Knock it off

What a girl wants? - The Jed Report

I agree with this post. Calling a woman girl is no better than calling a black man boy.

The Demographics of the Democratic Primaries

Check out this cool tool from the NY Times that visualizes how different demographic groups voted in the Democratic primaries.

The most striking difference is the divide between blacks and whites and women and men (the age, income and education demographics also varied, but not as starkly). While I'm sure there is latent racism in these figures I don't believe racism explains it all. People are attracted to people more like themselves. So naturally blacks will tend to vote for the black and whites will tend to vote for the white. Similarly, women will tend to vote for the women while men will tend to vote for the man.

What makes me proud to be a Democrat is that we, as a party, are willing to risk it all by putting forward two candidates who push the demographic boundaries. We could have played it safe in a year when it looks like beating McCain should be easy. We did not.

Changes at the DNC

It was inevitable that these kind of changes would be coming. The presumptive nominee has effective control over the DNC so what they want generally is what happens.

DNC will no longer take lobbyist, PAC money

NEW YORK - In his first order of business as his party's presumed presidential nominee, Barack Obama is instructing the Democratic National Committee to adopt his policy against accepting donations from federal lobbyists or political action committees.

In addition, Obama is keeping Howard Dean as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, while bringing in one of his top strategists to oversee the party's operations.

The change in the fundraising policies at the DNC is a good idea. Critics won't be able to say that Obama is using the DNC to get around the restrictions he has imposed on his own campaign.

It's good to hear that Dean will stay on as Chairman, even though I suspect his power over the committee will be reduced. He won't be able to do anything major without first running it by Obama. But that's okay. That's the way these things work out.

And can there be any doubt that if Hillary had won that Dean would have been asked to resign?

Roll outs

It's nice to see that the Obama campaign is wasting no time in rolling out its general election teams.

Clinton suspending campaign

Clinton Likely to Suspend Campaign and Endorse Obama Friday

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is moving to suspend her campaign and endorse Senator Barack Obama, probably on Friday, according to a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton.

Her decision came after Democratic members of Congress urged her Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.

What did I say? Clinton may have thought it was a good idea to try to force herself on the ticket, but party leaders and other supporters quickly put the kibosh on that idea. She may still get on the ticket, but it will be at Obama's choice, not Clinton's strong-arming.

Second shot across the bow

Pelosi, Reid, Dean Go Public: Democrats Need To Endorse

I think it's clear that party leaders have little patience for Clinton making a play for more power in a future Obama administration. If she gets it it will be on Obama's terms, not hers. If she tries to force the issue she will get burned.

The good thing about this announcement is that it comes from Dean, Pelosi and Reid and not Obama. Thus, any blow back over this move from disgruntled Clinton supporters will be focused on them and not the presumptive nominee.

Don't think of an elephant

John McCain, yesterday:

You will hear from my opponent's campaign in every speech, every interview, every press release that I'm running for President Bush's third term. You will hear every policy of the President described as the Bush-McCain policy. Why does Senator Obama believe it's so important to repeat that idea over and over again? Because he knows it's very difficult to get Americans to believe something they know is false.

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Framing violation. Don't think of an elephant. 10 yard penalty.

McCain needs to learn that you don't respond to a criticism by repeating the criticism and saying, "No I'm not". He just gave additional legitimacy to the question of whether he is, in fact, running for Bush's third term.

A bullet is most powerful when it is NOT fired

Hilary Rosen, a Clinton supporter, fires what amounts to a shot across the bow of Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic party is no longer Clinton's party (either Bill or Hillary). But it is not yet Obama's. It will be, soon. But the shape of that party will be formed in the next few days and the single thing that will have the greatest impact on that will be what Hillary does next.

Some people are asking why she is still in this thing? I think it is because she has made the calculation that she can use her 18 million supporters and 49% of the delegates as leverage to essentially force her way into a prominent role in the Obama Democratic party.

Rosen's column is a warning to Clinton that she shouldn't count on being able to use Rosen as a "bargaining chip" in her poker game.

The truly sad thing about Clinton is that she assumes that she needs to force her way into the Obama Democratic Party. What she doesn't understand is that, by the fact that she does have those 18 million supporters and 49% of the delegates, she automatically gains considerable leverage. She doesn't need to force anything.

But, by trying to force herself in she is actually weakening her position. Like a general who shoots to much of his ammo, she will find herself lying in the battlefield with an empty gun as people like Rosen rebel against her actions.

I've given this shakeout a few days because that is how long I think the patience of a great deal of her institutional support will give her. If she continues with her, "make me an offer or else" approach she will forever destroy her influence in the party.

Update: John Aravosis explains why what Hilary Rosen says should matter.

We really are governed by a child

There's just so much in this that's its hard to know where to start.

- Bush admits to Engel that going to war was a decision based on his personal instinct and not on any long-range strategy for the Mideast:

“I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.”

and this:

- Bush tells Engel that the election of Hamas was actually a positive development because it pressured Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to make reforms:

“I think the election of Hamas was a good thing. It proved to Abbas he was failing. I told Abbas, ‘You lost the election because you aren’t providing for your people, jobs, education, what people want.’ Now they know they have to compete.”

Puts his whole talk about appeasement in a different light, doesn't it?

Right to the point

Comment by Laertes at Balloon Juice

Pushing Hillary supporters to hop on the Obama bandwagon tomorrow is like hitting on a widow at her husband’s wake.

The shape of things to come

John Cole has, I think, the best take on all the "Clinton will concede"/"Clinton will not concede" reports we are reading today.

Politics is about power and Clinton still has power. Not enough to get her the nomination, but certainly enough to give her team a say in the future of the party. A quick concession would deflate that power, so she has to keep up the pretense of a campaign just to keep that power in play. The minute she concedes, her influence in the party will drop dramatically (not completely, few big players ever lose all their power). She has to play this out to the end.

Obama's best option is to let her do it. Nothing would be gained by forcing her out. It would just piss off the wrong people if he did.

The race is over. Everyone knows this. This is no longer the Clinton's party. But it is not yet Obama's party. Again, everyone knows this. The shape of the party will be dictated, in large part, by what happens in the next few days.

That's why things seem so chaotic. It's because it is chaotic. But it will pass. We just have to be patient.

This is cool

I've linked before to the Garfield Minus Garfield strips. I'd wondered since how Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield felt about it. After all, one could see the modifications as criticism of his work.

Well, apparently Davis likes it and says it has even prompted him to reevaluate some of his work.

(hat tip to Mathew Wingram)

The end of the Clinton era

The greatest surprise for me in this election season has been Bill Clinton. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said he would be Hillary's greatest asset. The reality is that he may have ended up being her greatest weakness. Josh Marshall discusses this here and I think he might be right that time has just passed Bill by and he doesn't realize it. The political environment has changed both technologically (with the web and viral videos) and philosophically (with a greater emphasis on grassroots democracy and less on the institutional politics he was the master of).

I'd still vote for him in a second over any Republican. But it's still a sad thing to see how ineffectual he has turned out to be.

Oh well then, I guess the AP has spoken

And we all know that when the AP speaks we can just accept it as reality.

AP tally: Obama clinches Democratic nomination

Off course, this announcement is based on the AP counting super delegates that they have talked to in private who have said they intend to endorse Obama combined with an assumption about how many pledged delegates Obama will win in tonight's final contests. All of these assumptions may be correct, but until they actually happen it hasn't actually happened.

I can understand people wanting this race to be over. But it's embarrassing that so many (here and here) have leapt on this news story as if it is anything more than a news organization wanting to be the first to say "Obama Wins!"

Save the celebration for when it is justified folks. You've waited this long. You can wait a few more hours.

Worry and fret. Fret and worry.

Bob Herbert goes all ADD (Anxious and Defeatist Democrat).

I swear, the one thing I would most wish to see is the end of Democrats spending inordinate amounts of time figuring out how they might lose.

Reading tea leaves

I think people may be reading to much into reports of Clinton's campaign slowing down (here, here and here).

After Tuesday, the primary elections will be over, so there is no reason for Clinton to maintain an electoral staff at full strength. If she continues her fight it will depend more on a small cadre of operatives working behind the scenes to try and convince super delegates that the voters were wrong to give Obama more pledged delegates. That would explain why she is marshaling her forces in New York tomorrow night: Not to say "goodbye" but to say "here's what we do now".

Too much of the reporting in this campaign has been of the variety, "We want it to be this way so we will report things as if they are indicating it will be that way." I've been burned on that enough times not to believe any reports other than an actual video of Clinton saying, "I'm suspending my campaign and endorsing Barack Obama".

It could happen tomorrow night. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Voting for someone like yourself

As an addendum to this I'd like to add my personal reflection on the recent Oregon primary.

I voted for Obama. So did my wife. But it wasn't until we received our ballots (Oregon is vote by mail) and sat down to fill them out that the magnitude of what was happening struck me. For the first time in both of our lives , we were voting for a presidential candidate that was NOT a white male. For the first time in both of our lives, we were voting for someone who was not like someone we have voted for before.

However, while this was the first time I was voting for someone different than myself (I am a white male), voting for someone different from herself was normal for my wife. This election provided her with the first chance to vote for someone who was like her (a white woman). And she had to make the decision not to do it.

There will be viable female presidential candidates in the future. Clinton's campaign makes that more likely. But I think it behooves us to consider just what Clinton supporting women have to give up when they let go of her candidacy.