RJ Matson, Roll Call

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com

The Quote of the Day from Bloomberg News’ Al Hunt:

So, knowing this will anger some woman readers, here goes: Hillary Clinton didn’t lose the Democratic presidential nomination because she is a woman, and gender no longer is a big deal in American elections.

There are two basic reasons the most formidable front-runner in contemporary presidential politics failed: Barack Obama is a sensational candidate who assembled a campaign team, which out- thought and out-strategized Clinton at every turn; and Hillary Clinton, in the most important venture of her life, picked the wrong people and adopted the wrong strategy.

Unwilling to face this painful reality, some Clintonistas persist in the whiny complaint that it was all about sexism.

When it was announced that Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton was going to give a concession and endorsement speech the key questions became: would it give Democratic presumptive nominee Senator Barack Obama what he needed to begin to unify the party — and would it allow the controversial Clinton to emerge from the primaries a historic figure poised to have a bright future within the party or if she decides to run for higher office again?

The answers: Yes and yes.

Clinton’s rousing speech was a professionally crafted in terms of content, masterfully delivered in terms of style, and perfectly calibrated to turn some initial anti-Obama rumblings when she endorsed Obama into cheers for Obama at the end. She tried to shift her supporters over to Obama, arguing that her goals are his goals and are their goals. And the plea for unity was delivered with force and sincerity.

Clinton once again displayed what we have noted at TMV before: out of all of the candidates who first began running for President in 2007 in either party, she is the one who has most grown as an actual campaigner. And in this speech, she showed that she has also blossomed as a campaign speaker: the speech ranks as one of her most perfectly and sincerely delivered speeches. The text of her speech is HERE.

Indeed, if she is seriously on Obama’s list as a Vice Presidential possibility, her performance in this speech would qualify as a successful audition. She used words such as “family” when referring to the Democratic party painted the election as a turning point election. She warned Democrats not to let Republicans take the White House again. She even used Obama’s “Yes We Can” slogan.

Her call for unity, delivered forcefully and coupled with her recap of how important her candidacy was in changing some expectations and assumptions about America’s women, should have sparked relieved smiles in Obama headquarters, jitters at the RNC (which was already circulating a big, fat sheet of comments Clinton made about Obama during the primaries), and smiles among Clinton supporters.

Here’s a roundup of some other news media and weblog reactions.

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Democratic party warhorse Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has been rushed to the hospital with stoke-like symptoms, CNN reports:

Sen. Edward Kennedy was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital in Massachusetts Saturday morning, a well-informed, prominent Democratic source in that state told CNN.
The source said the 76-year-old senator had “symptoms of a stroke.”

Kennedy was taken to the hospital around 8 or 9 a.m. from the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis, according to the source. The source said the senator would be transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

That hospital said it had no information on Kennedy.

Kennedy has represented Massachusetts in the Senate since 1962. He is one of only six senators in U.S. history to serve more than 40 years. He is known as a liberal champion of social issues such as health care, family leave, and the minimum wage.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. He has endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the 2008 nomination.

There will be huge interest in this story about Kennedy, who remains highly controversial in some quarters. But it’ll be big ongoing news for these two reasons:

1. He is the last of the three Kennedy brothers who so dominated the early to mid-1960s.

2. The campaign of Senator Barack Obama had won his endorsement earlier this year and Kennedy had reportedly been planning to go out on the hustings and work for Obama’s election. Since he’s also a superdelegate, he was expected to be influential as the primary season was winding down and was expected to be influential at the Denver convention.

The skinny bald-headed man has sung:

James Carville has been one of Hillary Clinton’s most energetic defenders, but on Monday he all but declared Barack Obama will become the Democratic nominee for president.

Speaking to students at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, Carville argued Clinton should stay in through the final nominating contest in early June, but said the Democratic tide appears to be moving in Obama’s direction.

“I still hear some dogs barking,” Carville said, according to The State newspaper. “I’m for Senator Clinton, but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee.”

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Earlier this week, I interviewed the author and political pundit, Cliff Schecter about his latest book, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him - and Why Independents Shouldn’t. You can read more about the book at its website and I also recommend this article in U.S. News and World Report.

In his book, Schecter makes the case for why, although he supported McCain in his run in 2000, McCain no longer deserves support and in fact, his candidacy should be fought actively, without hesitation and on all fronts. Schecter outlines his reasons for these sentiments and fills in those reasons with more details than you may be able to absorb. Schecter draws a portrait of both McCain’s political trajectory and the parallel trajectory of how his political choices since 2001 are a thumbing of his nose at the very people who got him to the presidential precipice in the first place.

A couple of disclosures before I offer you my phone interview with Cliff: I’ve never been a McCain supporter. And I haven’t known of Schecter that long either - here’s the first post I ever wrote about Schecter. However, it was fascinating talking to someone with a seemingly vast knowledge base about someone whom I’ve never really studied.

JMZ: You argue on behalf of former McCain supporters who should be able to realize that McCain isn’t what he once was. Who, then, is the alternative and why?

CS: Well. There’s always, “What we have versus what we’d like to have.” I’m an Obama supporter and he has a lot of appeal to Independents. But he hasn’t done it the way McCain did it – by attacking his own party in big speeches. Obama has done it by standing up, not by splitting. Obama talks about rising above partisanship and reaching out to all people on all sides and getting past the muck where politics has gotten so nasty. Obama says, I’m going to talk to you like an adult. And that’s what McCain had called “straight talk” – but he hasn’t given us much of that [this election cycle.]
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Today is likely to be a day of highly-watched final polls surfacing in the Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary but the latest Zogby poll underscores a trend: undecided voters now seem to be breaking for Senator Hillary Clinton, who most polls now show poised to defeat Senator Barack Obama:

The final weekend before tomorrow’s important primary election in Pennsylvania was good for New York’s Hillary Clinton, as she made a definitive move toward victory over rival Illinois’ Barack Obama, a fresh Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows.

She gained two points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, and she now leads 48% to 42%, the latest polling shows. Meanwhile, the undecideds dropped by two points. Her edge was three points yesterday but had wobbled within a tight margin. Clinton’s advantage is still within the margin of error, but she is close to getting beyond it as Election Day looms.

Trending is everything in polling, and the trends in Zogby have been for Clinton.

Zogby believes Clinton could win the 10 point lead she and her campaign hope to get to boost her campaign in remaining primary states and add weight to her argument that she is the candidate who has the best chance of winning vital big states in the general election:

A big one-day of polling for Clinton. If a 10-point victory is the pundit-driven threshold she needs on Tuesday, it looks like she can do it. This does not look like a one-day anomaly—undecideds dropped to only 5% in this latest single day of polling, and they are breaking Clinton’s way. As I suggested yesterday, if white and Catholic voters, who still are the biggest portion of undecideds, actually vote, Clinton will have her double-digit victory. Just today alone, she polled 53% to Obama’s 38%.

She had big pickups of support in the western region, among voters 50-65, and among women. She has tightened Obama’s lead among men and she maintains her Catholic base. For the first time in our poll, Clinton climbs into double digits among African Americans.”

The trending now in polls clearly is against Obama. While it’s always possible that there could be are result far different from the polls and a dramatic upset — we have already seen that several times in Campaign 2008 — just looking at the list and graph at Pollster.com now show a changed picture. Here’s the latest chart that takes into account all of the polls — showing a much bigger gap than just a few days ago between Clinton and Obama with Clinton on the ascent:

UPDATE: To show you how many contradictory bits of info have to be factored in, read this from The Politico:

An historic spike in Democratic voter registrations in Pennsylvania could help Barack Obama cut into Hillary Clinton’s vote in Tuesday’s primary, robbing her of the big victory margin she needs to justify continuing the primary fight.

The changing party demographics also are contributing to an overall bluing of the Keystone State that could dim Republican John McCain’s hopes of competing there in the fall.

A county-by-county analysis by Politico suggests that the hard-fought primary between Obama and Clinton has accelerated an ongoing partisan shift in Pennsylvania that could soon move it out of the battleground presidential states and ripple across congressional races this fall, as well.

…In Delaware County, a Philadelphia suburb once home to a storied Republican machine, nearly 14,000 voters have switched their party affiliation to Democratic since January compared to just 768 who became Republicans.

Those party-switchers now represent about 7 percent of the roughly 2 million Democratic voters expected to turnout Tuesday, said Madonna.

A poll of those switchers and new registrants released by Madonna last week found that Obama was the preferred candidate for 62 percent of them. Clinton insiders said they are also bracing for the same 60-40 split among newly registered Democrats.

And then this from the BBC’s Justin Webb’s blog:

Well here we go. Pennsylvania is the next potential moment of truth. Though the truth is that the moment of truth has probably already passed.

An interesting take here on the Obama campaign in Philly - is it such a bad thing if they alter the way things have been done in the past ?

A Clinton fundraiser sits in my kitchen and reveals that the money is still flowing in BUT small sums mainly from individuals giving as little as $25 a time. It’s not enough to be viable.

Approaches to Clinton people with access to sources of money are coming now from the Obama folk. The vultures are circling.

But the bottom line is: polling trends (at least THIS time Monday morning) do not look good for Obama. One argument being made by his supporters is that the polls don’t take into account all of the new and young voters. Perhaps. Tomorrow will determine if that’s an accurate statement or wishful spin.

This Guest Voice post is by Walter Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University and president of the Pennsylvania Press Club. He often writes on the blog The Democratic Daily.

Coming to a Town—but only until Tuesday—a Clinton

by Walter Brasch

The Clintons are patrolling Pennsylvania as if they’re border collies herding all the stray sheep into the flock.

The same day that Hillary Clinton was campaigning door to door in Scranton, Bill Clinton was in Lewisburg, Bloomsburg, and Jim Thorpe, three small rural Pennsylvania communities in three different rural northeastern counties. The day before, Chelsea Clinton was in Oregon; the day after, she was at colleges in western Pennsylvania.

Sen. Clinton once dominated the race for the presidential nomination. After her win in New Hampshire, her strategists convinced her to concentrate on the “big vote” states, essentially ceding several of the Super Tuesday states to Sen. Barack Obama, who had emerged as her primary rival. In that Feb. 5 election, Obama edged Clinton in delegate votes, 847–834; more important, he took 14 states to Clinton’s eight.

The perception was that Clinton and her campaign not only were struggling but no longer had a chance to win the nomination. Although Clinton later won Texas and Ohio, two states she needed, she trails Obama in total delegate votes, 1,641–1,504, according to the Associated Press, with eight million voters and 158 delegate votes at stake in Pennsylvania. (Pennsylvania also has an additional 29 super delegates, officially known as “unpledged delegates.”)

Less than two months after Super Tuesday, Obama has significantly narrowed the wide gap in voter perceptions that once gave Clinton significant advantage over the first-term Illinois senator in experience, health care, the economy, and the handling of the war in Iraq.
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The highly perceptive columnist/blogger Dick Polman, who is not hyping any candidate, says it was this bad.

From the report given in the New York Times’ lively The Caucus blog, Kentucky Republicans were having a blast, ridiculing the Democrats as political non-realists and, overall, as an almost madcap lot.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had some fun going after the Demmies…and then it was the turn of Congressman Geoff Davis to continue the celebration of how Republicans are superior to Democrats. It was his turn to take it up (or down) to another level.

And he did:

Congressman Geoff Davis, took the criticisms of Mr. Obama a few steps further, likening the change slogan to the pitch of a “snake oil salesman.” He then relayed to the audience that he had taken party in a “highly classified, national security simulation” with Obama.

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Mr. Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”

What happened next was predictable: the Internet picked it up (alas, TMV is late, so accept our apologies), and the Obama campaign issued a response.

“It’s hard to tell what is more outrageous - Representative Davis’s condescending and personal attack, or his absurd and offensive claim that Barack Obama is not prepared to defend America. Geoff Davis may hide behind offensive tough talk, but he has marched in lock-step with Bush-McCain policies that have devastated our national security, while Barack Obama has stood up against a misguided war in Iraq and worked with respected Republicans like Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel to secure loose weapons and nuclear materials from terrorists,” Bill Burton, the campaign spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Davis apologized to Obama for a “poor choice of words” — and Republicans expect that will be accepted.

But wait: hasn’t Obama just said when he said small towners were “bitter” it was a poor choice of words? So that means Republicans won’t join Hillary Clinton in hammering Obama on the issue?

But this tale of political types having fun with zingers has a bit more.

What would a fun event like this be without taking a quick-laugh swipe at Hillary Clinton?

Back at the dinner, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t escape the men’s attention either. While saying her candidacy seemed to be teetering on the brink, he [McConnell] added “I hear she hasn’t been this worried since a new Hooters opened” near her home with former President Bill Clinton.

Everybody laughed, according to Ryan Alessi, political reporter for the Herald-Leader.

Thoughtful American political discussion…at its best.

FOOTNOTE: One commenter on a site has noticed several references popping up (most assuredly from people who don’t support or like Obama) as a “boy.”

READ AND RESPOND TO THIS QUESTION ON THE LINK BELOW:
Is it racist to call a grown man ‘a boy’?

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this post we attributed the “Hooters” joke to Davis in brackets. The joke was actually told by McConnell. The correction has been made. TMV regrets the error.

The latest Gallup Daily tracking poll has Senator Barack Obama 9 points ahead of Senator Hillary Clinton in their bitter battle for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination:

Barack Obama has gained support in the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking report for April 4-6, and now leads Hillary Clinton by a statistically significant margin, 52% to 43%.

Obama’s current 52% support level matches his highest of the year, although his margin over Clinton was slightly larger, at 52% to 42%, in March 27-29 polling. So far this year Obama has been unable to sustain a significant lead over Clinton for more than a few days.

Obama had a particularly strong showing in Sunday’s interviewing, and it will remain to be seen if he is able to enlarge and sustain a margin of victory in the days ahead. Two events have been in the news in recent days that, in theory, could affect Democrats’ support levels for their two candidates. Bill and Hillary Clinton released their tax returns for the last eight years on Friday, reporting that they made over $100 million during that time period. Sunday Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, resigned his position after reports that the public relations firm of which he is president had a conflict of interests with the Clinton campaign.

Part of the problem is that Hillary Clinton now has key several factors working against her — unless Obama stubs his toe politically or something hideous comes out about him.
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RJ Matson, Roll Call

T.E. Lawrence and John McCain are bona fide war heroes, but when it comes to Iraq, that’s where any similarity between the two men ends.

Lawrence (top photo), one of the most astute observers of Iraq and the Middle East of any generation, knew impending disaster when he saw it and warned three years after the British occupation of Iraq commenced in 1917 (bottom photo) that it:

“Is a trap which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. The [British people] have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told . . . It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.”

McCain, devoid of Lawrence’s nuanced insight and lacking his first-hand experience, offered a warning of another kind in a major policy speech last week:

“It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our national character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.”

The British occupation of Iraq, which when adjusted for population then and now involved about 10 times the number of troops the U.S. deployed for the Surge, ended with a whimper after four decades.

This is because the Brits didn’t belong there in the first place and never were able to understand the Arab mindset and historic sectarian enmities. The Americans also don’t belong in Iraq, and McCain, acting for all the world like an imperialist poobah, has famously remarked that it would be fine with him if America troops stayed in Iraq for 100 years.

This despite the reality that presence would be a fraction of the troops that Britain deployed and the opposition today is far better organized – and armed — and it is long past time for the Iraqis to pick up the pieces from a disastrous American occupation and cobble together some sort of confederation.

McCain may have trouble telling Shiites from Sunnis, but he does know one thing that Lawrence didn’t and it is an important but largely unspoken element of why the presumptive Republican nominee has made staying in Iraq indefinitely the centerpiece of his presidential campaign: Oil.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

How can one account for Barack Obama’s truly astonishing success in reaching for the American presidency?

It isn’t his speechifying. He’s an excellent speaker, but Jesse Jackson in his time was better. It’s not his personal story, which though in many ways inspiring, can’t match the heroic realism of John McCain’s. It’s not his stands on issues that are not noticeably different from Hillary’s. Nor is it the populist edge that has creeped into his campaign in recent months. John Edwards was way out front in this respect.

No, it all comes down to that one word that appears in bold letters on all his literature and just over his left shoulder at every speaking engagement. Change. And the change hinted at here is not the kind of change this country has seen several times in recent decades. Not like, for example, the change when Republicans took control of Congress after 40 years of Democratic majorities, or when an undistinguished actor cemented the union of media and politics when Ronald Reagan won the White House.

This change is something far more basic, far more fundamental, than a mere shift in political sentiment. It represents the full fruition of what was predicted in the movie “Network.” The arrival of the time when not just a few Americans, nor even one or two large groups of Americans are mad as hell and not going to take it any more. But a time when the majority of the country is that mad, that determined not to take it for one more election cycle, that it is willing to reach for a very visible symbol of its frustrations and anger.

€ Americans are mad as hell about health care they are straining to afford.

€ Mad as hell about inflation that is only under control when government officials don’t bother counting the costs of basics whose price is rising at an unseemly rate.

€ Mad as hell about a foreign policy concocted by think-tank ideologues, for-profit contractors, and Washington special-interest groups.

€ Mad as hell about financial markets now so flagrantly-rigged that even the overwhelmed wizard behind the curtain who is doing the rigging no longer bothers to hide his shaky hand.

€ Mad as hell about working longer and harder than anyone else on the planet and still seeing their standard of living slide while Wall Street bunglers walk away from their failures with astronomical rewards.

€ Mad as hell that their religions, their core faiths, have been hijacked and manipulated by Beltway hucksters to retain their own political power.

€ Mad as hell that the infrastructure they depend on in their daily lives is slowly rotting away while huge sums are wasted trying to nation-build a country with which we have no historical or kinship relationship.

€ Mad as hell about spending on a vastly-overblown military that seems unable to put down gangs of fanatical yahoos.

€ Mad as hell that the guy who killed 3,000 of our people on 9/11 is still tweaking us on TV seven years after the crime.

€ Mad as hell that our natural environment is being trashed in frightening ways we have trouble even understanding but know in our gut are horrible.

€ Mad as hell that we have to borrow from foreigners to keep our government financially afloat and give them control of large pieces of our economy in payment.

So along comes a guy who not only talks change, but is so different from our usual leadership stereotypes that we think, maybe, just maybe, he will actually do something radically different when it comes to the things that are making us mad as hell.

You would have to have one very angry, one very ticked-off electorate, to even consider giving someone like this a shot at the Oval Office. Obama isn’t just a sop to unity or an instrument to narrow this country’s racial divide. He’s a cry from the nation’s heart for something dramatically new, fairer, more sane and sensible.

If he loses the nomination or the November election the winner had better understand this cry and its implications. Or things in these climes are going to get a lot more nasty in the very near future.

Now there’s yet another indication that the Democratic convention this summer is shaping up to be a powder keg battle over the seating of delegates that’s likely to end with deep party rifts: the idea for a redo Michigan primary is now dead:

Ignoring entreaties from state party leaders and an in-person plea from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday, state lawmakers adjourned Thursday without acting on a bill to authorize a do-over of the disqualified Democratic presidential primary held in January, effectively killing any new vote.

Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat who supports Mrs. Clinton, said in a statement that she was “deeply disappointed” that Michigan Democrats would not get another crack at a primary ballot. The Michigan contest was voided by the national Democratic Party because it was held earlier than party rules allowed.

That means Florida and Michigan will be front-and-center at the convention in August and could basically be locked out unless they find a way to comply with party delegate-selection regulations. In Michigan, some wealthy Clinton donors offered to bankroll a mail-in primary but the Obama camp rejected it for several reasons.

And Clinton and Obama? Both took potshots at each other over the news from Michigan:

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to reporters on Thursday at a campaign stop in Terre Haute, Ind., said that selecting a Democratic presidential candidate without the votes of delegates from Michigan and Florida would call into question the legitimacy of the nominee.

She blamed Mr. Obama for the collapse of the Michigan revote and said it would cripple the party in the general election. “I do not understand what Senator Obama is afraid of,” she said, “but it is going to hurt our party and our chances in November.”

…..“Truth is,” Mr. Obama said, “doing a redo vote is really complicated. For example, you got a bunch of people who didn’t think they could vote in the Democratic primary so they voted in the Republican primary.”

The Obama campaign suggests the fairest resolution would be to split the delegates evenly with Clinton — an idea the Clinton camp rejects.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, an Obama supporter and former presidential candidate, promoted the idea of evenly splitting the delegates between Obama and Clinton. “The best outcome is to come to an arrangement where the delegates are apportioned fairly between Senators Obama and Clinton, so the Michigan delegation can participate fully in the Denver convention,” he said in a statement.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Dodd spoke to campaign leaders about the idea, and they agreed it would be an equitable way of handling Michigan. “Senator Obama looks forward to building a winning campaign in Michigan in the fall as our Democratic nominee,” Burton said.

But Clinton told reporters while campaigning in Terre Haute, Ind., that Obama’s nomination could be tainted if he achieves it without a second Michigan contest.

“I do not see how two of our largest and most significant states can be disenfranchised and left out of the process of picking our nominee without raising serious questions about the legitimacy of that nominee,” Clinton told reporters, referring to Michigan and Florida.

So unless there’s a breakthrough, it looks like the whole mess will be placed in the hands of the national Democratic party.

Net result so far: bad news for the Clinton campaign since the re votes would have been high profile and Clinton could have possibly won them.

So was it a home run or not? Was Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s historical racial division speech — delivered due to the continuing political firestorm over his relationship with his controversial family pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr but containing one of the most thoughtful discussions of the racial issue ever uttered by a modern politician — a success or a flop?

Much of it is in the eye of the beholder. (You can watch the whole speech here.)

The reason: although generally acknowledged to be a historical speech in terms of content and importance, in hard-nosed political terms its success will eventually be judged by whether he reached his target audience. So watch the polls…and the primaries.

His target audience would NOT be:
–Conservative talk show hosts. On the radio yesterday Bill O’Reilly told listeners Obama could NOT really be a uniter — because he had dared to boycott the Fox Presidential debates. (Ohhhkayy…..). Meanwhile, on his Fox News evening show, Sean Hannity was again raising the name of Louis Farrakhan and seemingly trying to link Obama with him — as he has done before.

–Republican activists on and off the web who area looking for vulnerabilities — any vulnerabilities — to use against him in the general election if he gets the nomination. It’s like the old Groucho Marx song lyric: “Whatever it is, I’m against it…”

His target audience WOULD BE (and these are just a few):
–Independent voters who are truly swing voters and showed great interest in Obama in the past. The Pastor’s comments have already had a bad impact on Obama, a CBS poll finds:

Sixty-one percent of independent voters say they are unaffected, but 36 percent said it made their view less favorable. Two percent of independents said it made them more favorable view.

Overall, unfavorable views of Obama are up somewhat from February. His favorable ratings remain largely unchanged at 44 percent, but there has been some movement from undecided views to unfavorable views, from 23 percent in February to 30 percent now.

–Superdelegates. Too early to tell. They’ll be watching the remaining primaries and polls to see if Obama self-destructs. They’ll also likely watch to see how he handles himself under intense fire…that is sure to come in coming weeks.
–White working class Americans. The impact here is problematical. Most working class Americans didn’t see the speech live, and it’s unlikely a larger number of them turned to C-SPAN or the web to see it in its entirety. As many analysts noted, the speech was “nuanced” and highly thoughtful. In fact, his passages about the way America politics operates in attack mode echoed what many independent voters have said for years. Most working Americans will get their take on what he said via TV sound bites — which are usually the most dramatic. In a “nuanced” speech, that could prove perilous.

The likely impact? It’s too early to tell — but it’s likely more footage of Wright will be shown and hammered via clips by Obama’s foes, particularly Republican. (Why should Hillary Clinton intervene at all when Obama is now being lambasted by GOPers and press coverage?).

But it’s clear the issue won’t go away, that Republicans were smiling yesterday, Newsday notes:

Barack Obama’s first major speech on race drew praise for its eloquence Tuesday — but Republicans think he handed them a major weapon by refusing to disown family pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is known for racially inflammatory remarks.

“This is far and away the most damaging issue of the campaign for him, and his wonderful speech did nothing to make it go away,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster.

In the middle of a recession an economic slowdown (we’ll use White House terminology here), the war in Iraq and various other problems, it’s clear Republicans see an issue they can hammer home. The election could be about Obama and his pastor and his refusal to totally disown him:

“I think it’s an obligation of any opponent to use this issue, to make Reverend Wright a centerpiece of the campaign,” said Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford).

“His speech was disappointing and shameful,” King added. ” … This goes to the heart of who Barack Obama is. He’s trying to say he represents the 21st-century view on race and here he’s sticking up for this guy.”

Added pollster Ayres: “The problem is the contradiction between the fundamental message of the Obama campaign about bringing America together and Wright’s hate-filled, divisive message.”

So the most likely conclusions could be this:
(1) The speech will go down in history as one of the most nuanced and thoughtful discussions by a politician about race in decades.
(2) Future polls will prove hard evidence of what the impact is on the groups Obama needs to reach.
(3) Conservative talk radio, Fox News, and many weblogs that already vehemently oppose Obama were never in the target audience but can be expected to return to this issue repeatedly (as new clips will inevitably arise).
(4) If this issue starts to hurt Obama, Clinton will use this to argue that it’s too huge a risk to give him the nomination and that for the good of the party Superdelegates should vote for someone else (her).

The Washington Post:

Obama needed to address several audiences with the speech: undecided white voters in Pennsylvania, whose Rust Belt cousins Obama struggled to win over in Ohio even before the Wright controversy; African Americans aggrieved by the opprobrium being heaped on Wright; and staunch supporters such as Farley who needed reassurance about their candidate.

And the likely impact?

The speech drew praise across the political spectrum, though some on the right questioned Obama’s assertion that his liberal agenda could unite different races. But many who heard the speech wondered whether it would be enough to calm the anger generated by the Wright videos. Gerald Shuster, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, found the speech “stylistically persuasive” but thought Obama should have moved aggressively to distance himself from Wright months ago, when reports of his harsher sermons first surfaced. “The rhetoric is convincing, but it’s just coming too late,” he said.

Martin Medhurst, an expert in rhetoric at Baylor University, was struck by the religious intonations as well as the echoes of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on his Catholicism, particularly the summons to overcome divisions to confront common threats.

Will yesterday’s speech be remembered along with Kennedy’s? “If Obama goes on to win the presidency, it will,” Medhurst said. “If he wins the presidency, this will be seen as a very important speech.”

The question is whether the bulk of voters will be able to find the entire speech or watch significant parts of it and listen to his discussion on race, its role, how it impacts perceptions, how existing politics always works and his call for a newer style. Or, whether the focus will remain on Wright as a hot-button issue — that eventually could sink him.

Here’s a prediction:

Parts of the speech may be read to students in future generations.

And parts of the speech will be read and used by Republican operatives.

Looking at it in purely political terms, is the Obama campaign ready for what is most assuredly going to come?

HERE’S A CROSS-SECTION OF VIEWPOINTS FROM MANY DIFFERENT WEBLOGS ON THIS HISTORICAL SPEECH

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The war is raging in Texas between Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential nomination primary (and caucuses) — and a key battleground is the all-important TV airwaves. And here are two current warring ads.

First, Clinton’s “red telephone” ad:

There have been a few comments to this being Hillary Clinton’s nuclear cloud ad, similar to LBJ’s during the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater campaign for the Presidency. But this doesn’t come close. It’s a basic pitch, again, making the argument that Americans would be safer with Hillary Clinton’s experience.

And, First Read reports, the Obama campaign has fired back:

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said, “She had her red-phone moment; she had it in 2002,” when she and President Bush voted for the war.

The red phone reference is to an ad run by Walter Mondale in the Democratic primary against Gary Hart.

“We don’t think the ad’s going to be effective at all,” Plouffe also said, continuing, “she’s already had her red-phone moment… she answered affirmatively” on her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. “She did not read the NIE, so she did not do her homework either.”

When asked repeatedly about the ad on the call, Plouffe focused on “judgment.”

“Sen. Clinton’s red-phone moment in her career was in 2002,” he said again. “And she supported the Iraq war, supported president Bush. … Ultimately an ad like this is going to make people focus on judgment.”

So, the Obama campaign has now responded to the Clinton “red telephone” ad with its own ad that frames the race in terms of experience versus sound judgment:

UPDATE: The Clinton ad is sparking lots of comment:
Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Republican Party (as opposed to the Big Tent GOP of the Goldwater-Rockefeller era) has welcomed blacks with open arms — as long as they use the back door on their way to the kitchen or maid’s quarters — and has been only somewhat less unfriendly to women.

So the possibility that John McCain will be facing an African-American or a woman in the November election is scaring the bejeebers out of party bigs, who have launched a secret operation to try to determine how far they can go in attacking either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Before I go any further, please note that this is not a satire like my Saga of the Cedars. And pause to consider the extraordinary fact that one of the two major political parties in America has become so extreme that it has to take steps to try to immunize itself against what it sees as inevitable charges of racism or sexism.

And marvel that the secret operation is not meant to sensitize the party faithful, let alone draw in black and woman voters, but to gauge how to best attack Obama or Clinton.

Jack Kemp, the 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee, is one of the few prominent Republicans to speak out about the GOP’s raving intolerance.

Kemp tells The Politico that:

“You can’t run against Barack Obama the way you could run against Bill Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry.

“Being an African American at the top of the ticket, if he makes it, is such a great statement about the country. Obviously you have to be sensitive to issues that affect urban America. . . . You have to be careful.”

More here. And here for a sneak peek at what the Republican attacks might be like if it’s Obama.

I’ll be discussing this post with Jazz Shaw and the Lady Logician on Midstream Radio this afternoon from 1:30-2 p.m. Eastern Time. Click here to listen and participate.

Political Wire has this item about comments by Clinton supporter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — and Townsend’s analysis makes us wonder if she reads The Moderate Voice. Most of this analysis is what we’ve been saying on this site:

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, spoke at St. Mary’s college in Maryland last week and offered a very frank assessment of the state of the Clinton campaign. A Political Wire reader emails a summary:

“Townsend said she expects Sen. Barack Obama to win the Democratic presidential nomination and that Clinton is finished. She believed that the Wisconsin results demonstrated that Clinton’s coalition (voters over the age of 50 and those earning less than $50,000) had fallen apart. When asked why the Clinton campaign had failed, Ms. Townsend had plenty of opinions and she placed significant blame on Bill Clinton and his racially tinged statements in South Carolina. She also felt that Clinton made a tactical error in making “experience and inevitability” her central campaign themes. Townsend argued that Clinton had little more experience than Obama and far less than candidates such as Senators Dodd and Biden. Additionally, making the inevitability claim hurt her when she lost Iowa… Townsend then lamented Clinton’s decision to go negative and question Obama’s readiness. She said that she called the Clinton campaign and advised that they ‘go out on a high note’ but her advice was politely dismissed.”

It sounds like a campaign that still intends to do what it wants to do, despite advice it may receive from those who disagree with its course of action.

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com