You’ve Got a Friend (an Interlude)

A little song to go along with a fresh Open Thread

Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Obama

“He was not at all afraid to debate in nasty ways”

Touché! Hillary has challenged Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate before the next primary. She wants to give him another chance because the moderators were so mean to him at the last debate and he’s still complaining about it. So, this debate will have no moderators.

you may be asking, what is a Lincoln-Douglas debate? Well, wiki says that it is a debate whose focus is values and morals, not policy. That’s awful nice of her to give him a handicap. You’d think he would jump at the chance to set the record straight, to prove his bona fides, to demonstrate his presidentialtudinissness.

So, what’s the word from Obama? Has he accepted? What’s that his campaign says? No more debates before May 6?

“In the next nine days we’re going to devote our attention to the voters and we will see where we are after May 6. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Lincoln-Douglas, standing, sitting, what language it is in, it does not matter.”

When danger reared it’s ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Obama turned about
And gallantly he chickened out

Super Surrogate Chelsea Clinton in Indiana

This is an official campaign video of Chelsea and reactions from some Indiana students. Chelsea talks about Hillary’s plan for student loans.

Saturday: Follow-ups

You know, I haven’t been to North Carolina for years. I’ll bet spring is really pretty there. Hmmm, Brook has been saying for some time now that she would like to visit Williamsburg in VA and that’s really close to NC and, heck, I haven’t been to Kitty Hawk since I was 5 years old when my Dad took us to see the Wright Bros. Monument. And the BFF went to school in NC. So many good reasons to visit.

Anyway, I like to look forward, not back. There’s not a lot you can do about the past. You can’t unsay things you regret later. You can only learn from your mistakes and move on. With that in mind, here are a couple of posts from around the blogosphere that reflect on things better left unsaid:

• Jerome Armstrong has another memo from the other side, this one from an Obama delegate in PA who recaps the fatal mistakes that lead to Obama’s humiliating loss in PA (did I do it right, MABlue?). This one is a doozy. Some of the dumbass things include going to San Francisco and dissing small town voters, debating very poorly and not passing around “street money” in Philly. As to that last one, I know for sure they did it in NJ, but either Obama is watching his spendthrift ways lately or he just takes his African-American constituency for granted (I think it’s a little of both) but he didn’t pass out enough cash to ward leaders and volunteers. Now, I have to pause for a second and say that as far as I know, Clinton’s campaign doesn’t do that. For one thing, the money is very carefully budgeted and there is no waste. I’ve never been offered cash for volunteering and I don’t know of other volunteers who have been offered it either. Yeah, we Clinton supporters are in it for the fame and glory. But seriously, how sad is it that you have to pay your volunteers to GOTV? Shouldn’t they *want* to do this for altruistic reasons, like, maybe they believe in the candidate? But I think the more egregious thing about the street money issue with Obama is the campaign was aware of this custom in Philly and chose to spend its money instead on $11 Million in advertising. As the delegate alludes to in his memo, the Obama PR operation gets paid per ad in a way so that there is an incentive to produce more ads and consequently more money for the PR firm. It’s a racket. There’s probably a cost-benefit analysis somewhere that shows how many ads deliver the greatest punch. Obama’s campaign exceeded this number many times over. And his campaign contributions went to pay the PR firm instead of going into the hands of the volunteers who would have flushed out the voters on primary day. I don’t know about you but the overall sense of the campaign just looks like a racket to make money for some very enterprising individuals connected to David Axelrod. And everyone thought Mark Penn was bad. He might be a loathsome person but at least he knew how to win the big states for Clinton.
• In Metaphor? No, Murder, Anglachel recaps what she wrote previously about Keith Olbermann’s room scenario. She’s got a point in that Keith’s frustration with Hillary’s tenacity is starting to make him indiscreet and he’s blurting out what he’s really thinking. But Anglachel and I know that while Keith is unlikely to act on that frustration, there will be some listeners who think it’s a great idea. I think Hillary has pretty good secret service protection. I have a feeling their monitoring tools are much more sophisticated than we think. But that’s not to say that someone won’t flip out and try something. She’s not a large woman. And who’s to say that this comment won’t encourage men to let down their guard in everyday situations? This genie is out of the bottle. Keith can’t unsay it and I doubt that any of us can influence the network to take these things seriously. But Obama and other party leaders should step up to the mic and say enough is enough. It’s getting dangerous for women in the public forum when stuff like this goes unchecked.

I have an idea that I hope a couple enterprising readers will take me up on. I’d like to read “on the ground” reports from North Carolina and Indiana so we can live vicariously. Are there any Conflucians that are volunteering for those two states who would be interested in contributing a post or two? Let us know in the comments and make sure your email is the one you actually use to get email so we can contact you. (no, we will not broadcast your address to the world)