Election Results

The oldest political party in the world, a party founded by Virginia slaveholders in the eighteenth century, has nominated and elected the first African American president. Critical to Barack Obama's victory was the Democrats’ stronger showing among white college graduates than four years ago. The most salient issue was the deteriorating economy and health care coverage. The question of exiting Iraq, so important four years ago, became less important since the collapse of housing and financial industries. Tonight history was made in many ways.

Odd and Ends

Now the McCain people are attacking Palin as a diva and a whack job. How come when others said that they got so much right wing hate mail.

Is anyone seriously talking about her and 2012. Come on guys, wake up, this nation is in serious straits.

McCain reported proudly how many Secretaries of State support him; unfortunately he could not remember George Schultz.

Word is Obama people are writing his inaugural address. Shouldn't they be spending their time on getting out the vote?

There Hillary Is

In the last debate, McCain went on the offensive against Obama, but Obama decided as the front runner to grin most of the night. Hey, these are serious matters, guys.

Hillary was at Hofstra, sitting quietly and thinking. She said little. HOfstra does a fine job presenting special weeks on presidents of the past, including her husband, to tries and define their place in history. More interesting was their conference on Babe Ruth. I met their Bob Feller and Babe's old bat boy was in his 70s when we talked.

It appears that the American people have awoken from their vice presidential slumber and decided that Governor Palin is not qualified. And yes.....

She's No Tina Fey

On Tuesday night, Senator McCain finally got his town meeting debate where he thinks he is so much better at. Unfortunately for him, the camera angles just made him look tired and decrepit. He kept on taking notes for some reason and repeated his old lines. Obama seemed clearer and lean, even though he was diffuse at time about the issues.

Sister Sarah Palin was in Florida trying convince people that Obama liked to pal around with terrorists, like Bill Ayres, the old Weatherman. She did not even know what the Weathermen were about and their record of anti social behavior. But on and on she went, looking like a bad imitation of Tina Fey.

Has anybody seen the Clintons?

Vice Presidential Debate

Totally programmed Sarah Palin had set expectation so low she had to surprise you--if she did not go daffy duck.

You now know why Biden got two percent in Iowa. He is rapid fire boring.

To intimidate the moderate then noted she wrote a pro Obama book. If so the MSNBC and FOX people should be cut out today.

McCain will stop campaigning in Michigan. The economy is too dismal there and the GOP are seen as responsible.

Odd & Ends This Week

Poor John McCain looked confused when some reporter asked him--if insurance covers Viagra why not birth control pills.

The New Yorker's cover of Obama is less troubling than the inside analysis of his early career in politics.

While the Administration is chastising those who want a timetable for withdrawal out of Iraq, the Iraq government is demanding just such a timetable.

What Change Looks Like

Barack Obama is complaining that his liberal friends have misunderstood his movments to the center. That is what happens when you look like you are changing your positions on Iraq, telephone survelliance, campaign financing and faith based social work.

Odds and Ends

Hillary overwhelmingly wins Puerto Rico, but only 20% of the people voted on an island where 80% percent of the people usually vote—that's about as big a turnout as the people who vote in the municipal fire department commissioner elections.

When can I get a copy of Scott McClellan’s book around here? Is there anything McClellan said that we don't know about? Imagine implying that the Bush administration is not on the level!

Obama's giving a speech in Mitchell South Dakota in front of a building built of corn cobs. Is that state for real?

Harold Ickey spent all weekend denouncing the Democratic National Committee’s rules on voting. Where was he when the rules were created? As I remember, he was there! How many Americans remember that his father was Franklin’s Roosevelt’s great Secretary of the Interior?

Speaking of FDR the co chair of the democratic national rules committee was FDR's great grandson. Boy, has the gene pool thinned out in that great family.

McCain denounced Obama for not having bee in Iraq recently. Last time McCain went we have to mobilize all sorts of American military security just to protect him and sycophant Joe Lieberman just so that they walk through the bizarre buying cheap rugs.

This weekend, with my wife, I saw the Sex and the City movie. Only three other hen-pecked guys were there in an auditorium that sat over three hundred people. When I walked in, the women gave me an ovation. Is this country becoming polarized by gender?

Bread and Butter

Obama's victory in North Carolina, and near upset in Indiana is pretty much the ball game for Hillary. She has fought a long and honorable campaign but the public mood is clearly for someone and something else. The Clintons have been around too long, and with the general of the Bushes, perhaps it is time to end their lock on the modern presidency and get in some young blood.

McCain may not have that blood, but he is solidifying the party and getting ready to hit Obama hard on the usual patriotic issues that the GOP loves to fight on instead of the war, taxes, gasoline, and health care.

Obama needs to bleed the new politics he so advocates with bread and butter issues which have been so important to the Democratic party since FDR. No Democrat can win without raising the class warfare issues.

Hillary On Her Way Up?

Despite Obama's lead in the popular vote, Clinon has a 421,000 lead over him among registered Democrats in the votes conducted so far.

Our First Black President

There is talk about Barack Obama becoming our first Black president, but Beverly Gage of Yale reminds us that that may not be so. There has been the persistent rumor that President Warren Harding was in fact the "First Negro president", as they called it in his time. He was supposedly the great grandson of a black woman and under US race relations in which one "drop" counted. We will never know if this was just a racist attack on the Harding family strain or was a true oral legend until we have access to DNA of the late president.

That's amore?

Just when we thought they said all they can say: the McGreeveys are back in the newspapers with explicit details of a ménage a trois with their driver. There seems to be no end to their ongoing story of life, love and romance. If someone had written a novel of this relationship, none of us would buy it. It would be too absurd.

Obama is fudging about his relationship with his minister who married him and who baptized his kids. Why is it that so many men of the cloth think that they have a right to use their pulpits to preach on non religious topics and spread venom when the Prophets preach love and mercy. I guess the gospels and scriptures are not powerful enough for these inspired guys who have to regale us with their prejudices and hatreds.

McCain is back in Iraq where he walking around checking on the surge in US forces. Even the commander of the forces has admitted that he is rather frustrated with the lack of progress in the political realm.
The whole idea of adding more forces was to create the time to let the politicians in Iraq solve their problems. That is not working.
They took months to decide on the color scheme of their flag. Somehow our fighting forces deserve better. McCain can not admit the obvious, since he has staked his campaign on the surge and on staying the course. Bush III.

The media and several books have suddenly discovered the obvious: that Condi Rice is a very poor secretary state, was a poor National Security advisor, and was even a very poor provost at Stanford. But in this administration, one's judgment is not a criterion for promotion, you just have to agree with Bush II's visions and apparitions on foreign policy.

The latest study of thousands of documents done by the Pentagon shows that there was absolutely no tie of Saddam to Al Qaeda.

And the New York Times just discovered in its March 17 issue that Ambassador Bremer destroyed the Iraq army and bureaucracy on his own, and probably only Rumsfeld and maybe Bush were aware, and even then it is not clear if they understood the magnitude of what they were doing.

So we are now in the fifth year of this endless war--it has taken Bush longer to foul up Iraq than it took Franklin Roosevelt to win the wars in Europe and Asia combined. People frequently ask me what makes a president great--just think about the last fact.

Obama and/or Hillary? Hillary and/or Obama?

Even if Hillary Clinton prevails in Pennsylvania, Obama is expected to do well in Mississippi and North Carolina. She must get 2/3 of the super delegates to get the nomination and Obama needs to get 1/3 to prevail.

Now the scandal sheets are fronting the story that Obama is gay.
Pundits I talked to in Washington DC predicted that was coming months ago.

Bill Clinton is indicating that a Hillary-Barrack ticket would be unbeatable. Perhaps they would inherit each other's negatives. How could Hillary say he was qualified for the number 1 slot and for taking over from her if she is gone after she has said that he is simply inexperienced for the job? And if he is on top, does he really want Bill Clinton let loose in the West Wing? She would be better with Bill Richardson, and he would be better off with General Wesley Clark.

Meanwhile the media did a number on McCain saying that he lost his temper when he dared to confront a New York Times reporter on an old rumor that he was offered the number two slot on John Kerry's ticket.

If that is an explosive temper, the New York Times and the 24-7 television and radio media better toughen up in life. As for the New York Times, they had better watch for a major stockholders' revolt which is going to be more difficult than poor McCain.

Bread and Butter, America

The Tuesday primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island all featured victories by Senator Clinton. Senator Obama only carried the People's Republic of Vermont. The Chablis flowed freely in Burlington that night. Clinton won the popular vote but lost the small caucus vote in Texas. Her victories were apparently due to economic issues; she is a bread and butter Democrat, not an inspirational one. And as the recession deepens, people are very worried about bread and butter. So she recaptured the middle class last night. Still, with all her victories, the Democratic Party’s weird system probably gave her only a few more delegates than she had the day before. But she does have a sort of momentum, and can say that she delivers in the big states: California, New York, New Jersey, Texas and Ohio, and would probably have won Michigan and Florida.

An interesting aside, state Senator Karen Johnson from Arizona is sponsoring a bill that permits firearms on campuses. She had originally wanted to allow kids starting in kindergarten to carry weapons but a few of the right wing crazies said that was a bit much even for them. I kind of like the idea of tots carrying rods--so much for bullying. Johnson says some people consider her a wacko. A good candidate for vice president???

Oprah for Obama

Sometime in the Iowa and New Hampshire primary campaigns, Obama went from being another candidate to being a major alternative to Hillary. I hate to raise the issue, but I think I have the answer--Oprah. Yes, I know—or I share the usual male attitude toward her show. It is an endless stream of sappy self help books, anti male rhetoric, and tips on the need to avoid bad hygiene habits by Dr. Oz. But still she has an enormous following among older women, and her support for Obama indirectly tipped the scales at the outset. How? Well, she helped turn out huge crowds, and that gave him the chance to present his message which more and more people came to like. She sold him, and he sold himself. Now the campaign is about him, his character, his readiness, and his rhetoric. Poor Hillary can not get us to focus on public policy, so she gets more frustrated and then sounds shrill.
She can't win because she and Bill are used to going bare knuckled against opponents all their careers. Now she can't do that with Obama--the people don't like her going after him. The latest New York Times poll shows him with a 54-44 margin over Clinton among all Democratic primary voters. Obama's problem is what happens when she is gone and he has to face McCain--a personable warrior who will stress national security experience and his heroic war record.

Obama Leader?

While the New York Times is close to pronouncing Obama the democrats candidate, Hillary looks ahead in Ohio, Pennsylvania, maybe Texas, and likely to get Florida and Michigan in a floor fight. That is a big bloc.

Huckabee is continuing on in part because has nothing else to do. Who wants to go back to hope Arkansas?

Biden is out raising money to pay off his campaign debt. Too bad, he at least had a plan thought out to leave Iraq.

Odd and Ends, Election Updates

The state of California spends over $30 million a year to protect its Governor. Wasn’t this fellow once the Terminator?

Obama is not only beating Hillary in a string of primaries but, more ominously for her, he is winning the Democratic primaries by very large margins.

Bill Clinton said recently that he always wanted to vote for a woman president and also for an African American president, so he understands why people are flocking to Obama. That does not help Hillary, Bill.

My grandson in Virginia voted for Obama; he is tired of the Baby Boomers presidents.

Super Tuesday Elections

The Super Tuesday elections were a real mixed bag. McCain generally rolled over Romney, but his strength is in states that will likely go for the Democrats in the general election: California, New York, New Jersey. Huckabee cut into his opponents’ votes especially in the conservative South. He is all that is left for so called social conservatives, or people who want to tell others how to live their lives so they can feel saved. It is said, in the media, that Romney has a transparency problem, which is code words for saying that he does seem to a lot of people not to be telling the truth.

As for the Democrats, the picture is more complicated. Hillary did well in New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts as well as other states like Arkansas. Obama carried Connecticut, Illinois, and important states in the South and Midwest. She does well among older women and blue collar workers. Her ability to carry Hispanics, especially those more likely to watch Spanish language televisions, and Asians was critical to her election victory in California.
Someone said that in the Democratic contests it is a battle between those who drink Dunkin Donuts coffee vs. those who drink Starbucks.

The Debate

The Tuesday debate of the three remaining democrats vying for the presidency, showed the candidates in poor light. Hillary came off as a vulture especially with Obama, he looked tentative and confused about the major issues especially medical care and Iraq, and white male John Edwards seemed ill at ease in South Carolina and in the debate.

Rudi has argued that he was saving himself; it appears now that what he was saving himself for (the big states primaries) have become increasingly populated by the Romneys and McCains of the world.

It is fun to watch the GOP candidates lionize Ronald Reagan, who was himself one of the great trimmers during his political career. Nobody can say that, but the record speaks for itself on abortion, taxes, civil rights and even dealing with the USSR.

The Oracle of Montel Supports Obama

Popular psychic, Sylvia Browne, has predicted that Barack Obama will be nominated president on the Democratic ticket, and that the Democrats will win the White House. Show host Montel Williams was delightfully surprised.