Friday- Finally!

It’s a snark lover’s dream today in the left blogosphere. It’s hard to believe at times that some bloggers make a living spouting off nonsense and yet. Here are some of the prize winning idiocies from both bloggers and campaign surrogates from around the web:

• Take Chris Bowers, Please! The man gets a tingle in his leg whenever there is the prospect of a caucus. Yes, we’re just so into the jostling, misinformation, deceptive practices and locking Clinton people out of the caucus sites by the Obama supporters, we can’t get enough of that special brand of democracy. Ooo, Ooo, why don’t we calculate when the Clinton shiftworkers will be most inconvenienced and hold one *then*? Chris doesn’t even bother to feign ignorance about the obvious advantage that Obama has in the low-hanging fruit of the caucus state. From his post yesterday, Michigan Needs to Hold a Caucus, he writes:
  

  For Clinton to narrowly eek out a victory by means of the current 80-1 Michigan delegation would be horrendous… I think seating Florida’s delegation as is (105 Clinton, 67 Obama, 13 Edwards) and holding a new Michigan caucus (with 128 pledged delegates at stake) would be an acceptable compromise (more on my Florida position here). Clinton’s advantages from the lack of campaigning in Florida would be cancelled out by Obama’s advantage in caucuses.

  Oh, yes, we must make everything Even Steven. We can’t let Clinton have any delegates that would push her over Obama. What really strikes me as absurd in the Bowers’ post was the notion that “Clinton advantages from a lack of campaigning in Florida” and somehow this must be “cancelled out”. Forget the cancelled out bit for a second and tell me how it is that Clinton benefitted in Florida by not campaigning? Does he mean that she saved herself the $1.4 M that she might have spent if she’d followed Obama’s example and bought lots of cable TV ads in Florida? She did no campaigning the first time and beat him by 17 points. Hmmm, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that, as well as the acknowledgement by Chris that caucuses are undemocratic ways of choosing a candidate but it’s ok in this case because it levels Clinton’s advantage with Florida. Settling Florida and Michigan should not be seen as an opportunity to tweak the numbers so that it is beneficial to Obama, Chris. We’re interested in making sure the voters are not disenfranchised so they don’t take it out on the Democrats in November. If reinstating them ends up as a loss for Obama, get used to the concept. Surely, Barry can make up for it by running to the fainting couch over illusory “race-baiting” comments by the Clinton campaign just before the NC primary.

• Apparently the Kossacks and Keith Olbermann (KO) are all in a tizzy about Hillary’s latest remarks about readiness to be commander in chief:
  

  “I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

  “I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

  I don’t watch KO anymore so I can’t comment on the breathless, simmering outrage of his polemic on Clinton’s assertion. No doubt it was as orgasmic as the Kossacks report it to be. I hope it wasn’t over too soon. Maybe they can get Keith to do one nice and slow so they can roll with it. And no, I don’t think she’s said anything that will permanently damage Obama in the fall because there isn’t going to *be* an Obama leading the ticket in the fall. She is merely continuing to frame him as the junior partner in her upcoming joint ticket, just as she signalled on Wednesday that she was open to the idea of making him her VP. That along with the commander in chief remark is intended to condition the remaining voters to accept the battle in the fall as being between Hillary and McCain. It makes Obama look childlike and unready. It’s very clever as they start to campaign in PA and who knows, it might even make a difference in Wyoming. And she’s absolutely right about McCain going gung-ho on National Security issues. That’s his strong point and he and the media are going to milk his POW experience for all it’s worth. Obama is going to look like a soft, spoiled yuppy next to McCain. And if the lefty blogosphere is going nuts over the comment, hey, the truth hurts. Obama is NEVER going to win the national security argument against McCain. He’s going to have to win it on a different set of strengths like, oh, I don’t know. Think of something.

• Oh my, oh my, oh my! Following up on the last point, one of Obama’s campaign surrogates really sticks her foot in her mouth. At least she is honest about her own boss: She and Samantha Power must be good friends or something. By the way, have we any idea what the Clinton campaign calls Obama?
• Normally, I wouldn’t go near the Rezko thing. It just reminds me too much of Whitewater. But I do find it interesting that Obama might have been involved in getting patronage jobs for his staffers through Tony Rezko. It reminded me of something our commenter Lori found in Newsweek a few weeks ago about Michelle Obama interviewing for a job. The whole report of the job interview process was so atypical of any HR procedure I’m familiar with:
  

  One landed on the desk of Valerie Jarrett, deputy chief of staff to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. “I interviewed Michelle, and an introductory session turned into an hour and a half,” Jarrett tells NEWSWEEK. “I offered her a job at the end of the interview—which was totally inappropriate since it was the mayor’s decision. She was so confident and committed and extremely open.” Michelle was flattered by the quick offer. But though she came across as supremely confident to Jarrett, she had doubts about whether it was the right decision. She asked Barack to meet with Jarrett to discuss the job before she accepted.

  Jarrett, who is now a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, became Michelle’s mentor. She set Michelle to work with businesses caught in red tape between city departments. It wasn’t exciting work, and it paid far less than her law-firm salary, but Michelle saw it as a first step in her new career in public service.

  What the heck is going on here with Barack’s involvement?

• So, Barry made $55M in February. Good for him! Of course, he’s lost every major state so far except Illinois and Georgia. I guess Money *Can’t* Buy You Love.

Person Samantha Power

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