Hillary’s Last Gasp Dismisses Blacks, Disses Working-Class Whites

What was the intent when Hillary Clinton said this to USA Today on Wednesday:

I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on…Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and whites in both states who (have) not completed college (are) supporting me…There’s a pattern emerging here.

Pundits left and right inferred the obvious: Clinton was questioning the ability of a black candidate to win the White House without the white working-class vote. She presumes much. While most of the growing criticism of Clinton’s comments focuses on her dismissive attitude towards black voters, her presumptuous attitude towards working-class whites is equally damning. Both the dismissing and the dissing come from a deep-seated belief in racial and class-based stereotypes and a longstanding reliance on inherently divisive identity politics.

Peggy Noonan reports what Democratic insiders are saying off the record about Hillary Clinton:

She has unleashed the gates of hell. She’s saying, ‘He’s not one of us.’

And,

It’s not math anymore, it’s psychodrama. If she can’t have it, no one can have it. If she has to tear the party apart, she will.

Joe Conason wears kid gloves and pulls his punches writing for Salon today, but his jab still lands squarely on Clinton’s jaw:

She violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake. It was her offhand reference to ‘working, hard-working Americans, white Americans’ that raises the specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?

In The Washington Post today, Eugene Robinson tells the unvarnished truth:

Here’s what she’s really saying to party leaders: There’s no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you’ll be sorry.

And the upshot, according to Robinson:

Assuming that Obama is the eventual nominee, he will have some work to do in reuniting the party. But there’s no reason to think he won’t succeed — unless Clinton drives a wedge between important elements of the party’s historical coalition.

The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton has finally found a formula that can defeat Barack Obama, namely, exploiting deep psychological divisions between races and classes. The problem for Clinton is that, as Charles Krauthammer lucidly explains, she found the formula too late.

Why, then, does she persist in pursuing a strategy that can only divide her party and weaken its nominee?

Isn’t that Rush Limbaugh’s job?

Newsprism

Immediate Election Results Direct from Indiana and North Carolina

Below are the results of the primaries in Indiana and North Carolina as reported by their Secretaries of State.

Indiana usually announces results quickly; North Carolina allows you to follow results county-by-county.

Indiana Presidential Primary Results

North Carolina Presidential Primary Results

Newsprism

Summer Gas Tax Holiday is a Holiday from Reason

On the issue of suspending federal gas taxes over the summer, Barack Obama is the only “conservative” in the presidential race.

John McCain first proposed the tax holiday but didn’t specify how he’d pay for it. That was some pretty transparent pandering (let’s call it translucent) coming from an alleged fiscal conservative.

Hillary Clinton then began advocating the same tax holiday and added that she’d pay for it by taxing the windfall profits of the oil companies. Vintage Clinton; she panders transparently while acting fiscally conservative.

Barack Obama says the tax holiday isn’t necessary or even useful. Considering the fiscal pickle we’re in, his position is wise. If nothing else, Obama knows how to create the appearance of a new politics.

Based on average driving, most Americans would receive a benefit of about $30 over the summer, and that’s assuming that every penny of the tax will wind up in consumers’ pockets. It won’t.

How many Americans would sell their vote to a pandering politician  less than $30? Clinton and McCain intend to find out.

Newsprism

New Twist on an Old Joke: What Do You Call a Liberal Who’s Been Mugged?

The old joke goes like this: What do you call a liberal who’s been mugged?

A conservative.

After seven years of big-spending government and eroding civil liberties under allegedly conservative Republicans, the joke needs an update: What do you call a conservative who’s been mugged by government?

A libertarian.

Independent voters tend to decide national elections, and the largest bloc of independents are libertarian in outlook: fiscally conservative and socially liberal, in effect straddling the two major parties—which leaves them vulnerable to getting kicked in the crotch no matter whom they vote for.

This country was founded on libertarian principles—limited government, property rights, civil liberties, individual responsibility—that have been significantly eroded under both Democratic and Republican administrations. The designers of our democracy wouldn’t recognize what’s become of their experiment today; somehow a design intended to limit government has been twisted into a government with no intention of limiting its designs.

Up until the turn of the millenium, it was Democrats who considered the Constitution a “quaint document.” Now the Republican Party has betrayed its most fundamental animating principle. It is no longer a conservative party.

PJ O’Rourke puts it like this: “It’s going to be hard to do a worse job running America than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it’s the Democrats.”

With a socialist Hillary Clinton or a very liberal Barack Obama set to face off against a big government Republican like John McCain, McCain would seem to be the lesser of two evils. Maybe the late great Molly Ivans had it right: for the third presidential election in a row, we’re faced with “the evil of two lessers.” The only genuine libertarian in the race is Ron Paul, and he’s way too principled, too shrill, too rough around the edges, and too ugly to win the American Idol contest we call a presidential election.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of nation had been created. His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Newsprism

Laugh While You Cry—It’s Tax Freedom Day!

According to the Tax Foundation, the average working American pays 31% of his or her income in direct federal, state, and local taxes. That’s more than is spent on food, clothing, and shelter combined.

If that tax burden visualized as a percentage of one year, the average working American spends the first 113 days of the year to pay direct taxes.

According to the Foundation, that means today, April 23, is Tax Freedom Day—the day of the year on which the average working American has finally worked enough to pay his or her taxes.

Congratulations!

As you celebrate the end of this year’s servitude to government, you should ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I get for my 113 days of labor? (You probably don’t want to know the answer, but if you do, check out this, this, and this.)

2. Who are the non-working Americans I’m supporting, and why the hell aren’t they working? (Some are retired or disabled—God bless them—but then there are the millions of parasites, scammers, lazybones, bureaucrats, corporations and assorted criminals we support thanks to misguided government largesse.)

To ease the burden and help you laugh through the tears, watch this witty Tax Freedom Day video courtesy of YouTube.

Newsprism

Hillary Clinton and Monty Python’s Black Knight

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight fights King Arthur to prevent him from crossing a small bridge. After having an arm cut off by the King, the Knight insists, “‘Tis but a scratch” and refuses to concede. After the other arm is cut off, the Black Knight still refuses to concede, insisting it’s “just a flesh wound.” The unarmed knight then loses both legs, at which point he finally agrees to “call it a draw.”

With virtually no chance of catching Barack Obama in either delegates or the popular vote, Hillary Clinton continues to insist on dragging the Democratic Party through a bloody and needless fight to the convention in August. She needs to win around 80% of the remaining popular vote, for example, but is down by 8% in the latest Gallup tracking poll.

Disarmed and without a leg to stand on, Clinton is now asking the question, “Why can’t (Obama) close the deal?“

The answer is simple: because a black knight with no chance of victory is blocking his way.

Newsprism

Bill Clinton Denies Saying What He Said…On Tape

Asked about his comments during the South Carolina primary comparing Barack Obama’s performance there with Jesse Jackson’s—a comment many took as injecting race into the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton—Bill Clinton told WHYY 91FM’s Susan Phillips (audio),

I think that (the Obama campaign) played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign that they planned to do it along.

Asked about the comment today, a snippy and defensive Clinton denied saying what he said (video.) The former president also dodged a question about the alleged memos he denied referring to. (Here’s the whole story from ABC News.)

Later in the WHYY interview, Clinton said his South Carolina comments were “used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign.” Then, off mic, using his genuine voice and vocabulary, he adds, “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?”

This is vintage Bill Clinton—cynically spinning and twisting beneath that slick, golly-gee persona of his, then lying and denying about it.

Is Bill Clinton a serial liar? It depends on where your definition of “lies” lies.

Newsprism

Those Arkansaw Bumkins, or, A Gremlin In His Goober (satire)

 

The Perfect Vice President for Either Party: Sam Nunn of Georgia

Former Senator and conservative Democrat Sam Nunn today endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, eliciting speculation that he could be on Obama’s short list of potential runningmates.

Newsprism has long considered Nunn, a four-term Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an expert on weapons of mass destruction, among the most credible candidates for the presidency—an office he’s shown little if any interest in.

As Obama’s runningmate, Nunn would shore up the Democrats’ foreign policy credentials substantially and move the ticket towards the center, possibly even putting some states in the otherwise solidly red South in play.

Mr. Nunn would make an equally strong runningmate for John McCain. McCain’s main weakness is the perception that he would continue the utterly failed foreign policy of George Bush, a foreign policy Nunn has challenged with great depth and perspective. Nunn would also pull the Republican ticket towards the center, putting any number of blue states in play.

Nunn  hopes for a sea change in US foreign policy and for political reconciliation domestically. Accepting a spot on either ticket would go a long way towards accomplishing both objectives.

Update: Nunn just told MSNBC that he’s happy in the private sector and not considering a return to public office.

Update: Along with Nunn, former Senator David Boren and former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich have also endorsed Barack Obama today.

Newsprism

Hillary Clinton Uses Wrong ‘Kitchen’ Metaphor

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania today, Hillary Clinton responded to Barack Obama’s criticism of the ABC News debate Wednesday night, saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (video).” She added, “I’m very comfortable in the kitchen.”

This seems an odd metaphor for a woman who once belittled housewives for “bak(ing) cookies and hav(ing) teas (transcript).“

The apt metaphor for the lingering Mrs. Clinton: too many cooks spoil the broth.

More to the point, Obama’s crticism wasn’t about the “heat” of the questions  the moderators, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, asked him—it was about their shallowness, a criticism Newsprism agrees with 100%.

Newsprism

Why Some Democrats and Republicans Should Be Barred from Voting

Have you ever wondered why some people seem impossible to reason with when conversations turn to politics?

A study conducted at Atlanta’s Emory University used sophisticated brain scans to analyze the political reasoning—or lack thereof—of voters strongly attached to one political party or the other.

The results: when faced with information that threatens their pre-existing beliefs, both staunch Democrats and Republicans turn off the rational centers in the brain and turn on the emotional ones.

According to LiveScience.com,

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making … Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

Emory University’s Director of Clinical Psychology, Drew Weston, put it this way:

The result (of the study) is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.

The study might go far in explaining the popularity of conservative talk radio and the liberal blogosphere, where reason and evidence are as rare as an honest politician.

The old admonition may hold true that some people—the party faithful, as it turns out—just shouldn’t discuss politics.

Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to vote, either.

Newsprism

Delegate Math Doesn’t Add Up for Clinton

Barack Obama has opened a nine-point national lead over Hillary Clinton in Gallup’s daily tracking poll, 52-43%. Rasmussen has Obama ahead by 11, 51-40%.

In March, Obama raised $40 million to Clinton’s $20 million.

Meanwhile, the Gallup poll shows Obama leads by two over John McCain, who is tied with Clinton. McCain raised $15 million in March.

In North Carolina, Obama leads Clinton by 23 points; in Pennsylvania, some polls show Obama gaining on Clinton—others show a dead heat; in Oregon, Obama leads Clinton by 10 points; In Indiana, Clinton leads Obama by nine.

Considering that Clinton needs to virtually sweep the remaining primaries to defeat Obama, the likelihood of her winning the Democratic nomination has shrunk from slim to none.

Clinton’s only chance now appears to be a broad movement of superdelegates in her direction, but even that seems less and less likely as superdelegates have been swinging to Obama and backpeddling on their endorsements of Clinton.

Math doesn’t lie; Clinton’s insistence on staying in the race just doesn’t add up.

Newsprism

Hillary’s Penn Leaves Black Mark on Campaign

Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist Mark Penn has been forced to resign after meeting with Colombian officials to discuss a bilateral trade agreement opposed by Mrs. Clinton.

Trade agreements that could hurt American workers are a touchy subject in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a declining industrial base is damaging local economies. Pennsylvania holds its primary on April 22.

Penn, sometimes referred to as Clinton’s “Karl Rove,” had clashed with numerous campaign staffers and was blamed by many for the failed electoral strategy that allowed Barack Obama to establish an imposing lead in pledged delegates shortly after Super Tuesday primaries in February.

Particularly problematic was Penn’s dual role as chief campaign strategist and president of PR firm Bursten-Marsteller, which brought up questions of propriety and conflicts of interest. Colombian officials have suggested that they weren’t sure whether their meeting with Penn involved just one or both of his roles.

Penn’s resignation is just the latest in a string of black marks on a campaign that a year ago was seen as virtually unstoppable.

Newsprism

Oink, Oink! Congress Pigs Out on Pork Barrel Spending

The latest annual Pig Book, which tallies up the total amount of pork-barrel spending by Congress, came out today. The results: Congress added 11,600 special projects called “earmarks” to bills last year, costing the taxpayers $17,200,000,000.

Among the programs documented by the Pig Book’s publishers, Citizens Against Government Waste:

$211,509 for olive fruit fly research to be performed not in the USA, but in Paris, France.

$1,950,000 for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service … sponsored by none other than Charles B. Rangel.

$98,000 for a walking tour of Boydton, Virginia … a town of 474 covering less than one square mile that can all be seen from one spot.

$148,950 for a Sheep Institute in Montana and $188,000 for a Lobster Institute in Maine. What? No Pig Institute in Washington, DC?

$196,000 to renovate the historic post office in Las Vegas … because what better way is there to spend your time in dull, boring Vegas than marvelling at the Post Office?

The pork continues to flow from Congress despite ethics reforms and earmark reforms instituted by the new Democratic majority. Last year was the second porkiest since 1991, when CAGW first published the Pig Book. The total cost of special projects in those 18 years exceeds $271,000,000.

The top three porkers in Congress are three Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee: Thad Cochran, Ted Stevens, and Richard Shelby.

As for the three remaining candidates in the race for the White House, there are no surprises. Hillary Clinton leads the way with 281 earmarks costing $296,200,000. Barack Obama finds himself in the middle with 53 earmarks costing $97,400,000.

And John McCain? Zero earmarks costing $0.00.

Mr. and Ms. American taxpayer, here’s the message from your representatives in Congress: turn around, bend over, and squeal like a pig.

Who says you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s earmark?

Newsprism

Hillary’s Not Merely Dead, She’s Really Most Sincerely Dead

To turn Mark Twain’s line on its head, reports of the life of the Hillary Clinton campaign have been greatly exaggerated.

Slate.com has created a Hillary Deathwatch page that calls her campaign “as good as dead” while gauging her chances of winning the Democratic nomination at 12%. Politico.com pegs Clinton’s odds at “virtually no chance of winning” while quoting a Clinton official as saying her chances are 1 in 10.

David Brooks offers the more realistic figure of 5% and asks the salient question: ”Why does she go on like this?” His answer:

Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life. For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity… No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears. If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary.

A look at the most recent Democratic primary Gallup polls shows Obama pulling away from Clinton nationally with a lead of eight percent. Meanwhile, in Gallup’s general election polling, Clinton’s two point lead over McCain has been reversed since the Jeremiah Wright tapes surfaced just over two weeks ago. McCain now leads Clinton by two. More to the point, Obama’s two point lead over McCain has also been reversed, due at least in part to Clinton. McCain now leads Obama by one.

Pressure on Clinton to withdraw from the race is growing and is coming from higher and higher up in the Democratic Party hierarchy.

Newsprism first predicted an Obama victory on February 13 and has been assuming a Clinton defeat since February 25.

With apologies to the Coroner of Munchkinland for stealing his lines, and to the Wicked Witch of the West for the comparison, Mrs. Clinton “isn’t only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.”

Newsprism

Those Arkansaw Bumkins or, A Gremlin In His Goober

100 Years Is a) The Length of the Campaign, b) McCain’s Age, or c) A Moral Obligation

It sure feels like this presidential campaign has been going on for a century, and according to the late night comedians, John McCain was 100 when he gave his first speech in front of the Tower of Babel. 

But the answer, despite what Democrats want to make of a single sound bite, is c., a moral obligation. We have a moral obligation to insure that Iraq returns to its pre-invasion stability and stays there. If that means maintaining an American military presence there for 100 years, as McCain insists (video,) so be it.

When we invaded, we threw Iraq into chaos. If we leave prematurely, as both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have promised to do, Iraq could descend into a Cambodian-style bloodbath, and some of that blood would be on our hands.

A bill sponsored by Obama early last year would have had all US combat brigades out of Iraq by this coming Monday, March 31. In a speech this week, Hillary Clinton mischaracterized McCain’s “100 year” quip four times and said, “my plan is … to remove one to two brigades a month (text.)”

Neither Obama nor Clinton seems to understand the realities on the ground in Iraq; neither seems willing to defy the anti-war sentiments that predominate in the Democratic Party.

To leave Iraq in its current condition, or in any condition we can realistically expect to see in the foreseeable future, would not only be profoundly immoral, but would put us a greater risk of terrorist attack. And at greater risk of skyrocketing oil prices. And at greater risk of a Middle East meltdown. And at greater risk of metastasizing global jihad.

You can oppose the launching and execution of a war and still acknowledge the moral obligations that that war entials.

Newsprism

Dueling Victims—Identity Politics Taken to Its (Il)logical Conclusion

In America today, is it worse to be black, or female? That’s the absurd question many in the Democratic Party and in the mainstream media are pondering.

The victim mentality that has sustained so much of liberal ideology over the last four decades has been starkly displayed of late after pack journalists swarmed around two ill-conceived and incendiary statements by Geraldine Ferraro and George McGovern, both of whom are Hillary Clinton supporters.

According to Ferraro,

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.

And according to McGovern,

I have a feeling that in this country where we’re at today in our thinking, it’s going to be harder to elect a woman than to elect a black man.

To (white) Clinton supporters, it’s better to be black than female. This is a question without an answer, of course, though we know two things for sure: 1.) discrimination of any kind is damaging to the health of both individual bodies and the body politic, and 2.) the roots of racism and sexism, while both run deep, are comparable at only the most shallow levels.

If only the media weren’t, like the academy and liberalism in general, still dominated by people with a stake in keeping racism and sexism alive in the national psyche, maybe more healing could be taking place. For Hillary Clinton and her operatives to be trotting out the ugly side of identity politics is shameful and damaging to their party and our nation. The only beneficiaries of this infighting are John McCain and the Republicans.

No matter how hard he tries, Barack Obama can’t rise above the issue of his blackness, which his blue-state Democratic rival has turned into red meat for yellow journalists.

Newsprism

$43,000,000,000,000.00—The Biggest Scam in Human History

According to the Heritage Foundation and their own trustees, the Medicare and Social Security programs are $43,000,000,000,000.00 short of the funds required to pay future recipients in full. Why? Because the federal government has been “borrowing” from those funds to cover a portion of its runaway spending.

What? You didn’t hear about that on the evening news or read it in the local paper?

Whatever. It’s just $43,000,000,000,000.00 future generations of Americans will have to come up with to cover our excesses. I’m sure they’ll think of something.

Newsprism

More on fiscal irresponsibility from The Heritage Foundation

Operation Chaos vs. “Shoot Those Leftist Bastards Dead”

Not all political machinations of and by the media deserve the same censure. 

Rush Limbaugh has been touting the success of his “Operation Chaos” campaign designed to sow dissent and chaos within the Democratic Party. Statistical data support the possibility that significant numbers of Limbaugh-led Republicans have been voting for Hillary Clinton in Democratic primaries, the goal being to extend the Democratic nomination process as long as possible.

The beneficiary: John McCain (and, of course, Rush Limbaugh.)

Democrats have criticized Limbaugh for inserting himself into the Democratic race, claiming that he’s undermining the democratic process. That’s an odd accusation coming from a party that uses elitist superdelegates and can’t find a way to make the votes cast in Florida and Michigan count.

If states want to restrict party primaries to voters registered in that party and registered independents, that’s their right. Until then, Limbaugh’s tactics are no more or less unethical than those routinely practiced by his critics.

Limbaugh is participating in the democratic process, even if it’s in a pretty sarcastic and mischievous way. The only thing he’s undermining is his opposition.

Meanwhile, last Friday, during the noon hour of the Neal Boortz Show, Boortz spoke about the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, or POG, a radical leftist anti-war group that pickets military recruitment offices.

Boortz’s admonition to any military personnel present for a protest scheduled that evening: “Shoot those leftist bastards dead.” That could easily be interpreted as an incitement to violence at a particular place and time against a specific group of citizens … a reasonable and widely accepted exception to free speech that might interest the FCC.

Limbaugh’s strategery has generated ample press coverage and the deeply satisfying scorn of the left; Boortz’s stunt just confirms that he’s an amoral, artless self-promoter.

Newsprism

A wise man cannot be harmed by criticism; for if the criticism is false, it means nothing to him, and if it is true, he’s grateful for the opportunity to improve himself

Government Give and Take

When the Bush administration took office, the federal government was spending less than two trillion dollars a year. When the Bush administration leaves office, the federal government will be spending well over three trillion dollars a year.

When the Bush administration took office, the federal budget was in surplus. When the Bush administration leaves office, the federal budget deficit is projected to have reached $400,000,000,000. (The budget deficit for February 2008 alone was $175,000,000,000.)

With that kind of expansion, you’d think the government would be improving its regulation of the private sector significantly. After all, what should we taxpayers expect for an additional trillion dollars a year?

Here’s what we’ve received for that astronomical sum:

1. A devalued and declining dollar, which makes every dollar in our bank accounts and in our retirement accounts worth less and less every day and portends rising inflation and a falling stock market.

2. An imploding housing market with no end in sight, which leaves many homeowners with mortgages in a negative equity situation and leaves virtually every homeowner with a net worth that falls every day.

3. A total national debt approaching $10 trillion dollars, which must be paid back by each of us and/or our children and/or our children’s children’s children…who are poorer before they’ve even been born.

4. A crumbling national infrastructure that will require more and more tax dollars just to maintain our roads, bridges, ports and the like in their current condition.

5. A severe tightening of credit that leaves each of us with fewer opportunities to educate our children, invest in our businesses, or improve or upgrade our homes.

Republicans are supposed to be for a smaller government that regulates less, and Democrats for a larger government that regulates more.

Under Bush, we have the worst of both: a much, much larger government that regulates less, and regulates less effectively.

The upside: thank goodness, Mr. Bush gave most of us a $300 tax rebate when he took office, and he’s giving us another $600 tax rebate as he leaves office. Forgive me if I don’t seem grateful.

The government giveth, the government taketh and taketh and taketh away.

Newsprism

McCain Wins 7 Out of 4 States

You read that right—John McCain won seven out of four primaries last night. He won all four Republican races, and he won three out of four Democratic races.

On the Republican side, McCain swept Texas, Ohio, Vermont and New Hampshire to wrap up the 1191+ delegates needed to secure the nomination. Mike Huckabee belatedly joined Mitt Romney in dropping out of the race, clearing the way for the Arizona Senator’s run to November.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won in Texas, Ohio and New Hampshire, which means the Democratic nomination won’t be secured for at least another seven weeks. Rival Barack Obama still holds a lead of 1307-1175 pledged delegates, while the superdelegate count remains in flux with Mrs. Clinton holding a lead of about 40.

Two consequences of last night’s results seem clear.

First, Republicans now have an edge in the general election campaign. The two Democratic frontrunners will be stuck in a tough contest that may well continue until the Democratic Convention in Denver in late August; that would give the Republicans nearly six free months to raise funds and energize their base.

Second, while Barack Obama’s pledged-delegate lead appears unassailable, the Democratic nomination may now rest on the shoulders of the so-called superdelegates … a decidedly undemocratic process, as I pointed out earlier this week.

Republicans are hoping for a repeat of 1968, when a chaotic Democratic National Convention split the party along a jagged and (literally) bloody schism, clearing the way for Richard Nixon’s victory that year and setting up his landslide victory in 1972.

The old saw says, “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.”

The problem for Democrats, and the opportunity for Republicans, is that the Democrats are torn between two lovers.

Newsprism

Democracy, Republic, and Superdelegates—A Party Paradox

The so-called “superdelegates” in the Democratic Party’s nomination process account for about one-fifth of the delegates who will choose the party’s standardbearer. Made up of elected officials, former office holders, and appointees these 796 party apparatchiks are in no way beholden to the voters of their respective states.

The question on many lips: is the superdelegate system undemocratic?

The easy answer is, clearly, yes, at least a little bit. Superdelegates take power away from the people and concentrate it in the party hierarchy.

But in historical terms, our presidential electoral process is far more democratic now than it was when the Founders designed our democratic republic. (Benjamin Franklin, asked as he left the Constitutional Convention what kind of government had been created there, quipped, “A republic, if you can keep it.”)

We temper the passions and shortsightedness of the mass by keeping a fine balance between pure democracy, which Plato called “mob rule,” and republicanism, in which the rule of law insures the rights of all of the people despite the worst inclinations of the majority of the people. Slavery was as undemocratic an institution as could be imagined, but was supported by a majority of the people until Abraham Lincoln resolved to “form a more perfect union.”

Neither democracy nor the Constitution is infallible. Both should be subject to enlightened revision. The question concerning the superdelegate system should not be, “is this undemocratic,” but rather, “is it good for the party and the country?”

The Founders saw fit to leave the election of both the President and the Senate in the hands of the state legislatures, not the people, though all 50 states have ceded that power to the people. The Electoral College and the party system still act as more or less elitist buffers between the people and the highest offices in the land.

The superdelegate system is more democratic than what the Founders envisioned, but less democratic than the direct popular election of the president proposed by many Democrats.

Is there such thing as a system that is too democratic? Democrats would generally say, “Of course not.” Republicans would generally say, “Of course.”

The irony is that the Republican Party uses a process that’s far more democratic than the process used by the Democratic Party.

If anything needs to change, maybe it’s this: the advocates of a purer democracy should adopt a system that more accurately reflects their Democratic philosophy, not that of the patrician protectors of the Republican elite.

Newsprism

Follow the superdelegates nationally and in your state at the Superdelegate Transparency Project.

Checkmates and Runningmates in Veep Sweepstakes

It looks more and more apparent that Barack Obama has checkmated Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic Party nomination (though she’s yet to lay down her king.) John McCain and the Republicans have already cleared the board and sent their kinghts, bishops, and pawns out to rally the faithful. The Libertarians won’t nominate a candidate until May, but unless they want to sacrifice their king before the game begins, they’ll choose Ron Paul. Ralph Nader has taken a seat at the chess board and will announce his runningmate in a press conference slated for noon today. (Update: Nader chose this dude.)

So, the stage is set for the next phase in this seemingly endless presidential election: the choice of running mates.

With literally thousands of qualified people to choose from and hundreds of names already in the running, it would be foolish to predict who will choose whom.

So, this fool says:

Barack Obama needs to choose someone who’ll pull the ticket towards the center and attract the crucial independent voter. For that reason, I think he’d be very wise to choose New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with whom he had a widely discussed breakfast in New York in November. Bloomberg would attract the support of Jewish voters, who have not embraced Obama–far from it. (While the Jewish vote is small in terms of numbers, it’s significant, thank G_d, in terms of influence.) Obama should probably avoid choosing another Senator; if he goes with a prominent governor, Bill Richardson of New Mexico would be an obvious, but disastrous choice–he’s too far left to do Obama any good, and having two minorities on the ticket would be asking too much of the voters.

McCain has earned his reputation as a maverick, and I expect his veep choice to reflect that independence. He needs to consolidate the conservative base, and choosing a Southerner wouldn’t hurt, especially since Obama has a good chance to make inroads in this reddest of regions. Mark Sanford, the Governor of South Carolina, would be a great choice. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty would also be a great choice; the Mississippi Valley is a critical region just like the South, and Pawlenty has a conservative record on par with Sanford’s. Choosing another Senator as his runningmate would be disastrous for McCain; that puts Chris Dodd and Joe Biden out of the running.

Some Libertarians may resent Ron Paul for running as a Republican, but the fact of the matter is that he’s raised his national profile substantially, has brought a libertarian philosophy to the nation’s attention like no one else since Harry Browne, and would therefore be a boon to the party and its principles. He should be the LP’s choice for president, hands down. The choices for veep are many, but presidential candidate Christine Smith may be the frontrunner.

As for Mr. Nader, I’ve already suggested one choice: Sancho Panza. Or, Nader could choose his own ego, though the two might be in for one helluva power struggle.

Newsprism

Ralph Nader—Spoiler, or Just Spoiled?

Democrats are groaning and Republicans are grinning after Ralph Nader announced his latest quixotic run for the presidency on “Meet the Press” (transcript) Sunday. Nader is widely credited with having swung the 2000 election, in which he was the Green Party candidate, in favor of George W. Bush.

MSNBC describes Nader’s run as a “third party bid”–and therein lies the rub. What third party? The only party Nader represents is his own birthday party. Neither his campaign website nor the MSNBC story so much as mention a third party (though the Nader website does currently include an adorable photo of Mr. Nader circa 1935; he’ll celebrate his 74th birthday tomorrow.)

The Los Angeles Times opines that Nader’s run benefits voters who are disaffected from the two major parties, noting that “More choices among candidates mean more opportunities for you to make your views known in an election.”

The two-party duopoly that dominates American politics has a number of shortcomings. The most problematic is that alternative philosophies don’t get aired; the duopoly inevitably shrinks the debate towards the center. Also, dividing a nation of 300,000,000 into just two factions results in some mighty strange bedfellows; socialists in bed with Reagan Democrats on the left, and libertarians with social conservatives on the right. And the duopoly leads to some distorted binary thinking that makes every issue a black-and-white, either/or confrontation; either pro-choice or pro-life on abortion, either anti-war or pro-war on Iraq, either Chicken Little or complete denial on global warming.

To vote for a third party candidate has merit in that it erodes the duopoly. I voted for the Libertarian Party candidate, Michael Badnarik, in 2004 knowing that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance, but I also knew that my vote might enable more Libertarian candidates to get on the ballot in future elections. (For the record, Badnarek garnered nearly as many votes as Nader, who ran as an independent in ‘04, but only a small fraction of the media coverage. Go figure.)

If Ralph Nader were representing a legitimate third party, his candidacy would be and should be welcome. But if Nader is merely representing Nader (or his own ego, as satirist Andy Borowitz points out,) his run is little more than tilting at windmills.

At least we know who Nader’s runningmate should be: Sancho Panza.

Newsprism.com