Unwavering Commitment: Democrats Dug In on Iraq Retreat

There's no progress in Iraq that will satisfy the antiwar left.

Just this morning, Michael Kinsley, for example, argues the "Surge Doesn't Equal Success." Meanwhile, last night's Democratic debate showcased Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama gasping for a breath in their race to see which candidate will surrender faster.

Charles Krauthammer offers his take on this, "Democrats Dug In For Retreat":

"No one can spend some 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. . . . If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi government -- in security, governance, and development -- there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

-- Anthony Cordesman,

"The Situation in Iraq: A Briefing From the Battlefield," Feb. 13, 2008

This from a man who was a severe critic of the postwar occupation of Iraq and who, as author Peter Wehner points out, is no wide-eyed optimist. In fact, in May 2006 Cordesman had written that "no one can argue that the prospects for stability in Iraq are good." Now, however, there is simply no denying the remarkable improvements in Iraq since the surge began a year ago.

Unless you're a Democrat. As Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) put it, "Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq." Their Senate leader, Harry Reid, declares the war already lost. Their presidential candidates (eight of them at the time) unanimously oppose the surge. Then the evidence begins trickling in.

We get news of the Anbar Awakening, which has now spread to other Sunni areas and Baghdad. The sectarian civil strife that the Democrats insisted was the reason for us to leave dwindles to the point of near disappearance. Much of Baghdad is returning to normal. There are 90,000 neighborhood volunteers -- ordinary citizens who act as auxiliary police and vital informants on terrorist activity -- starkly symbolizing the insurgency's loss of popular support. Captured letters of al-Qaeda leaders reveal despair as they are driven -- mostly by Iraqi Sunnis, their own Arab co-religionists -- to flight and into hiding.

After agonizing years of searching for the right strategy and the right general, we are winning. How do Democrats react? From Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama, the talking point is the same: Sure, there is military progress. We could have predicted that. (They in fact had predicted the opposite, but no matter.) But it's all pointless unless you get national reconciliation.

"National" is a way to ignore what is taking place at the local and provincial level, such as Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, scion of the family that dominates the largest Shiite party in Iraq, traveling last October to Anbar in an unprecedented gesture of reconciliation with the Sunni sheiks.

Doesn't count, you see. Democrats demand nothing less than federal-level reconciliation, and it has to be expressed in actual legislation....

Despite all the progress, military and political, the Democrats remain unwavering in their commitment to withdrawal on an artificial timetable that inherently jeopardizes our "very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region, and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over al-Qaeda. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now-achievable victory?

The answer is yes, obviously.

Throughout 2007, top Democrats - on the campaign trail and in Congress - repeatedly denounced Iraq as a failure and declared the surge a diversion from the priority of an immediate surrender.

The Democratic denunciations and denials continued last night in Texas. Hillary Clinton spun the surge as a be-all-end-all prod to instantaneous Iraqi political reconciliation:

The rationale of the surge was to create the space and time for the Iraqi government to make the decisions that only it can make....

But the fact is that the purpose of it has not been fulfilled. The Iraqi government has slowly inched toward making a few of the decisions in a less than complete way, but it hasn't taken advantage of the sacrifice and the losses of life and billions of dollars that have occurred since the surge began.

And here's Obama, with an even bigger attack on America's democratization project in Iraq:

I think it is indisputable that we've seen violence reduced in Iraq....

But this is a tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic blunder.

Actually, experts note Iraq's turning out to be a huge strategic victory.

Not for the antiwar types.

As I've noted, it's becoming clearer by the day that Democratic Party claims of support for the troops are hollow: The leading contenders for the nomination can't beat it fast enough for the ignominous exit of strategic retreat.

So much for the costs and sacrifices Americans have paid for the overthrow of tyranny and the consolidation of democracy in a region filled with autocrats and monarchs.

Obama Associated With Known Terrorists

I've recently highlighted the disastrous implications of an Obama presidency for American politics and national security (see here and here).

More fuel for that claim is out today at the Politico, which reports that Obama had known ties with domestic terrorists in the 1990s:

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious – and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from the Hyde Park left to a man closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president....

Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home—part of a campaign courtship—reflects more extensive interaction than has previously reported....

The relationship with Ayers gives context to his recent past in Hyde Park politics. It’s milieu in which a former violent radical was a stalwart of the local scene, not especially controversial.

It’s also a scene whose liberal ideological features – while taken for granted by the Chicago press corps that knows Obama best – provides a jarring contrast with Obama’s current, anti-ideological stance. This contrast between past and present—not least the Ayers connection—is virtually certain to be a subject Republican operatives will warm to if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

The tension between the present and recent Chicago past is also evident in some of his positions on major national issues. Many national politicians, including Clinton, have moved toward the center over time. But Obama’s transitions are still quite fresh.

A questionnaire from his 1996 campaign indicated more blanket opposition to the death penalty, and support of abortion rights, than he currently espouses. He spoke in support of single-payer health care as recently as 2003.

Like many of the most extreme figures from the 1960s Ayers and Dohrn are ambiguous figures in American life.

They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb – designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

But – unlike some other fringe figures of the era — they’re also flatly unrepentant about the bombings they committed in the name of ending the war, defending them on the grounds that they killed no one, except, accidentally, their own members.

Failed bombers who became academics? Oh, that's reassuring.

The Obama campaign needs to make a national campaign address disavowing his past ties to domestic radicals, as well as his campaign's recent controversy surrounding the displays of Che Guevara paraphernalia within the Obama organization.

This is not likely to happen, as the Obama campaign, amid a hot primary, doesn't want to anger the antiwar base, a constituency perfectly in tune with the Obama organization's anti-American proclivities.

See more at Memeorandum.

The Obama Cult

Even lefties are having some problems with Barack Obama. Margery Eagan over at the Boston Herald is picking up on the cult of Obama that's building for the Illinois Senator:

I’m an Obama girl and my man throttled Hillary Clinton, again, Tuesday night.

Suddenly, the impossible is real.

Suddenly, I’m nervous. Very nervous, actually....

I’m nervous about the “O’Bambi” factor. Will the terrorists move in next door when Obama’s in the White House?

I’m nervous because Michelle Obama, about whom I just wrote a fawning puff piece, now says that until her husband’s stunning ascendancy, she’s never before been proud of America. Huh?

Barack now claims she didn’t mean it. Oh, yes she did. We all know the insufferable, holier-than-thou, Blame-America-First types who lecture the unwashed from the rarefied air of Cambridge and Brookline.

If I wanted lecturing, I’d be with Hillary.

I’m nervous because too many Obama-philes sound like Moonies, or Hare Krishnas, or the Hale-Bopp-Is-Coming-To-Get-Me nuts.

These true believers “Obama-ize” everything. They speak Obama-ese. Knit for Obama. Run for Obama. Gamble - Hold ’Em Barack! - for Obama. They make Obama cakes, underwear, jewelry. They send Valentine cards reading, “I want to Barack your world!”

At campaign rallies people scream, cry, even faint as Obama calmly calls for the EMTs. When supporters pant en masse, “I love you!” (like The Beatles, circa 1964), Barack says, “I love you back” with that deliciously charming, almost cocky smile.

Oh - I’m nervous because it’s all gone to his head and he hasn’t even won yet.

I’m nervous because it’s gone to a lot of other people’s heads as well. Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings introduced Obama last week in Baltimore and said, “This is not a campaign for president of the United States, this is a movement to change the world.”

“He walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere,” says George Clooney.

“I’ll do whatever he says to do,” says actress Halle Berry. “I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”

I’m nervous because nobody’s quite sure what Obama stands for, even his supporters. (“I can’t wait to see,” said actress/activist Susan Sarandon, declaring full support nonetheless).

I’m nervous because even his biggest fans can’t name Obama’s accomplishments, including Texas state Sen. Kirk Watson, an Obama-man who humiliated himself when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked him about five times to name something, anything, Obama’s done. Watson hemmed. Watson hawed. Watson gave up.

I’m nervous because John McCain says Obama’s is “an eloquent but empty call for change” and in the wee, wee hours, a nagging voice whispers, suppose McCain’s right, too? Then what?

Jules Crittenden, who's a colleague of Eagan, relates a perfect story on this:

I have another lefty colleague who, when confronted with Obama’s lack of experience, always points to George Bush, says he didn’t have any either. I find that a little odd, given how lefties feel about the Bush years. So I asked him why he would want to try inexperience again. Awaiting answer.

See also my earier post, "Do the Obamas Get It?

More at Memeorandum.

Do the Obamas Get It?

Peggy Noonan's got some questions on the political difficulties of Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. Basically, do they "get" their country?

Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? Do they confuse patriotism with nationalism, or nativism? Are they more inspired by abstractions like "international justice" than by old visions of America as the city on a hill, which is how John Winthrop saw it, and Ronald Reagan and JFK spoke of it?

Have they been, throughout their adulthood, so pampered and praised--so raised in the liberal cocoon--that they are essentially unaware of what and how normal Americans think? And are they, in this, like those cosseted yuppies, the Clintons?

Why is all this actually not a distraction but a real issue? Because Americans have common sense and are bottom line. They think like this. If the president and his first lady are not loyal first to America and its interests, who will be? The president of France? But it's his job to love France, and protect its interests. If America's leaders don't love America tenderly, who will?

And there is a context. So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out. They can see we are giving up our sovereignty, that our leaders will not control our borders, that we don't teach the young the old-fashioned love of America, that the government has taken to itself such power, and made things so complex, and at the end of the day when they count up sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax they are paying a lot of money to lose the place they loved.

And if you feel you're losing America, you really don't want a couple in the White House whose rope of affection to the country seems lightly held, casual, provisional. America is backing Barack at the moment, so America is good. When it becomes angry with President Barack, will that mean America is bad?

The more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with the idea of a First Lady Michelle Obama.

As the Los Angeles Times reported today, Mrs. Obama's possessed with the demons of destructive negativity - she's riding the wild downer of the left's subway of anti-Americanism. The message? The U.S. as irredeemable monstrosity, the impossibility of upward mobility, the undifferentiated disaster of American public education, etc.:

"The life that I am talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. And this is through Republican and Democratic administrations. It doesn't matter who was in the White House. . . . So if you want to pretend there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I wanna meet you!"

You know, I don't think most Americans expect life to be "easy." Maybe economic entitlement and the leisure of the unpropertied classes is an unrealized economic right that an Obama administration will unlock, after "decades" of unrequited hardship and American suffering.

This isn't the United States I know - not the politics, not the economics, not the demographics - which brings me back one of Noonan's initial queries: "Do the Obamas understand America?"

I don't think so, at least not the hard-working, individualistic, patriotic, down-home (yet not-always-perfect) country of kindness, goodness, and unrelenting democratic progress.

My ideal First Lady recognizes - indeed embodies - just these elements: This is what it means to be American.

I don't think Michelle Obama quite gets it.

The Return of Stagflation?

Today's Wall Street Journal looks at the possible return of "stagflation" to the U.S. economy, an economic malaise that combines recessionary unemployment with rampant inflation:

The U.S. faces an unwelcome combination of looming recession and persistent inflation that is reviving angst about stagflation, a condition not seen since the 1970s.

Inflation is rising. Yesterday the Labor Department said consumer prices in the U.S. jumped 0.4% in January and are up 4.3% over the past 12 months, near a 16-year high. Even stripping out sharply rising food and energy costs, prices rose 0.3% in January, driven by education, medical care, clothing and hotels. They are up by 2.5% from the previous year, a 10-month high.

The same day brought a reminder of possible recession. The Federal Reserve disclosed that its policy makers lowered their forecast for economic growth this year to between 1.3% and 2%, half a percentage point below the level of their previous forecast, in October....

A simultaneous rise in unemployment and inflation poses a dilemma for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. When the Fed wants to fight unemployment, it lowers interest rates. When it wants to damp inflation, it raises them. It's impossible to do both at the same time.

Stagflation, a term coined in the United Kingdom in 1965, defined the years from 1970 to 1981 in the U.S. Inflation rose to almost 15%. The economy went through three recessions. Unemployment reached 9%. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker finally conquered inflation, but only by dramatically boosting interest rates, causing a severe recession in 1981-82.

Today's circumstances are far from that. Inflation is lower. Unemployment has risen, but only to 4.9%.

Yet there are similarities. As in the 1970s, surging commodity prices are leading the way. Crude oil rose to $100.74 a barrel yesterday, a new nominal high and close to its 1980 inflation-adjusted high. Wheat prices have hit a record. And, as in the 1970s, the rate at which the U.S. economy can grow without generating inflation has fallen, because of slower growth in both the labor force and in productivity, or output per hour of work.

The biggest difference is that in the 1970s, the Fed was unwilling, or thought itself unable, to bring inflation down. The Fed today sees achieving low inflation as its primary mission.

I also think we have much more flexible labor markets in the U.S. today, and we've not faced the same type of cost-push price increases associated the inflationary oil shocks of the 1970s.

That said, recent actions of the Federal Reserve have looked increasingly desperate in trying provide some liquidity to the financial system.

I've been bullish on the economy since the beginning of the subprime collapse. Unemployment still at historically low levels, for example, although housing's still freefalling to some extent, so it remains to be seen if this year dodges the bullet on a full-blown economic collapse.

Will Obama End the War on Terror?

If elected, will Barack Obama end the global war on terror? Michael Hirsh offer his analysis:

Using bold rhetoric that often makes his followers rapturous, Barack Obama has declared over and over that he will be the president of "change." But is Obama brave enough to bring about a really radical change? Will he end the permanent "war" George W. Bush has left us with? Will a candidate or a President Obama be willing to go so far as to question whether "the war on terror"—the framework for nearly every discussion of U.S. foreign policy today—is truly the pre-eminent challenge of our time?

Obama has come close. He has repeatedly called the war in Iraq a needless distraction, and he has accused Bush of "lumping" all sorts of enemies together. "It is time to turn the page," Obama declared last August in a defining speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "When I am president, we will wage the war that has to be won." But Obama's rhetoric still suggests that he too will be spending his term as a war president. And his "comprehensive strategy" for that war, while it calls for "getting out of Iraq and onto the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan," still implies that the Illinois senator believes the war on terror should be the overarching framework for his foreign policy.

Let's think about this for a moment. A small group of ragged America-haters, who had one lucky day of mass murder nearly seven years ago, will continue to define the foreign policy of the lone superpower for years, possibly decades to come. There's something wrong with this picture. Yes, we can all agree that 9/11 was one of the worst moments in American history. And we can certainly agree that Al Qaeda must be completely eliminated. But the group has never come close to duplicating 9/11; even the train bombings in London and Madrid that were attributed to Al Qaeda-inspired cells were minor by comparison. Are Al Qaeda and its ilk still really our number one challenge? What about global warming? What about the emergence of China, the resurrection of Russia, the decline of the dollar, the slackening of free trade, the spread of debt and disease, and the persistence of ethnic cleansing? What about the virus of "ethnonationalism"....

None of these broad trends has made it into the headlines of the campaign yet. As E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post has pointed out, John McCain has fully embraced, even expanded, Bush's concept of a broad-gauge war on terror, declaring that "the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical extremism." But McCain has not said why he thinks that is, and Obama has not questioned this premise. Perhaps, like most Democrats, Obama suffers an insecurity complex about his national security credentials—especially going up against a Republican lion and war hero such as John McCain. Some Obama aides admit that he could put himself in political peril if he backs away from the "war on terror" construct. One top adviser to Obama conceded to me this week that "we have not as a party had this debate [about the war on terror]. We had an opportunity to have it in 2002, but it lasted about a day." Why? Because the Dems didn't want to look softer than Bush on terror.

It is a debate that only Obama can start. McCain won't bring it up. Nor will Hillary Clinton. Apart from being on the verge of oblivion politically, she is too fully vested in the war on terror, having voted in 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq as part of it. And if that debate doesn't start, we as a country will be effectively doomed to a "war" that has no prospect of ending....

The rational policy would be to replace the overblown "war on terror" with what we should have been engaged in every day since 9/11: a war of annihilation against Al Qaeda, an all-out effort to rid the earth completely of the small, lunatic group that attacked us on that day....

Ironically, only if the next president downgrades the war on terror to a far more focused military and policing effort to destroy Al Qaeda completely—winning back all the natural global allies we've lost, placing groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in another category entirely—can he finally achieve the goal of making sure another 9/11 doesn't happen. But to do that we need to rethink the war on terror entirely. Is Barack Obama up to it?

While Hirsch is playing into the left's anti-administration "forever war" meme, he's got a point, although more thoughtful commentators have previously raised the question.

James Fallows suggested in 2006 that it was time to "declare victory" in the war on terror, moving on to a less epochal approach to combatting the remaining but not insignificant global challenge of coldblooded Islamic fundamentalism:

The U.S. military has been responsible for the most dramatic recent improvement in American standing in the Islamic world. Immediately after the invasion of Iraq, the proportion of Indonesians with a favorable view of the United States had fallen to 15 percent, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey. After American troops brought ships, cargo planes, and helicopters loaded with supplies for tsunami victims, the overall Indonesian attitude toward the United States was still negative, but some 79 percent of Indonesians said that their opinion of America had improved because of the relief effort. There was a similar turnaround in Pakistan after U.S. troops helped feed and rescue villagers affected by a major earthquake. But in most of the Muslim world, the image of American troops is that of soldiers or marines manning counterinsurgency patrols, not delivering food and water. “The diplomatic component of the war on terror has been neglected so long, it’s practically vestigial,” a Marine officer told me. “It needs to be regrown.” But in time of war, the balance is harder to correct.

Perhaps worst of all, an open-ended war is an open-ended invitation to defeat. Sometime there will be more bombings, shootings, poisonings, and other disruptions in the United States. They will happen in the future because they have happened in the past (Oklahoma City; the Unabomber; the Tylenol poisonings; the Washington, D.C.-area snipers; the still-unsolved anthrax mailings; the countless shootings at schools; and so on). These previous episodes were not caused by Islamic extremists; future ones may well be. In all cases they represent a failure of the government to protect its people. But if they occur while the war is still on, they are enemy “victories,” not misfortunes of the sort that great nations suffer. They are also powerful provocations to another round of hasty reactions.

War implies emergency, and the upshot of most of what I heard was that the United States needs to shift its operations to a long-term, nonemergency basis. “De-escalation of the rhetoric is the first step,” John Robb told me. “It is hard for insurgents to handle de-escalation.” War encourages a simple classification of the world into ally or enemy. This polarization gives dispersed terrorist groups a unity they might not have on their own. Last year, in a widely circulated paper for the Journal of Strategic Studies, David Kilcullen argued that Islamic extremists from around the world yearn to constitute themselves as a global jihad. Therefore, he said, Western countries should do everything possible to treat terrorist groups individually, rather than “lumping together all terrorism, all rogue or failed states, and all strategic competitors who might potentially oppose U.S. objectives.” The friend-or-foe categorization of war makes lumping together more likely.

The United States can declare victory by saying that what is controllable has been controlled: Al-Qaeda Central has been broken up. Then the country can move to its real work. It will happen on three levels: domestic protection, worldwide harassment and pursuit of al-Qaeda, and an all-fronts diplomatic campaign....

Americans still face dangers, as they always have. They have recently lacked leaders to help keep the dangers in perspective. Shaping public awareness—what we mean by “leading"—is what we most remember in our strong presidents: Lincoln’s tone as the Civil War came on and as it neared its end; Theodore Roosevelt taking the first real steps toward environmental conservation and coming to terms with new industrial organizations; Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression and the Second World War; Eisenhower managing the showdown with the Soviet Union, but also overseeing the steady expansion of America’s transportation, scientific, and educational systems; Kennedy with the race to the moon; and on up to George W. Bush, with his calm focus in the months immediately after 9/11. One of the signals Bush sent in those first days may have had the greatest strategic importance in the long run. That was his immediate insistence that America’s Muslims were not the enemy, that they should not be singled out, that they should be seen as part of the nation’s solution rather than part of its problem. It is easy to imagine that a different tone would have had damaging repercussions.

Now we could use a leader to help us understand victory and its consequences....

The question now is whether a President Obama is capable of providing this leadership.

He may indeed be called to the task, and with dangers clear and present, his performance will be measured by record of American history.

Democratic Debate in Texas

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama debated tonight in Austin, Texas. CNN has the details:

Sen. Barack Obama said while he and Sen. Hillary Clinton share a lot of policy positions, "there's a fundamental difference between us in terms of how change comes about."

The Democratic presidential candidates are facing off in Texas in their last debate before the state's March 4 primary.

"If we don't bring the country together, stop the endless bickering, actually focus on solutions and reduce that special interests that have dominated Washington ... we will not get anything done," Obama said.

Obama was responding to Clinton's reference to a recent interview with an Obama surrogate who could not name any of his accomplishments.

Clinton said she and Obama offer different records of accomplishment.

"Obama responded effectively -- he defended his achievements, and characterized Clinton as suggesting his supporters are delusional for supporting him. The line played well," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.

Clinton, who has been marketing herself as the candidate in the "solutions business," said, "I do think that words are important and words matter, but actions speak louder than words, and I offer that."

The more I watch the Democratic debates, the more intense is my distrust of these two candidates. On healthcare, Iraq, and fiscal policy, I can't imagine a more left-wing discourse from any major candidate in presidential elections in the last 50 years (and I'm not forgetting Michael Dukakis and George McGovern).

With a Democratic administration next year we'll certainly see an attempted far left-wing makeover of American public policy and national security.

So far the public's favorable to such trends and ideas, although I think the general election campaign will help to refocus the country on more traditional interests, policies, and values.

(Personality-wise, I can't help noticing Hillary Clinton's resemblance to a coiled rattlesnake readying a deadly strike as she contemplates - with supreme contumely and smugness - the debating points of Obama, whose frontrunner status now obviously and deeply pains the New York Senator).

The Democratic Advantage in Partisan Identification

Trends in partisan idenfication are trending significantly toward the Democratic Party, although the picture's not so rosy when we move away from generic party preferences to specific would-be electoral matchups.

Here's more, from Gallup:

Forty percent of Americans in the Feb. 11-14 Gallup Poll -- in response to the question, "In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent?" -- said they identified with the Democratic Party, while 26% identified with the Republican Party and 34% with neither (most of these considered themselves independents).

The 40% Democratic identification figure is unusually high. The last time 40% of Americans identified as Democrats was August 2000. Before that, there have been just a handful of Gallup Poll telephone surveys -- going back to 1985 -- in which 40% or more of Americans identified as Democrats. The highest Democratic identification in a Gallup telephone poll was 42% in July 1987.

The gap between Democratic and Republican identification -- now at 14 percentage points -- is also almost a record high. The gap was higher only in December 1998 -- immediately after President Bill Clinton had been impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives -- when 41% of Americans identified as Democrats and only 20% as Republicans.

The highest level of identification with the Republican Party, 39%, has been reached at three points: in May 1991 (a few months after the first Persian Gulf War), December 2003 (in a poll in the field at the time of Saddam Hussein's capture), and September 2004 (after a successful Republican convention at which George W. Bush was nominated for a second term in office).

Last year, as often happens in a year in which there is no national election, Americans were increasingly likely to identify as independents. This year, as presidential election voting has begun in primaries and caucuses, the Democrats have been the beneficiary as Americans have become more likely to express identification with a party. As 2007 ended, an average of two Gallup Polls conducted in December showed 32.5% of Americans identifying as Democrats, 37.5% as independents, and 28.5% as Republicans. Now, the shift is evident. Identification with the Republican Party and with no party have slipped slightly, while identification with the Democratic Party has gained.

I think the sense of change, particulary captured with the Barack Obama campaign, is being reflected in the surge of left-wing identification.

But as I've noted repeatedly, in head-to-head matchups, the Democrats roughly tie John McCain in general election viability. Gallup concludes:

The data reviewed here underscore the strong position of the Democratic Party at this point in the election year. A near-record number of Americans indicate that they currently identify as Democrats; the image of Democratic Party is much more favorable than that of the Republican Party; and Americans say the Democratic Party is better positioned to bring about change and is more likely to be able to manage the government effectively.

These things can change, of course, between now and Election Day. In addition, recent polling has shown that John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, does relatively well when pitted against the two leading Democratic candidates, suggesting that the Republican Party's image troubles don't necessarily transfer directly to specific candidates.

And that's the key to understanding this data. Naturally, after nearly eight years of GOP governance, we're bound to see some Bush-fatigue, captured in slogans of hope and change among the Democratic candidates.

But as the data indicate, there's no slam dunk for the Democrats in the fall (see here, here, and here). It's going to be a close-run, hard-fought, vigorously contested campaign.

Michelle Obama: No Pride in Personification of the Dream

I've previously commented on Michelle Obama's "pride" remarks, here and here.

I think it's a big story, although the old-line media's a little behind the curve. Here's the Los Angeles Times' story on the Michelle Obama's bleak view of the United States:

Unwittingly, Michelle Obama became the story...this week, telling an audience in Wisconsin on Monday that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

It may have been nothing more than a little hyperbole in a season that has seen plenty. But as the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has narrowed to Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the spotlight is shining much brighter now on Michelle Obama, a 44-year-old hospital administrator.

While Clinton's husband, the former president, has been in hot water regularly for his verbal jabs at Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, whose tongue can be as barbed as Bill Clinton's, has received less scrutiny. With her husband's increasing success, that has changed. And with so much at stake, even minor gaffes are being blown into full-fledged campaign issues.

On Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, she clarified her Monday remarks in an interview with a Rhode Island TV station. "What I was clearly talking about was that I'm proud in how Americans are engaging in the political process," she said. "For the first time in my lifetime, I'm seeing people rolling up their sleeves in a way that I haven't seen and really trying to figure this out -- and that's the source of pride that I was talking about."

Still, her comment was in keeping with the generally bleak view of the country that is the heart of her stump speech, a departure from the usual chauvinism of the campaign trail....

Like her husband, Michelle Obama is a masterful public speaker who can easily talk for an hour without notes. But unlike her husband, she tends to dwell on the negative. America, in her telling, is a place where "regular folks," meaning the working class, can't get ahead because, as she said at Ohio State University, "folks set the bar, and then you work hard and you reach the bar -- sometimes you surpass the bar -- and then they move the bar!"

Americans, she says, have become "cynical" and "mean" and have "broken souls." For regular folks, life is bad and getting worse.

People can't raise a family on one salary anymore, she says. They can't afford to get sick even if they have insurance because of deductibles, premiums and the high cost of medication. They can't confidently send their kids to neighborhood public schools because so many of them are so bad. Young people can't afford to attend college to become teachers or nurses or journalists because those jobs don't pay enough to repay college loans.

"We don't need a world full of corporate attorneys and hedge-fund managers," she told a crowd in a Baptist church in Cheraw, S.C., last month. "But see, that's the only way you can pay back your educational debt!

"The life that I am talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. And this is through Republican and Democratic administrations. It doesn't matter who was in the White House. . . . So if you want to pretend there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I wanna meet you!"

Her rhetoric is jarring given that the Obamas themselves are a stunning embodiment of the American dream. Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, the men's basketball coach at Brown University, attended Princeton University. Barack and Michelle Obama both earned law degrees from Harvard, another of the nation's most prestigious schools, and are facing the possibility of raising their two daughters in the White House.

The couple's combined salaries were more than $430,000 in 2006, according to their tax return. In addition, Barack Obama earned $551,000 in book royalties. The family lives in a $1.6-million home in Chicago.

Well, the country club liberals are back, by the look of that income!

And to think, Barack Obama, for all his success and considerable income, is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate.

The Obamas personify the American Dream, as do many others on the radical left who relentlessly attack this great nation.

Flailing Brand: New York Times Descends to Tabloidism

While Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have used the New York Times' hit piece on John McCain to pump up their own ratings and (hoped for) relevance, Thomas Lifson offers a principled criticism of the Times' flailing journalistic practices:

The decline and fall of the New York Times accelerates, with today's anonymously-sourced hit piece on John McCain. I will leave to others like Rick Moran and Ed Morrissey the debunking of the story itself. What concerns me is the manner in which the CEO of the organization has jettisoned standards that once would have ruled out publication of such material.

"A fish rots from the head" goes an old Chinese saying. If it is true, as reported, that the story was controversial within the Times, and only ran because the paper feared that The New Republic would publicize the office politics at the Times over publication of the story, the Sulzberger's responsibility is all the greater. His inability to set clear guidelines, hire capable editors, and maintain newsroom harmony and discipline was about to be exposed to the public. To protect his hind quarters, he went with a disastrously bad story.

The proper response to TNR would be a statement that the Times does not rush into print with anonymously sourced accusations against the presumptive nominee of either party. And do it with a straight face.

Such an approach might have begun to undo the damage of Jayson Blair, a man promoted and retained despite obvious signs of trouble. Such an approach would be consistent with the Times' previous practice of seriously downplaying similar and much worse stories about Bill Clinton's sexual behavior. Such an approach might have begun to undo some of the damage to the institution of the Times inflicted by Pinch Sulzberger's management.

The corporation he heads is in the fight of its life, with the News Corporation-owned Wall Street Journal preparing to challenge it as a national general interest newspaper, while disgruntled shareholders search for a way to reform management, despite a dual class shareholder system which enables the Sulzberger family to elect a majority of shareholders despite owning only around 10% of the company's equity.

In the face of these challenges, The Times descends a full notch or two, resorting to partisan gossip that is inadequately sourced. This is not a way to enhance the value of the brand, nor to ensure the survival of the firm.

Lifson makes a good case.

I would note that for all of the Times' liberal politics, bloggers, commentators, and pundits from all sides of the spectrum are equally quick to jump on a story from the Old Gray Lady if it suits their ideological program.

Certainly, the paper's reputation has been in decline, but so far the Times remains the country's "unofficial newspaper of record."

Frankly, I wildly prefer the Wall Street Journal, not just for its editorial slant but for the rigor of its front-page news journalism. I think WSJ is hard to beat, and I'm hoping that it really does become the country's main national daily, toppling NYT from its perch.

Now, we debate issues with the media we have, and thank goodness for the tremendous news resources at the command of the American news industry. Could things be better? Naturally. The media's hardly a watchdog for the people much these days, serving as a fourth branch and checking the power of one governmental faction or the other. The news media are not only increasing partisan actors, but they're increasing the "news."

Perhaps NYT will boost its revenues a bit. I don't think they're going to hurt McCain all that much, although Rush Limbaugh may get some good mileage out of this.

We've still got a good ways to go until the November election. I doubt the fundamental dynamics of the race will change much, nor will this be last of such underhanded tabloidism.

Far Right Allies With NYT to Attack McCain

The Politico's story on the far-right's defense of John McCain, who's attacked in a hit piece at today's New York Times, is entitled: "Rush, Right Rally to McCain."

It should really read, "Rush, Right Ally with NYT Against McCain."

This is the moment Rush-bots have been waiting for: While the Politico's piece argues for a conservative rally to McCain amid a clear left-wing media smear against the Arizona Senator, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have exploited the attack in a classic and juicy "I told you so moment":

Ironically, a potentially damaging article about McCain may help bond him to conservatives, who are relishing the fact that now he needs them.

"Is he going to learn the right lesson from this?” Limbaugh asked. “The lesson is that liberals are to be defeated."

Limbaugh wrote in an e-mail to Politico: “The story is not the story. The story is the drive-by media turning on its favorite maverick and trying to take him out. The media picked the GOP's candidate, the NYT endorsed him while they sat on this story, and is now, with utter predictability, trying to destroy him.”

Limbaugh added: “This is what you get when you walk across the aisle and try to make these people your friends. I'm not surprised in the least that the NYT would try to take out John McCain. Predicted this, in fact, way back in the early 2000s. Sen. McCain courted the media, cultivated them, even bragged that the media was his ‘base.’ I cringed when I heard it because the media turning on McCain was as predictable as the sun rising in the morning.”

Limbaugh was one of several influential conservatives who, to the delight and relief of the McCain campaign, immediately decided that the behavior of the Times — not the senator — should be the issue.

Ingraham began her show this morning with a brief dig at McCain's years of cozying up to the mainstream media, but then declared: “You wait until it’s pretty much beyond a doubt that he’s going to be the Republican nominee, and then you let it drop — drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That’s what The New York Times thinks.”

Ingraham was deriding the front-page article suggesting McCain had a romantic relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist in 1999, when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Ingraham was among the conservatives who endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney before he dropped out of the nomination race, and she has been among the high-profile talk show hosts who have been very critical of McCain.

McCain has been jokingly called “the senator from ‘Meet the Press’" because of his cozy relations with the elite media.

Ingraham said triumphantly, “I ask the McCain campaign this question: Do you think you need talk radio now? Do you think that talk radio’s important to set the record straight, or do you think a press conference, where the media is shouting question after question at you — do you think that's going to put an end to all of this?"....

Ingraham read from the article with a mocking tone — even adding “comma” at one point — noting what she considered omissions and fallacies.

“I’m reading through this piece and I’m thinking, Did McCain think that having all these people on the Straight Talk Express — and getting Jonathan Alter and all these guys to sit down with him and laugh and chat — do you think that was going to inoculate him from this kind of absurd attack?” Ingraham mused. “Of course it wasn’t going to.”

Ingraham called it “one of the more ridiculous pieces I have read in some time,” and specifically took up for McCain by pointing out that he had voted against the interests of the lobbyist’s client.

Reminding her listeners why she had once bashed McCain, she needled him this morning for “intimacy of the sort that no one had ever seen between a Republican and a member of the media.”

“John McCain stands before all of these reporters that he has been yukking it up with over the years,” Ingraham said. “And I think he is stunned, frankly. I think he’s stunned that all his old friends would turn on him.”

I noted in my post this morning that the media's increased attention on McCain's potential lobbying infidelities - wholly unsubstantied as they are - would work to focus on McCain's long tenure in Congress, reminding voters of McCain's power well before the Clinton's came to office, painting him as a tired, old GOP warhorse.

But the whole episode forms a case of "Political Manipulation 101." Here's the right-wing talk radio commentariat steaming at NYT's attack on the one hand, while using the smear to bolster the conservative case for leadership of the GOP for '08 on the other.

Michelle Malkin's apparently holding fire, and Allahpundit at Hot Air's going with the Politico's meme that the far-right's rallying to McCain's defense.

Still, a Rush rally? Well, with (rallying) allies like that, who needs enemies?!!

See more at Memeorandum.

U.S. Strikes Falling Satellite, Displays Missile Defense Capabilities

The United States Navy reports successfully striking a rogue spy satellite with missile defense technology, according to the New York Times:

Just hours after a Navy missile interceptor struck a dying spy satellite orbiting 130 miles over the Pacific Ocean, a senior military officer expressed high confidence early Thursday that a tank filled with toxic rocket fuel had been breached.

Video of the unusual operation showed the missile leaving a bright trail as it streaked toward the satellite, and then a flash, a fireball, a plume and a cloud as the interceptor, at a minimum, appeared to have found its target, a satellite that went dead shortly after being launched in 2006.

“We’re very confident that we hit the satellite,” said Gen. James E. Cartwright of the Marines, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We also have a high degree of confidence that we got the tank.”

General Cartwright cautioned that despite visual and spectral evidence that the hydrazine rocket fuel had been dispersed, it could take 24 to 48 hours before the Pentagon could announce with full confidence that the mission was a success. Even so, he said the military had 80 to 90 percent confidence the fuel tank was breached.

The fuel tank aboard the satellite was believed strong enough to survive the fiery re-entry through the atmosphere, and officials expressed concerns that the toxic fuel could pose a hazard to populated areas.

General Cartwright said debris from the strike, with individual pieces no larger than a football, already had begun to re-enter the atmosphere. Most, he said, was predicted to fall into the ocean.

Even so, the State Department was alerting American embassies around the world so they could keep their host governments informed, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had put out instructions to first responders across the United States about steps to take should hazardous debris fall in populated areas.

The first international reaction came from China, where the government objected on Thursday to the American missile strike, warning that the United States Navy’s action could threaten security in outer space.

The Chinese and other critics have alleged that today's shoot-down was nothing more than a tit-for-tat display of U.S. force, a political-strategic response to China's own blustery satellite take-down last year:

American officials were critical of China last year for using an anti-satellite weapon to destroy a satellite in a much higher orbit in January 2007 and then refusing to confirm the test for nearly two weeks. The Chinese test produced 1,600 pieces of debris that are expected to orbit the Earth for years, preventing other spacecraft from using the same or similar orbits.

During a Pentagon news conference Thursday morning, General Cartwright rebuffed those who said the mission was, at least in part, organized to showcase American missile defense or anti-satellite capabilities.

He said the missile itself had to be reconfigured from its task of tracking and hitting an adversary’s warhead to instead find a cold, tumbling satellite. “This was a one-time modification,” General Cartwright said.

Sensors from the American missile defense system were an important part of this mission, though, he said.

He stressed that “the intent here was to preserve human life,” but also acknowledged that “the technical degree of difficulty was significant” and the accomplishment earned cheers from personnel in command centers across the military, as well.

Completing a mission in which an interceptor designed for missile defense was used for the first time to attack a satellite, the Lake Erie, an Aegis-class cruiser, fired a single missile just before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the missile hit the satellite as it traveled at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the Pentagon said in its official announcement.

As they say, missile defense technology essentially seeks to hit a moving space vehicle like a "bullet hitting a bullet."

It's a massive feat of military technology, and a good round of U.S. hegemonic chest thumping is rightly in order.

McCain Will Fight New York Times on Integrity Attacks

The New York Times has moved beyond journalism to political attack in its story on John McCain's ethics. Now the McCain campaign has vowed to fight back:

John McCain’s campaign promised to “go to war” against the New York Times Wednesday night after the newspaper posted its long-awaited story on McCain's alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship.

The story, word of which first leaked to the Drudge Report in December, relies on anonymous sources tied to McCain who said the lobbyist was warned to keep her distance to the senator in the run-up to his first presidential bid.

In the piece, McCain is quoted as telling Times Editor Bill Keller that he never did anything unethical. Top McCain advisers, including his former Senate chief of staff Mark Salter, also say on the record that there was nothing inappropriate done legislatively.

McCain told reporters Wednesday night when asked about the story: "I haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment."

But campaign aides had read it and spared no time in blasting the newspaper.

"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign," said communications director Jill Hazelbaker, in a prepared statement sent about an hour after the Times posted their story online. "John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."

The McCain campaign is using a two-pronged attack to push back against the story. First, they’ll argue it was a thinly sourced piece of innuendo journalism. But McCain aides will also strike at the source, using the Times’ liberal reputation as a means of self-defense to draw sympathy from the GOP’s conservative base.

To this end, a top McCain adviser accused the paper of practicing tabloid journalism.

“It’s not every night I stay up to read the National Enquirer,” said Charlie Black, who was with other top McCain aides at the senator’s Arlington, Va., headquarters to mount the counterattack.

Black noted he had taken heat from some of his “conservative friends’ after McCain won the paper’s endorsement in January. “We’re going to go to war with them now,” Black said. “We’ll see if that hurts or helps.”

I think this last part about appeasing "conservatives friends" might be a primary motivation for the campaign's retaliation.

Some of this stuff dates back to the 1980s, and it's not in McCain's interest to dwell on old, unfounded allegations too much. If people are thinking the Clintons are "so 1990s," why raise 'em by a decade?

Obama's Surge: Implications for McCain

Michael Medved assesses the implications of Barack Obama's win last night in the Wisconsin primary for the electoral strategy of the Republican nominee-in-waiting, John McCain:

With his unexpectedly decisive landslide victory in Wisconsin, Barack Obama has solidified his status as the Democratic frontrunner. His success owes less to his own political strategy than it does to a fatal mistake by Hillary Clinton. At the beginning of her campaign, Clinton made a decision to avoid an ideological battle with her rival and decided to frame the race as a choice between “experience” and “charisma,” between “work” and “words.” In other words she decided to fight Obama on personality, rather than the issues, and in terms of a compelling, appealing personality, Obama obviously wins. Clinton could have won an issues election – mobilizing the broad middle of the Democratic Party and leaving Obama to run to her left. She could have criticized him for preaching surrender on the war, for minimizing the reality of the terrorist threat, for calling unequivocally for big government and higher taxes, for rejecting the free trade heritage of Clintonism. Instead, she insisted that she and her opponent hardly differed on the issues, and it was only a question of who is better “prepared to take over as commander-in-chief from day one.” By emphasizing my “thirty-five years of work fighting for change” Hillary not only made herself sound older, but high-lighted the meaningless, trivial nature of the change she sought and, allegedly, achieved: most Democrats don’t like the results of the last thirty-five years of government policy....

John McCain needs to learn the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign. If he tries to emphasize his obviously superior experience and preparation for the job, he’ll lose in a landslide....

McCain and the GOP can win the election, but only if they draw crisp, unmistakable distinctions on the issues. Voters should face big questions: do you think America will be safer if we surrender to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere? Do you want to pay more in taxes to pay for a bigger government? Do you want to pay for your neighbor’s health insurance, or is the nation stronger when we emphasize individual responsibility? Do we want more freedom and opportunity or do we need more government supervision and regulation?

On these issues, on these crucial choices, Republicans can win. If McCain explains those choices clearly and persuasive (and I believe he will) then his problems with movement conservatives will take care of themselves.

If, on the other hand, he tries to run a campaign based on biography and personality, he’ll meet the same fate as Hillary Clinton. Unless McCain offers bold, positive, conservative vision for the future, and draws clear distinctions on the issues, then even this admirable war hero and maverick Naval aviator is, alas, likely to go down in flames.

I would only disagree slightly.

Medved might have added that Obama's success currently is found with core Democratic Party constituencies. He's mobilized the youth vote like no candidate has done before, and his message of change is more than that - it contains the elements of a social movement.

But a youth revolution is not inevitable this year, nor is it clear that such voter activism will bridge the generation gap between young and old in the general election (the Social Security cohort remains America's most active voting consituency).

McCain's not Clinton, and the Arizona Senator's appeal will be broader than Clinton's in the wider population. Moreover, much of Clinton's probem is her husband, Bill, and the electorate's pre-buyer's remorse on the possibility of four-more years of hyper-partisan political battle in the classic co-Cintonesque model.

McCain's coming off as a Churchillian figure this year. With American forces deployed around the world - in both current, dangerous hot spots and decades-old alliance committments - qualities such as wise national security leadership offer potentially hard-to-beat political contrasts between the candidates. Add to that the fact that McCain out-campaigns opponents thirty years his junior, and the potential liabilities of the "age factor" are dramatically reduced.

(McCain lives for the hustings and he's not one to back down on issues of character, integrity, or patriotism, a style Obama may have a difficult time counteracting.)

Having said all this, McCain would be wise to follow Medved's issues-based model against Obama, but not to the point of neglecting his "Churchillian enigma," a potentially powerful source of voter appeal this election.

Anatomy of the "McCain's Soft-on-Terror" Talking Point

Joe Klein, for all the abuse he takes for his infidelities to the hard-left antiwar mob, offers up some wildly intemperate Democratic Party talking points.

Here's Klein trumpeting the "McCain's soft-on-terror" talking point:

McCain's loose, inaccurate talk continues a sad pattern he has shown on national security matters, particularly with regard to Iraq, where he is a loose cannon, firing off hot-button words like "victory" and "surrender"--words that his hero General David Petraeus has never and would never use. As it now stands, McCain believes that Iraq, where 150,000 U.S. troops are chasing after 3,500 Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia terrorists, is the "central front" in the war against terrorism--and he is on the record opposed to taking military action against the real Al Qaeda, which is actively working to destabilize Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and may be planning the next 9/11 in the mountains of Waziristan. Indeed, the election results in Pakistan this week may lead to further instability, perhaps a military coup, which could make U.S. action--action, not invasion--to root out Al Qaeda all the more necessary.

A central foreign policy discussion in the general election should be: Are our troops deployed appropriately to meet the threats we are facing? Should we have more in Afghanistan and fewer in Iraq? (McCain, like Bush, has already ceded his authority as Commander-in-Chief on that decision to Petraeus, whom, he says, should have the last word on troop levels in Iraq--an abdication of authority that raises deep questions about McCain's ability to conduct a coherent national security policy.)

In sum, John McCain, who claims to take national security seriously, made a foolish statement to score political points last night. At the very least, I hope he retracts it and joins Obama in the effort to defeat Al Qaeda.

Klein's problem? Oversimplification and ignorance.

It's not just "3,500" al Qaeda terrorists were fighting in Iraq: Throughout the various phases of the war, Americans have battled an ex-Baathist Sunni-led insurgency, a Syrian-enabled foreign-fighter terrorist force (including deadbeat jihadis from across the region, from the Occupied Territories to Pakistan), an Iranian-backed Shiite-majoity campaign of barbarous ethnic cleansing, to today's version of a low-grade, high-variety anti-American campaign of bottom-of-the-barrel nihilist mayhem.

Klein should know better.

As for Afghanistan, it's simply false that the U.S. has neglected the Kabul regime in military/stategic planning:

Six years after the first U.S. bombs began falling on Afghanistan's Taliban government and its Al Qaeda guests, America is planning for a long stay.

Originally envisioned as a temporary home for invading U.S. forces, the sprawling American base at Bagram, a former Soviet outpost in the shadow of the towering Hindu Kush mountains, continues to expand.

Today the United States has about 25,000 troops in the country, and other NATO nations contribute another 25,000. The total is more than three times the number of international troops in the country four years ago, when the Taliban appeared defeated.

Current planning represents adjustments to missteps in U.S. strategy after initial post-conflict stabilization for Afghanistan proved inadequate to the suppression of renascent insurgent activity.

Of course, McCain's fully aware of our difficulties in Afghanistan. The Arizona Senator laid out his commitment to long-term Afghan security in a Foreign Affairs essay last year:

There has been progress in Afghanistan: over two million refugees have returned, the welfare of Afghan citizens has meaningfully improved, and historic elections took place in 2004. The Taliban's recent resurgence, however, threatens to lead Afghanistan to revert to its pre-9/11 role as a sanctuary for terrorists with global reach. Our recommitment to Afghanistan must include increasing NATO forces, suspending the debilitating restrictions on when and how those forces can fight, expanding the training and equipping of the Afghan National Army through a long-term partnership with NATO to make it more professional and multiethnic, and deploying significantly more foreign police trainers. It must also address the current political deficiencies in judicial reform, reconstruction, governance, and anticorruption efforts.

Klein's particularly off base in his silly criticism of McCain's national security credentials. It's hardly "punting" the war issue to a supreme commander in the field who's the architect of the most important strategic-military comeback since the Vietnam war.

The fact is, it's folly for the Democrats to even consider outflanking McCain on military matters:

If Democrats try to do that, they play into another campaign based on fear and military strength. And they lose, again. John Kerry's military career far out-trumped Bush's, but Republicans Swift-boated Kerry and won on a fear campaign.

The "McCain's Soft-on-Terror" talking point's not going to fly. Klein - and potential Democratic Party hangers-on - should rethink it before it bites him from behind.

Got Pride? Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain, and U.S. Democratization

I noted yesterday, in response to Michelle Obama's renunciation of her country, that her comments aren't unusual for "contemporary radical left opinion on the country, the war, and just about anything else."

Well, here's unscientific confirmation to that effect, straight from the horses mouth:

Either she's a liar or a sociopath:

“I am proud of my country. I don’t know about you? If you heard those words earlier, I am very proud of my country,” Mrs. McCain said while revving up the crowd and introducing her husband.

When asked at a media availability afterward if they were responding to Michelle Obama’s comments that this election was the “first time” she was “really proud” of the U.S., Sen. McCain deferred to his wife–who reiterated her previous words.

“I just wanted to make the statement that I have and always will be proud of my country,” McCain said.

How nice.

Given that she's lived through segregation, My Lai, and Abu Grhaib, though, that's a fairly disturbing thing to say. Always? Really? No matter what it does?

Of course this is about Michelle Obama's comments and the phony outrage machine that they inspired. To wingnuts, patriotism means loving your country like a child loves her mommy -- it can do no wrong. Ever.

(Adding, it's okay to hate the half of the country that votes Democrat, because those people aren't real Americans.)

The title of this post? "Cindy McCain Proud Of Jim Crow."

Of course she's not proud of Jim Crow. Her comments suggested nothing of the sort. No, she's being attacked for simply being patriotic, in contrast to the left's campaign of unreconstructed anti-Americanism.

Cindy McCain accepts something that the America-bashing left never will: No democracy is perfect.

Not only that, of all the great Western democracies, the United States has made the most radical committment toward the guarantees of full equality under the law and the pursuit of the unimpeachable human dignity in the history of Western civilization.

Have we always lived up to our ideals? Of course not. Thomas Jefferson himself embodies the contrast of our nation's lofty ideals and our ignominious crimes of injustice.

But we have overcome.

From Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, the march of American democratization - while not always swift - has been unrelenting.

As the radical left demonizes our heritage and those would would cherish it, minority voters are weilding more power in the presidential selection process than any time in history.

Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House, represents the triumph of progressive politics in the 21st century, but she herself is demonized by the very left-wing forces who should be her greatest natural allies.

I have repeatedly indicated that the hard-left is devoid of pragmatism and principle. The goal of the country's nihilist detractors is to tear down and obliterate the nation's system of values, a structure repeatedly indicted as irredeemably evil.

Remember the words of Lee Harris on this:

America-bashing is anti-Americanism at its most radical and totalizing. Its goal is not to advise, but to condemn; not to fix, but to destroy. It repudiates every thought of reform in any normal sense; it sees no difference between American liberals and American conservatives; it views every American action, both present and past, as an act of deliberate oppression and systemic exploitation. It is not that America went wrong here or there; it is that it is wrong root and branch. The conviction at the heart of those who engage in it is really quite simple: that America is an unmitigated evil, an irredeemable enormity.

Defenders of Michelle Obama will deny and obstruct the real message of Cindy McCain: There's no shame in celebrating America's democratic achievements and progress.

Much of campaign '08 will be waged on this very axis.

McCain Victory Speech in Wisconsin

During our regular strategy communications, my neoconservative blogging ally Great Satan's Girlfriend pumped up John McCain's speech last night in Wisconsin. Here it is, via YouTube:

The text is here, at the New York Times:

My friends, we have traveled a great distance together already in this campaign, and overcome more than a few obstacles. But as I said last week, now comes the hard part and, for America, the bigger decision. Will we make the right changes to restore the people's trust in their government and meet the great challenges of our time with wisdom, and with faith in the values and ability of Americans for whom no challenge is greater than their resolve, courage and patriotism? Or will we heed appeals for change that ignore the lessons of history, and lack confidence in the intelligence and ideals of free people?

I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history and a return to the false promises and failed policies of a tired philosophy that trusts in government more than people. Our purpose is to keep this blessed country free, safe, prosperous and proud. And the changes we offer to the institutions and policies of government will reflect and rely upon the strength, industry, aspirations and decency of the people we serve.

We live in a world of change, some of which holds great promise for us and all mankind and some of which poses great peril. Today, political change in Pakistan is occurring that might affect our relationship with a nuclear armed nation that is indispensable to our success in combating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere. An old enemy of American interests and ideals is leaving the world stage, and we can glimpse the hope that freedom might someday come to the people of Cuba. A self-important bully in Venezuela threatens to cut off oil shipments to our country at a time of sky-rocketing gas prices. Each event poses a challenge and an opportunity. Will the next President have the experience, the judgment experience informs, and the strength of purpose to respond to each of these developments in ways that strengthen our security and advance the global progress of our ideals? Or will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan, and sitting down without pre-conditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons?

The most important obligation of the next President is to protect Americans from the threat posed by violent extremists who despise us, our values and modernity itself. They are moral monsters, but they are also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic zeal, which celebrates murder, has access to science, technology and mass communications, and is determined to acquire and use against us weapons of mass destruction. The institutions and doctrines we relied on in the Cold War are no longer adequate to protect us in a struggle where suicide bombers might obtain the world's most terrifying weapons.

If we are to succeed, we must rethink and rebuild the structure and mission of our military; the capabilities of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies; the purposes of our alliances; the reach and scope of our diplomacy; the capacity of all branches of government to defend us. We need to marshal all elements of American power: our military, economy, investment, trade and technology and our moral credibility to win the war against Islamic extremists and help the majority of Muslims, who believe in progress and peace, win the struggle for the soul of Islam.

The challenges and opportunities of the global economy require us to change some old habits of our government as well. But we will fight for the right changes; changes that understand our strengths and rely on the common sense and values of the American people....

I'm not the youngest candidate. But I am the most experienced. I know what our military can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how Congress works, and how to make it work for the country and not just the re-election of its members. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. And I know who I am and what I want to do.

McCain points to the probably fall matchup when he alludes "confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate"

I don't seek the office out of a sense of entitlement. I owe America more than she has ever owed me. I have been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. I have never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I haven't been proud of the privilege. Don't tell me what we can't do. Don't tell me we can't make our country stronger and the world safer. We can. We must. And when I'm President we will.

McCain points to a likely fall matchup against Barack Obama, and warns against "the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate."

Note also McCain's clarity, for example when he says "I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it."

Is this "the politics of fear," the buzzphrase of left-wing ostriches who hold the United States as the biggest threat to world peace?

No, McCain speaks the temerity of truth, a Churchillian amalgam of genuine leadership and resolve.

McCain Wins Wisconsin!

Barack Obama and John McCain are tonight's big winners in Wisconsin, the New York Times reports:

Senator Barack Obama won the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday by a comfortable margin, extending his victory streak to nine states and forcing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton into a must-win scenario on March 4 as the nominating fight heads to the crucial states of Ohio and Texas.

The victory reinforces Mr. Obama’s position as the front-runner in the Democratic race, even as the Clinton campaign hopes the New York senator can stage a comeback next month when a large haul of delegates are up for grabs in Ohio and Texas.

On the Republican side, Senator John McCain solidly defeated former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. Mr. McCain, the presumptive nominee, is hoping a commanding victory in Wisconsin will help quash the rebellion within the party.

Freezing conditions did not stop thousands of Wisconsin residents from voting in the presidential primaries, and the votes were just beginning to be counted.

Mr. Obama’s victory was helped in part by support from groups that have traditionally tilted toward Mrs. Clinton, including female and middle-aged voters. Mr. Obama received more than half of the votes cast by white residents and he split the female vote with Mrs. Clinton, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool.

“The change we seek is still months and miles away and we need the good people of Texas to help us get there,” Mr. Obama said in a speech in Houston. “We’re here because we believe that change is possible and that we have never needed it more than we do right now!”

In Ohio, Mrs. Clinton appeared to reference Mr. Obama in her remarks. The election, she said, “is about picking a president who relies not just on words, but on work, on hard work to get America back to work.”

“We can’t just have speeches, we’ve got to have solutions, and we need those solutions for America,” she said. “Because while words matter, the best words in the world aren’t enough, unless you match them with action.” Mrs. Clinton added, “I will restore our leadership and moral authority in the world without delays, without on the job training, from day one.”

Mr. McCain, appearing before supporters in Ohio, claimed the Republican nomination and immediately launched into what seemed to be an aggressive broadside against Mr. Obama, dismissing “the peals of change that ignore the lessons of history and lack confidence in the intelligence and ideals of free people.”

“I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change,” Mr. McCain said.

Eloquent and empty?

Not that empty. Obama's been clear in his victory speeches that he'd ratify the antiwar left's surrender agenda. Indeed, Obama's been one of the biggest Democratic retreatists in the Senate majority over the last year, often denouncing the "failed" mission in Iraq.

There's increased attention to a likely McCain-Obama matchup in the fall, which is looking more and more likely given Hillary's complete collapse. Tonight's results clarify matters a bit - and I'm getting a kick out of McCain going after Obama's audacity of retreat!