR mentioned yesterday that having her exit, only to have her win a primary or two after her departure, would be devastating to Obama. McCain served Bush some serious embarrassment in 2000 after he quit and then won a primary. She should perhaps hang on long enough to take West Virginia and Kentucky -- two states where the outcome won't matter a hill o'beans in the end -- and then emphatically throw her support behind Obama.

The Dems have a huge obstacle to overcome. They must reconcile with white voters who would rather vote for McCain -- or not at all -- if Obama is the nominee. Some serious education must be provided for these uneducated voters who think that a vote for McSame is better for America than a vote for Obama. If they can't be swayed, then I fear that only confirms what I and many others have been saying all along: Americans really are that stupid.

The Dinosaur Speaks

George McGovern, an early Clinton supporter, has now thrown his support behind Obama, and urged Clinton to quit the race.

Now, if we can only get Ted Kennedy, Dukakis and Mondale to do the same, maybe she'll start to listen up.

Who's the real enemy here?

The NY Times editorializes that Obama and Clinton now need to stop stabbing at each other over inconsequential matters and to debate the issues. Big news there, right? Well, that's just the means to the end. The piece vividly illustrates what's really at stake. As the title suggests, "It's About the White House." The lucky man or woman who gets to occupy that building for the next four to eight years can shift the balance of power back to where it should be; that is to say, in balance for the first time in eight years. We don't need more justices on the Supreme Court like Roberts and Alito. I love this quote about McCain's speech on Tuesday:

Since ... Roberts and Alito [joined], the Court has ordered Seattle and Louisville to scrap voluntary school integration, protected employers who illegally mistreat their workers, and constrained women’s right to choose and voters’ right to vote. Mr. McCain did not mention, of course, how the Roberts-led Court blithely overruled Congress by nullifying a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He did wax nostalgic about what “the basic right of property” has meant “since the founding of America.” (He did not mention that in 1789 many women could not own property and African-Americans were property, but he did criticize the idea that values evolve over time.) .

(Warning: slight tangent here) Not to mention the recent ruling that the three-drug "cocktail" used for lethal injection executions does not violate the Eight Amendment. You see, there were only a few people who may have experienced great pain during the process. If you're gonna execute people, then you have to allow for some of those bastards to feel pain. (OK, tangent over)

The real enemy in this presidential race is already crafting his national campaign while the eventual winner is caught in a petty contest about who has the bigger balls. According to one midwestern white guy, Clinton's got more "testicular fortitude." Whatever. Stop bickering at each other and set your sights on getting past the old fart and his ever-bending straight talk.

The candidates as comic book, er, Graphic Novel, characters

Maureen Dowd turns Hillary Clinton into a shape-shifting scorpion, while Barack Obama (did she really call him "Barry?") is a "diaphanous" butterfly. Good read, although neither candidate comes across looking particularly presidential.

More on Energy... and start taking your Smart Pills

I'm directing the next sentence of this blog to my mother, who I know is reading this: Mom, both you and dad need to stop thinking that the next election rests on what Fox News says or on what the next president will do about preserving the status quo on healthcare, and read this Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman in today's NY Times.

In case you hadn't heard, McCain and now Clinton are both supporting a "gas-tax holiday," whereby the 18.4 cents per gallon federal tax on gasoline would be suspended during the summer. McCain has no offset for how to pay for it, so really he is going to borrow from the Chinese just like his mentor, President Bush. Clinton wants to charge a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, which is only slightly better. At least she's trying to find a way to offset the loss to the government budget. But the tax has the opposite effect; it causes oil companies to shift profits to their foreign operations because those aren't taxed.

I'm not going to paraphrase Mr. Friedman because he just put it so well:

This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

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

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

Do Americans really want to drive their SUVs to the beach just to put their heads in the sand?

As I said earlier, it's less consumption we're after, not more. Repealing the tax, however temporary, would reveal the government to be the world's greatest enabler. "Gee, I know we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we can't kill their summer vacations when gas is $4 a gallon! Let's make it $3.82. That'll give the people what they need!"

I think the government needs to go to a Codependents Anonymous meeting. And we consumers need some kind of program of our own too.

Hillary won't leave yet

She beats Obama by 9.2%, less than the 10% most experts agreed would be needed to stay in the race. However, she remains formidable for one very important reason: she wins the Democratic voters that the party most wants to win, who are the working-class white men. Obama couldn't connect with them. What's also nagging me is that he hasn't won a single big "swing" state other than Illinois. Hillary took all the others. In Pennsylvania, she won big in 70% of the state, and Obama only won big in Philadelphia. Hillary takes the old voters, Obama the younger. She gets lower-income voters, he gets the affluent.

Surprising: today on NPR, Obama's spokesman said that Obama had gotten more overall votes than Clinton, and that per recent polling he does better against McCain in a general election than Clinton in all of those big states where Hillary won. I haven't seen the polling data, but if that's true, that would be one thing to hang your I'm-for-Obama hat on.

I'm not sure where I fall with this protracted contest. Many of the more cynical political bloggers are proclaiming McCain as the winner in last night's primary. As long as he's the only presumptive nominee out there, he's the only one who gets to present a national campaign strategy and frame a national message without the distraction of having to run against anyone in his own party. Obama occasionally tries on the nominee's clothes, but at most it's a tux rental that he has to return the next day or pay extra. Clinton still portrays herself as the one who's ready to lead, but where that is, I'm not sure. Obama seems to want to lead us away from polarization, and I like that. I certainly don't agree with Republicans on most things, and the more that they lean towards Christianism, the less I resonate with any of their positions on issues. But enough damage has been done to this country and we don't need four more years of political skullduggery, the way the GOP tried to take down Bill Clinton, and the way they took down Gore and Kerry (and let's not forget good ol' Max Cleland). Putting Hillary in the White House will certainly make it easier for the Republicans to go on hating, because she's a Democrat, because she's a Clinton, and because she's a she.

I got an email from a colleague who said some Europeans were predicting McCain would win by boiling it down this way:

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, running against a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer. On the other side, you have a war hero married to a good looking woman with big tits who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a really contest here?