Full of it

How does one go from this on Tuesday:

p.p.s. To all you Obama supporters tempted to belittle or insult West Virginia, just remember how annoying it has been when the Clinton camp has done that to Obama states like Idaho and Utah and Mississippi. A 50-state strategy means just that. You don’t go around insulting states.

To this, on Wednesday?

And it’s a district in the Deep South, where scary black people are supposed to be particularly damaging to Democrats.

It’s an easy answer, so I’ll just give it to you: Markos, along with the other coastal elites (on both coasts) really doesn’t believe a word he writes about how Democrats should engage southerners. Oh, it looks nice on netroots blogs when their proprietors solemnly declare that Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy means behaving as if Democrats care about constituencies that aren’t made up of overeducated, arugula munching, latte guzzling, sherry sipping, tree hugging DFH’s, but they are simply unable to police either their comment sections or their own condescending slips when it comes down to it.

And that’s why I think Georgia, which went solidly for Obama in the Democratic primary, is going to go heavily for McCain in November, along with the rest of Markos’ “Deep South”. Oh, the Obamites will scream “racism” at the top of their lungs, with the netroots cheering them on, but the fact is, for all the netroots jeering about the GOP’s having made itself a regional party (that region being, of course, the dreaded (by Democrats) “Deep South”), it’s the Democrats who have abandoned their lunch pail constituency this year, ceding the region to the GOP.

You know, Bill Clinton carried Georgia and West Virginia. Neither Gore nor Kerry, who came across as DFH lovers were able to. Obama is in the mold of the latter two, and you can see the excuses being made already as to why he’s going to lose rural voters. Don’t believe it? Check this out:

Obama is blue, Clinton red, Edwards green. This is the Democratic primary, mind you, not the General Election, where you’ll see a lot more “red” (think McCain).

So, the coastal elites and the big city liberals, along with black voters have selected this year’s Democratic nominee. That coalition hasn’t served Democrats very well in the past two general elections, but it may squeak them by this year, solely due to the fact that George W. Bush squandered every advantage he was ever handed, and the modern GOP merrily enabled him along the way. We shall see.

Update: Geraghty:

The Carpetbagger Report: “John Edwards — who dropped out of the race in January — got 7% of the vote. That’s quite a few West Virginians who seemed to be saying, “We don’t like the black guy or the woman from New York.” The first comment in response: “If stupid, white, rednecks are who we want to elect our next President then I guess Clinton has it sewn up but haven’t we had one of those running the country for the past 7 years?”

…

Obama’s fans are insisting that he can win the presidency without Appalachia - not merely West Virginia and Kentucky, but most of Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, the western part of Virginia, and half of Tennessee. They’re left insisting that there’s something unique about the white, working class voters in this region, an antipathy to Obama that is not shared by white, working class voters in Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, the upper Midwest and Mountain West.

Second thoughts?

My good friend Lance at A Second Hand Conjecture:

Joe Tobacco is now a registered Democrat. Reading this I am thinking he is having some second thoughts.

My good friend and frequent commenter twc must be wondering the same about now.

Frankly, I’m just as unhappy with the Democrats, and the choices they have offered for president this year as I am with the Republicans and their selection of John “Amnesty” McCain. Oh, don’t get me wrong: Iraq, Afghanistan, corruption, laziness, pandering to the religious right, secrecy, and torture stacked plenty of straws on this camel’s back before McCain-Kennedy-Bush snapped it, and I do still think it’s time the Democrats were given a chance to do something besides hate George Bush and bluster / obstruct from the sidelines. I’m not one to quit a political party in a fit of petulance only to slink back into their cold embrace, and I still honestly believe that aside from the Supreme court, there’s not much damage even an ultra-liberal could do from the Oval office.

That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though. Yes, I endorsed Hillary Clinton back in December, but I think it’s fair to say that I’ve never shilled for her on this blog the way, say, Andrew Sullivan has hacked and shilled for Barack Obama, or Hugh Hewitt hacked and shilled for Mitt Romney. I’ve never actually fallen in love with a political candidate, but during this cycle, I’m even more nonplussed than usual with the choices.

Senator Clinton’s recent behavior has, indeed, cooled my support for her. The incidents responsible are primarily her lying about the Sniper fire in Bosnia, her hypocrisy in attacking Obama over the Weathermen, and the recent gun flyer spat. Even given that rapidly cooling support, however, I still think she’d be a better president than Obama, and at a couple of levels, a better president than McCain. So, rather than spend my time extolling her all too slim set of virtues, I find it easier to air my concerns about Obama.

Again, that doesn’t mean I won’t vote for the wunderkind should he take the nomination. I do understand the trade-offs involved in working within a system dominated by two major parties, and I hold no illusions about the amount of work that lies before conservative Democrats of my ilk in attempting to dampen the influence of the progressives who are dragging the party inexorably left. That’s the work that concerns me, and as far this primary is concerned, you’ll see it reflected in my writing.

More hangovers

Blacks who have voted for Obama en masse have got to be in search of the Goody Powders today — If not, they will be this week when this Allison Samuels piece gets a bit of MSM exposure:

“Friends of Sen. Barack Obama, whose relationship with Wright has rocked his bid for the White House, insist that it would be unfair to compare Winfrey’s decision to leave Trinity United with his own decision to stay. “[His] reasons for attending Trinity were totally different,’’ said one campaign adviser, who declined to be named discussing the Illinois senator’s sentiments. “Early on, he was in search of his identity as an African-American and, more importantly, as an African-American man. Reverend Wright and other male members of the church were instrumental in helping him understand the black experience in America. Winfrey wasn’t going for that. She’s secure in her blackness, so that didn’t have a hold on her.’’ And while Winfrey, who has endorsed Obama and campaigned on his behalf, had long understood the perils of a close association with Wright, friends say she was blindsided by the pastor’s personal assault on Obama. “She felt that Wright would never do anything to hurt a man who looked up to him as a father figure,” said her close friend. “She also never thought he’d intentionally hurt someone trying to make history and change the lives of so many people.”

Inauthenticity is one of the Barack star’s biggest problems. His blank slate act, trying to be all things to all people fizzled out early for me, when I broke the code regarding his “understanding” of white consternation with black rage. This Newsweek article, though, lays it out just about as clearly as it could be laid…lacking “street cred”, Senator Obama took the easiest route to obtaining it: He attached his Chicago area star to the coattails of a racist black anti-American demagogue preacher, and lapped up the adulation of those who have actually had a “black experience” in America, assuring them with a wink and a nod (and with his embittered wife, and a mouthful of dog whistles) that their rage would trump any “understanding” he might have of the white perspective on racial matters .

Look, let’s visit the actual “reality-based community” here for a second, shall we? There’s no question that there’s a lunkheaded segment of white America that’s going to treat blacks shamefully for who knows how long. There’s also, however, a big, fat section of black America that’s going to leverage every tidbit of white American guilt at that fact for whatever advantage they can glean from it, and it’s sad but true: Politicians are going to feed that perspective for as long as they can garner votes from it. For a politician who insists he’s “post-racial”, Obama sure seems to have invested a lot in becoming black when his unique background doesn’t lend itself to that identity.

And now we come to find out that Obama’s biggest star power endorser, the mighty Oprah herself, left Jeremiah Wright’s den of hatred against whites and conspiracy mongering in the mid 90’s. It’s hard to question Oprah’s judgment, actually, given the fortune she’s amassed and the white audience share she’s commanded for so long, but boy, doesn’t this call the Obamessiah’s judgment into question? Especially given that Wright’s insistence that the government inflicted the black community with AIDS and that American foreign policy excuses the perpetrators of 9/11 didn’t, apparently, upset him in March, but boy Howdy it did at the end of April, when Wright postulated that Obama only disavowed these statements because he feared how they might affect his share of the white vote in the Democratic primary?

Obama hung on to Wright for as long as he possibly could, even going so far as to insist that he could no sooner disavow Wright than he could the black community. By equating Wright with that community, he sent a distinct message that as far as Barack Obama is concerned, a majority of blacks think just like Wright does, and that as far as Obama is concerned, they have a bloody right to do so. In fact, his big “race speech” outlined just why it was that Wright (and, by extension, the “black community”) was justified in his rhetoric, while attempting the same time to distance Obama from that rhetoric.

Given what we’ve learned, though, that was a shoddy speech, and sickeningly so. If Obama wanted so badly to be accepted into the portion of the black community that harps ignorantly on the Tuskegee experiment, uses that sad time in history to insist that their erroneous understanding of it justifies a suspicion that the U.S. government continues to experiment on blacks, and uses all manner of other wrongful accusations against a white community (who, for the most part, has accepted their ancestral guilt in the measure they understand it, and have resolved to make concessions wherever possible to the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and Louis Farrakhans of the world in order to mitigate it), then he should proudly wear their mantle today, rather than trying to belatedly forswear it. The pure political expediency of courting them for his Illinois and U.S. Senate seats doesn’t excuse the association once he hits the national stage, if anything, it should magnify that association in the context of what it means for an Obama presidency. Far from being an independent thinker, or bold trend setter, this man is nothing but a master of leveraging grievance to uncover the levers of power he craves so deeply, even to the extent of not being satisfied with his newly won seat in the Senate, but coveting the presidency while he grins over his all too thin resume.

If, however, Sullivan is correct, and Obama’s support is this:

I don’t think you have to agree with Obama on many things to want him to succeed. The point is in part a thorough repudiation of the past eight years, and a rejection of what Rove Republicanism has come to mean.

Then an election of petulance that results in an ultra-liberal presidency enabled by a Democratic House and Senate is what we’re all about to suffer through for four years. I seriously doubt we’ll put up with it for eight.

Gallup doesn’t matter (today)

Anyone else noticed that Sullivan has stopped putting Gallup graphs up lately? Gee, I wonder why?

(Click to embiggen)

See also this. The golden boy, he isn’t looking so golden anymore, is he?

Update (5/4/2008): Matters today, though I see. Andrew’s such a hack.

Hangover

No, not me — I’m a bit too long in the tooth to drink during the week. 90% of Obama supporters had to have been hitting the sauce last night, however: If anyone was thrown under a bus during Obama’s hastily arranged press conference yesterday, it was them.

These poor folk have been arguing since early March that Obama was 100% correct in not disavowing Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s words were “speaking truth to power” after all, his love for America manifest due to his service in the Navy and Marine Corps, and his racism wasn’t racism, it was simply “the way the black church does things”.

Boy, Obama put the kibosh on their feeble attempts at rationalizing Wright, didn’t he? And in the process of doing so, made himself look like a fool. No one with half a brain could possibly believe that Obama saw anything different in Wright’s performance at the National Press Club than what we’ve all seen since the “God damn America” clips came to light, and certainly not anything different than what he’s seen during his twenty-year relationship with Wright.

Ah, but Wright called Obama a liar, you see. And Barack took offense at that, and fired back with both barrels.

This guy is such a lightweight. But hey, Jimmy Carter was a lightweight too, and when America was “weary” in the 70’s, we ushered in Carter’s agenda of “change”. Fat lot of good that did us.

Ah well. My party has all but nominated Obama, and the lefties have convinced superdelegates that there will be riots and decades of backlash from black voters and young voters if the will of the people lefty caucus activists isn’t followed. Welcome to the new Democratic party, my friends: Controlled lock, stock, and barrel by the very folks you don’t want in charge of national affairs.

Sullivan’s poison

Oh, this is a beauty. After over a month spent defending Jeremiah Wright from those of us who find his racism disgusting, and question Barack Obama’s relationship with him, Andrew Sullivan comes up with this:

I knew he was an exhibitionist; many of his sermons at Trinity, read in their entirety, do fall within the tradition of some prophetic teaching; I can forgive occasional outbursts from fiery preachers; he has done much good in his own neighborhood and his interview with Bill Moyers struck me as defensible; parts of his address at the Press Club were completely uncontroversial and even contained some important truths.

But what he said today extemporaneously, the way in which he said it, the unrepentant manner in which he reiterated some of his most absurd and offensive views, his attempt to equate everything he believes with the black church as a whole, and his open public embrace of Farrakhan and hostility to the existence of Israel Zionism, make any further defense of him impossible. This was a calculated, ugly, repulsive, vile display of arrogance, egotism, and self-regard…

(emphasis mine)

So, it wasn’t enough for Andrew that Wright espoused these views over twenty years of preaching at TUCC, but it’s enough that he reiterated them at the National Press Club. In other words, as long as Andrew thought that Wright wasn’t truly hurting his favored candidate, defending the man was acceptable — Nay, defending the man was Andrew’s duty. Now that Wright has deployed on his F*** Barack Obama tour, however, boy has Andrew changed his tune:

Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright’s views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer, Vietnam era’s obsession with its red-blue, white-black, pro and anti-America fixations. That is not what this election needs to be about; and Wright’s massive, racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

We need a speech or statement from Obama in which he utterly repudiates this poison, however personally difficult that may be, however damaging the impact will be.

And the beauty of it? Andrew continues to demand that Obama do what Obama will never, ever do:

Marc has a longer quote. I reiterate that I think Obama has to make clear again that he vehemently opposes the use of race to divide and separate and inflame ancient grievances; that he wants to get beyond the racial politics of the Vietnam era; that he is dedicated to overcoming race and offering hope - not obsessing about race in order to foment anger and bitterness. Parts of the message Wright gave today were not just alien to Obama’s stated views - but actively hostile to them. Obama cannot explain that often enough.

Barack Obama is not going to make any such statement or speech, at least not in the clear, unambiguous manner Sullivan is suggesting here, and Andrew knows it. Obama has become the black candidate for a very good reason: He chose to. His association with Wright and TUCC, and his refusal to disown Wright or leave the church is an implied acceptance that what Wright says has merit, and that’s a huge dog whistle to black voters who share Wright’s views. Andrew and the rest of the Obamaniacs can bury their heads in the sand and try to WORM their way out of it all they like, but Obama’s consistent winning of 90% of the black vote in each primary is exactly what it looks like, nothing less.

It’s too late for Obama to shed Wright’s mantle now, he’s made too many statements indicating that he won’t do so. Changing his mind now, as Sullivan demands, would make Obama look weak to both blacks and liberals wallowing in white guilt, and it would have a real effect on his performance in North Carolina. No, Obama and Sullivan are going to have to continue to bear the albatross they embraced so eagerly back in early March, and it serves them both exactly right.

Update: WLS has a wonderful progression of Sullivan’s thinking here.

Update II: Maguire:

Here’s your newsflash - Obama has already given a speech on Wright. Now he’s supposed to give another one? Saying what - “Gee, when I didn’t disown Wright in March for saying “God DAMN America”, it was because I didn’t realize then that he meant it”? What has changed? Andrew seems to think that this is a different Jeremiah Wright from the man made famous by his soundbites in March, the man about whom Obama said “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother”.

Or is Obama going to try and pretend that, unlike everyone in the world except Andrew Sullivan, he had no idea until late April that Wright was hateful?

We aren’t leading you here, much less trying to make you drink

Michael Hirsh let forth a liberal elitist primal scream that shook the foundations of…well, of nothing, actually, this weekend. Hirsh’s view is that “what has become the South-Southwest” has “won another kind of Civil War. It has transformed the sensibility of the country. It is setting the agenda for our political, social and religious mores–in Pennsylvania and everywhere else.”

Hirsh:

In part this is a triumph of demographics. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge observed in their 2004 book, “The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America,” the nation’s population center has been “moving south and west at a rate of three feet an hour, five miles a year.” Another author, Anatol Lieven, in his 2005 book “America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism,” describes how the “radical nationalism” that has so dominated the nation’s discourse since 9/11 traces its origins to the demographic makeup and mores of the South and much of the West and Southern Midwest–in other words, what we know today as Red State America.

Excuse me, but as a southerner who has traveled extensively across Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, I can’t seem to recall a single billboard, television commercial, or radio advertisement enticing anyone who lives up North to relocate down here and start to swill from our “radical nationalist” Kool-Aid. In fact, as the old saw goes, many residents of the area South of the Mason-Dixon line ask “What’s the difference between a Yankee and a Damned Yankee?” The answer? “A Yankee comes to visit, a Damned Yankee comes to stay.”

Of course, this sort of geographical statism is silly, especially when you see it in the pages of a national magazine like Newsweek. Hirsh’s beef isn’t with southerners, really, it’s with conservatives:

This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants–the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics. After succeeding at that, they then settled the American Frontier, suffering Indian raids and fighting for their lives every step of the way. And the Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest. But that latter sensibility has been losing ground in population numbers–and cultural weight.

That’s right: Here’s an international affairs and foreign policy reporter positing that if it weren’t for those damned descendants of the Scots-Irish immigrants who settled the frontiers, a “communitarian Yankee sensibility” would, presumably, be driving the “cultural weight” of US foreign policy…and that such a thing would be good in the wake of what we’ve learned about world opinion since September 11, 2001. Not to mention what we’ve learned about Muslim opinion since then:

In Melbourne the day after September 11, Muslim students at a state high school danced on the desks with glee. What are these young people being taught by their decent and law-abiding parents? Literature being sold at a store attached to a Brunswick mosque tells Muslims they should “hate and take as enemies” Jews, Christians, atheists and secularists, and that they should “learn to hate in order to properly love Allah”. How many Muslims complain when they see this kind of hate literature? Did the large Sydney audience complain when Sheikh Feiz Muhammad charged recently that because of the way they dressed, women had only themselves to blame if they were raped? No, they applauded him.

Hirsh, and those who think like him always miss the glaring hole in their own fantasy: Were it not for those of us in America with a bit of the “savage, unsophisticated” set of mores (whether we are located North or South of the Mason-Dixon line), the frontier never would have been settled, the Texans that Hirsh holds in so little esteem would still be primarily residents of the South (Texas would still be Tejas, and part of Mexico), and the warrior class that protects and defends Hirsh while he sips his lattes and attends his upscale New York parties wouldn’t be nearly as effective as it is. And if America’s “cultural weight” is shifting in our direction, why, perhaps, Mr. Hirsh, it’s because Americans prefer a bit of the savage and unsophisticated in their lives, rather than the rarefied environment you yourself are so comfortable in.

Ugh

This makes me want to throw up. I don’t have time to write about it at the moment, but this post will serve as a bookmark for doing so later.

Bellavia for Congress

In my email today:

SSG David Bellavia is running for congress in New York State. Bellavia served in the First Infantry Division for six years. He has been recommended for the Medal of Honor and has been nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross. He wrote a book about his experience in Iraq called “House to House: An Epic Memoir of War”. He also formed the veterans group “Vets for Freedom”.

When SSG Bellavia announced he was running, one Republican leader asked him “What have you done besides shoot people?” Bellavia is up against millionaire businessmen. He is trying to raise money and needs help…… Let’s get the word out and get this hero elected.

Log onto:
www.bellavia2008.com

My review of Bellavia’s book is here.

The week from hell draws to a close

This has been one hell of a week. I just finished entering my time into our company’s time tracking system, and it looks like I’ll close out with 77 hours on the books this afternoon. That’s understandable, I suppose, given I’m managing five — Yes, I said five enterprise software implementation projects right now.

And my wife has put me on a diet. All I have to look forward to this weekend is Michelob Ultra. Pfeh.

As far as the Democratic primary goes, I see I didn’t miss commenting on much this week. Obama supporters are, if anything, even more obnoxious than ever after the ABC debate, and Clinton supporters have all but given up commenting on the major lefty blogs, due to the deluge of hatred they encounter there. In the meantime, Obama deigns to step down from his netroots pedestal to appear on Fox News (remember this?). Well, it’s not like the netroots will say anything about it at this point, is it? They’ve hitched their horse to the most lefty candidate available since Edwards dropped out, and any commentary on their sites that doesn’t glorify Obama is verboten.

Hm. I guess I’d better note that I’m half German, and speak it all the time with my family. No use trying to invoke Godwin’s law here, Obama drones.

So, sorry for abandoning you all for a week, but duty called. Given the state of the economy, I’m not going to complain about the hours I’m working, Hell, I’m just glad to have a well paying job with good benefits. I’ll try to do better next week, but the fact is, I’m absolutely disgusted with the primary right now, the Republicans aren’t really giving me anything to write about, and I need to find a muse that isn’t related to electoral politics for a while, I think. I’m certainly no wonk-blogger, so you won’t see much on policy from me, and the niche of this site doesn’t really lend itself to the sort of thing Eric does, so it may take me a few days.

Update: Heh. The state of the primaries today:

“The rice crisis we are facing right now is the result of eight years of bad policy by this administration,” offered Barack Obama as he courted voters at nearby Indiana Gun Club in Fortville. “We’ve been giving tax breaks to companies that move rice production and jobs out of this country, to places in southern Asia like Thailand. One of the first priorities for me as President is to bring all those jobs back to Indiana.”

Hillary Clinton, in a statement released by her campaign, lashed out at Obama’s remarks:

“For Senator Obama to claim that he’s been proactive on the rice shortage is simply dishonest. He’s done nothing on the issue, and in fact I think he’s weak on NAFTA. I’m the only candidate that has promised to provide a 25lb bag of rice to every home in America within the first 90 days of my Presidency. Indiana needs rice, not rhetoric, and they need it quickly.”

Republican nominee John McCain last week stated that he would suspend the federal sales tax on rice if elected. However, a campaign spokesman later had to back off this promise as they discovered that rice and similar grocery items are already exempt from sales tax.

(via Glenn)