Does the Nobel Prize Vindicate Al Gore?

From the New York Times: "With Prize, Gore Is Vindicated Without Having to Add President to Résumé." Here's an excerpt:

Al Gore's seven-year journey from loser to laureate began in bitterness, settled for a time into self-imposed exile and led him in the end to rediscover his voice on climate change.

The question now is what he will do with the prestige and attention that comes to him with the Nobel Peace Prize. The answer appears to be that he will neither embrace nor reject another quest for the presidency, but harness the speculation about his intentions to become a more formidable force on environmental policy and a power within the Democratic party.

Mr. Gore’s close friends and advisers said Friday that he had no desire to be drawn into the race for the presidency but that he saw the clear advantage of leveraging the acclaim. The clearest expression of his true feelings, they said, was his brief statement of thanks for the prize in an appearance in Palo Alto, Calif., where he talked about planetary politics and uttered not a word about the kind unfolding in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“This obviously turns everybody toward the presidency, but I think he’s saying what he means,” said Paul Begala, a political adviser in the Clinton White House who prepared Mr. Gore for his 2000 presidential debates against George W. Bush. “He knows there’s a Democratic field that Democrats are happy with, and that they don’t need a white knight riding in.”

Democrats also said Mr. Gore’s entry into the messy world of politics would undermine the stature that comes with the prize and his role as a wise man and conscience among many liberals.

“Why would he run for president when he can be a demigod?” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, who was a top aide in the Clinton White House. “He now towers over all of us because he’s pure.”

Michael Feldman, a Gore strategist who was meeting with him on Friday near San Francisco Bay, also said that Mr. Gore was not entering the 2008 race. “He’s focused on trying to solve the climate crisis,” Mr. Feldman said.

The speculation that Mr. Gore would win a Nobel Peace Prize began soon after the success of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary on global warming he starred in that won an Oscar.

But Mr. Gore’s close aides said they did not believe it would come to him as soon as this year. When his phone failed to ring early Friday morning, Mr. Gore assumed he had been passed over. He and his wife, Tipper, then turned on CNN to see who had been awarded the prize, only to learn it was him.

Although he shares the award with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was in many ways a personal victory for Mr. Gore, one achieved beyond the shadow of the disputed 2000 election and outside the orbit of the couple to which he has been linked for so long as a partner and a rival, Bill andHillary Rodham Clinton.

The presidency was within Gore's reach in 2000, but after his disastrous presidential campaign - where he stiff-armed Bill Clinton, who was leaving office with approval ratings in the 60 percent range - Democratic insiders snubbed their former standard-bearer. If there's any vindication here, it has more to do with the distant memory of Gore's incredibly poor political skills during his White House bid (rather than the controversy surrounding the Florida recount). To his credit, though, at least Gore didn't wind up like Michael Dukakis, who still wallows in that special ignominious obscurity reserved for presidential losers.

I blogged on Gore's Nobel win on Friday. With its history of controversy, I doubt the Nobel Prize committee will ever be vindicated (and I'm not alone).

President Trump Gets Warm Embrace at #CPAC2017 (VIDEO)

He skipped the conservative conclave last year, suggesting he'd be too radical for the right-wing mobs.

But he was welcomed like the king he is this year. What a blast.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump's popularity at CPAC gathering, which he shunned a year ago, shows how he's conquered conservatives":

Conservatives love Trump now b/c 'he has all the right enemies.' But how long this honeymoon? https://t.co/CQ5DoTAYbI @Noahbierman

— Marc Duvoisin (@MarcDuvoisin) February 24, 2017

A year ago, Donald Trump skipped the nation’s preeminent conference of conservatives, underscoring the friction between the populist candidate and many of the warring factions in his party during a heated presidential primary season.

Friday, Trump returned to the Conservative Political Action Conference with the blunt force of a conqueror, planting his brand of nationalist, anti-globalist populism like a flag.

His speech, with rhetoric that even Trump said would have been too controversial at the event even a year ago, marked his takeover of the conservative movement, one of several signs of his dominance throughout the conference, which also featured a rare and well-received speech from his chief intellectual influence and advisor, Stephen K. Bannon.

"There is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency or a global flag," Trump said to great applause from thousands of conservatives. "I'm not representing the globe. I'm representing your country."

He echoed ideas he has espoused in the past — denouncing trade deals as the antithesis of "economic freedom," warning that Paris and other great cities of Europe have been ruined by mass immigration, criticizing Democratic and Republican presidents for their interventions in the Middle East.

Although many of the words were familiar, the venue and the passion made Friday's speech remarkable.

Trump spoke directly of his ambition to turn the GOP into "the party of the American worker."

"I'm here today to tell you what this movement means for the future of the Republican Party and for the future of America," Trump said. "The core conviction of our movement is that we are a nation that [must] put and will put its own citizens first."

While Trump tried to unite conservatives, the speech made little effort to bridge the country's larger political divide. For example, Trump dismissed people who have shown up at town halls around the country to protest reversal of Obamacare.

"They're not you. They're largely — many of them are the side that lost," he said.

The visuals around the waterfront conference outside Washington were just as striking: the red “Make America Great Again” caps, the throngs of college Republicans surrounding Trump’s aides and allies, the giant Trump-decorated pickup truck at the convention center entrance.

As he has repeatedly done in the last couple of weeks, Trump attacked the media for what he sees as unfair coverage. He also showed how much he remembers the details of how his campaign was described in the press, at one point praising The Times for its election tracking poll that consistently showed him leading.

“I must say Los Angeles Times did a great job — shocking,” he said. “A couple polls got it right.”

In reality, the USC Dornsife/L.A. Times “Daybreak” tracking poll overstated Trump’s support, although it did correctly pick up the backing he was getting from disaffected white voters, many of whom had sat out the 2012 election.

Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, an outlet that has presented itself as a voice of the white nationalist alt-right movement, joked a day earlier as he sat down for a marquee event about how far he had come.

He used to hold a competing event called “Uninvited” for conservatives whose philosophies were considered too radical for the conference, Bannon said at a panel featuring him and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

Bannon reveled in his newfound influence as the conference organizer interviewed him in front of thousands of people.

He praised Priebus, the former GOP chairman, another indication of how the mainstream of the party has come into Trump’s fold. But both men made clear that Bannon was the dominant force in shaping Trump’s vision.

Bannon spoke about defending his notion of American culture and lashed out against the “corporatist, globalist media” standing in the way of Trump’s “economic nationalist agenda.”

“If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight," he said. "You are sadly mistaken.”

“We're at the top of the first inning of this,” Bannon said near the end of his remarks. “We want you to have our back.”

Conference organizers seemed to have gotten the message.

Breitbart News owns the first booth by the entrance of the convention hall, hawking “Border Wall Construction Company” T-shirts...

Keep reading.

Darcy Burner, Netroots' Epic Fail, Now Helping Leftist House Members ... Fail

I couldn't resist the schadenfreude of leftist Darcy Burner's defeat in last November's election.

Some of my thought are here, "Bachmann and Burner: Epic Electoral Fail for Netroots, and here, "Update on Darcy Burner's Epic Fail for Netroots."

The left poured all their resources into electing Burner, and she lost her congressional bid for the second time in a row - and this was in Washington State's 8th District, with its Democratic voter advantage and 15-point margin for Democratic nominee Barack Obama in 2008.

Burner, who is about as hardline radical as they come, is now executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. This leftist cell's mission is to "is to bring together the collective wisdom of progressives inside and outside of Congress to promote peace and global security, energy independence, environmental sustainability, human rights, civil liberties and the health and economic well-being of us all."

It turns out that Representative Barbara Lee, and Nation editor and publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel, are on the Board of Directors of Burner's organization. As I wrote regarding Representative Lee at my Pajamas essay, "A ‘National Day of Service’? Or a Political Hijacking of 9/11?", she's "the only member of Congress to vote against the Bush administration’s authorization of force following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001." She also chairs the Hip Hop Caucus Advisory Board, the organization of the "Reverend" Lennox Yearwood, who leads the White House group seeking to hijack September 11 for a National Day of Service and "eradicate the significance of the day as one of remembrance."

As for Katrina Vanden Heuvel, here's how FrontPage Magazine describes The Nation:

As the flagship publication of the political Left, The Nation consistently champions leftists’ lost causes, supporting totalitarian and Communist regimes while simultaneously rejecting any suggestion the United States is justified in military, or even philosophical, opposition to these rogue states.

It's clear that Darcy Burner is "burning it up" with some hardcore capitalist-bashing cadres.

Now it turns out that Burner's lobbying congressional "liberals" to "hang together" in support of the ObamaCare public option. Roll Call reports, "Burner Helping House Liberals Hold Firm on Public Insurance Option":

An organizer for liberal House Democrats says the bloc “isn’t bluffing” as it prepares to take a reputation-defining stand to protect a public insurance option in the health care overhaul.

Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, said the health care debate has rallied traditionally disparate Congressional liberals to hang together, while galvanizing support for their position from an array of left-leaning outside groups. The result, she said, is that Democratic leaders will not be able to clear a package through the House if it does not include the public plan.

“We have never had the Progressive Caucus organized the way it is right now,” Burner said during a Friday roundtable with Roll Call. “This is not the normal scenario. And Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] knows it.”

Whoo hoo!

A "reputation-defining stand"! That's awesome. A two-time congresssional loser now spearheading the left's plan to resurrect the DOA public-socialist option!

Hey, sounds like a winner!

More at Memeorandum. And Daily Kos too!

Runoff Expected in Special Election for California's 36th Congressional Seat

And it looks like Marcy Winograd, the hardline progressive who took 41 percent of the vote against Jane Harmon in the Democratic primary last year, won't make the cut. See Politico, "Class divide in war for Jane Harman's seat":

Washington has largely ignored the special election here Tuesday, focusing instead on a competitive House race across the country in New York. But the winner of California’s 36th District contest could reveal who’s leading the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party heading into the 2012 cycle.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn is an urban Democrat with strong labor backing. She will square off against Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a progressive candidate supported by environmentalists.

Under new California election rules, the top two vote-getters will advance to a July 12 runoff. With 16 names on the ballot, that means a divided Democratic vote won’t tip the seat to a Republican.

Hahn, the front-runner, is a “beer-track” Democrat from a political dynasty. She has support from such politically muscular unions as the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, an AFL-CIO affiliate representing 800,000-plus workers in the region, and the California Service Employees International Union.

Bowen, who previously represented most of the district in the state Legislature, is a “wine-track” Democrat who made a name for herself as an environmental crusader, co-authoring one of the country’s most ambitious laws to curb global warming. That’s earned her strong support from the national Sierra Club and the California League of Conservation Voters.

“Whoever’s voters show up on Election Day, that’s what’s going to win this,” Hahn told POLITICO. “The labor piece in this election is key, and particularly, again, because it’s a special election. L.A. County Federation of Labor knows how to win these.”

Actually, there's really not that much of a "class-divide" here. The South Bay labor constituency boasts major backing from the left's communist organizations. Winograd marched with ANSWER and antiwar veterans groups, but the Los Angeles teachers unions and SEIU recently "dropped the mask" on their communist orientation, so clearly the local Democrat Party has been captured by the hard left. Hahn? Bowen? It doesn't really matter. The 35th District is pulling far left and whoever wins the runoff will be doing bidding for America's ideological enemies in Congress.

More on this at WaPo, "Fighting to be the real progressive in California special election."

'A Memo to the Global Warming Cult'

Read this phenomenal essay from Doctor Zero at Hot Air's Green Room, "A Memo to the Global Warming Cult." An excerpt:

You aren’t going to frighten the world into reducing the human population. You’re not going to succeed in terrorizing free people into embracing totalitarianism, to fend off a phantasmal catastrophe that no democratic nation has the discipline to combat. We’re not going to politely ignore swarms of private jets and limos ferrying you to carbon-belching “climate summits,” where you draw up plans for the Western proletariat to live as primitive hunter-gatherers. We’re not going to let a pampered elitist, who once flew around the world to attend cricket practice, tell us that we need to make do without air travel and ice water.

We’ll never be foolish enough to allow a band of fanatics to use “peer review” to rule all dissenting opinion out-of-bounds, then declare themselves the proud owners of a mighty consensus. You global-warming fanatics underestimate how much you needed those tactics to gain power. You’ll never have that kind of unchallenged authority again, because we will never stop demanding the raw data, and we’ll drown you in laughter when you mutter something about deleting it by accident. We will never forget that you began with a conclusion and sought to harvest data that supported it – the exact opposite of the scientific method.

Your arrogant condescension to your critics is horribly misplaced. You have completely lost the ability to call anyone “stupid.” Your capacity for reason is the matter in question. Your status as “scientists” is on probation. It will take years of faithful adherence to the scientific method, and rigorous efforts to test and disprove your hypotheses, before you can regain the trust of thoughtful men and women. Until you have accomplished this, the attitude we expect from you is humility and contrition. You have much to answer for. The time for you to issue pompous lectures is over. The time for you to give sworn testimony may soon begin. We’re a year away from the American voter’s first opportunity to respond to the politicians who terrorized them by waving a loaded cap-and-trade bill in their faces.

RTWT at the link.

Hat Tip: Theo Spark.

Democrats Hone Anti-Capitalist Attacks

Clarity burns ever brighter on the Democratic agenda, as greater media attention is paid to what we might expect under a left-wing adminisration next year.

This Wall Street Journal report indicates that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are sharpening their attacks on business as the primary election campaign draws towards it denouement (and the stakes grow in attracting the protectionist vote):

As the Democratic presidential contest moves to the distressed industrial Midwest, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have ratcheted up their antitrade, anticorporate rhetoric.

The candidates have made broad attacks on corporate wealth and tax cuts they say tilt toward the rich, along with more specific attacks against health insurers and oil companies, among other industries. On Friday, Mrs. Clinton began airing a TV spot in Wisconsin in which she says, "The oil companies, the drug companies, have had seven years of a president who stands up for them.... It's time we had a president who stands up for all of you."

Both candidates increasingly sound like former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as they pursue his endorsement and the voters -- particularly union members -- who were drawn to the populist candidate before he dropped out last month. Illinois Sen. Obama got a boost toward that goal Friday with the backing of the Service Employees International Union, one of the most politically powerful labor organizations.

SEIU long was too divided to make a national endorsement, but Mr. Edwards's withdrawal and Mr. Obama's momentum made a choice easier. Now the union has organizers on the ground working for the Obama campaign in Wisconsin, which holds the next primary Tuesday. "It has now become clear the members of our union and the leaders of our union think that it is time to become part of an effort to make Barack Obama the next president of the United States," said Andy Stern, the union's president, during a phone conference with reporters.

I've expressed my views on trade and interdependence on occasion.

Free trade is good for the U.S. and good for the international economy. A Democratic shift to increased trade protection, combined with tax increases and redistributive economic policies, will slow the economy and foster beggar-thy-neighbor policies within the global system of trade.

Hillary Clinton Expected to Choose Virginia Senator Tim Kaine for Veep

God, it's the year of the ultra-safe veep selections.

Clinton shoulda picked Warren. She's have declared war on the patriarchy and mollified the Bernie or Bust crowd.

At the New York Times, "Tim Kaine Seems Likely for Hillary Clinton’s No. 2, but Liberals Balk":

Tim Kaine may not be liberals’ first choice as Hillary Clinton’s No. 2 https://t.co/uRnRR8xC7q pic.twitter.com/CgSh9H1gyt

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) July 22, 2016

"One group is already disappointed at the prospect of Mr. Kaine on the Democratic ticket: liberals" @amychozick https://t.co/hdaxXHJvDT

— Michael Tackett (@tackettdc) July 21, 2016

Democrats close to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign signaled strongly Thursday that she would choose Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate, rounding out the ticket with a popular politician from a battleground state.

Both former President Bill Clinton and the White House have expressed their support for Mr. Kaine, but aides cautioned that Mrs. Clinton had not yet made a final decision and that other candidates were still under consideration.

Mrs. Clinton is widely expected to announce her choice in an email to supporters while on a campaign swing in Florida on Friday afternoon, an attempt to regain momentum the day after her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, accepted his party’s nomination in Cleveland. With Mr. Kaine emerging as a clear favorite, one group already expressed disappointment at the prospect of the former governor of Virginia joining the ticket: liberals.

Many of the groups that backed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in his Democratic contest against Mrs. Clinton had hoped she would extend an olive branch to the liberal wing of the party and choose a vice-presidential candidate whose stances on Wall Street and global trade deals closely aligned with those of Mr. Sanders.

But with the Democratic National Convention beginning in Philadelphia on Monday, the prospects have dimmed for the two liberal senators who were being considered, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. That has led to more liberal scrutiny of Mr. Kaine’s record...

So bland. Yuck.

But hey, you don't want your veep showing you up.

Still more.

The Way Forward in Egypt? Defeat the Left's Red-Green Alliance and Build the Secular-Representative Alternative to Mubarak

Over the last few days, William Kristol has been among the most vocal supporters of dramatic democratic change in Egypt. And in today's essay he pushes back against Glenn Beck and others on the right who fear a Red-Green Alliance of communists and Islamists. Kristol also disagrees with Charles Krauthammer, but that seems secondary to him slamming those positing "one-world conspiracies theories" of a communist-backed caliphate across the Muslim world. The problem is that while Glenn Beck's show sometimes comes off as half-baked, the neo-communist left has indeed aligned with global jihad in a campaign against the West. In fact, today was the progressive-left's "international day of mobilization and solidarity with the Egyptian people." The neo-Stalinist ANSWER homepage has the announcement, "Emergency demonstrations: Stop all U.S. aid to Mubarak dictatorship!":

Emergency demonstrations in solidarity with the uprising of the Egyptian people are taking place across the country to demand that the U.S. government stop all aid to the Mubarak dictatorship.

As I've reported many times, the ANSWER contingents have been at the center of every left-wing mobilization over the past decade, from the Iraq war to Proposition 8 to the anti-SB 1070 campaign last year. The left's all-purpose protest machine, ANSWER is bolstered by Democrats and progressives, many of whom have ties to the Obama administration. Code Pink's Jodie Evans, for example, served as a top campaign fundraiser for Barack Obama, and now her organization is leading a fundraising operation for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: "Code Pink: Obama, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood Ally Raising (Tax Exempt) Money to Overthrow Egypt Gov’t:

As we reported previously, Code Pink has been on the ground in Cairo since the beginning of the uprising. The group has made nine trips to Egypt in the past two years as part of a campaign to undermine the Egyptian government and the blockade against Hamas-controlled Gaza.

For over a week now we've had international solidarity protesters calling for an anti-American, anti-Zionist revolution in Egypt, so, folks might want to step back and go easy on the freedom euphoria just a bit (in favor of a prudent democratic realism).

In any case, Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey, a.k.a. Mahmoud Salem, offers a way forward for Egypt's democracy:

So here are my two cents: next time when you head to Tahrir, alongside blankets and food and medicine, please get some foldable tables, chairs, papers, pens, a laptop and a USB connection. Set up a bunch of tables and start registering the protesters. Get their names, ages, addresses & districts. Based on location, start organizing them into committees, and then have those committees elect leaders or representatives. Do the same in Alex, In Mansoura, in Suez, in every major Egyptian city in which the Protesters braved police suppression and came out in the thousands. Protect the Data with your life. Get encryption programs to ensure the security of the data. Use web-based tools like Google documents to input the data in, thus ensuring that even if your laptops get confiscated by State Security Goons, they won’t find anything on your harddrives. Have people outside of Egypt back-up your data daily on secure servers. Then, start building the structure.

You see, with such Proper citizen organization and segmentation, we’ll have the contact information and location of all the protesters that showed up, and that could be transformed into voting blocks in parliamentary districts: i.e. a foundation for an Egyptian Unity party. That Egyptian Unity Party will be an Umbrella party that promotes equality, democracy & accountability, without any ideological slants. It should be centrist, because we don’t want any boring Left vs. Right squabbling at that stage. Once you institute the structure, start educating the members on their rights and their obligations as citizens. Convince them to bring their friends and relatives into meeting. Establish voters’ critical mass , all under that party.

The Egyptian Unity Party, however, will not be a permanent structure, but rather a transitional entity with a clear and direct purpose: create the grassroots organization to take back the parliament and presidency in the next elections. Once sufficient votes and seats have been obtained, the party will amend the constitution to promote civil liberties, plurality, and truly democratic elections. Once that constitution is in place, the party can disband, and its elected members can start forming their own parties and collations, based on their personal beliefs and ideologies, or they can join any of the existing parties, and breathe some life into their decaying carcasses. We will end up with an actual political process and representative political parties that will actually discuss policy and have to represent those who voted for them so that they can get re-elected. Democracy in action. An old but brilliant concept. A way to ensure that no matter what, we will have a huge influence on who becomes the next Egyptian President come election day in September.

That sounds awesome. The only problem is that during revolutionary crises the most highly organized factions often seize power through divide, conquer and assassination politics. We know now that Egypt's Arab street will not be silenced. But the shape of developments is still extremely fluid, and given the left's heavy investment and mobilization in the Muslim Brotherhood, a certain caution is well warranted.

Democratic Culture Advances in Iraq

The new ABC News poll of citizens in Iraq holds some of the most important findings on the long-term implications for American intervention in that nation, and on the some of the questions of U.S. foreign policy in the years ahead. The survey notes that the poll findings "represent a stunning reversal of the spiral of despair caused by Iraq's sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007. The sweeping rebound, extending initial improvements first seen a year ago, marks no less than the opportunity for a new future for Iraq and its people."

Read the whole thing at the link. The article includes a lengthy analysis of the prospect in Iraq for instititution building and the growth of democratic culture.

But let me share Sister Toldjah's brief comments as well, which are perfectly stated:

Thanks to President Bush, McCain, and others for hanging tough and not bowing to the political will of the cut and run lefties in Congress. And millions of thanks to our men and women in uniform who have played a large role in making all of this possible. The surge has produced fruitful results that even the average Iraqi is noticing, results that would not have been possible had it been for the defeatists in Congress like then-Senator-now-President Barack Obama.

"Not bowing to the political will" is in fact one of the most substantial political victories of the conservative right for these last 6 years, and I'd like to reiterate the thanks to America's valiant service personnel and their families for their sacrifice and élan amid a domestic political environment eminently less supportive than our forces deserve (see, for example, David Horowitz and Ben Johnson's, Party of Defeat).

(Note: The findings are not all positive. A majority of Iraqis disapprove of the U.S. decision to send troops to their country. Perhaps lefties will pick up on that angle in their rebuttals to the polls findings. But no one, not even Steve at the nihilist Newshoggers, can rightly attack the neoconservative vision of democracy promotion in the face of stunning poll results such as these).

**********

QUICK UPDATE: I just checked for broken links and it turns out that Newshoggers is indeed up with a response to the poll, "Another Year, Another Iraqi Attitudes Poll":

Maybe Iraqis are right to feel so optimistic, given how much less violent their lives have become compared with the last three years. But the last time their trust was misplaced and this time the looming spectre of violence hangs just around the corner again. No, there's been no American "victory" worth the name in Iraq.

Yeah. Right. This is sour defeatist grapes and postmodern denialism, pure and simple.

As the poll notes, "a substantial number of Iraqis, 42 percent, are concerned that security may in fact worsen after U.S. forces leave. But few are "very" concerned. Most Iraqis appear eager to move ahead under their own steam."

That's right, on their own steam, which means with their own freedom. Security is central to the development of a democratic society. In just six years since the toppling of Saddam Hussein a majority in the country "support a unified Iraq with its central government in Baghdad, up 12 points from its low in March 2007."

These are the indicators of nation-building. The Iraqis are under no illusions that sectarian violence has been permanently eliminated, but the results at the poll are simply stunning in the type of transformation in outlook we've seen in the country. As always, the global collective left will excoriate alleged American imperialism, but the antiwar types are looking more stupid all the time in simultaneously repudiating the war on the one hand and in taking credit for the pending troop redeployment out of the country on the other (as previously noted, in "Majority Says Iraq War a Success, Poll Finds ").

The war in Iraq has been won. I reported the news in late 2007. Americans should be celebrating with parades for the historic significance of the U.S. victory there.

The Left's Demonology of Vengeance

At the same time that Barack Obama's been presumptiously preparing his presidential transition team, the hard left forces of the nihilist left are sharpening their knives in preparation for a campaign of legal vengeance against the Bush administration's alleged record of war crimes in the battle against global terror.

Salon, for example, ran a piece earlier this week entitled "Exposing Bush's Historic Abuse of Power," which suggests the formation of a new "Church Commission" to investigate domestic surveillance in the Bush years (the article includes the obligatory Nazi Reichsadler pictured above).

Also, there's news this week that left-wing bloggers (and their allies on the Paulbot right) are mounting a program of electoral mobilization against Democrats who supported the FISA reform bill just passed in Congress. Leading the pack is Jane Hamsher, who has teamed with fringe libertarians to form a group called The Strange Bedfellows. The organization's goal is to promote an "accountability" campaign of legal recrimination against the administration's "lawless surveillance state."

One gets a good sense of how intense are the demands for extremist retribution in Matt Stoler's post, "Democratic Congressional Candidate Alan Grayson on Iraq Reckoning: 'We'll Put People in Prison'":

One of the most exciting candidates I've met this cycle is Alan Grayson, a high profile trial lawyer who has been suing defense contractors for fraud, and is now running for Florida's eighth district in central Florida. I spent some time with him at Netroots Nation, and took video. Usually I have to push candidates to become more aggressive, in Grayson's case, he pushed me. Grayson is part of a new crew of progressive professionals, people like Darcy Burner and Donna Edwards with a tremendous track record of success in fields other than politics who are crossing over into the progressive sector out of a sheer revulsion of where this country is headed. It's different than the civil rights era of liberalism and the single issue liberalism of the 1980s, much more fearless.

Because of his track record suing defense contractors, Grayson is completely uninterested and unintimidated by ridiculous arguments about secrecy and national security. He thinks that war crimes have been committed, that people need to be put in prison, and that we absolutely cannot let bygones be bygones with the 2000-2008 era.

That last section really sums it up.

For the nihilist left, few are putting a priority on improving the econony, rebuilding infrastruce, or exploring means toward American energy independence - some of the top issues facing the mass of rank-and-file Democratic Party voters. What's motivated the hard left hordes are subterranean questions of lawbreaking by the administration. The agenda of electing "agressive progressives" is code language for mounting a campaign of revenge against Republicans who are routinely alleged to have taken the country "recklessly toward war. Just this week Representitive Dennis Kucinich, a leader of antiwar contingent in Congress, held hearings on Capitol Hill to investigate the administration for "leading the country to war under false pretenses."

Recall that the Iraq war, of course, was launched under a bipartisan congressional mandate, but within months of the same Democrats in Congress - who supported America's goal to rid Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction - turned around for cheap partisan purposes to advocate the craven withdrawal from Iraq, the abandonment of our troops, and the surrender to the forces of Islamist totalitarianism.

As for the legal case for war crimes, the issue's debateable, and establishing them as a top priority in 2009 would create a political circus. The administration might do well to prevent a massive witch hunt by issues blanket pardons before leaving office.

Of course, it's hard to see the left's push for criminal prosecutions as more than diabolical partisan revenge. These developments, indeed, are the natural consequence of the left's doctrine of hatred. The incessant calls for criminal prosecution against the Bush administration satisfies the radical left's psychological need for vengeance against the percieved slights of intellectual and political marginalization.

It's not enough to organize for a restoration of the public spirit in health care, transportation, or other areas of needed revitalization, under a possible Democratic administration. The modern ideological hatred of the secular left demands nothing short of a totalizing political persecution for the very democratically-legitimated conservative leaders who have run the run the country for the last seven years.

Focusing on Economic Growth Should Be at Top of Policy Agenda for U.S. Leaders

From David Petraeus and Michael O'Hanlon, at USA Today, "Recipe for American success":

As world leaders gathered and debated each other at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, most of the attention seemed to be on hot spots.  Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, conflict zones in Africa and East Asia, and the latest news from Afghanistan got lots of discussion. In many respects, this was inevitable, and necessary. Indeed, our own careers have been largely shaped and dominated by such pressing issues.

In another respect, however, we need to remember that in a world of troubling headlines, less dramatic and more structural developments could determine the future of the global order even more than the latest crises. Many of these concern technology and economics.

While military might was a necessary ingredient in the West's victory in the Cold War, it was more like a moat than a battering ram — it provided time and protection for the inherent strengths of the Western democratic and economic systems to prevail. This is likely to be just as true in the future.

A few basic realities about the modern world need to be remembered. The post-World War II international order set up by U.S. and other key world leaders 70 years ago produced more economic growth in more places on earth, benefiting a far higher percentage of the human race, than had any previous global order in any period in history for which we have data.

As policymakers and leaders establish priorities for 2016 and beyond, attention to economic fundamentals should play as big a role in their thinking as crisis management and domestic political maneuvering.

Indeed, economics can even shape crisis management, if often with a lag effect. Economic sanctions established by Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and many others brought Iran to the table over its nuclear weapons program (an accurate observation whether one likes the actual deal). Sanctions, together with the fall in global oil prices, might not have yet limited assertive (and illegal) Russian interventions, but they could well constrain President Vladimir Putin in the years ahead. China's policies in the East China Sea and South China Sea, even if sometimes more assertive than we would like, have exhibited at least some restraint that might reflect an awareness in Beijing that we could introduce sanctions against China if things got out of hand.

Meanwhile, the North American shale revolution and the North American economic revolution more generally have improved U.S. growth prospects and the fundamental strength of the U.S. economic foundation. They have also helped Mexico provide more jobs to its own workers, reducing demographic pressures and actually making the immigration problem easier to address (even if we have not yet managed to address it appropriately and comprehensively). 

More.

Anti-Neoconservatism

Hatred of neoconservativism has become so intense that some on the left are talking about purging neoconservatives from American politics. James Kirchick, over at City Journal, takes a look at "anti-neocon fervor":

Today, no other political label gets thrown around as frequently, or with as much reckless abandon, as “neocon.” The most popular liberal blogs name and shame neocons, real or imagined, on a daily basis. The term is used in a fashion similar to the way “communist” was during the 1950s—an all-encompassing indictment—this time indicating an imperialistic and “warmongering,” even an “insane,” worldview. The anti-neocon fervor has reached truly McCarthyite proportions: just a few months ago, Steve Clemons of the left-wing New America Foundation argued in favor of “Purging the Neocons from the American Soul.”

The term “neoconservatism” has undergone a number of shifts in meaning. It was coined in 1973 by the socialist intellectual Michael Harrington to deride liberal thinkers such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer, who had begun to criticize the welfare state’s excesses. By the 1980s, its meaning expanded to include a small group of former liberal intellectuals who hewed to a strong anti-Soviet line and had defected from the Democratic Party to support Ronald Reagan. They were motivated in part by an increased awareness of, and distinctive moral clarity about, human rights in international affairs, a worthy tradition whose liberal incarnation found embodiment in figures such as Senator Scoop Jackson, labor leaders George Meaney, Lane Kirkland, and Al Shanker, and intellectuals Bayard Rustin and Michael Walzer. None of these people held traditionally “movement conservative” views on economics or social issues—far from it; some of them were outright socialists. Neoconservatives had not been content with the détente policies of Richard Nixon, because they wanted not to coexist with communism, but to end it—a more ambitious goal that Reagan shared.

After September 11, the “neocon” label, which had fallen into disuse, came back into vogue as a way to categorize the intellectual godfathers behind the Bush Doctrine, which of course has advocated both military responses to terrorist threats and promoting liberty around the world via “regime change” (not all necessarily through military means). According to the leftist narrative, the neocons got us into the Iraq war—never mind the widespread assumption among intelligence services around the world that Saddam Hussein did have WMDs, or that large segments of the Democratic Party and liberal opinion leaders supported the invasion of Iraq, etc., etc.

By now, “neocon” has mutated into a political curse word to discredit not just those who happily accept their status as neoconservatives, but also anyone who merely believes that the West should respond in muscular fashion to national security threats, such as those posed by the cooperation of Iran, Syria, and North Korea on nuclear weapons technology and the equipping of terrorist groups around the world. The chief purpose of this emergent rhetorical style is to cast aspersions on anyone who believes, say, that Iran must not attain nuclear weapons, even if it requires war. International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen, for instance, notes that “neocon has morphed into an all-purpose insult for anyone who still believes that American power is inextricable from global stability and still thinks the muscular anti-totalitarian U.S. interventionism that brought down Slobodan Milosevic has a place, and still argues, like Christopher Hitchens, that ousting Saddam Hussein put the United States ‘on the right side of history.’”

Examples of this new, broader, definitional standard abound. In 2004, writing in The Nation, Michael Lind termed the National Endowment for Democracy—a nonpartisan institution that provides millions of dollars to democracy activists around the world—“the quintessential neocon institution.” French intellectual Bernard Henri-Lévy deems France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, a “neoconservative,” a label that the socialist Kouchner would likely find surprising. But Kouchner, who founded Doctors Without Borders and was one of the very few left-wing supporters of NATO intervention in the Balkans, recently observed that “it is necessary to prepare for the worst” against Iran, adding, “The worst, it’s war”—enough to range him in the neocon camp, it seems. When Joe Lieberman, whose positions on domestic policy are indistinguishable from those of the majority of his colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus, makes mere mention of Iranian or Syrian support for armed elements in Iraq, Matthew Yglesias—one of the most popular leftist bloggers, writing from his perch at The Atlantic—duly calls the senator a “neocon,” a “psychotic rightwinger,” and a “warmongerer.”

The long tradition of liberal anti-totalitarianism thus appears to have come to an end, at least in mainstream political rhetoric. What about human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch? Largely staffed by leftists, these days they escape the neoconservative charge because they generally presume moral equivalence between democracies and anti-American thuggocracies. Amnesty, for instance, has referred to Guantánamo as a “gulag” and Human Rights Watch has issued more press releases about the lack of gay rights in the United States than any other country on earth. Freedom House, on the other hand, which rates countries on a scale from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free), and explicitly ranks some nations (invariably Western democracies) as “more free” than others, has long been the bane of the leftist “human rights community.”

Welcome to the new political discourse.

Kerchik's piece is a classic. Note, though, how neoconservatism has a strong roots in domestic politics, although the ideology's recent notoriety is founded in foreign affairs.

I love sporting the neocon label. I get occasional drive-by anti-neocon attacks in the comments, but for the most part my shift to an unequivocal neoconservative identity at American Power has been well-received.

See my introductory post for more on my neoconservative turn. (I get a kick out of this idea of a "purge," by the way: It sounds so Stalinist.)

Barack Obama, the Crossover Vote, and the White Working Class

Republican John Weiler, the winner of MoveOn's "Obama in 30 Seconds" contest, endorses Barack Obama in the video:

I don't see how any Republican could endorse Obama, but it turns out there are quite a few, including some of high prominence:

Susan Eisenhower is more than just another disappointed Republican. She is also Ike's granddaughter and a dedicated member of the party who has urged her fellow Republicans in the past to stick with the GOP. But now Eisenhower, who runs an international consulting firm, is endorsing Barack Obama. She has no plans to officially leave the Republican Party. But in Eisenhower's view, Obama is the only candidate who can build a national consensus on the issues most important to her—energy, global warming, an aging population and America's standing in the world....

Eisenhower is one of a small but symbolically powerful group of what Obama recently called "Obamacans"—disaffected Republicans who have drifted away from their party just as Eisenhower Democrats did and, more recently, Reagan Democrats in the 1980s.

So apparently MoveOn, in selecting Weiler's story - from a selection over 1100 submissions - sees this message as a chance to capture a large crossover vote in the fall, not unlike the "Reagan Democrats" from the 1980s.

I'm skeptical of the strategy frankly, considering Obama's dramatic weakness with conservative white working class voters, many of whom may have registered or voted GOP in recent elections.

I'm particulary unimpressed with Weiler himself. Perhaps he's suffering from BDS, but Weiler ought to realize that Obama's turning out to be even more lightweight on foreign policy than was suspected.

As Captain Ed notes, with reference to Obama's gaffes yesterday on Afganistan and Iraq:

Obama’s rhetoric calls into question whether he has any real knowledge of the issues in either Iraq or Afghanistan in any depth beyond that of the latest MoveOn talking points.

Note something too: Gallup today reports that Obama essentially ties John McCain in attracting political independents, but he's having a harder time keeping Democratic partisans in his column:

Each candidate wins the vast majority of votes from his own party, with Obama currently holding a 76% to 15% edge over McCain among Democratic registered voters and McCain leading Obama by 84% to 12% among Republican registered voters.

The candidates' own party support has been very stable thus far this year, with Obama's share of the Democratic vote ranging from 73% to 76% since mid-March and McCain's share of the GOP vote between 84% and 87%.

Obama is able to hold his own against McCain despite receiving less support from his fellow partisans because significantly more Americans currently identify as Democrats than as Republicans.

Independents are usually one of the most closely watched swing voter groups each presidential election. However, contrary to expectations, they are not always decisive, in part because turnout among independents is usually lower than it is among those with a political party affiliation....

It would seem more critical that McCain prevail among independents in order for him to win the November election, given the deficit in Republican identification and voting enthusiasm to the Democrats.

Barack Obama appears vulnerable to me.

While MoveOn's angling to attract crossover Republicans with ads like the one above, the immediate challenge for Obama will be in winning over the vast bulk of Middle American conservatives from his own party, many of whom have been voting for Hillary Clinton in high and increasing numbers.

See also, the New York Times, "After Big Loss, Obama Woos Blue-Collar Voters."

New York Times Endorses Hillary Clinton

Via Memeorandum, the New York Times has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination:

The early primaries produced two powerful main contenders: Hillary Clinton, the brilliant if at times harsh-sounding senator from New York; and Barack Obama, the incandescent if still undefined senator from Illinois. The remaining long shot, John Edwards, has enlivened the race with his own brand of raw populism.

As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on Feb. 5, The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election.

We have enjoyed hearing Mr. Edwards’s fiery oratory, but we cannot support his candidacy. The former senator from North Carolina has repudiated so many of his earlier positions, so many of his Senate votes, that we’re not sure where he stands. We certainly don’t buy the notion that he can hold back the tide of globalization.

By choosing Mrs. Clinton, we are not denying Mr. Obama’s appeal or his gifts. The idea of the first African-American nominee of a major party also is exhilarating, and so is the prospect of the first woman nominee. “Firstness” is not a reason to choose. The times that false choice has been raised, more often by Mrs. Clinton, have tarnished the campaign.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton would both help restore America’s global image, to which President Bush has done so much grievous harm. They are committed to changing America’s role in the world, not just its image. On the major issues, there is no real gulf separating the two. They promise an end to the war in Iraq, more equitable taxation, more effective government spending, more concern for social issues, a restoration of civil liberties and an end to the politics of division of George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

I'll just end the quote right there.

Readers need to keep in mind that NYT - despite the demands of journalism's professional ethics of objectivity - will do just about whatever takes to disrupt Republican prospects for retaining the White House this year.

First step: Get on board "Hill Force One" while it's motoring down the tarmac, better that way to get in on the ground floor of Democratic Party access and media largesse in a Clinton-times-two presidential administration.

Besides this, NYT has the most pronounced political agenda of any of the country's major national dailies. This is the newspaper, of course, that has repeatedly compromised American national security by unveiling U.S. intelligence programs that have worked to secure vital information on America's enemies and their plans.

This is a newspaper whose readership, egged on by outlandish frontpage reporting and editorial commentary, epitomizes the ultimate, narrow echo chamber of left-wing intolerance - the outrage at neoconservative William Kristol's hiring attests to that.

This is the paper, moreover, that has seen its reputation as the country's unofficial newspaper of record tarnished by scandals of plagiarism and shoddy journalistic practice.

It's with these thoughts in mind that one should consider the paper's backing of Hillary Clinton. No matter Hillary's obvious political skills and perseverance, there's a venality and remorseless in her drive for power that's mirrored by the Times' opportunistic backing.

Conservatives have a big year ahead of them. Democratic partisans are more enthusiastic about election politics so far. This big push by the leading liberal journalistic mouthpiece will add more kindling to that fire.

It's time to think now - beyond the primaries - of the consequences of easy cruising while the left-wing media mobilizes behind the Clinton machine. The highest stakes lie ahead, on November 4, when the country selects our next president and commander-in-chief.

**********

UPDATE: The Times has also endorsed Senator John McCain, but for all the wrong reasons.

The paper endorses his criticism of the Rumsfeld follies of light infantry and zero post-conflict stability. Simultaneously, the editors refuse to acknowledge the most important fact of the war today: military success, which is leading to increasing political accomodation:

Mr. McCain was one of the first prominent Republicans to point out how badly the war in Iraq was being managed. We wish he could now see as clearly past the temporary victories produced by Mr. Bush’s unsustainable escalation, which have not led to any change in Iraq’s murderous political calculus. At the least, he owes Americans a real idea of how he would win this war, which he says he can do.

NYT also makes light of Senator McCain's essential conservativism, writing off his bedrock positions on abortion and gay rights, as though these positions result from flexible campaign pandering.

Perhaps the paper's pragmatic, getting its bets in now with the most publically-identified leader among the candidates of either party. Truth be told, though, McCain will be NYT's arch nemesis on American foreign policy and the battle for global freedom. McCain will protect American national security on the march of freedom. This is an agenda the Old Gray Lady's already resisted to its very core.

Uninformed Comment: Josh Marshall on American Military Power

John McCain's taking heat on the left for his assertion that Iran has ties to al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni terrorist group. As Iran's a Shiite nation, many have questioned McCain's claims to national security expertise.

In fact, McCain's on solid ground on Iran and al Qaeda, as Eli Lake points out today at the New York Sun:

Senior military officials from Multinational Forces in Iraq have said on the record that Iran provides support for Sunni terror outfits in Iraq, but they have not identified them as Al Qaeda in Iraq. A former commander of a group that has at times aligned with Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic Army of Iraq, Abu Azzam al Tamimi, told Al Arabiya television on January 18, 2008, that Iran "interferes in every aspect in Iraq." When asked whom Iran supports, Mr. al Tamimi said, "Everybody — it works with the government, with the opponents of the government, with the opponents of the government's opponents, with Al-Qaeda, with the enemies of Al-Qaeda, with the militias, with the enemies of the militias ... Iran spreads its investments everywhere – with the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds," according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

But the purpose of this post isn't to parse the various statments of Iranian influence in Iraq.

Instead, let me shift over to the poorly informed attack on McCain by Josh Marshall, the publisher of Talking Points Memo.

In a post yesterday, "Unfit for Duty," Marshall called into question not just McCain's foreign policy acumen, but the entire economic-military foundations of America's policy in Iraq. After announcing McCain's unfitness for the Oval Office, Marshall offers his reasoning:

The idea that fighting jihadists in Iraq or policing the country's sectarian and ethnic disputes is the calling of this century is one that is belied in virtually everything we see in flux in today's world and which seems certain to affect us through the rest of our lifetimes and our children's.

It is very difficult to draw practical lessons from history. But one of the closest things to a law is that military power is almost always built on economic might. And the former seldom long outlasts the latter. Indeed, countries with sound finances have routinely been able to punch over their weight -- great Britain and the Netherlands during different periods are key examples. So fiscal soundness even over the medium term is much more important than any particular weapon system or basing right.

Then you step back and see the huge number of dollars we're pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. I don't think I've ever heard anything from John McCain that suggests he's given serious consideration to any of these issues, except as possible near term military challenges -- i.e., is China building a blue water navy to challenge the US, Russian weapons systems, etc.

Candidly, I do not think I've heard sufficient discussions or solutions to these challenges from my preferred candidates. But neither has the myopia that McCain has about Iraq. Or the willingness to spend -- how else to put it -- like a drunken sailor in that country at the expense of everything else now going on in the world.

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain's qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

That's a big takedown, with a lot of claims.

Note first that the notion that we're in a long-term conflict with the forces of Islamic terror is not controversial among foreign policy elites.

The normal criticism of current policy is that the U.S. relies too much on military power to fight what should be a multi-pronged campaign, using cultural, diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments in a wider, more diversifed war on Islamic terror (for some expert opinion to that effect, see Audrey Kurth Cronin, "How al-Qaeda Ends. The Decline and Demise of Terrorist Groups").

Further, some have argued that Islam at base is a religion of victory, as revealed in scripture, and that the ulimate goal of the faith is to render the infidels asunder.

So, while there's certainly room for debate, to make the sweeping assertion that the imperative of "fighting jihadists in Iraq" is belied by "everything we see" in the world today is a miserably unspecified claim, if not a matter of crazed ramblings outright.

But more deeply, Marshall's argument on the fundamentals of military power demonstrates serious ignorance on international affairs, thus raising questions of his own qualifications.

He states, for example, that America's relative international fiscal weakness is illustrated by "the huge number of dollars we're pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world."

Each one of these points can be rebutted, and in fact I've touched on most of these points at various times at this blog.

For example, we are indeed pouring tremendous resources into Iraq. But miltary spending today is a fraction of what the United States spent in the 1980s. The United States can afford the war, and it's a political question - not an economic one - as to the extent that we're spending too much, or that the war spending could be used for other things (see, for example, "Bear Any Burden? The U.S. Can Afford Iraq").

As for China's dollar holdings, good for them: The Chinese have amassed impressive capital reserves as a result of their increasing success as an export platform to the United States. That's not a threat to American interests, however: It's an indication of the power of the American market and U.S. consumer demand for Chinese goods found at various price levels and stages of manufacturing sophistication.

The Chinese have little interest in dumping dollars, because they've no interest in damaging the enonomy of their primary export market. Similar arguments were made regarding Japan in the 1980s, and within a decade Japan itself was struggling to excavate itself from the deepest recession in postwar Japanese history.

That's a historical comparison Marshall would do well to consider.

How about the U.S.dollar as reserve currency? Is the dollar on the way out?

Not at all. The fact is, in international comparisons there's no credible challenger today to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in global financial markets. The Wall Street Journal wrote about this a week ago, "Dollar's Dive Deepens as Oil Soars."

Roughly 90 percent of the world's monetary transactions in finance and trade are conducted in dollars, and international actors have huge investments in current monetary rules and procedures which are not quickly replaced (inertia, basically).

Besides, the dollar continues to provide banking and sovereign institutions an unparalleled currency as a store of value and unit of exchange. The closest competitors are the euro, the yen, and the yuan. Yet not one of these currencies has any immediate chance of replacing the greenback - despite its weaknesses - as the world's dominant currency. All three suffer from substantial deficiencies, which limit their attractiveness as alternative world currencies (for some initial information on this, see Benjamin J. Cohen, "Global Currency Rivalry: Can the Euro Ever Challenge the Dollar?").

What about that global anti-Americanism?

It's not true that the United States faces anti-American hostility among the Western democratic nations of the world (see "America’s Image in the World"). Even among the developing nations, the anti-Americanism that we do see is isolated to Arabic nations of the Midde East and South Asia.

The record's thus mixed, and not to be discounted, of course.

Still, the United States scores well on non-survey indicators of international goodwill in a great many countries. For example, notice the tremendous outburst of lasting respect for the United States in Indonesia following America's strong leadership in tsunami humanitarian relief efforts. Also, in Africa, the U.S. has generated tremendous goodwill through its global AIDS battle, a public health project unrivaled in size and scope among all the nations of the world.

So what to make of Josh Marshall's analysis?

He's not to be trusted, whatsoever. Which is too bad, because the Talking Points Memo's apparently an award-winning online jounalistic project (so what does that say about the quality of TPM's peer evaulators?).

If one dissects his attack on John McCain's foreign policy expertise, we might conclude, at the least, that Marshall's the last person who should be making such sweeping dismissals of the credentials of the GOP nominee-in-waiting.

It's not just Marshall, of course. For all the buzz about the blogosphere emerging as a powerful force in politics, much of what's distributed as commentary and analysis is bunk. For example. Glenn Greenwald's touted around the left blogosphere as some big expert on the war on terror, but he's been debunked so many times by specialists its not even funny.

In any case, I'll have more analysis later. In the meantime, don't doubt Iran's playing a substantial role in backing al Qaeda's operations in Iraq.

Economic Anxiety May Be Trouble for GOP

I was thinking about the relationship between politics and the economy upon reading this Wall Street Journal report on recent jitters in financial markets:

The credit crisis sparked by mortgage problems reared its head anew, as stocks tumbled on fears about shaky financial institutions. This time, the dollar's fall to record lows and oil's flirtation with $100 a barrel added to the worrisome brew.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 360.92 points, or 2.64%, to 13300.02. The index has now wiped out all of its gains since the Federal Reserve on Sept. 18 made the first of its two recent interest-rate cuts, sparking a short-lived rally that sent the Dow to a record high Oct. 9.

Wall Street is once again nervous about how much damage remains from subprime mortgages and other bad credit, even after tens of billions of dollars in write-downs. The wave of credit-rating downgrades on mortgage securities continued yesterday, and bank shares were especially hard-hit. Shares of Washington Mutual Inc., a major lender, lost 17%, and after the market closed American International Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley reported new write-downs connected to housing problems. (See related article.)

Something else is beginning to nag at investors. The dollar and oil are pushing to opposite extremes, one to record lows and the other near record highs. Gold, an age-old refuge in times of financial turmoil, is once again above $800 an ounce. The combination of economic worries and market movements is reminiscent of the chaotic 1970s, when the U.S. was beset by inflation, recession and a stock market going nowhere.

The global economy is much different today than it was then. Inflation is generally under control, and most investors trust central banks to keep it that way. The U.S. economy, though slowing, has kept growing even as higher energy prices hit consumers.

Still, the parallel points to some challenges that policy makers are trying hard to manage. One is the threat of inflation. Another is the risk of a broad international loss of confidence in America and its currency, which has long been the place where countries with big foreign reserves put the bulk of their assets.

In testimony yesterday, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, noted that housing instability may pose deep dangers to the economy, but overall prospects remain for price stability and growth in employment.

That said, the Los Angeles Times has an interesting story today on the political economy of the 2008 elections. Here's the introduction:

Republican strategists are beginning to fear that a deteriorating economy will pose serious obstacles for their party's presidential candidates, who may ultimately have to answer for rising gas prices and a slumping housing market.

For most of the year, the campaign has been dominated by dueling positions on the war in Iraq, national security, immigration and healthcare. But with gas prices topping $3 a gallon and home foreclosures a deepening concern, the struggling economy could trump other issues in next year's general election campaign.

President Bush is in his second term and can't face reprisal at the polls. So to the extent there is a voter backlash, it would be aimed at the president's party -- chiefly the Republican candidates vying to succeed him, GOP consultants said.

Economic forecasts are worsening: On Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said he expected a "sluggish" economy in the coming months. With millions of sub-prime mortgages due to be reset over the next 14 months, he said, more homeowners are at risk of default. The stock market has been volatile, dropping more than 393 points over the last two days.

"Any economic pain comes out of the hide of the Republican Party," said Don Sipple, a Republican strategist based in California.

"It's one more advantage for the Democrats."

Said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an aide in the unsuccessful 1992 reelection campaign of President George H.W. Bush: "What a weak economy does is, it lets the Democratic nominee go out and ask the Ronald Reagan question: Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?"

When the economy is not doing well, a political truism goes, the economy becomes the issue. Hyperinflation during Jimmy Carter's administration paved the way for Reagan in 1980. In the 1992 race, "The economy, stupid" became the catchphrase of Democrat Bill Clinton's successful campaign, reminding staffers to focus on the recession that emerged in 1990-91.

Now, said Scott Reed, campaign manager for Republican Bob Dole's failed presidential bid in 1996, "the economy has shot up to the No. 1 issue over the last 30 days, eclipsing Iraq. You have to remember that people vote their pocketbook."

A dip in the economy that squeezes voters would fit the narrative laid out by the leading Democratic candidates. All have said that middle-class Americans have lost ground under the Republican administration, and they have rolled out plans aimed at making healthcare and education less expensive.

Robert Samuelson made the case this week that a recession next year is possible, although economic slumps aren't all bad.

Yeah, tell that to the GOPers running against the gloom-and-doom Democratic candidates in next year's elections.

Progressivism Goes Mainstream?

Sometimes I ask myself "why"?

Why worry about the likes of Markos Moulitsas and the angry hordes of the hard-left blogosphere? These folks can't genuinely threaten traditional decency and order. They're nothing more than an extreme fringe, unnoticed by the great silent majority of Americans, to be tolerated, even indulged once in a while, right?

I'd say yes, but for the life of me Kos and others like him get a lot of attention, and their bullying totalitarianism gets results.

It turns out that the Austin American-Statesman has repudiated and removed from its website a front-page story on last week's Netroots Nation convention at the insistence of Daily Kos.

An article, critical of the netroots radicals, was written by Patrick Beach, a "featured writer" at the paper. In turn, Greg Mitchell, at Daily Kos, attacked Beach as writing an "opinion" piece instead of hard news:

The new newspaper trend - even extending to boring old AP - of encouraging reporters to not merely report but opine in their "news" pieces reared its ugly head again this morning by way of a front page story in the Austin American-Statesman on Saturday's Netroots Nation events.

Patrick Beach, a feature writer at the paper who once described himself as a "raging moderate," repeatedly described the gathering in stereotypes that better fit the aging Old Left of years ago than the much younger Netroots of today. I mean, how many of you have ever read much of Chomsky...?

What was Beach's sin? Hitting a little too close to home, I'd say. Here's a sample:

Name-dropping Al Gore and his call for a switch to clean, renewable energy within 10 years was enough to pull whoops of approval from the 2,000 or 3,000 marauding liberals gathered for Netroots Nation at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday morning.

So when the former vice president and Nobel Prize co-winner made a surprise — and cleverly scripted — appearance during U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's talk, it looked like the conference might turn into a faint-in.

Talk that Pelosi (who is arguably so left-leaning that her parenthetical should be D-Beijing) would have a Very Special Guest had been buzzing about the conference of liberal bloggers, pols and media types since it began Thursday (it concludes today). But it wasn't clear to attendees that something was afoot until a schedule change handed out Saturday morning indicated the speaker's talk would last 45 minutes longer than previously indicated.

Not that Gore's appearance was necessary to whip up the troops.

From the beginning, it was clear these people were convinced the electoral map would be repainted with a brush sopping with blue paint come November.

Perhaps the piece is a bit satirical, but it's not unlike what's published routinely on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, which includes an offbeat news story at the bottom of column three every morning, or the Los Angeles Times, which features "Column One" daily, with many of the feature stories comprising fun-loving takes on the quirks of life.

No matter ... the newspaper caved:

Readers expect front-page stories to speak directly and clearly about events and issues. Eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding from our work is a critical part of our daily newsroom routine. When we communicate in a way that could be misinterpreted, we fail to meet our standards.

Our front-page story Sunday about the Netroots Nation convention included doses of irony and exaggeration. It made assertions (that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might find herself at home politically in Beijing, for example) and characterizations ("marauding liberals" was one) meant to amuse. For many readers, we failed.

In trying for a humorous take on the Netroots phenomenon without labeling it something other than a straightforward news story, we compromised our standards.

I guess that's it then. No more room for irony in serious journalism. I somehow doubt Jonathan Swift would be amused.

But there's more: Katherine Seelye reports that Markos Moulitsas - again - has announced that his progressive movement's the new mainstream:

Back in the early 1990s, with the rise of talk radio, conservative commentators derisively dubbed newspapers, magazines and broadcast television as the “mainstream media.” More recently, with the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal bloggers joined in, abbreviating the term to MSM.

But now the Internet has overtaken most newspapers and broadcasts as a source of news, and some on the left say the lingo ought to reflect that.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos Web site, the biggest liberal hub online, wrote on Monday that the heretofore “mainstream media” should be called the “traditional media.” Calling it mainstream implies that the Internet is fringe, he said, when in fact liberal bloggers, at least, are “representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we’re selling.”

Seelye notes, thankfully, that Moulitsas' megalomania hasn't gone unnoticed:

As you might imagine, not everyone agrees that Kos now represents the mainstream, and some have been mocking him (“If Moulitsas’s netroots were truly the mainstream, why would they attack a MODERATE Democrat who rarely strayed from the party line?” one asked, in reference to his debate Friday with Harold Ford, chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.)

That's fine, although leftist hopes are indeed high that the long-awaited proletarian revolution's coming in November.

Ezra Klein, a prominent left-wing writer in attendence at Netroots Nation, asked of the event's political significance, "Is Social Democracy A-Coming?"

It turns out that Klein's vision of this coming millenarian social democracy includes the elimination of meat from the diet. That's right: Meat's the new Marlboro, a socially incorrect health hazard that should be phased out of American diets to save the environment (meat production leaves a larger "carbon footprint").

This is the kind of progressivism that the netroots hordes want to ram down Americans' throats. But let's be honest: While perhaps the netroots hordes aren't up on Chomsky, they're certainly right at home with the kind of drastic change called for by '60-era ideology.

Indeed, Moulitsas has a new book forthcoming that offers a manifesto for today's netroots progressivism, Taking On the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era. Here's the product description:

The Sixties are over and the rules of power have been transformed. In order to change the world one needs to know how to manipulate the media, not just march in the streets. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, otherwise known as "Kos," is today's symbol of digital activism, giving a voice to everyday people. In "Taking on the System," Kos has taken a cue from his revolutionary predecessor's doctrine, Saul Alinksy's Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and places this epic hand-book in today's digital era, empowering every American to make a difference in the 21st century.

There's some sheer hypocrisy - if not irony - inherent in this blurb.

Markos Moulitsas, who proclaims himself a digital revolutionary in his new book, sponsors attacks on news coverage of the very radicalism of his own movement - with the desired result achieved in the capitulation of the Austin American-Statesman to the left's totalitarian thought police.

But lest readers forget: Daily Kos is the blogosphere's top portal for the left's secular demonology of hate. Not only are moderate Democratic Party officials savagely attacked, the most extreme racist, anti-Semitic essays are published regularly on the blog.

Moulitsas himself is not above attacking John McCain for his teeth. As I've noted before:

The Kos page still hosts the rabidly anti-Semitic entry, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

Kos himself recently attacked John McCain's physical appearance, ridiculing the Arizona Senator in a post entitled "McCain's Teeth."The "teeth" post is particularly egregious, considering that the McCain's teeth were broken off at the gumline by his North Vietnamese captors in 1968.

I think people really need to step back and think about this.

Kristin Power argued recently that the Kos kids hardly represent mainstream Democrat voters, people who are more concerned about paying their mortgage or securing health insurance than about FISA wiretaps.

And she's right, but incomplete. Moulitsas is onto something when he makes the case that the revolution's gone online, at least in the sense that the radical left bloggers are the "squeaky wheel" of the current Democratic Party policy base. Sure leftists lost on the FISA domestic surveillance bill, but look at the left's gleeful triumphalism this week on Barack Obama's world tour.

An Obama administration will restore 1930s-era pacifism as "mainstream" American foreign policy. Obama has said he'd consider war crimes trials for Bush administration officials - a main quiver in the leftosphere's Jacobin agenda - upon taking power. Obama's proposed dismantling America's nuclear arsenal. He reportedly had no problem with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Palestian terrorist cell, providing security for his visit to Ramallah on the West Bank. And he's on board the radical global warming agenda, pushed by the Al Gore-faction of the Democratic Party left.

And that's just a sample in foreign policy! Domestically, from affirmative action to taxes, Barack Obama's a radical's dream.

So, while folks can quibble on whether or not Moulitsas represents the mainstream, the big picture suggests that should Obama be elected to office, he'll be pulled even further left than he already is. Call it a realignment or a revolution, but it's a direction in which many traditional Americans would not rather not go.