Brilliant Politics

Barack Obama is leaving Trinity United Church of Christ.

John McCain did not know the difference between Shiite and Sunni terrorists when he was in Iraq a couple of months ago, and he had to be corrected on the spot by Joe Lieberman. Now he doesn’t know how many troops we have in Iraq compared to before the Surge:

I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet.

McCain’s elderly inexperience shows in this mistake. Troop levels are now at 155,000, which is 25,000 troops above the 130,000 pre-Surge level. I imagine that is a significant difference for those 25,000 soldiers and their families. McCain does not look like he has the knowledge to be Commander-in-Chief, nor the leadership ability to admit when he has made a serious mistake. Obama brings home the point today, while campaigning in South Dakota:

We all misspeak sometimes. I’ve done it myself. So on such a basic, factual error, you’d think that Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake and move on. But he couldn’t do that. Instead, he dug in. And the disturbing thing is that we’ve seen this movie before — a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain refused to admit that he made a mistake. And that’s exactly the kind of leadership that we’ve had through more than five years of fighting a war that should’ve never been authorized, and should’ve never been waged. We don’t need more leaders who can’t admit they’ve made a mistake, even when it’s about something as fundamental as how many young Americans are serving in harm’s way.

Mountain goats in Montana (Photo/Eric Fortin)

It is not a good sign when your favorite book is about a man who is doomed to failure. From George Packer’s excellent article on Republicans in free fall (the quote is referring to John McCain):

His favorite book, according to Salter, is “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” because it’s the story of a man who struggles nobly even though he knows the effort is doomed.

Hillary Clinton’s remarks this past Friday about Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, used as part of her justification for staying in the race, were shocking to many of us. Some have been reluctant to accept the obvious implication of the comment. Not Keith Olbermann:

The New York Times Editorial Board:

“We have no idea what, exactly, Hillary Clinton was thinking when she referred to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in explaining her decision to keep on campaigning when it looks like there is virtually no hope of her winning the Democratic nomination.

(We’ve supported her decision to do so. This is a democracy, after all.)

But she could, at least, have apologized.

Instead, she issued one of those tedious non-apology apologies in which it sounds like the person who is being offended is somehow at fault: “I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive.”

If?

Is it even possible that Mrs. Clinton thinks someone out there was not offended by her remark, Kennedy relative, Obama relative, or just plain folks?

Mrs. Clinton tried to excuse her inexcusable outburst by saying she was distracted by the shock of the news of Senator Edward Kennedy’s malignant brain tumor. But there was something familiar about what she said, and thanks to Ben Smith of Politico, we remembered what it was. Mrs. Clinton said basically the same thing in an interview with Time on March 6:

“I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A.”

What’s next? “Mistakes were made”?”

On Friday Hillary Clinton mentioned Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in June of 1968 as a reason to stay in the Democratic primary race. So, Obama might be assassinated and she should wait around just in case?!? It’s bad enough that she would think the thought, but why dare say it? When Ted Kennedy has just been diagnosed with malignant brain cancer? The mind reels when thinking about how some hate-filled mentally deranged person might interpret this comment. Paired with her “working, hard-working white people” comment of a couple of weeks ago, you have to wonder about how low she will go in indulging her desperation for the nomination. Here’s the original comment, followed, below that, with her apology:

Andrew Sullivan comments:

I was on the stairmaster when the news came through. And I saw the apology as well – an apology to the Kennedy family, I might note, not to Senator Obama. Since some seem unwilling to point out why this remark was more than unfortunate, it is worth remembering that we have the first black candidate for president. You only have to spend a few minutes talking with African-Americans about this campaign to discover that the fear that Obama could be assassinated is very much on their minds. It is in everyone’s subconscious, especially Michelle Obama’s. To refer to the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the context of reasons to stay in this interminable race against Barack Obama is therefore catastrophically inappropriate. Coming after her pitch for “white votes”, it is reckless.

From Obsidian Wings:

People are writing about her as though she were a bomb that needed to be expertly defused, as opposed to a person who can govern her own life, and is responsible for her own choices.

I am aware that it must be hard to face the fact that you’ve lost. But it became clear that she was not going to win the nomination months ago — I would say after Wisconsin, but certainly after Texas. Moreover, this is not unprecedented. People lose the nomination every four years. Most of the time, they do not stay on until it is mathematically impossible for them to win; they leave when it has become clear that they will not win. They do not complain about disenfranchising all the states with later primaries, they do not threaten to keep their supporters home, and they certainly do not threaten “open civil war” if they don’t get nominated for Vice President. On those rare occasions when some candidate does this in the absence of some truly monumental issue, we normally think that that candidate is a narcissistic and unprincipled person who has just shown why s/he should never, ever be President.

(Photo/true2source)

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”

-Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

This is why the pundits have been wrong so many times during the 2008 election cycle. It is why Barack Obama will be our next president.

Hillary Clinton’s overarching message is that if she is not the nominee then the process has been unfair.  It does not matter that her method of counting popular votes is patently unfair.  She wants to count votes in Michigan, where Obama was not on the ballot and she agreed that those results would not count, and in Florida, where no one campaigned and she agreed that the results would not count.  How is that fair by any reasonable standard?  It’s not, but Clinton apparently does not care to play by a reasonable standard.  Even though Obama is winning according to the rules of the game as set by the Democratic National Committee, and agreed to by Clinton, she never stops finding ways to proclaim that someone is being victimized—her, voters in upcoming primaries, voters in Florida and Michigan.  Is her strategy to scream victim until she drives everyone crazy and they give up out of sheer exhaustion?

Well, for those of you who want clarity about elected delegates and the popular vote, Jonathan Alter sets the record straight.  Don’t be fooled again.

-Doc Pierson

John McCain sought and welcomed the endorsement of evangelical preacher John Hagee before rejecting Hagee’s endorsement today. It should be noted that Hagee calling the Catholic Church “the great whore” was not reason enough for McCain to reject his endorsement. McCain was “glad” to have Hagee’s endorsement until it become public one week ago that Hagee said that God sent Hitler as a “hunter” of the Jews to help them reach the promised land of Israel. Here is the audio and the text of Hagee’s sermon about Hitler, the Jews, and the Holocaust:

Talking Points Memo provides the timeline of McCain seeking, welcoming, sticking with, and eventually rejecting Hagee’s endorsement.