Nightcap- Post Super Wednesday

I can’t figure out why I feel so battered. I have never seen anything like the mobilzation against Clinton. But the funny thing is that she is proving her claims correct: she can take what they’re throwing at her, she can be down in the money count- she still wins, by a LOT in the big states where it counts.

Joe, I’ll have a Basil-Haydens light on the ice. Heck get me an ice pack. I’m black and blue and finally know exactly how she feels. Gotta get up tomorrow and do it again.

This is a nice bar, not too demanding. The lights are therapeutically dimmed, the music slow and sultry. Who’s the piano player? Well, whoever she is, she knows exactly what I want:

Set’em up, Joe.

The NYTimes weighs in on “The Uniter’s” Cult of Personality

Well, someone had to say it. In today’s NYTimes Editorial, Barack Obama’s supporters are described as engaging in a Cult of Personality, which in this context means:

A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country’s leader uses mass media to create a larger-than-life public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies as well.

A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is specifically built around political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders.

There’s no better word for the Obamaphiles patrolling the blogosphere or the media pundits frantically extolling his illusory virtues. Yes, Obama is a gifted politician, an exceedingly bright individual, a charismatic speaker. But he is untested, inexperienced and doesn’t have the knowledge base yet to be president.

But more than that, he seems to have bought into the idolatry as NYT explains:

Having run on the idea of broad participation across society’s divisions, Mr. Obama’s campaign often seems to teeter on becoming a cult of personality — a feeling that the candidate and those around him do nothing to dispel. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” on Monday, Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, was asked if she would work to support Mrs. Clinton if she won. “I’d have to think about that,” she replied.

Mrs. Obama quickly got back on her talking points, stressing party unity. But her unguarded answer was similar to what we heard from Obama supporters in e-mail messages that we received after endorsing Mrs. Clinton. Many of those readers said they would not bother to vote if Mr. Obama lost the nomination. That is not the way democracy is supposed to work.

Bingo! Obama and his wife are willing to give us 4 more years of Republican rule if they can’t have their way. They are going to hold their breaths and withhold their support, their solidarity to the nominee, who would be Hillary Clinton.

And this seems to bother his supporters not a whit! It’s perfectly ok to diss that has-been white woman candidate because, because….

Why exactly? Why should the tantrums of the young and foolish keep us from taking our country back? But more importantly, what kind of “leader” allows his party to be split like this, to let the country teeter on the edge of ruin all because he puts himself over the greater good?

The Greater Good is a core Democratic principle, Senator Obama. Are you onboard or not? Tell us now. The primary season is expensive and a lot of us would very much like to wrap it up.

I’ve Overestimated Chris Bowers’ Intelligence

Or has he underestimated ours?

From his post SuperTuesday analysis:

There are only two paths to the Democratic nomination now. One path, for Clinton, is based on her maintaining a tie or a narrow lead among pledged delegates, thus allowing her to seal the deal through a rules and bylaws engine that focuses on superdelegates and the Michigan / Florida delegate seating process. The other path, for Obama, is based on him taking a narrow pledged delegate lead, and then slowly building that lead through a string of victories that will eventually make Clinton’s super delegate lead a democratic farce, and her Michigan / Florida claims irrelevant. Which situation are we in now? Well, unless one is simply incapable of counting pledged delegates and simultaneously blind to Obama’s gaping caucus advantage and resource advantage, you simply have to conclude that the latter scenario is more likely now.

Really?

Like California and NY and NJ and MA, FL and MI voters are just going to cry uncle when Obama has them in a choke hold. “Ok, Ok, we give in. You can be the nominee. We didn’t know what we were thinking. We just let that most densely populated, most diverse, most tech savvy states status thingy go to our heads. Oh, and women forgot to check with their husbands before they pushed the buttons. We’re sorry, sorry, SORRY! Ow, ow, ow, you’re hurting us.”

Chris, if you and the rest of the big blog stores and the media keep this up, there is going to be a backlash and it isn’t going to be pretty. Obama is not going to be the nominee by the big states graciously conceding our delegates to him because he won more Utahs and Alaskas. Nah gah happen. It has nothing to do with superdelegates or party establishment. The voters of the largest Democratic states in the nation have spoken- decisively. I don’t think that Obama is going to want to piss us off.

Last night, Clinton proved conclusively that despite all of the vicious media and blogger attacks, she is an admired and viable candidate for president. It can only go up from here. Please don’t bore us with this stupid cognitive dissonant zealotry. Obama gets VP if he’s nice. Hillary tops the ticket.

Deal with it.

Oh, and one other thing: I’ll be campaigning for Clinton throughout April in PA, which is right over the border and I’m going to recruit my sister and mother to do the same since they live there. In fact, since there won’t be much else for we NY and NJ people to do before the convention, we will have lots of time on our hands during the weekends to help out.

Good Day, Sir! I said, GOOD DAY!

Word Association

I was reading Jeralyn at TalkLeft this morning and I think she makes an interesting point that will be completely ignored by major media:

I may be in the minority on this, but I don’t give much weight to winning the rural, less populated states with few delgates. Particularly those that aren’t likely to go Democratic in the general election. (Idaho, Utah, Alaska, etc.)

The Tweetys and Russerts will probably call these “big” states thinking that most geographically challenged Americans will not realize he means big in terms of square miles, not population density. But is this true? Or is there a specific image that comes to mind when Americans hear the names of these states? For example, here are the things that immediately spring to my mind when I think of Obama states:

• Georgia- Gone With the Wind
• Utah – Mormon underwear
• Idaho – potato
• Alabama- sharecroppers
• Alaska- polar bears
• Colorado – Aspen
• Connecticut – Lieberman and Hartford Insurance
• Delaware- credit card interest rates (not just the cards, the *interest* rates)
• Kansas – prairie
• Minnesota -Jesse Ventura
• Missouri – pro-life
• North Dakota – Fargo

I will be the first to admit that I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drummer and I’m a little different than my peers and neighbors. But if I have most of the cultural references correct, I get a sense of rural, isolated, ethnically not diverse, corporate, african-american, conservative, quirky.

Now, let’s look at Clinton’s states:

• New York- New York City
• New Jersey- What exit?
• California – 5th largest GDP in the world
• Massachusetts- MIT, PHD, M-O-N-E-Y
• Arkansas- razorbacks
• Tennesee- TVA dams
• Arizona- desert
• Oklahoma – Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain

The overall feeling I get from Clinton’s wins is diversity, creativity, energy, liberal, government successes, openness.

In the states where Clinton lost to Obama, except for very conservative states or backyards, the nargins were small (Missouri, Connecticut, New Mexico). That indicates that her base is solid but that Obama may have tailored his message to a specific population. In CT and MO, there is a large african-american population. It could have gone badly in NJ as well but NJ has an open primary where independents can declare at the polls and vote their preferences. I think this is what happened in NJ, which suggests that there are plenty of independents who find Clinton a reasonable alternative to a Republican challenger. In fact, Democrats outnumbered Republicans in yesterday’s NJ primary by 2:1. If Obama was really a draw for them, here was his chance to show it. Not only that, he vastly outspent the Clinton campaign who were sticking to a budget. Obama lavished the state liberally with a flood of cash for canvassers and signs and organization. He gave the Clinton camp the willies. And he still lost here- by 10 points.

What I think we are seeing is that both women, independents and the creative class went for Clinton in greater numbers than had been anticipated. (They might all be part of the same group) While the more conservative voter and blacks went for Obama. Now, come fall, if Clinton is the nominee, she can win back those black voters. But if Obama is the nominee, it’s unlikely he will ever carry Utah or Idaho or Alaska and it wouldn’t really matter anyway.

Tell me where I got this wrong because the # of states won don’t mean a hill of beans. Clinton won the heart of the country, the creative, energetic, diverse, progressive heart.

Tonight’s Big Losers: The Media and the big Blogs

Yes, the delegate counts are going to be close to even for both candidates. But people are going to wake up tomorrow and see the big, diverse states going for Clinton and the more minority, conservative and “corporate” states going to Obama. They’re going to believe their lying eyes. They’re going to see Hillary Clinton as a serious, well liked candidate with a large, diverse constituency. You can broker this convention from now until doomsday but Clinton will likely end up at the top of the ticket. That’s not gloating, that’s just an observation.

And this after pundit after pundit, big blog after big blog put their thumb on the scale and put all of their weight behind it. They pulled out all of the stops to make sure Obama won. There was no non-Obama voice they weren’t willing to put on mute or ridicule. It has been a relentless, nauseating drumbeat for Obama on TV and online where Hillary supporters could find no refuge. With all of this force of effort, harrassment, the breathless reports of the polls tightening and most of the Kennedy clan throwing their influence behind Obama, you would think Obama was going to have a cakewalk. Oh, sure, it was going to be close but the spirit of Change! was going to swing it for him. He was optimistic. Fresh. More charismatic. Inspirational. He exuded auras.

Why did our few sympathetic media outlets and bloggers immolate themselves like this? I have no fricking clue. There is something completely disconnected from reality in their disdain for Hillary Clinton. There is something equally unrealistic in their irrational exuberance for Obama despite his thin resume, high Broderism and poor debate appearances. But the voters for some strange reason, didn’t listen. They paid attention to their own economic situation and the condition of the country and the kind of historic change *they* preferred and voted for Hillary.

On the blogs, there will be a lot of bitter spinning against the Democratic establishment and consultants. But most voters out there aren’t following the infighting between the consultant class and the insurgents. It’s not like any voter’s arm was twisted by Mark Penn or Terry McAuliffe. If voters got so much as a GOTV telephone call, they were lucky. The Clinton campaign in NJ was decidely low key and was outspent by Obama. Obama’s campaign spent so much money here that the Clinton campaign took serious notice. They thought it would be much closer. So, it’s not the campaign consultants who are doing this.

And it’s not like this was an “inevitability” thing. The tsunami of support for Obama was so great that Hillary’s candidacy should have collapsed months ago under the so-called lack of support that was reported at every opportunity.

There’s a lesson for the media and the big blogs in tonight’s results. But I doubt they will learn it. This *IS* the most historic election of our lifetime. The majority is finding its voice and it will no longer allow the regular players to call the shots without them. We are about to do what many countries in the developing world have done previously. We are about to nominate a woman as our leader.

Guys, get over yourselves or risk becoming irrelevent. Because to the rest of us, it looks like the people screaming loudest for Change! are the ones most resistant to it.