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Broadcast week ends
I'm out of town for the rest of the week. See you all on Monday with some reflections on the greatest danger facing the Obama campaign.
Today's brain-twister
Is Mickey Kaus the stupidest person alive, or merely the world's biggest asshole?
Nice White Lady
Shit, you know what? I changed my mind. Obama can't carry certain states without Hillary Clinton. There's no way the campaign will do as well without Clinton's people. Just because Obama beat her in the majority of primaries and caucuses doesn't mean he actually could win an election without her. If Obama wins the White House, he could have done better with Clinton on the ticket. If he loses, it's because he didn't have Clinton on the ticket. Oh, and don't forget, Obama wouldn't be as great a candidate as he is today without Clinton "making him better." Oh, even though he's a totally terrible candidate who should have Clinton because he'll win the election with her but totally might not if he doesn't.
In short, Obama is nothing without the awesomeness of Hillary Clinton. Thus is the power of the Nice White Lady.
Hillary Clinton: because of course a black man can be president, but man, wouldn't a Nice White Lady make him a better one?
Bayh
Reading a lot of the background on Evan Bayh, both positive and negative, color me puzzled. If Obama's going to pick a running mate who disagrees with him on a bulk of fundamental issues, is deeply connected to the failed and party-killing DLC, unabashedly- and embarassingly, with no remorse- supported the war in Iraq, and will completely ruin support and excitement among his progressive base already wavering from his recent anti-progressive stances, he might as well just choose Hillary Clinton.
If Obama does pick Bayh, I really hope BooMan's synopsis is being overly pessimistic, because the idea that Clinton's people believing they can blackmail their way into an Obama White House is almost as odious as the more blatant threats from the more, to use the scientific term, batshit insane wings of the Clinton campaign.
"Leave the hanger"
The right wing is at it again with their crusade to make it legal for pharmacists to not do their job, only this time they've got HHS in the works, complete with some language that would technically allow the sales clerk at Wal-Mart the right to refuse to sell you birth control pills. Of course, that would mean you could still afford them, since the White House also wants to go ahead and let insurance companies not even cover birth control to begin with.
At the rate we're going with the anti-choice lunacy currently in control of the government, it's only a matter of time before you can't buy a pack of condoms without a doctor's note. Oh, who the hell am I kidding? Making it hard for men to get anything related to controlling their reproductive functions? Cue the Twilight Zone music.
Armando: Obama continuing to not know his place
Jesus Christ, someone save us from the stupid.
The big hook for McCain is the fact that Obama supporters disgracefully smeared Bill and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. The McCain riposte to pushback from Obama supporters is "that's what you said about Bill and Hillary Clinton."...
The fairy tale has come home to roost. All the dirty work these folks did during the primaries to slime Bill and Hillary Clinton is now fodder for John McCain. Of course he was going to going dirty, ugly, negative and would race bait. The wonder is none of these folks realized that when they said and did anything about Bill and Hillary Clinton to favor Obama that all of it would come back to haunt Obama in the general election.
Everyone got that? Because the Obama campaign had the audacity to be upset about veiled racist attacks made against him in the primary, now it's already on the table for McCain to use. See, Obama only had one "race card" in his Magic: The Election deck, and he should have saved it for McCain. A smart candidate would have simply held off from responding to six months of suggesting that the black guy can't actually win.
Of course, back on Planet Earth, I guess it's cra-a-a-a-a-zy talk to, oh I don't know, suggest that maybe this could have been prevented by the Clinton campaign not making racially polarizing attacks against Barack Obama?
Armando and the rest of the baby brigade truly embody the most disgraceful and arrogant remnants of the Democratic Party. It's Obama's fault, you understand, that Clinton ran a disgraceful and shitty campaign. It's Obama's fault that he had to deal with racism in the election before he even became the nominee. And now, of course, it's Obama's fault that Hillary Clinton spent the last six weeks of a primary she was already statistically incapable of still winning having her surrogates practically write half of McCain's campaign ads for him.
Next week: as Obama selects someone other than Hillary Clinton to be his running mate, Armando explains that Obama's loss of the guaranteed 698 electoral votes Clinton would have brought to the ticket is his fault for not going back in his time machine and destroying every single video tape of Clinton publicly saying Obama isn't qualified to be president.
Update: Armando, calling me an "Obama supporter" (you know, the guy I never endorsed in the primary, never voted for in any election, nor ever given money to) declared that I am calling him and everyone who supports Clinton a racist. Hmm... pointing out that your opponents have used racial attacks against you means you're "playing the race card." Gosh, where have I heard that tantrum in the last 24 hours? Sorry, Armando, what was that you were saying about how you're not co-opting the McCain talking points?
His valiant stance in the war on straw aside, I find it very interesting that I said there were "veiled racist attacks against Obama in the primary" and Armando's response was to claim I was calling him, personally, a racist. I think that says a lot more about what he recognizes as a racially-based attack than he's trying to hide from.
Finally, I think his silly little snit about "hatred of all things Clinton" is as illogical as it is precious. No matter who wins in November, Hillary Clinton isn't going to be president. So what, exactly, would I give a shit about with her at this point?
Second Update: You know, I want to emphasize this because it really is astounding. This weekend, John McCain and his surrogates stole a news cycle claiming that Obama "played the race card" which, in essence, was a rhetorical argument about how the Obama campaign was accusing Republicans of racism- despite the fact that Obama had done no such thing. It's really amazing how over half the comments in Armando's thread up there are people saying the exact same thing. Just like John McCain, they turned the reality of a handful of Clintonites using racially-tinged arguments against Obama into some kind of fury over an accusation of blanket racism that no one has actually made. That Armando and his deranged followers are completely blind to this is a glowing example of why Clinton lost so much support in a primary that was supposed to be handed to her on a plate.