POWER OF THE WORD

After listening on Hardball to back-to-back clips of speeches by Obama and Clinton, one of the reasons for her problems is obvious: she's a terrible speaker. Not only is her delivery poor - she doesn't modulate her voice (except to raise her volume when she gets to her peroration) - but she doesn't work the words so that not only do they make sense but they sound like she's speaking to you instead of at you. There is so little sincerity in her tone - and this is no judgment as to whether or not she's sincere, but whether or not she can convey sincerity - that the cliches of which these sorts of speeches are inevitably constructed are patently obvious as cliches in which she doesn't believe.

Here we are in the TV age of cool and hot oratory is back as a required skill for a political candidate. Not hot in the sense of heightened speech, but hot in the sense that the words carry the conviction of the speaker. John McCain has that skill in a different way than Obama; he speaks very softly and he just sounds real.

So it's going to be Lincoln-Douglas all over again. This will be much more a speech campaign than Nixon-Kennedy was - because Nixon was no orator, Kennedy had it hands down. This time there'll be two brilliant speakers coming at you. And after eight years of a president who could hardly put syllables together and relied on force, not persuasion, let's rejoice in the coming power of the word.

BALLS

This was reported in the Jeusalem Post:

"I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud ap-proach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.

"If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress," he said.

He also criticized the notion that anyone who asks tough questions about advancing the peace process or tries to secure Israel by anyway other than "just crushing the opposition" is being "soft or anti-Israel."

How many American politicians would have the balls to say that? It helps me to appreciate Obama that I agree with him.

HOW COME?

I've said every word of this, too, months ago.

If I'm so smart, how come nobody knows who I am?

OPPORTUNIST?

This from Jamie Lyn Stahl on the HuffPo:

Wouldn't you love to have been a fly on the wall of the room when Barack Obama met John Edwards a bit more than a week ago? Not another word has been said about the outcome of that meeting, but Edwards on the same ticket with Obama would be unstoppable.

Even if it means running for vice president, for the second time, we hope that Senator Edwards will recognize that his presence on the Obama ticket will win the hearts, and votes, other otherwise disenfranchised elements, to ensure a Democratic victory, in November.

I said this months ago, and I wonder what the hell Edwards thinks he's doing by hanging back in this race, other than to make himself irrelevant. Although I believe an Obama-Edwards ticket would be brilliant, since Edwards has contributed nothing to Obama's success to the point I'm sure there is someone else Obama would like to reward with the vice presidential nomination - like, for example, Chris Dodd, who just came out for him.

I have to believe Clinton promised him something really big - but his failure to act to this point, one way or the other, paints Edwards as an opportunist, unfortunately.

Well, like they say, we'll see.

Stahl also said she felt an Obama-Edwards ticket would render Nader a redundancy. He is already a redundancy. He made noise in 2000 when independents felt they had nowhere to go. This time they have Obama and McCain. Nobody needs Nader. I have to admit to some respect for the arguments he makes, but the idea that he is the person to make them in a presidential contest argues for a seriously out-of-whack ego.

TWO STATE SOLUTION? DID WE FORGET SOMETHING?

Some Palestinians are now saying that if peace talks with Israel don't work, they should follow the example of Kosovo and declare their independence. Many Palestinians don't like the idea. I wonder if that's because of the fascinating question it poses: since Israel has not incorporated most of the West Bank and Gaza into Israel, exactly who would they be declaring independence from?

The nominal government of Gaza is Palestinian. Following World War I, Gaza became part of the British Mandate of Palestine under the authority of the League of Nations. But it certainly was not British. According to the terms of the 1947 United Nations partition plan, the Gaza area was to become part of a new Palestinian Arab state. An All-Palestine Government was proclaimed in Gaza City on 22 September 1948 by the Arab League, although no one else recognized it. Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip were issued All-Palestine passports until 1959, when Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt, annulled the All-Palestine government by decree. So then what? Egypt never annexed the Gaza Strip.

In May 1994, following the Palestinian-Israeli agreements known as the Oslo Accords, a phased transfer of governmental authority to the Palestinians took place. Much of the Strip (except for the settlement blocs and military areas) came under Palestinian National Authority control.

So here's a piece of land nominally under Palestinian control which no other nation has claimed sovereignty over. It doesn't have to declare its independence. You'd have to conclude that it is a Palestinian state. And if the Palestinians could persuade one substantial nation simply to recognize that status, Israel would be shifted from the status of occupying what is essentially a no man's land - land that doesn't exist - into occupying the territory of another nation state. Sort of like they are in the Golan Heights.

Now, the West Bank was annexed, by Jordan, during the 1948 war, and they ruled it until 1967. In 1988, Jordan ceded its claims to the West Bank to the Palestine Liberation Organization, as "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. So - same story.

So what is all this talk about a prospective two-state solution? It's a smokescreen which protects Israel's "claims" to the territories and completely ignores recent history. There are already two states - and if George Bush really wanted a Palestinian state, all he'd have to do is recognize what now exists.

BEHIND

I do feel sorry for Hillary. She has backed herself into such a corner that her campaign is debating whether to go negative on Obama, when going negative is the only chance she's got. Admittedly, it isn't much of a chance. Obama has transformed himself into such a soaring eagle that not only do Hillary's negative attacks fail to work, they end up being turned against her. And they don't know which will help her most: to go after Obama or to try to rise on positive winds up to his level. The theoretical answer is pretty clear - the latter. But she can't do it. And that's why she's behind.

MCCAIN TWO WAYS

Muqtada al-Sadr has been observing a cease-fire for six months. But now he says he may put an end to it. If he does, Iraq goes back to the top of the news and election concerns - and we find out whether the so-called "surge" or al-Sadr's restraint is responsible for the currently lessened violence in Iraq. According to the AP, the cease-fire is credited with "helping" reduce violence by more than 60% in the last six months.

Watch out, McCain. There's another rug which may be pulled out from under you soon.

Speaking of McCain, the reporting of his alleged affair with a lobbyists, and the furor over it, are disgusting. Do we really have a problem if he wanted to get laid? As a matter of fact, do we really believe he did get laid? As for charges of ethical violations, I don't see the need to report it unless there is real evidence - which I have not seen. This cannot even be seen as "just desserts"; McCain is not one of those Republicans who throws charges around against others.

I'm sorry, New York Times, but that was OJ reportage. America is really great at gnawing on ethical issues like whether or not Britney Spears abused her kids. It's not so good at finding out or caring about what happened to $90 billion in Iraq. We can wrap our stupid heads around somebody's peccadillo. But bigger issues sound like policy, and how dull is that?

I sense it's all smoke, and if I were McCain, I'd really be pissed.

YEAH, RIGHT

On Chris Matthews they flashed a picture of bin Laden while Chris was discussing Obama. The caption was "Words About Words." MSNBC claims it was a mistake. Give me a break. Somebody in their production department wanted to make a point that Fox has been making endlessly. He or she needs to be fired.

GOD FORBID

Michelle Obama recently said she was proud of America "for the first time in her adult life."

She was born in 1964. She reached 18 in 1982. She has now offended Reagan voters, Bush voters and Clinton voters, unnecessarily. Even I - deeply cynical as I am - had moments of pride in America during the Clinton administration; not in what was happening in Washington, but what was happening outside of it as Americans soundly rejected what the Republicans were doing to Clinton. And every American had to be proud of America immediately after 9/11.

I rejoice in her wit, and even her sarcasm. But her husband is running for president. She isn't. If voters start to get the feeling that they're signing onto another version of Teresa Hines Kerry or, God forbid, even Hillary Clinton, Obama is going to find himself losing support.

DEFINED BY THE HEART

Probably the strongest indicator of Obama's power is the fear I am hearing from some of his supporters that he will be shot before he can take office.

The fear is from a personal or cultural memory that public figures who embody real and huge transformation toward the moral and the ideal have been, historically, murdered in the United States. That happens when regressive forces turn evil - or, perhaps better put, become recognized as evil, and a great yearning develops for a return to purity. Not moral purity as defined by religion - moral purity as defined by the heart,

That's what's behind Obama's candidacy. And it means that he cannot be defeated politically.

THE END OF THE NATION STATE?

I have said many times on this blog that I can envision a worst-case future scenario where corporations - having divested themselves of their home-country workforce, and marketed for sales and/or profits across the world - divorce themselves from their home nations, becoming assymetic corporate entities. As they aggregate financial power - ala Exxon's $41 billion annual profit - they marginalize the nation-state and, in fact, entire populations of nation-states, which no longer have the ability to earn enough to compete with these corporations to promote their own security.

Techonology has made this much more possible - and the development of huge war-making private machines like Blackwater make what I am projecting much more likely. The question is whether these corporations - now armed - will content themselves with protecting their own assets and contracts. Or will they conquer - like the colonialist nations once did - territories which they can use to produce more profits - and, at the same time, use these armies to promote a particular point of view or ideology - say, for example, Christian extremism?

Bet it never occurred to you when Bush was anointed that the reason for that anointment went far beyond questions of the national interest. Bush has pushed us far along the path I outline. I do believe all of this has long been planned - not by Bush, of course, who wouldn't have thought of it and might still not fully understand it - but by others who understand how the world can be made to work.

FERTILE GROUND

After listening to Takeover, I am convinced that the reason immigration is a big political issue - something I have not understood before - is that it has been pushed by an alliance of people who stand to make a lot of money preventing it and a segment of the American population which prefers totalitarian control - either governmental or by private corporations - because it promises to protect them from people they're afraid of and/or to crush people they don't like - and to provide satisfying occupations to people filled with this hate and the arrogant belief that they are ideogically correct.

These people have always existed in America. It's the confluence of a fascistic government and fascistic corporate growth which has given them the influence they now have. They may not be anywhere near a majority, but they are fertile ground for Nazism and will continue to be.

It is going to be up to the next American president to make sure they are solidly put down. Obama is the only candidate who even potentially could do such a thing (Edwards certainly would have, but, you know ...)

IF SHE LOSES

If Hlllary Clinton loses this nomination, it will be because she has completely failed - and continues to fail - to understand the times.

Lately, all she's had to do is watch the Republicans. Those of them left with a shred of independent thought have declared that it is time for something new. They don't want evangelicals (bye bye Huckabee). They don't want neocons (bye bye Rudy). They don't want ideologues (bye bye Tancredo). They don't want liars (bye bye Mitt) and they don't want another moron (bye bye Thompson.)

Of course, McCain is an ideologue, but he's shown some pragmatism - and he's the only "pragmatic" choice the Republicans had.

Democrats don't want any of those things either, and they wouldn't get either with Hillary or Obama (well, Hillary lies, but they're Clintonian lies, and we've proved ourselves willing to put up with those). But there are other things Democrats seem not to want.

They don't want another minute of the Iraq war. Hillary has refused to distance herself from that war. She doesn't seem to understand that in century 21 an apology and a stint at rehab fixes everything. She could have gotten away with just an apology. Edwards did - his loss had nothing to do with his initial vote for the war.

They don't want politics as usual. Hillary is the essence of politics as usual - big money, lobbying money, backroom deals. But she could have convinced all of us that wasn't true if she'd been willing to use the kind of language Obama has. But that has not been in her. And everybody knows it.

They want distinctions drawn between the rich and the rest of us - to the benefit of the rest of us. The Clintons are very rich - and they got that way by playing the establishment game. It's Obama who is "the rest of us" - and I wouldn't be surprised if the working man is starting to figure that out. (See this story.)

They don't want divisive politics. Yet Hillary played to women in a way that antagonized men, and was entirely unnecessary. Women know she's a woman - it's rather unavoidable. She really didn't have to say so in such an emphatic way. If she had used her gender as it should have been used - i.e., that a woman brings change automatically, and that change would be offered as a benefit to all - Obama wouldn't be taking the white male vote. And the votes of women who don't believe one should vote for a candidate simply because she's "like me." That's how Bush got elected. We don't want that.

It could be said that Obama is divisive, too. He's got the black vote, just as Hillary wanted the female. The difference is that Obama did not pander to that vote, nor make a very big deal out of it - he courted it, sure, but not over everyone else.

It is absolutely true that no one knows what kind of president Obama would make. His speeches about unifying people are calls for miracles. But I'm convinced that the unification ploy is not why he's ahead. It's that he doesn't seem beholden to anyone - and we have seen too much of what "beholden" can produce. It may very well be that he is very "beholden" - but we haven't seen it, so we don't know it, if it exists.

By the way, I wouldn't count on Texas if I were Hillary. Liberals in Texas - the few of them around Austin - are likely to go the Obama route. And the rest of Texas is crazy and Republican. Her only shot is the Latinos - and things seem to be shifting in that area.

Well, I said if she loses ... So we'll see.

SINK IT

The Senate has voted 68-29 to immunize telecoms from suits on account of their spying. Obama voted against it. Clinton missed the vote.

There's enough reason right there to sink her candidacy.

Incidentally, I had to go to the British press - The Guardian - to find out what the candidates did on this bill.

THE LONGER I LIVE

Is this too cynical for ya?

James Dobson endorses Huckabee because McCain is too far to the left. This gets all the Democrats and independents thinking that the press is correct and McCain really is a moderate. All the moderates vote for McCain, and so do the right-wingers, because they're sure not going to vote for Clinton or Obama.

And McCain and Dobson cooked this whole thing up. Or McCain's innocent and Dobson cooked it up. Either way you know McCain is a conservative and he'll fuck up the Supreme Court for the rest of your life.

The longer I live, the more sense conspiracy theories make.

HOPING

So John Edwards held secret talks with Hillary Clinton, and is about to hold more secret talks with Obama. I just want to know: if I've heard about this, how secret are these talks?

Edwards has already received pledges from Obama and Clinton to stay on top of his issues. Whether an endorsement from him will carry any weight remains to be seen, now that his supporters in many states have been free to go where they will for what seems like quite a long time.

So - are these the negotiations for a vice presidential nod that I was hoping for? If they are, here's the beauty of it:

No matter how much Huckabee wins, McCain is going to be the Republican candidate. He is essentially now free to enter the general election campaign.

If Clinton or Obama announces Edwards as her or his VP, the pair essentially can campaign as if the Democratic nomination process was over and they are the nominees. That prevents McCain from getting a jump on the Democrats.

OH, WELL

I don't understand why anyone - including me - thought that Super Tuesday would resolve the Democratic nomination. With proportional apportionment of delegates, even a race less close than this one ultimately leads to a brokered convention - and there's a good chance that the superdelegates may decide it all.

I used to think that was a good idea, when I didn't like the people the voters were choosing. I figured the professionals would have a better idea of who could actually win the presidency. This time, though, I'm thinking they don't - because they are so used to politics as usual they may not be able to see what's really happening.

Oh, well ..

The Republicans winner-take-all system (de facto) produced a nominee in February. Is this good or bad for them? We'll see.

In the meantime, all those states that moved up their primaries so they could be the deciding factor ... um ... with proportional apportionment, that was always impossible. Okay, I missed it - but why did they? They're supposed to actually know what they're doing.

GLASS HOUSES

So we're angry at the Pakistanis for supporting and financing the Taliban, which at least supported, if not financed, al Qaeda. What we have here is a simple case of pot calling kettle black - and I don't hear anyone saying so.

The support for the Taliban in Pakistan in the '90s came primarily from the military and the intelligence services. Were they radical Muslims? I don't think so. They built up the Taliban to keep out the Russians, or the Chinese, or the Indians. It was simply a geo-strategic move.

The support for the mujahidin in Pakistan - people who mutated into al Qaeda - in the '80s came from Reagan and Bush. Were they radical Muslims? I don't think so. They built up the mujahidin to hand the Russians a defeat. It was simply a geo-strategic move.

Neither the Pakistanis or Reagan Bush figured out the chance of a blowback if the radicals got too much power, or too much money. So we have suffered as a result, and so will the Pakistanis.

Of course, the argument could be made that we stopped supporting the mujahidin when we didn't need them any more, and therefore the Pakistanis are the ones who built the Taliban into a threat. I.e., their actions were closer in time to 9/11 than were ours.

The problem with that analysis is this: there was general recognition after the Soviets left Afghanistan that in order to keep the Afghans at least neutral toward us, we were going to have to help them build, or rebuild, their nation. Bush committed us to do that. And then did nothing of the sort, leaving the Afghans high and dry and even more miserable and angry than before. And another Bush is doing it again.

So it was our fault that Pakistan was able to radicalize the whole country. If we had done what we knew we had to do, there wouldn't have been a Taliban regime. They wouldn't have hosted al Qaeda. And where would 9/11 have come from then?

Those who live in glass houses ...

OUT OF IT

Romney, in his quit speech:

"Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

What war is this a time of? Oh, there are a few guys out somewhere in a fight, but America is at war with nothing except itself.

So the Democrats are going to surrender to terror?

I guess this is the campaign the Republicans are going to run. All I can say is, I'm glad this mealy-mouthed hypocritical ad-brained pandering son of a bitch is out of it.

IT MUST HAVE KILLED THEM

Everyone knows that airline delays and cancellations are out of hand. One of the reasons is the scheduling of too many flights for an airport to handle, particularly when there is a weather glitch. Another is the elimination of so many direct flights. When planes fly back and forth between two airports, the only traffic an airport problem affects is directly connected to that airport. But when planes hop all over the country, a screw-up in one place can affect nearly everywhere.

So the Bush administration is putting limits on the number of flights into Kennedy and LaGuardia, two of the airports with the worst delay rates. That doesn't attack the bigger problem, but it's a start.

And it's incredibly significant. The administration which has done its best to destroy government regulation over just about anything has tacitly admitted government regulation is needed to fix a problem. It must have killed them to do it, and they'll never admit that's what they did. They're hoping nobody will notice. Well, I did.

Now if they took the same approach on about a hundred other problems - in other words, if they put government back to doing what it's supposed to do, that is, regulate for the common good - we might actually get somewhere.

DAMN NAOMI KLEIN, SHE ALWAYS SAYS IT BETTER THAN I CAN

Thanks to Persephone for this one.

Disowned by the Ownership Society
by Naomi Klein


Remember the "ownership society," fixture of major George W.
Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? "We're
creating...an ownership society in this country, where more
Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live
and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property," Bush
said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted
that the ownership society would be Bush's greatest legacy, remembered
"long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah." Yet in
Bush's final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was
conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father,
Bush has turned out to be the ownership society's undertaker.

Well before the ownership society had a neat label, its creation
was central to the success of the right-wing economic revolution around
the world. The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small
piece of the market--a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private
pension--they would cease to identify as workers and start to see
themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That
meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock
performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a
relic.

It was always tempting to dismiss the ownership society as an
empty slogan--"hokum" as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put it. But
the ownership society was quite real. It was the answer to a roadblock
long faced by politicians favoring policies to benefit the wealthy. The
problem boiled down to this: people tend to vote their economic
interests. Even in the wealthy United States, most people earn less than
the average income. That means it is in the interest of the majority to
vote for politicians promising to redistribute wealth from the top down.

So what to do? It was Margaret Thatcher who pioneered a solution.
The effort centered on Britain's public housing, or council estates,
which were filled with die-hard Labour Party supporters. In a bold move,
Thatcher offered strong incentives to residents to buy their council
estate flats at reduced rates (much as Bush did decades later by
promoting subprime mortgages). Those who could afford it became
homeowners while those who couldn't faced rents almost twice as high as
before, leading to an explosion of homelessness.

As a political strategy, it worked: the renters continued to
oppose Thatcher, but polls showed that more than half of the newly
minted owners did indeed switch their party affiliation to the Tories.
The key was a psychological shift: they now thought like owners, and
owners tend to vote Tory. The ownership society as a political
project was born.

Across the Atlantic, Reagan ushered in a range of policies that
similarly convinced the public that class divisions no longer existed.
In 1988 only 26 percent of Americans told pollsters that they lived in a
society bifurcated into "haves" and "have-nots"--71 percent rejected the
whole idea of class. The real breakthrough, however, came in the 1990s,
with the "democratization" of stock ownership, eventually leading to
nearly half of American households owning stock. Stock watching became a
national pastime, with tickers on TV screens becoming more common than
weather forecasts. Main Street, we were told, had stormed the elite
enclaves of Wall Street.

Once again, the shift was psychological. Stock ownership made up
a relatively minor part of the average American's earnings, but in the
era of frenetic downsizing and offshoring, this new class of amateur
investor had a distinct shift in consciousness. Whenever a new round of
layoffs was announced, sending another stock price soaring, many
responded not by identifying with those who had lost their jobs, or by
protesting the policies that had led to the layoffs, but by calling
their brokers with instructions to buy.

Bush came to office determined to take these trends even further,
to deliver Social Security accounts to Wall Street and target minority
communities--traditionally out of the Republican Party's reach--for easy
homeownership. "Under 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanic
Americans own a home," Bush observed in 2002. "That's just too few." He called on Fannie Mae and the private sector "to unlock millions of dollars, to make it available for the purchase of a home"--an important reminder that subprime lenders were taking their cue straight from the top.

Today, the basic promises of the ownership society have been broken. First the dot-com bubble burst; then employees watched their stock-heavy pensions melt away with Enron and WorldCom. Now we have the subprime mortgage crisis, with more than 2 million homeowners facing foreclosure on their homes. Many are raiding their 401(k)s--their piece of the stock market--to pay their mortgage. Wall Street, meanwhile, has fallen out of love with Main Street. To avoid regulatory scrutiny, the new trend is away from publicly traded stocks and toward private equity. In November Nasdaq joined forces with several private banks, including Goldman Sachs, to form Portal Alliance, a private equity stock market open only to investors with assets upward of $100 million. In short order yesterday's wnership society has morphed into today's members-only society.

The mass eviction from the ownership society has profound political implications. According to a September Pew Research poll, 48 percent of Americans say they live in a society carved into haves and have-nots--nearly twice the number of 1988. Only 45 percent see themselves as part of the haves. In other words, we are seeing a return
of the very class consciousness that the ownership society was supposed to erase. The free-market ideologues have lost an extremely potent psychological tool--and progressives have gained one. Now that John Edwards is out of the presidential race, the question is, will anyone dare to use it?



This article can be found on the web at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/klein

The answer is: No.

HOWEVER-OLD-HILLARY-IS

Well, Obama certainly laid it all out in his speech tonight ... but I think it's over. We are going to have to wait another four years - if we're lucky - for a new generation to replace this tragic mess the boomers have brought us. The only change this country is ready for right now is the end of the Bush regime - and there's no credit to be given to anyone for that, since the Constitution seems to require it anyway.

You would expect that both coasts would spearhead a new politics - but tonight the impetus for change seems to have come from the west (although most of them were caucus states, and Connecticut has atoned for what it did to Ned Lamont). Considering population shifts and the new emphasis on "green," perhaps the west - California excluded - is where we should be looking. But there's a long road ahead to any significant change.

It smells like '68 to me. The progressive left all excited about McCarthy and RFK, and we get Humphrey and Nixon destroys him. I think McCain could destroy Hillary - but there are several hurdles he's going to have to get over first.

Number one - the Republicans are about to refight the Civil War. Everyone keeps saying McCain should put Huckabee on the ticket to consolidate his position in the south. Of course that would serve its purpose - but one has to doubt whether anyone outside of the south would vote for a ticket which includes a man who has said he thought God's law should supplant the Constitution, and who doesn't believe in evolution (although I never forget that in polling 72% of Americans don't believe in it either, and those states where Huckabee's beliefs are laughable are rarely part of a Republican winning coalition anyway.)

But I think in a contest against Hillary the conventional wisdom that McCain can't actually win in the Northeast or California is dead flat wrong. It is certainly going to be true that it will be up to women to keep that from happening.

Number two - in order to be really effective against Hillary, McCain is going to have to have the support of the Republican dirty tricks machine. Right now they don't like him - but I don't see how they're going to be able to resist being involved in a campaign against Hillary.

So it's going to be a real race, down and dirty and politics as usual. Too bad, America - because as I remember it, when the kids lost in '68, that was the end of the hope for change. Sure, they got McGovern in '72, but by then it was far too late. The critical thing to watch for in 2012 and beyond is the mood and involvement of the young. I don't think the 2008 race is going to inspire them much - watching a 72 year old fight a however-old-Hillary-is.

SMART?

Hillary makes her victory speech ten minutes before the polls close in California. And talks right through the time for closing.

In a few minutes we'll see how smart that was.

UPDATE: No we won't. Too close to call.

Incidentally, her speech - which was a general campaign speech, not a thank you - was pretty well written, but horribly delivered. It's as if she is incapable of projecting any emotion other than whatever you call it when she raises her voice.

FOR THE RECORD

All of the absurd talk about a Clinton-Obama ticket seems to be coming from the Clinton camp. It's an obvious attempt to co-opt Obama - make people think if they vote for Clinton they get Obama too. It's a nice try at reaching the nice people who just like both of them so much and would just feel so bad if one of them lost.

For the record, Obama would never agree to serve as Hillary's vice president.

Would you?

Talk about being useless and subservient.

And, by the way, the same is true vice versa.

HOLY JESUS! THE UNDEAD RETURNS!

What this guy doesn't get is that there's a reason the people who think like him don't win elections.

A WONDERFUL PLACE

New figures reveal that about ten percent of Americans are engaged in manufacturing. So what the hell is it we do around here?

Starting at the lowest end, the people who do the dirty work are no longer Americans - that is, until the Republicans send twelve million Mexicans home.

At the next level up, we cut each other's hair, we put out each other's fires, we catch each other's criminals. We teach (badly). We sell each other clothes. We sell each other hamburgers. We sit behind glass cages at gasoline stations.

Next level up - we fix each other's bodies. Nurses, therapists, home health aids.

Next level up - we fix each other's things - although that's becoming a lost art since it became more expensive to fix something than to buy another one. But with regard to houses, for example, if we don't fix your air conditioning, we will sell and install a new one.

Next level up - we own business that sell each other things. On the same level, we fix each other's bodies with surgery. We fix each other's problems with contracts and litigation. And we sell each other things that help us sell each other things. Like advertising and design services. And TV and radio stations and networks.

Up this level, we are essentially bartering. We sell each other things with the same pile of money. It just moves from one to the other of us. It doesn't accomplish one damn thing.

Some of us make things we don't want. Like Pontiacs. Very few of us make things we do want. I think we still make airplanes, but I think a lot of the parts are made somewhere else. Same with yachts. We still make movies, but less and less in the US. We still make music recordings here. That doesn't change. To the extent these products are sold outside the US, this is where we go beyond the barter stage. I should point out that when most of the US economy was a manufacturing base, most of the US economy was beyond the barter stage.

Next level up: we invent things. Sometimes we sell them. Sometimes foreign companies sell them. But if we sell them worldwide, this is where value is added to our economy - even though we don't make any of them.

Next level up: we play with people's money. If we get to play with foreign people's money, we add value to the US economy. If we only get to play with our neighbor's money, we're back to the barter system again - only this time it's in the nature of a Ponzi scheme, because in the end somebody is going to get screwed.

At the highest level: we don't do anything. We own stock in all the things other people do.

Sounds like a wonderful place to live, right?

STRONGER

Conservatives who have hated McCain are now deciding he's not so bad. There's the difference, I think, between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats are not realists - they hold onto their principles at whatever cost (Hillary doesn't do this, which is why she may seem electable - although I suspect it's easy for her, since she doesn't have any principles). Republicans will push on principle to the farthest they can go. But when they realistically appraise themselves to be in an unfavorable situation, they will retrench and accommodate themselves at the same time they try to move the situation toward something they prefer.

I think Republicans are making themselves stronger. The only question is how badly Bush has hurt them.

MOVING OVER

MoveOn has endorsed Obama.

The significance is in this detail: apparently MoveOn members were equally split between Obama and Clinton until Edwards bowed out. At least among MoveOn members, Edwards people are going to Obama. There's a certain logic to this - Obama is the more natural choice for progressives, rather than Hillary - but there were plenty of Edwards supporters who were not MoveOn types. We'll have to see where they go. I guess we'll know on February 5th.

GREAT IDEA

The word out of The Times Backstory podcast is that Edwards has asked both Obama and Clinton to pick up his anti-poverty and anti-corporatist themes. He says he will be watching them - presumably to determine who he will endorse. But he hasn't got much time.

If he expects to have any influence, he will have to endorse soon - before his supporters go their own way without any input from him. I did notice that Obama has started on Edwards' themes. Don't know about Hillary. But great idea, John.