[ Posted Thursday, January 31st, 2008 – 14:58 UTC ]
As the field of candidates from both parties narrows, it is now possible to talk of the November candidate matchups in a single column.
But before I get into this candidate versus that, I would like to point out one more interesting thing about this year's election. It's a footnote, really, but an interesting one nonetheless: there's a large chance that this year will be only the third time Americans have elected a sitting senator. There's been a sort of "curse of the Senate" hanging over presidential candidates ever since JFK became only the second one to ever make this leap. While this isn't as exciting as electing the first black or woman to the White House, it will be one more reason this year's election isn't exactly like the others. By my figuring, there's a 75% chance we'll have a senator moving to the Oval Office next year.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 – 16:14 UTC ]
Out of the frozen tundra of Iowa, out of the snowy mountains of Vermont, out of the brightly-lit casinos in the Nevada desert, out of the churches of South Carolina... campaign '08 comes barreling down towards Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday like a cheetah on steroids. But I'd like to pause here for a moment, take a deep breath, and look at the 2008 election's "big picture" -- where we've been, where we are, and how we got here.
The most striking thing about the 2008 campaign so far has been the mainstream media pundits being so wrong, so many times. Here are just a few of the nuggets of "conventional wisdom" served up as gospel truth by the chattering classes -- which all turned out to be laughable: "McCain is finished," "Hillary is inevitable," "Obama will lose Iowa since it's all white," "Ron Paul is a fringe candidate who will not be able to raise any money," "Huckabee doesn't have any money, so there's no way he will win Iowa," "Hillary will lose New Hampshire," "if a candidate (especially a woman) ever seems to cry on the campaign trail, their campaign is over," "Rudy Giuliani is the Republican frontrunner," "this election will be all about Iraq," "black people won't vote for Obama because he isn't 'black enough' and Hillary will win their votes," "Bill Clinton will be a big plus when campaigning for black votes," "Obama will win South Carolina, but it will be a close race," "Fred Thompson will be the next Ronald Reagan," "Everything will be decided on Super Tuesday," "Republicans always choose a frontrunner early and fall in line behind him," "Romney has it all wrapped up now," "Hillary has it all wrapped up now," "McCain has it all wrapped up now," et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 – 16:04 UTC ]
Last night the Democratic response to President Bush's final State of the Union speech was given by Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic Governor of Kansas. While the initial reaction of most Americans could be summed up as "Who?" watching her deliver her speech made me wonder if Barack Obama had helped write it. And after Sebelius endorsed Obama today, I'm left with an even bigger question -- will she be Obama's running mate?
Her name has already been floated around among the pundits handicapping who will be the choice for vice president (they also have a name for the process which I refuse to use due to its overwhelmingly saccharine cutesiness: the "Veepstakes"). So it's not out of the realm of possibility that she'd be on Obama's short list.
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[ Posted Monday, January 28th, 2008 – 15:14 UTC ]
Ever onwards, into the fray, we return to the latest in a series of primary "picks" columns, this time heading down to Florida to examine the Republican race. I refuse to write any Democratic picks, since they're supposed to be in the penalty box for moving their primary up sooner than February 5th. So this week, it's GOP-only.
Which is probably a good thing, since my track record on the Republican side is a lot better than my total for Democrats. I seem to be able to be more objective on the Republicans, and more biased on the Democratic side, so make of that what you will.
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[ Posted Friday, January 25th, 2008 – 16:16 UTC ]
Netizens, fellow bloggers, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, Members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, and all Americans... I am proud to stand before you and say... the state of the weblog is strong!
Blogging, for instance, means you can put your own comments out there before President Bush gives his final State of the Union speech next Monday. This is a good thing for our blogosphere!
The state of the blog is best when we call things long before the mainstream media wakes up from its eternal slumber to echo what bloggers have been saying for months. Like predicting last May that February 5th will not determine our nominees, and that we may even have open conventions this year.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 24th, 2008 – 16:46 UTC ]
There's a difference between leading and following. Leading means getting out in front, and charting a course. Watching to see what others do, calculating where the political chips are going to fall, and then picking the safest course is not leading. It is following.
John Edwards today came out strongly in support of Chris Dodd's fight against Harry Reid in the Senate over giving telecommunications companies immunity for breaking the wiretapping laws. To be fair, Dodd is the one leading on the issue, but he has dropped out of the race for president, so he deserves the leadership honors on the issue. But among the three leading candidates for the Democratic nomination, only Edwards is even speaking about the issue. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as of this writing, don't have any press releases up on their web pages on the issue, one way or the other. Both of them are out on the campaign trail rather than in the Senate to cast votes on the issue.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 – 15:20 UTC ]
Either Karl Rove has joined the Clinton campaign as their advisor, or somebody over there has learned a lot from his standard campaign playbook. Because they're successfully using Rove's signature (and quite bizarrely effective) political tactic: attack your opponent not on his weak points, but on your weak points. This throws your opponent on defense, when he should be strongly playing offense.
The first indication of this came a few weeks ago when Hillary started criticizing Obama's Iraq war voting record. Even though he was against it from the beginning, Clinton points out that in the past few years Obama has voted for war funding! Well, so what? Unless I'm grossly mistaken, Clinton herself has voted for war funding in the same time period. And Clinton voted for the war's onset, which she's never apologized for (a weak point for her). But she tied Obama up in knots for a while explaining why this was such a ridiculous charge.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 – 18:15 UTC ]
Life imitates art....
I was amused to read an article in Salon the other day about a man who is selling one acre lots on the moon for the surprisingly reasonable price of $19.95 each.
But what amused me most about the article is that whoever wrote it obviously doesn't know much about science fiction, as Robert A. Heinlein's name wasn't even mentioned.
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[ Posted Monday, January 21st, 2008 – 18:00 UTC ]
I was watching the Chris Matthews Show yesterday, and amidst the usual blather about Hillary Clinton was an interesting question: what's Bill going to do if she gets elected? Now, this wasn't the first time I'd heard the question asked, but it was the first time I've heard people actually take it seriously. Several facets of the question were explored, including whether Bill will have a West Wing office or not (the First Lady has traditionally had a less-prestigious East Wing office), whether he'd be "in" on briefings and decisions, and (most interestingly) whether Hillary is going to have a problem getting a Vice President (since anyone considering the job would have to ask whether Bill would be more important in the administration than the VP). But none of them even mentioned what may be the perfect solution to the problem. How about Bill Clinton, White House Chief of Staff to President Hillary Clinton?
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[ Posted Friday, January 18th, 2008 – 17:00 UTC ]
I apologize in advance for the disjointed nature of this week's column. There are a lot of odds and ends to cover, including tomorrow's primary picks, a cartoon, and the usual awards and talking points.
But the first of these ends is definitely odd: is it just my imagination, or did Charles Krauthammer (of all people) read my earlier column before writing his own? You be the judge.
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