Is anybody else really freakin' nervous?

I am. Really freakin' nervous

I am reading all of these premature "How Obama Won" pieces around the blogs, and it's not making me feel better. Nate Silver is more realistic, and actually quite sobering. This election might be really, really close.

Baby boomers for Obama

Marc Cooper on how some of them feel.

Obama’s speech came at the precise moment when I’d been mulling over his appeal to my generation of boomers. It’s been somewhat staggering for me to encounter the number of close friends of my own ’60s-generation cohort who, in the past few weeks, have been rather quietly confessing to me their own begrudging admiration for Obama.

And I do mean confessing. For those of us who grew up reading Ramparts, not Facebook, it’s somewhat uncomfortable, if not downright embarrassing, to admit to investing any real hope in a Democratic presidential candidate. It might be hard for the Millennials or even the Xers to fully grasp, but my generation was radicalized by LBJ Democrats more than by Nixon Republicans. We thought Jimmy Carter was a Southern conservative (and we were right). Bill Clinton, we thought, was the best Republican president since Ike (and I think the record confirms that notion as well).

But along came John Edwards and Obama this time around, and it was hard to deny that we were starting to hear some of the same arguments we had wearily been making over the last four decades finally coming from the presidential-campaign stump.

Not that we’ve been pushovers for Obama’s message of Change We Can Believe In. Coming to us veterans of the Gulf of Tonkin, Chicago ’68 and Kent State, it is a little bit like the Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to hawk the latest edition of The Watchtower at a convention of atheists.

But I know I speak for these same friends when I say you can now count us among the O-boomers. We’ve sipped no Kool-Aid, nor been seduced by focus-grouped campaign rhetoric, nor driven senseless by finely tuned speechifying. Instead, we’ve looked around and reached three simple conclusions:

First, that John McCain, whose personal courage cannot be denied, and who has had some distinguished moments in public life, now finds himself positioned in the American political system with little to run on except a platform of militarized jingoism.

Second, the election of Hillary Clinton would be an absolute guarantee of the political status quo. There might be a forward shift here or there compared to the Bushies, but the system itself would remain intact. And we are convinced that her decision making would, indeed, continue in the well-known Clintonian tradition of unmitigated expediency — as has already been more than amply demonstrated during her lamentable campaign.

Finally, we do not invest naive hope in Barack Obama. We O-boomers are, I fear, ready to be disappointed by a President Obama. It’s a well-worn reflex with us. But for the first time, in a very, very long time, we can sense at least the mathematical possibility of some refreshing change if he is elected. His speech this week served only as a geometrical multiplier.

Wingnuts debunking wingnuts

Bill Kristol thinks that Joe Lieberman would make a great Veep candidate for some republican. It would do all sorts of things, including "scramble the political chess board." In response, Ramesh Ponnuru is making sense:

Lieberman for Veep?

I'm not sure what the case for putting him on the ticket is. To prove that Republicans are willing to reach out to Democrats whom most Democrats hate? To show that Republicans are the hawkish party? I think people already know that.

The Big O

Here:

Oprah Winfrey has already done plenty for Barack Obama, lending her influential endorsement and organizing major fundraising efforts, including an event on Saturday at her California home. But she may go even further. The Washington Post reports today that the TV superstar is in talks with Obama's advisors to take on a more active role in the campaign, possibly delivering stump speeches and more openly campaigning for Obama in the media.

Discussion question:

Is Oprah the cultural juggernaut everyone says she is? Will she send forth her arcane and hypnotic commands, shaping or subverting the will of America's ladyfolk? Will Obama crush Hillary and the hapless republicans beneath Oprah's fabulous heel?

Or is this more of a Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin level thing?

Bill Richardson as the "electable" candidate?

DLC types love to tell Dems that they should play for middle-of-the-road independents instead of taking firm progressive stances. Well, according to David Weigel, it looks like those independents love them some Bill Richardson:

That's been going on for a while. Pollster.com, which tracks the primaries and averages all the surveys, has noticed Mr Richardson gaining everywhere. In Iowa he's gone from negligible numbers to the low teens, near Mr Obama. In New Hampshire he's moving past Mr Edwards into third place.

But the internal numbers in that Smith-featured poll are fascinating: Mr Richardson's making the biggest gains with independents. In South Carolina only 1% of Democrats support Mr Richardson, but 9% of independents do. In New Hampshire it's 6% of Democrats and, again, 9% of independents. The Iowa poll's the real blockbuster: Mr Richardson has an outright lead with 25% of the independent vote. That's what's pushing him into the first tier.

The Iowa and New Hampshire numbers matter; those are both states where independents can show up to the caucus or primary and signal their intention to vote Democratic. When I reported from New Hampshire in June, Ray Buckley, the state's Democratic chairman, crowed that two-thirds of independents are planning to vote in his party's primary. Nearly half (44%) of New Hampshire voters are registered independent. If Mr Buckley is right, there'll be as many independents voting in Mr Richardson's race as there will be Democrats.

Personally, I think that the reason Richardson is climbing with independents is that people are tired... Richardson's most attractive quality is that he exudes non-partisan compentence. However, Weigel offers up another possibility:

Mr Richardson has the most extreme Iraq pullout plan in the race—all troops out of the country, no permanent bases. A lot of those non-Democrats and ex-Republicans who ditched Bush in 2006 like the sound of that.

You should really read this

This post at splodinvark. Read the post, but don't neglect the comments, which are excellent (I'm not talking about my own little throwaway quip). Take the quiz if you are still interested.

I give you the next president of the United States

There's a lot I don't know yet about Bill Richardson, but what I do know I like. So far, he's the only candidate in the entire field who I think would almost certainly make a very good president.

This ad campaign hasn't changed my mind about that:

Return of the hack gap or, "My opponent's fortitude is not an issue in this campaign"

On MSNBC this morning Michael Barone deployed the new GOP beholden hack talking points on John Edwards. In bullet point form they are:

• Like everyone, I have great sympathy for John and Elizabeth Edwards
  
• Having a terminally ill spouse would put a lot of stress on a President.
  
• None of Mr. Edwards opponents would bring this up, so
  
• It will be an issue for voters to consider in the privacy of the voting booth.

I feel dirty just from watching Barone's performance. Ick. I'm sure we'll see it repeated hundreds of times by dozens of GOP proxies before this is over. Ick. Ick. Ick.

A note to the naive: not talking about something is not the same as talking about not talking about something.

Will Iraq be the prominent issue of 2008?

As I wrote earlier, Joshua thinks "no," and I think "hell yes." Neither of us can really know, of course, but that doesn't stop either of us from electoral prognostication. Yesterday, Josh sent me the following email:

Asked of Republican primary voters:

Which is more important to you in a presidential nominee — someone who commits to staying in Iraq until the U.S. succeeds, or someone who is flexible about when to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq? 

answer: 

39% committed to winning
58% flexible

This is coming from primary voters, mind you. The GOP voter is way more on top of this Iraq shit...they aren't going to shoot themselves in the foot over it. Bush might shoot them in the foot, however.

52% believe that the winning candidate will oppose the war. They aren't gonna run on it, and if both parties won't run on it, then it won't be an issue. Might it make sense for a Democrat to try and pin the other guy w/ it? Not really. It goes to Bush and he's in his private wilderness. The press will keep doing stories on it, but since both sides will be messaging the same message (get out), what will matter is health care, education, economy. Domestic issues election, this one.

There are three reasons why I think Josh is wrong.

First, Bush will probably shoot the Republicans in the foot (better than Cheney shooting them in the face, I guess). He's going to be president throughout the campaign, and if there's one thing we can apparently count on from Bush, it's that he will continue to mess things up real good. If we end up with a broader war in the Middle East, for example, I think even Joshua would agree that this would become the major issue in 2008.

Second, even without a foot-shooting-related incident, Iraq is on track to be in a significantly more horrific situation in mid-to-late '08 than it is right now. Top of the evening news, on the front page every day... that kind of horrific. There is no way that this doesn't become an issue in the primaries, where the "mainstream" candidates of both parties will face challenges from the left and the right. Candidates will need to put up specific proposals, and then those proposals will be savaged by both the "get out now" and the "stay to win" crowds.

Third, in the general election, I just can't see the Republicans not taking another tug at the national-security lever, especially if the race is tight. Perhaps their strategists will look at these polls and consider it a losing proposition, but I think it's more likely that they will suggest a series of slash-and-burn (political) attacks designed to move the electorate, and change that polling. The context of this poll is widespread malaise about Iraq, and nobody out there trying very hard to beat the drums of war. In full-on campaign season, the rhetorical landscape will be very, very different.

This has been my first prognostication entry for '08. Discuss.

Really?

Note to Hillary: Your husband cheated on you and was fined $90,000 for lying about it to a federal judge. Everybody thinks he's still cheating on you. |The execrable Mickey Kaus|

...I mean, is this the conventional wisdom, or is Kaus just casually throwing around unsourced slanders?

On the "mistake" and other nonsense

Nothing has changed for Hillary, and John Edwards is seizing on that to try to get a little traction:

When Edwards spoke a few minutes later, he seemed to aim his rhetorical barrels right at Clinton, emphasizing repeatedly how he was, indeed, wrong to have voted for authorization of the war. “I should have never given George Bush authorization,” he said. Arguing that America needs a president who can is “honest, open, and moral” he said that after 6 years of Bush not taking responsibility for the war, it was no longer acceptable to dance around the issue as he implied Hillary was doing.

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias--who claims he is saying something nice about Hillary--says that Hillary isn't avoiding admitting a mistake. Instead, she just thinks it wasn't a mistake. Is that really being nice, or is he actually being a dick?

Lastly, one of my favorite politicians weighs in on Iraq:

Dennis Kucinich got his licks in, trashing all the other candidates. “It must be hard for these politicians to say they were misled, tricked and deceived by George w. Bush,” referring to their positions on the war in Iraq. “Here’s one who wasn’t. I organized 125 Democrats in Congress to oppose the war and I saw all the same information these other candidates did.”

Lest the "realists" amongst us get bent out of shape, I don't think Kucinich can win, but I don't think his candidacy hurts anybody either. He's one of my favorites not only because of his honorable positions, but also for stuff like this:

He then ended his talk by saying he was the only candidate who had no strings attached to him. Then he lifted his arms up to his shoulders and slowly twirled around on stage repeating: “No strings. No strings. No strings.”

UPDATED: Which Democrat would you like to be President?

Let the 2008 race begin here on this blog. As we get closer, I'm sure we'll talk a lot about who should get the Democratic nomination and save America, and a lot of that talk will involve our judgment of who can win against the Republican challenger. But now, in the early days when we don't even have a clear idea of who is going to run (I mean, seriously, Chris Dodd?), my question is this:

Assuming that the winner of the Democratic primary were to automatically win in the general election, who would you support?

In the field of candidates (and likely candidates) so far, my answer is John Edwards. What about you?


UPDATE: What's the point of this question?

The point of this question is to start acknowledging some preferences among the likely candidates for the Democratic nomination. Likewise, when I later post a question about which could most likely beat the Republican challenger without any concern about whether he or she would actually make a good president, I will also intend to restrict the question to likely candidates.

The point, dear readers and co-bloggers, is to begin a discussion about whom we should support of the likely candidates.

So, no Robert Byrd, and no William Shatner. Got it?

I didn't see this in the decumbiture

There must be some bizarre astrological convergence today, some relationship expressed beyond whatever pedestrian harmonic controls vehicular safety. How else could it come to pass that a public figure is both appearing on a Sunday morning talk show and making sense about Iraq?

I'm talking about Colin Powell who, on Face the Nation this morning, first tore to shreds the Bush Administration's troop surge gambit and then offered a realistic assessment of what we can usefully do going forward. It was surreal.

At a fundamental level, Powell's criticism of the troop surge gambit is that it comes without any discernable rationale. In response to speculation that the troops will go to Baghdad and be part of an effort to stabilize the city Powell says, refreshingly, that 40,000 troops can't do that and that "The American army isn't large enough to secure Baghdad."

Plus, in a nod to all the wonks out there, he linked this critique to a three point test for evaluating any further use of military force in Iraq. Here's how it goes:

1. Is there a clearly articulated mission?
   
2. Can that mission be accomplished?
   
3. Do we have enough troops to accomplish the mission?

I don't know about you, but I've always been a sucker for a Powell doctrine.

As for his plan going forward, it's basically the ISG recommendation without the permanent bases and rapid reaction force. That is, Powell thinks that we should work with the elected Iraqi leadership to help them train police and put in place the political pieces that are going to make possible the establishment of stability.

Will this work? I'm not overly optimistic, but then, neither is Powell. Which is, I'll say it again, refreshing. It's not a give up and get out plan and it's not a stay the course plan. It's a figure out what we can productively do, do it, and live with the consequences plan.

All of which brings me to this. Whatever happened to the Colin Powell presidential speculation? I know that the conventional wisdom is that he lost his chance with his WMD testimony at the UN, but I have trouble seeing why that's supposed to matter so much. The bad spin, I guess, is that it shows that he's either dishonest or won't stick to his principles. But, you know, it's hard to see how that sets him apart from the field. And, anyway, there's positive spin too. Namely, that Powell is a team player.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm on the Powell 2008 bandwagon, but he looks pretty good to me on the key issue of getting the hell out of Iraq. Unlike establishment Democrats, Powell wouldn't feel the need to prove his hawkishness. And unlike establishment Republicans he's not a melange of batshit crazy and evil incarnate.

Update: Video of the appearance is up at Crooks and Liars.