PSoTD

Wow, Noam Scheiber can't think beyond the shiny.

Another thought: a tax credit for people who live in small towns and work over 30 miles away. A "preserve small-town small-town America" tax credit. You argue that high gas prices threaten the viability of small-town life for many commuters, and that we have an interest in preserving these communities. Of course, you do risk the pandering problem here...

What Scheiber is really pointing out is the lack of good jobs in small towns. Seriously, do we want a tax policy that pays for commuting over 30 miles? Does he really think that gas prices are the big threat on small towns?

Scheiber's right that Obama should put some tax credit specifics out for consumers who pursue transportation efficiency. How about credits for using mass transit? How about a bicycle purchase credit? Let's not think of ways to provide incentives to USE gasoline, but think of incentives to save it.

Time to give Friedman a cheer. The idea is the stupidest kind of pandering - and implies that voters are pretty damn stupid. Supporters of both McCain and Clinton should be both disappointed and insulted.

My earlier post was obviously not serious. My honest opinion is that there is too much debate that is deferred to a "superior judgment" and that adding more religious figures into the fray will just exacerbate that.

On the other hand, I'm all for public debate which reveals religious leaders to be just, well, people. Thoughts convert into acts, and those actions may show a person to be good to the point of being worth the individual choice of following that person's example - but that doesn't give that original person a pass on every thought they have, nor should it give the follower a pass to not think about separate issues about the "leader".

Americans, in general, seem too docile in their thinking about religious leaders, and grant them status based on their visibility as opposed to their activities. If events such as the Reverend Wright episode lead Americans to have a bit of self-realization about that possibility, I would see that as a good thing.

Obama addresses his former pastor's comments.

“I think certainly what the last three days indicate is that we’re not coordinating with him, right?” Mr. Obama said. “He’s obviously free to speak his mind, but I just want to emphasize that this is my former pastor. Many of the statements that he has made both to trigger this initial controversy and that he’s made over the last several days are not statements that I’ve heard him make previously. They don’t represent my views and they don’t represent what this campaign is about.”

“Some of the comments that Reverend Wright has made offended me and I understand why they offend the American people,” Mr. Obama said. “He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign.”

Obama has said enough about this for me. Hell, I wouldn't want to be held accountable for that Delltones youtube just because I blog here!

Moving on...

I'd love to see a debate like this. Cut the bozo talking heads out of the deal. The candidates take responsibility for both the questions and the answers. We should get better topics than Rev. Wright and the Weatherman Underground. And if we don't, we'll know exactly who to point the finger at.

Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton turned up the rhetoric Saturday in their increasingly heated primary battle as she issued a new debate challenge and he complained of a race that's largely been reduced to trivia while working families feel economic pain.

Clinton took the debate dispute to a new level, challenging Obama to face off with her in a debate without a moderator, Lincoln-Douglas style.

"Just the two of us, going for 90 minutes, asking and answering questions, we'll set whatever rules seem fair," Clinton said while campaigning in South Bend.

Do it!

It isn't wise to damn your own candidate with faint praise by claiming he/she is better than Dick Cheney. Example: Clinton's new campaign strategist:

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, held a conference call with reporters and called Hillary "one of the most secretive politicians in America today" — a striking personal charge in the era of Dick Cheney.

Until the next votes, for the next two weeks the most important voices belong to superdelegates and contributors. We can expect the campaigning to get more nasty now. Both candidates are in somewhat of a death-spiral for the party now, looking to taint the other enough to win enough delegates to fulfill their current plans. Indiana and North Carolina are about to enjoy for two weeks the depressing emptiness of it all that Pennsylvania got to endure for six weeks.

There are two groups that can decide to step in and say that enough is enough, and that damage is occurring to the party, if they feel the time is right - superdelegates and contributors. Superdelegates can do so by coming out for Obama in droves in the next two weeks, making the math for Hillary so unlikely that she recognizes she has to rein it in. Or contributors can simply not give to the Clinton campaign for the next couple of weeks, drying up her resources and giving a clear signal to the voters that they see it as over. But it would take a significant action - or inaction - to prevent this from continuing to impair the Party's chances in November.

Failure of either of things to happen is a green light to even dirtier campaigning.

Jay Newton-Small at Swamplands likens the Obama-Clinton primary battle to "Groundhog Day".

Whatever the reason a lot of Democrats are getting nervous that the race is dragging too long and it could start to hurt the party. Like Bill Murray, they want out of the time loop, and maybe, like Murray (and I realize I'm probably pushing this analogy past its limits here) they just need to fall in love.

My analogy is "Jane, stop this crazy thing!"

Now that the primary is over, I have two suggestions for Obama's campaign:

Get rid of those youth radio ads. I voted for Obama, but they actually creeped me out. Too much cult of personality feel to them.

Talk economy, but bring Iraq into it, and how the judgment of going into Iraq is hurting our economy today. The notion that voters rank Iraq 4th on issues in this election at this point is based on two things, in my view:

Fatigue about Iraq news in general.
Fear about the economy - the personal sense of how I may get hurt.

Iraq has been a disaster for the United States in so many ways, including economic. Regardless of the fatigue, there needs to be a point drawn about America needs to spend its human resources and borrowed dollars in more effective ways when the economy is at risk. Obama needs to do a better job of framing this.

Note to states with primaries remaining - the past seven weeks were not uplifting campaigns. They weren't particularly nasty, either. Mostly, they were just vacuous, specious, and eventually mind-numbing. I'm less happy with both Clinton and Obama as candidates now than I was in early March.

Not good.

Even less happy with the national news media, which I guess shouldn't surprise me. If there's an institution that needs reform - that needs term limits - it is the national news media. About the only good thing to come out of the entire coverage by the news media on the campaigns the past 7 weeks was the loud and omnipresent bashing that ABC took for their pathetic effort at a debate last week. Of course, the news media took aim at the two front men and didn't realize that those men were merely brinksmanship examples of the media's activity for years in campaigns, but perhaps it's a start.

Note to Democratic Party - the past 7 weeks of campaigning have not been uplifting or illuminating. They have been a turnoff.

Thanks to Atrios.

I reject the idea that one should pick a candidate based on some imagined preferences of other voters.

5:15 PM - Forster and Front Street, Harrisburg.

Here's the deal - the election is on the 22nd. By that night, we're going to know the results. At that point, there will be a major effort to either establish the result as a big surprise for the candidates, or as expected.

We all know what both Obama and Clinton will want to do with the results. We also know that the polls have been all over the map this campaign season, and the idea that one reporter thinks she can establish the goalposts is laughable. I suspect the result will be an eye-of-the-beholder result, especially if it's in the high single digit advantage for Clinton. Both candidates will have polls that will allow them to spin it their way, and the electorate will still be unsure what it all means.

I think there's a more interesting question - will there be another big negative "news" triviality bomb dropped this weekend on one or both of the candidates? What are the odds?

Clearly the worst this year, maybe of all of them. Why? Because of the moderators, and their questions. Last night revealed one obvious item: Charlie Gibson is a horrible, horrible hack.

And here's a framing subject I think should be pushed back on - this notion that the middle class earns up to $250K per year. Please. According to the 2006 U.S. Census, only the top 1.5% of households made $250K or more per year. Only the top 5% made $167,000 or more. What is so middle about that? A tax increase on somebody making $200,000 or more is NOT a middle class tax increase.

Weird. He's running radio ads in Pennsylvania. Why? Is there a chance he's going to run for President outside of the Republican Party? The news reports things like this:

"...Republican candidate Ron Paul, who hasn’t officially dropped out of the race but isn’t active on the campaign trail... "

but he's running ads and he's speaking in the state, maybe it's not HEAVILY active, but it sure still appears active to me.

Does anybody think 2004 would have played out significantly differently if John Kerry's Democratic primary opponents had challenged his Viet Nam experience? Not necessarily as aggressively or dishonestly as the Swift Boaters but maybe played the "Winter Soldier" episode against him or brought up some conflicting details of his service.

Would there have been a different nominee? Would Kerry have been better prepared for the same attacks in the general election? Or would Kerry have been weakened and lost by a larger margin?

Much of my support for Kerry was based on "electability". If I had been aware of his vulnerability to attacks on his military record, I'm sure I would have rethought that support.

My gut feeling is that Kerry would have been a stronger candidate had he survived that vetting - and the Swift Boaters would have been mostly defanged. And if the line of attack resulted in a different nominee, who knows how the election turns out?

This spring gauntlet run will hopefully produce a better equipped-and-prepared 2008 Democratic nominee for the fall.

Yeah, seriously, I thought Ron Paul's campaign was over, but I am seeing a LOT of signs for him on the West Shore.

Didn't Tom Vilsack support Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus? Didn't Hillary Clinton come in THIRD in that event? If Iowans don't care what Tom Vilsack has to say, why would anyone drag him out to talk to Pennsylvanians? Could there be a less significant former government official that could be pushed out for comments?

Seriously, to the Clinton Campaign - if you have a story that you think has legs, don't bring the Vilsack.

From a speech in Indiana...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Barack Obama said anti-abortion Democrats are backing him because they feel he respects their opinion on the issue despite disagreement on it.

The Democratic presidential candidate favors abortion rights, but he noted his support from former Rep. Tim Roemer of Indiana and Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania who are anti-abortion.

"It may be that those who have opposed abortion get a sense that I'm listening to them and respect their position even though where we finally come down may be different," he told reporters at a news conference.

"The mistake that pro-choice forces have sometimes made in the past, and this is a generalization so it has not always been the case, has been to not acknowledge the wrenching moral issues involved in it," he said.

"Most Americans recognize that what we want to do is avoid, or help people avoid, having to make this difficult choice. That nobody is pro-abortion, abortion is never a good thing."

This bugs me on several levels.

First off, I don't know any pro-choicers who don't consider abortion a wrenching moral issue. But they believe that wrenching moral issues should be decided by the individual not the government. I'm not buying into the "abortion as birth control" caricature and I don't believe Obama honestly does either.

Secondly, does Obama actually feel all it takes to satisfy pro-lifers is "listening to them and respecting their position"? That's ridiculously naive. Or is he really not firmly committed to choice?

This is the Obama that strikes me as the guy who thinks he can talk his way around anything. Hell, maybe he can.

I bet you didn't know that so many states are still in legislative session this year. Funny how a Presidential primary keeps the attention away from that...

I'd like to know how much money and resources this waste of time, courtesy of the jackasses at the 2006 Lieberman campaign, cost America.

Nothing could motivate me more to vote for, send money to, knock on doors for, do whatever it takes to get the Democrat elected than John McCain selecting Condoleeza Rice as his running mate. She was there every step of the way through every foreign policy and national security blunder of the past eight years serving as Bush's chief enabler and "Yes" woman. Condi might be a nice lady but she's clearly been over her head since day one. Seems like Republicans never hesitate to encourage and reward incompetence.

Get thee back to academia, Dr. Rice!

From Republicans - such as how he doesn't get fundraising.

Why does a winner-take-all delegate system make more sense than a proportional delegate system?

Or more importantly - for whom does it make more sense?

Apparently the rabble is messing this up. It's the rabble's fault!

I need to write a book. There's money in that!

Look, it's this simple - Michigan's primary was screwed up beyond repair the first time. Short of a revote, there's no way you can allow the delegate distribution as a result of that primary vote in the convention - it's not fair to the candidates, and it's not fair to Michigan's voters. Perhaps everyone can take some blame in this fact, but it is a fact.

It's also not fair for Michigan's voters to not be represented at all, but this is a choice between two equal failures. Is it better to have an unrealistic result based on various parties not following the rules of the primary election, or no result based on various parties not following the rules of the primary election? That is why supposedly responsible Democrats such as Jon Corzine need to quit suggesting that the Michigan results should be counted as is, either by delegates or by popular vote. Those results are tainted, we all know it, and responsible parties need to quit ignoring that fact. Corzine should be pressing for a revote in Michigan, period, as should all responsible Democrats. Revote or no vote are the options, period.

Let's use this as a starting point. Give All Spin Zone a read on this.

And now for my personal experience.

It's been a couple of weeks since I've really blogged anything here about the primary race, and here's what I've learned:

It's pretty easy to avoid blogging about it.

Of course, that is from my standpoint as a blogger. I still read about it, still go to blogs that post about it, but I will admit to feeling a bit better today while not blogging about it, as opposed to feeling a need to post about the day's relatively minor primary news. So much of the campaign news is blow, and blowback, of no longterm substance, but only by standing off, and watching from a further distance, was I able to accept that as a blogging choice.

I'm not saying that the primary race isn't important. I'm saying that most of the blogging that is going on about the primary race isn't that important. Probably, at least 80% is blogger opinion, reflecting personal preferences of one sort or another.

We've voluntarily joined the talking head realm in pixels, and are obliging to pontificate on every day's visible or imaginary slight or promotion for the candidate we support. We have surged in our own self-importance. Are we making a difference in the primary campaigns? Perhaps. Are we making a difference in the primary campaigns that we can be proud of later? Very questionable.

I really don't see the need to blog about the primary activity at this point - the benefit for you as a reader can't be great enough, and at this point, there is no ego boost for me. I don't mind being a repeater, but there are so many other interesting things in the world worth repeating, I don't see why I should focus this blog in the primary. Everyone else is doing it - why should I? So, unless I feel I have some sort of rare insight into an primary campaign issue - and that is ridiculously unlikely - this will NOT be a good place to go to if you're looking for primary news.

But, if you've been here much, you probably already knew that!