Obama Confronts ’60s Radicals as Troubling Campaign Issue

It had to happen sooner or later.

As those now buzzing around the blogosphere know, George Stephanopoulos questioned Barack Obama last night on his relationship to terrorist radicals of the 1960s.

I've discussed Obama's dangerous friends a nunber of times (see "Obama's Circle of Friends: The America-Hating Left"), but the New York Times picks up on the story in today's paper:

On March 6, 1970, a bomb explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village town house, killing three members of the radical Weather Underground and driving other members of the group even deeper into hiding. On Wednesday night, those events emerged as the focus of a sharp exchange between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama at their debate in Philadelphia.

Mr. Obama was asked by a moderator, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, about his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former Weather Underground leader who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the early 1970s, the Weathermen, who took their name from a line in a Bob Dylan song, claimed responsibility for bombing the Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department Building and banks, courthouses and police stations.

Mr. Ayers is married to Bernardine Dohrn, another Weather Underground figure. Both were indicted in 1970 for inciting to riot and conspiracy to bomb government buildings, but charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

Mr. Ayers is listed as a member of the nine-member board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an offshoot of the Woods Charitable Fund, founded in 1941 by a prominent lawyer and telephone company executive. According to the fund’s Web site, it has focused in recent years on “issues that affected the area’s least advantaged, including welfare reform, affordable housing” and “tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty.”

For a time, Mr. Obama was on the board with Mr. Ayers, though he no longer has a formal association with the group. At the debate, he described Mr. Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” Mr. Obama said he was being unjustly linked to “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old.”

Mr. Stephanopoulos and Mrs. Clinton also referred to statements by Mr. Ayers in an article in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001, that Mrs. Clinton said were “deeply hurtful to people in New York.”

“I don’t regret setting bombs,” Mr. Ayers said then. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

It turns out that ABC News - and Stephanopoulos in particular - is coming under fire for its handling of last night's debate.

A sampling of commentary shows, for example, that Wednesday night's was the "worst" debate ever, that "Lee Atwater Lives!!!," and that history will record the event as "Obama's Waterloo."

See the full roundup at Memeorandum.

Obama Reports Charitable Contributions to Trinity United

Barack Obama's tax returns show a reported income of more the $4 million for 2007, the Associated Press reports.

But what's particularly eye-popping here is the substantial tithe Obama paid to Trinity United Church of Christ, the home-pulpit of America-bashing black liberationist Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, made $4.2 million last year as widespread interest in the presidential candidate pushed the sales of his two books.

In tax returns the campaign released Wednesday, the Obamas reported a significant jump in their income from the previous year as profits from the books "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope" accounted for some $4 million. The Obamas paid federal taxes of $1.4 million and donated $240,370 to charity.

Their salaried income was $260,735, which included his $157,102 salary as a U.S. senator and hers of $103,633 as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

For part of 2007, Michelle Obama collected a salary for serving on the board of Westchester, Ill.-based TreeHouse Foods Inc., which produces pickles, nondairy powdered creamer and other products. She resigned in May after two years on the board.

The position had generated some complaints because TreeHouse is a supplier to Wal-Mart, and Barack Obama has criticized some of Wal-Mart's policies and treatment of employees.

The Obamas reported $29,443 from Treehouse Foods.

In 2006, Obama and his wife reported income of $991,296. The sum included Obama's Senate salary of $157,082 and his wife's earnings of $273,618 from her position as an administrator at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle Obama also earned $51,200 in director's fees from TreeHouse Inc., a food distributor.

They paid $277,431 in federal taxes — an overpayment of $40,856, which they designated for estimated tax payments this year.

Among the charitable donations in 2007 was $26,270 to Trinity United Church of Christ, where the incendiary sermons of Obama's former pastor have created problems for the candidate. The Obamas' largest charitable donation was $50,000 to the United Negro College Fund. They also gave $35,000 to CARE.

The campaign released the returns just hours before a candidate debate with rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Think of the significance of this reporting:

Obama, a millionaire, can be situated among the Democratic Party's socioeconomic demographic most comfortable in condescending to lower status white voters (working class Americans were "aspirational," and not "downtrodden," according to recent commentary and analysis).

He also has given tens of thousands of dollars to a church which sponsors religious teachings holding that the United States itself is responsible for the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly three thousand innocents.

Yet, while Obama has refused to renounce all ties to that hate-backing religious institution, his wife, Michelle, quit the board of Treehouse Foods because of ties to Walmart, a corporation that accounts for a major portion of the increase in living standards (through its low-price policies) for millions of the same lower income people that the Illinois Senator has attacked as bitter.

Now that is just disastrously symbolic of how out of touch - no, anti-American - Barack Obama really is, not just in his refusal to sever all ties to "GOD DAMN AMERICA" theology, nor in his elitist condescension, but in his abject, snobbily hypocritical pandering to the very interest group that he's dependent on for election in the fall.

Now that's something worthy of some attention!

For more on Obama, see the coverage of last night's ABC News Democratic debate.

Obama Support Holding Among "Bitter" Voters

It's seems like a juicy conundrum, but the very voters who Barack Obama dissed last weekend as bitterly clinging to their guns and bibles have yet to defect from the Illinois Senator's column.

Jeff Jones at Gallup has the report:

As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton prepare for Wednesday night's debate in Philadelphia, Gallup's daily tracking indicates that Obama's support has yet to suffer following his widely reported remarks about small-town voters being "bitter." The remarks were first reported on April 11.

Obama said in essence that small-town voters are bitter because the government has not been able to help their economic plight. As a result, they "cling" to religion and drift toward narrow issues such as gun rights, and anti-trade or anti-immigration policies, instead of their larger economic interests.

Clinton has criticized Obama's comments on the campaign trail in recent days and is sure to remind Pennsylvania voters of those remarks in the debate Wednesday night.

Clinton and other Obama critics have characterized his remarks as being insensitive to less-well-educated, lower-income, and religious voters. If his comments are to affect any voters, presumably it would be voters in these subgroups. But an in-depth analysis of Gallup Poll Daily tracking data collected both before and after the controversy shows little or no change in support for Obama as the Democratic nominee among these types of Democratic voters.

The analysis is based on tracking data of Democratic voters' nomination preferences immediately before (April 8-10) and immediately after (April 12-14) Obama's remarks became a major campaign issue. Although Gallup's tracking data do not have a variable that identifies small-town residents per se, it can identify a number of groups that have suffered economically and are presumably the types of voters to whom Obama was referring.

Jones breaks down the data into variables for income, education, financial status, religion, and black versus white ethnicity.

So far, Clinton's been running stronger with lower-income and less-educated constituencies, but her numbers relative to Obama's with these groups are roughly unchanged, so apparently Obama's gaffe hasn't made much of a difference.

Also interesting is Jones' suggestion that despite Obama's comments most likely being directed at working-class whites, the data show no decline in support among these voters.

Here's the conclusion:

It certainly appears that, as of April 14 interviewing, Obama's remarks have not hurt him -- either among the Democratic electorate as a whole or among the Democratic constituencies Obama was referring to. Wednesday night's debate may shine a spotlight on those comments and make them known to a wider audience, so the possibility remains that Obama has not completely weathered the storm.

Conceivably, Obama could be hurt more in a general-election context, where voters with the characteristics he describes might already have an inkling to vote Republican, and such remarks could nudge them more in that direction. But Gallup's general-election tracking data -- like that for the Democratic nomination -- have so far shown no deterioration in Obama's standing versus presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

Be sure to look at John Judis' analysis yesterday at the New Republic, where he cited new research indicating prior weaknesses for Obama among traditional working-class, rustbelt states in the November election.

Given that Republican and allied 527s envision a gold mine of "black liberationist-bitterness" attack-campaign fodder, the numbers on general election matchups bear watching closely if (and more realistically, when) Obama secures the nomination.

The Wright controversy's America-bashing sermons, followed up by video-snippet campaign-spots of Obama's "clinging" comments to the San Francisco socialist set, will provide a big one-two punch likely to rival in significance the GOP's "Willie Horton" ads from 1988.

Note here as well that there's been some very stimulating analytical online debates surrounding the possible socio-political implications of Obama's bumbling.

In particular, see Ross Douthat, "What Obama Really Got Wrong":

Timothy Noah, surveying the literature on the white working class and its voting behavior in the wake of Obama's San Francisco fiasco, tiptoes close to an important point about the roots of culture-war politics but doesn't quite get there. Citing a fascinating new paper by Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abramowitz....

Apparently Noah's review of Teixeira and Abramowitz found working-class Americans to be decidedly upbeat about their economic chances - they are more "aspirational" than downtrodden - and the least likely to find appeals to economic "bitterness" attractive. It's among the more affluent and educated constiuencies where "bitterness" pandering would find more traction.

Douthat takes this further:

If well-educated voters are more likely to base their party ID on culture-war issues than are voters without college degrees, then what's happening within the non-college educated contingent? Which working-class voters are most likely to base their party ID on culture-war issues? Well, given that the working class has trended away from the Democratic Party overall, even as - pace Thomas Frank - the relationship between party affiliation and income has grown stronger, not weaker, it seems like it's the more prosperous members of the working class who are responding to culture-war issues and trending GOPward. (And yes, much of the working class has grown more prosperous during the long GOP ascendancy, contrary to what you may have heard.) In other words, both within the no-college/some-college demographic and in the country as a whole, the Obama line has it exactly backward: Voting on issues like "God, guns and gays" is an artifact of (relative) prosperity, not immiseration....

One can argue, plausibly, that the Republican Party's response to these cultural anxieties of late has been insufficient or misguided, more concerned with finding scapegoats than solutions, and that the country needs a pro-family agenda that goes deeper than opposing gay marriage. But Obama didn't make an argument along these lines. Instead, he said something that wasn't just politically dumb - it was analytically dumb, as well. And that, pace Ezra and Andrew and sundry others, is why these comments matter: Because they suggest that Barack Obama buys into a narrative of American politics, and American life, that simply isn't true.

This debate will ring true to those familiar with the "post-materialist value change" hypothesis, which suggests that those at lower levels of material well-being have been driven toward conservative social issues in the post-WWII era, as the hardships of earlier crisis like the Great Depresssion and 1940s war-rationing have faded amid increasing societal abundance and relative economic security.

The more economically-secure, better educated (condescending) cohorts have gravitated to "post-material" issues such as gay rights, environmental protection, and gender equality.

What Douthat seems to be getting at is that the old party alignments - where the Democrats naturally were the party of unionized blue-collar voters - have become unsustainable when the traditional partisan cleavages of class standing have disappeared and hot-button social issues emerged as more compelling for traditional middle American constituencies. The "Reagan Democrats," for example, were voters who shifted to the GOP in the 1980s on questions of national defense, and particularly on polarizing wedge-issues such as race, rights, and taxes.

I think Douthat's right to suggest that Obama's words are more signifcant than some commentators have allowed.

I don't think that the Democrats are going to be able to make much additional headway into working-class GOP support, particularly if Obama's the nominee.

The Illinois Senator is badly out of touch with "fly over" America, and once we get into full general election campaign mode, Bittergate's going to come back haunting the Democrats like the devil.

Joe Lieberman May Give RNC Keynote Address

Senator Joseph Lieberman may give the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in September, The Hill reports:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, is leaving open the possibility of giving a keynote address on behalf of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) at the Republican National Convention in September.

Republicans close to the McCain campaign say Lieberman’s appearance at the convention, possibly before a national primetime audience, could help make the case that the presumptive GOP nominee has a record of crossing the aisle. That could appeal to much-needed independent voters....

Lieberman, a staunch Iraq war supporter, has taken the Democratic Party to task for its push to withdraw from Iraq, likening that approach to surrendering to al Qaeda. He has called for aggressive action against Iran and pushed measures that some Democrats have likened to war-mongering.

He continues to criticize the Democratic candidates for their foreign policy positions, and says the party has jettisoned its tradition of being strong on defense by pandering to its liberal base.

Making those points to a Republican audience in front of national primetime viewers would make a strong case for McCain’s candidacy, which is based largely on his national security experience, Republicans say.

“I think it would be a great idea,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), McCain’s closest Hill ally. “If you looked at economic issues and social issues, I bet you we disagree a vast majority of the time. But when you look at what the primary job of what a United States senator is in the age in which we live, we have pretty much universal agreement — and that’s to protect the homeland.”

“I think Sen. Lieberman would be a very powerful spokesperson,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), a former general chairman of the Republican National Committee. “I think he really is someone who helps Sen. McCain break through to independent voters.”

Lieberman’s presence could potentially anger some social conservatives because of his positions supporting abortion rights and other liberal values. But Lieberman’s arguments that McCain is best suited to lead the country at a time of war would override those objections, said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a hero of the religious right.

“If he’s talking about security issues, Iran, Joe is fabulous on those issues,” Brownback said.

The greatest risk is to Lieberman himself, as Senate Democrats may never forgive him for backing the opposition so prominently (and thus Lieberman could lose power in Congress). McCain won't have too much difficulty on the right, actually, as many social conservative Malkin-tents and Rush-bots are still mad at McCain anyway, so far-right anger will be a replay from the primaries.

In any case, beyond reving up the independent vote, few figures in American politics can speak more authoritatively or eloquently on the Iraq war than Lieberman.

I look forward not only to a Lieberman RNC address, but to the screeching outrage among lefties for what will be alleged as the ultimate incantation of the Connecticut Senator's partisan apostasies.

See also, "Democrats Hijacked by Hard-Left Base, Lieberman Says."

Glenn Greenwald: True Hypocrite

It's interesting that Glenn Greenwald, in his new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, takes down John Wayne as the template for the prancing, hypocritcal he-man Republican.

I live in Orange County, California, where Wayne lived. On occasion I stop by his resting place, to sit under the tree by his headstone, and reflect aloud about life in the United States today. It's pieceful there; and while Wayne wasn't my favorite actor, I've always appreciated the "True Grit" he brought to his roles.

I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but I was reminded of my Wayne visits in reading Dean Barnett's review of Greenwald over at the Weekly Standard, especially this passage:

Greenwald posits John Wayne as the archetypal Republican - a guy who acted tough and noble but whose personal life was ignoble and at times pathetic. Greenwald acidly notes, "John Wayne flamboyantly paraded around as the embodiment of courage, masculinity, patriotism, wholesomeness and warrior virtues" when in fact he was a Lothario who went to great lengths to avoid military service during World War II. (Worse still, Wayne inflicted "The Green Berets" on the movie-going nation in the 1960s, a cinematic crime that can never be fully forgiven.)

You'll want to take special note of Greenwald's none-too-subtle code language that has the Duke "flamboyantly parading." Throughout "Great American Hypocrites," neocons and other Republicans are reliably "prancing" or perambulating in some less than manful way. Greenwald stretches with both holding up John Wayne as a Republican idol and all his talk of prancing. For what it's worth, in my conversations with neocons, I've never heard a single one of them mention John Wayne. I've also noticed that they seldom "prance" let alone "flamboyantly parade." Well, maybe a couple do, but they are the exceptions.

I can't vouch for too many neocons, but I doubt Wayne's the biggest model for aspiring prancing-warmongers out there, but hey, easy strawman-ish case selection for Greenwald I suppose.

Barnett, interestingly, says that Greenwald's a good guy:

I KNOW THIS WON'T endear me to many of my fellow conservatives, but I like Glenn Greenwald. I've spoken to him a few times on the radio and have enjoyed our jousts.

I simply can't imagine having a rousing intellectual exchange with the guy, but at least Barnett's fair-minded when he notes:

The sad fact is that Greenwald often opts for personal attacks rather than reasoned argument.

It's sad because, frankly, Greenwald does have some intellectual firepower, but his ad hominems are so grating that one wants to let him have it upside the head.

But check Jules Crittenden as well:

There is no indication ... [that this is] in fact a serious book, or anything but a partisan bid for money and attention. You’re welcome, by the way, Glenn, for this bit of gratuitous attention. It’s my pleasure. However infantile the book is … [Barnett's] review itself is worth a read. Given Greenwald’s boundless self-admiration, I presume the cover has a big picture of the sockpuppet himself on it.

No, apparently it doesn’t. Astonishing. I would have thought the unself-conscious self-adoration would have trumped other artistic, marketing, humility, self-mockery concerns, etc.

You can admire Glenn and his curriculum vitae at the link, and also observe how busy he is going to be promoting himself and his latest great contribution to western civilization. It’s already got one, but for the second edition, here’s a suggested edit on the subtitle: Takes One to Know One.

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner, shrewdly wasting less time and space on this than I did, proclaims Greenwald “one of the most easily and profitably ignored voices in the blogosphere.” Considering the competition, that’s no insignificant accomplishment.

Prior Greenwald scholarship, with links to the important work others have done in the study of Greenwald:

Lacking Even the Ethics of a Journalist.

Here's this from book's blurb at Barnes and Noble:

More a partisan screed than a reasoned argument meant to persuade undecided readers, this repetitive text frequently devolves into personal attacks and vast generalizations.

But also note Barnett's conclusion:

Great American Hypocrites will likely be a big hit. Whatever the equivalent of red meat is for the angry left, this book is it.

That sounds about right.

Racial Stereotypes Alive and Well in Democrats' Battle

The debate on racial progress in America's taken some strange twists and turns lately.

It was just two weeks ago, on the 40th commemoration of the death of Martin Luther King Jr., when some commentators argued that the slain civil rights leader's words revealed not a nation living out the true meaning of its creed, but rather a country of implacable, irredeedable racism, a country mired in a system of hopelessly hierarchical minority oppression.

This, of course, is a dishonest misrepresentation of the King legacy, and the debate's not over.

Now, after a weekend in which Barack Obama's faced a massive political crisis over his intemperate claims of "bitter" middle Americans "clinging" to guns and bibles, it turns out that at base, it's all racism again!

Unbelievable?

Well, listen to David Shipler tell it at today's Los Angeles Times:

Whether by calculation or coincidence, Hillary Clinton and Republicans who have attacked Barack Obama for elitism have struck a chord in a long-standing symphony of racial codes. It is a rebuke that gets magnified by historic beliefs about what blacks are and what they have no right to be....

This could not happen as dramatically were it not for embedded racial attitudes. "Elitist" is another word for "arrogant," which is another word for "uppity," that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.

In a country so changed that a biracial man who is considered black has a shot at the presidency, the subterranean biases are much less discernible now than when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. They are subtle, unacknowledged and unacceptable in polite company. But they lurk below, lending resonance to the criticisms of Obama. Black professionals know the double standard. They are often labeled negatively for traits deemed positive in whites: A white is assertive, a black is aggressive; a white is resolute, a black is pushy; a white is candid, a black is abrasive; a white is independent, a black is not a team player. Prejudice is a shape shifter, adapting to acceptable forms.

So although Obama's brilliance defies the stubborn stereotype of African Americans as unintelligent, there is a companion to that image -- doubts about blacks' true capabilities -- that may heighten concerns about his inexperience. Through the racial lens, a defect can be enlarged into a disability. He is "not ready," a phrase employed often when blacks are up for promotion.

When Clinton mocked Obama for the supposed emptiness of his eloquence, the chiding had a faint historical echo from Thomas Jefferson's musings in "Notes on the State of Virginia" that "in music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time," but "one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid."

This slander that blacks had more show than substance was handed down through later generations as a body-mind dichotomy, with physical and mental prowess as opposites. Overt "compliments" -- they've got rhythm, they can dance, they can jump -- were paired with the silent assumption of inferior intellect.

That's a pretty long stretch - if you ask me - from arguing that Obama's out of touch with Americans of the rustbelt, to suggesting he's of shortened mental comprehension.

It was just last year when people were talking rapturously about how far equal protection had advanced in a nation where the top Democratic Party contenders were a black man and a white woman.

Now we're being told that the grim, ghostly legacy of white supremacy has risen from the depths, casting a pall of "racial resonance" across the land.

I think folks should take a step back. What's happening is the natural interest groups battles of the Democratic Party are building to a climax. As Jerry Bowyer noted the other day, identity politics is now "playing out as both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battle for votes among Democratic Party factions."

Perhaps this is good. Maybe we're seeing the kind national conversation on race that we failed to have during the 1990s-era of post-Cold War political retrenchment and DNC political moderation.

But this reactionary racial resonance line's taking things too far. Barack Obama's previously stressed themes of education and personal responsibility as the key avenues of black upward mobility in the 21st century.

If we can ever get the Democratic nomination battles settled, perhaps the Illinois Senator can return to the themes that put him in the national spotlight in the first place.

The moment won't come too soon.

The Jefferson Memorial Fascist Jackboot Controversy

There's been a big libertarian outrage over the Jefferson Memorial dancing controversy this last weekend. "' Footloose' vs. Fascism" is how "The Other McCain" characterizes the story.

Yet, as today's Washington Post points out, the libertarians haven't quite accurately nailed down Jefferson's ideals:

It is just before midnight at the Jefferson Memorial, and as the celebrants dance in honor of the founding father's birthday, wind whips across the Tidal Basin and spotlights gleam off the towering bronze statue in the echoing sanctum of the monument.

Suddenly, in a video and audio recording of the event, a shadow looms and a voice commands: "You gotta go. Leave. You're acting disorderly."

"Why?" a voice asks. There is a commotion. Protest. Cursing. A woman, a former ambassador's daughter, is handcuffed, arrested and taken away. And within moments, an event that participants say was a simple libertarian celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday turns into a tense encounter between police and the public.

This was Saturday, and the face-off between the celebrants and the U.S. Park Police and private security guards has splashed across YouTube and the blogosphere. It has also prompted complaints about what some say is a trampling of the individual rights that Jefferson championed.

The author of the Declaration of Independence would have been appalled at the conduct of the police, the celebrants say.

Not so fast, says one noted Jefferson scholar: The country's third president would more likely have been angered at the civic disobedience of the revelers, which he would have seen as a threat to orderly democracy.

The Park Police, for their part, say the group was violating a federal law that prohibits disturbances in the sanctuaries of hallowed memorials.

"They were dancing and just generally making a distraction, and the chamber is posted that you are to remain quiet so you don't disturb other visitors," said Sgt. Robert Lachance, a Park Police spokesman. "The chamber of the Jefferson Memorial is a restricted area for demonstrations or causing any kind of activity that could distract other visitors . . . [in order] to preserve a spirit of tranquility and reverence."

Jason Talley, 33, of Crystal City, whose recording of the incident quickly landed on YouTube, denied that the group was being disorderly. He said the late hour was picked to avoid disturbing others: "We were there to celebrate Thomas Jefferson and his ideas. We were not prepared for a police action...."

"So you're saying the state is going to reject us?" Talley says. "It's Thomas Jefferson's birthday. We're here to celebrate that. And the state is throwing us out. There is something wrong with America when we get thrown out of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial when we're silent and peaceful and celebratory!"

"Thomas Jefferson's looking down, and he'd be very dissatisfied," Talley says.

Quite the contrary, says Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor of history at U-Va.

"What they're referring to here is Jefferson's endorsement of popular resistance to tyrannical authority," he said yesterday. "What these folks were involved in was provoking authorities into having to enforce the law. Jefferson was very anal about obedience to the law.

I love that last line.

I wonder if it's possible to be anal before the psychological concept was invented.

Photo Credit: Washinton Post

Obama Fight Hurting Democratic Prospects

The first thing to note here is Obama's flag pin in the picture above.

A veteran gave it to the senator at yesterday's campaign event, and Obama would do well to stick that on his lapel every day. It turns out, as the New York Times reports, things aren't going so well on the Democratic side:

The battle between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama over whether Mr. Obama belittled voters in small towns appears to have hardened the views of both candidates’ supporters and stirred anxiety among many Democrats about the party’s prospects in the fall.

For five days, as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have tangled more ferociously than at almost any point in the last year, interviews with voters in Pennsylvania suggested little new movement toward either side as the primary campaign there entered its final week. A snapshot of public opinion, a poll by Quinnipiac University, showed no change in the race from a week ago.

“There’s a lot of truth to what he said,” said Ezar Lowe, 55, a pastor at a church in Ambridge, Pa., a city along the Ohio River that has been steadily draining population since steel mills began closing two decades ago. “I’ve seen it.”

The closing week of the Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania is awash in fresh accusations of elitism and condescension. After sparring over those topics from afar, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama will come together Wednesday evening at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for their first debate in nearly two months, which will be televised nationally on ABC.

Cindy Phillips, 54, a flight attendant from Leetsdale, Pa., said she had intended to vote for Mrs. Clinton before the latest feud developed. But she said her position was solidified by Mr. Obama’s remarks that many small-town Pennsylvania voters, “bitter” over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

“He just doesn’t know Pennsylvania,” Ms. Phillips said in an interview. “People here are religious because that’s their background, not because they’re mad about jobs.”

For six weeks, Mr. Obama had diligently worked to introduce himself to the voters of Pennsylvania. He visited small towns and factories, bowling alleys and beer halls, with every picture designed to allay any concerns that voters harbored about his presidential candidacy.

Now, though, advisers to Mr. Obama wonder whether those images — and, more importantly, the political gains that even his detractors believed he was making in the state — have been overtaken by criticism over what his rivals suggested was a profound misunderstanding of small-town values.

On Tuesday, as Mr. Obama campaigned about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh in Washington, Pa., he said he was “amused about this notion as an elitist.” Asked by a member of the audience if he believed the accusations were racially motivated, he said no, adding, “I think it’s politics.”

It is a diverse state, but the voters that seemed the toughest for Mr. Obama to win over were the same ones that had helped Mrs. Clinton defeat him in Ohio: working-class whites, especially those in regions that have suffered through decades of economic decline.

These Reagan Democrats — people who might lean Republican on national security and social issues but who look to Democrats on the economy — could determine whether Mrs. Clinton performs strongly enough against Mr. Obama in Pennsylvania for her campaign to continue.

They are also helping to test the limits of Mr. Obama’s appeal, a skeptical focus group that to varying degrees has become a proxy for his ability to calm concerns about his race, his values and whether he can connect with voters beyond the Democratic Party’s base.

“It seems he’s kind of ripping on small towns, and I’m a small town girl,” said Becki Farmer, 32, who lives in Rochester, Pa., another Ohio River town hit hard by the closed steel mills. “That’s where your good morals and good judgment come from, growing up in small towns.”

Indeed, advisers to Mr. Obama concede, his job has been made that much more complicated by his remarks about bitterness among small-town voters. Though it remains unclear what effect the episode will have in the long run, it has suddenly prompted a series of questions — and worry — from Democrats about whether Mr. Obama could weather a Republican onslaught in the fall, should he win the presidential nomination.

Well, actually, it's not that unclear. As John Judis pointed out yesterday, to win in November against John McCain, Barack Obama - as the Democratic nominee - will have to win "most of the industrial heartland states that stretch from Pennsylvania to Missouri."

The electoral math for Obama was already difficult before "Bittergate." Now it's even worse.

Photo Credit: New York Times

More at Memeorandum.

Hillary Clinton is GOP Mouthpiece?

I suppose it's an empirical question as to whether this year's Democratic race is nastier than primary battles of earlier years.

Some have argued that no matter how divisive the race gets, the implications for the November general election contest will be minimal: The party faithful will rally around their nominee to battle a common, despised GOP opponent.

Perhaps, but in the meantime the Obama forces are attacking Hillary Clinton as worse than Benedict Arnold:

Liberal bloggers are slamming Clinton for reinforcing conservative attacks on Obama:

• Arianna Huffington: "John McCain should go on vacation, Hillary Clinton is doing his job for him. [...] Clinton's cynical distortion of Obama's remarks is in keeping with her campaign's modus operandi. On the foreign policy front, we've been fed a steady diet of her RNC-patented attacks: No Democrat can be trusted with national security -- except her. Obama hasn't crossed the threshold to be commander-in-chief. Etc. Now she's turned to the domestic policy section of the RNC playbook, twisting Obama's words in a way that confirms every right-wing demagogic caricature of her own Party."

• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "While I find the whole 'don't repeat right-wing frames' kind of tired if useful, Hillary Clinton's charges of elitism are explicitly reinforcing right-wing charges. How do we know this? Well, because right-wingers are attacking [Obama] with her rhetoric."

• TPM's Marshall: "With the [Jeremiah] Wright business and now with this, the more nuanced version of the Clinton line has been that what 'we' think is not really the point. It's what Republicans will do with it in the fall. And that's a real concern that I definitely have. I won't deny it. I've never thought Obama was a perfect candidate. But as we get deeper into the primary calendar, increasingly so, this 'what the Republicans will do' line has become more of a simulacrum, or a license, if you will, to do what Republicans actually do do. That is to say, to grab for political advantage by peddling stereotypes about Democrats and liberals that are really no less offensive than the ones we're talking about about Americans from small town and rural America."

• Marshall continues: "And seeing Hillary go on about how Obama has contempt for folks in small town America, how he's elitist, well...no, it's not because I think she's either. I never have. But after seeing her hit unfairly with just the same stuff for years, it just encapsulates the last three-plus months of her campaign which I can only describe as a furious descent into nonsense and self-parody. Part of it makes me want to cry. But at this point all I can really do is laugh."

Meanwhile, Balloon Juice's John Cole unloads on Clinton: "I am well aware that I am beyond the point where I can discuss Hillary rationally, but I really can not stress enough how much I have grown to hate her. [...] This past week-end was just the final boiling point for me, as I watched her run to every microphone with a zeal that would impress Chuck Schumer to claim that America's blue collar workers are under assault from a San Francisco effete liberal latte-sipping out-of-touch Obama. [...] This would merely be stupid and offensive if she actually believed that Obama doesn't like or looks down on average Americans, but she knows that isn't true. As it is, though, it is far more than offensive and stupid, as she just thinks she has an angle where she can score some political points. [...] The woman is a moral black hole -- soulless, empty, calculating and nasty all the way to her core."

But at least the bloggers over at American Prospect are consistent:

TAPPED's Kate Sheppard: "I do think Obama's words were poorly chosen, but I don't think they merit 'Bittergate' as we're seeing it play out.

Compare to Ezra Klein: "As far as I can tell, few actually find the argument underlying Obama's statement controversial."

Spoke a little early on that one, no?

Arianna Huffington Okay'd Obama "Cling" Story While Yachting in Tahiti!

This post updates yesterday's entry on Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who broke open Barack Obama's "cling" comment controversy, "HuffPo Blogger Under Fire for Obama Bittergate Uproar."

Today's Los Angeles Times reports that HuffPo's Arianna Huffington made the editorial decision to publish Fowler's blog report on Obama's comments while yachting in French Polynesia:

Obama campaign officials have not publicly criticized the story or complained about Fowler, who had given nearly the $2,300 maximum to his campaign for the Democratic nomination. They declined to comment Monday.

The story was reviewed up the website's editorial ladder all the way to founder Arianna Huffington. Vacationing on a yacht in Tahiti, Huffington gave her assent.

Think about the convoluted juiciness of this:

Barack Obama's in hot water for airing condescending comments arguing the bitterness of religiously opiated Midwestern Americans.

Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, has been relentlessy and rightly ridiculed as politically inexeperienced - ignorant of the lives of alleged bible-thumping rust-belt gun-owners - while the story that scooped the scandal erupted from a "progressive" online blogging platform published by a Greek-born, Cambridge-educated internationally bestselling author and ex-wife of an openly-bisexual millionaire oil magnate and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate.

It's limosine liberalism for the Internet age, Yahoo yachtsmanship for the South Pacific socialist set!

No wonder some in Pennsylvania are up in arms.

Indeed, "the good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said!"

Careful With Those Bush/Truman Analogies...

ABC News ran a dramatic piece today on President Bush's public approval ratings, "Bush Defeats Truman."

The article indicates that Bush has lacked a majority of public approval over a longer period than President Harry Truman:

At 39 months in the doghouse, George W. Bush has surpassed Harry Truman's record as the postwar president to linger longest without majority public approval.

Bush hasn't received majority approval for his work in office in ABC News/Washington Post polls since Jan. 16, 2005 — three years and three months ago. The previous record was Truman's during his last 38 months in office.

Click here for PDF with charts and full questionnaire.

Truman's problems included both economic recession and the war in Korea, which, in October 1952, 56 percent of Americans said was not worth fighting. Bush's approval, likewise, has suffered overwhelmingly because of the unpopular war in Iraq; his job rating correlates almost perfectly with views of the war.

In the latest ABC/Post poll, just 33 percent of Americans approve of Bush's work, a point from his career-low 32 percent earlier this year. Sixty-four percent disapprove, with those who "strongly" disapprove outnumbering strong approvers by a 3-1 margin.

Comparing numbers like these requires a little care, of course, and ABC might have been a bit quick off the blocks in suggesting "Bush Defeats Truman."

You see, while Bush may have beaten Truman non-majority approval indices over time, Bush is still well above Truman's public approval ratings from 1953. Truman left office with the lowest presidential support in history, at just 23 percent.

But who cares about precision when one can hammer Bush, one more time, as the "worst president ever"?

See Firedoglake, for example, "It’s Official: Bush Is Objectively The Most Hated President In History."

Actually, he's not, as the numbers themselves indicate.

But the Truman comparison is accurate in other respects, particularly in terms of historical legacy.

Historians, for example, regard President Truman as in the near great category today, and some commentators have suggested that President Bush's historical record will follow a similar trajectory into the near-great pantheon:

With all the talk about President Bush's failed legacy by the nattering nabobs of negativism, one might think he won't have one.

Actually, he has cut a wide and often determined swath in the troubled course that history has dealt him, with 9/11 defining his presidency and the war-footing decade in which he has governed. Other big events, from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to several very large domestic initiatives he started and implemented, will have positive repercussions long after he has left office.

As American progress in Iraq continues, and we see futher consolidation of the Iraqi democratic regime, the positive repercussions will come more clearly into focus.

Obama Sporting Flag Pin at Veterans Event

Well, just two days after Doonesbury ran a "Senator Flag Pin" comic in Sunday's syndication, Barack Obama was seen today sporting one of the patriotic lapel embellishments at a veterans campaign speech today.

As seen below, the sixth panel in the Doonesbury strip reads, "If I DON'T WEAR MY FLAG PIN, PEOPLE WILL THINK I'M MAKING A STATEMENT THAT I'M WITH THE TERRORISTS..."

It turns out a vet gave Obama the pin he donned today, but he might do well to sport them more often, especially now that he's got terrorist-backing antiwar group Code Pink bundling campaign contributions for him.

There's significant controversy over this, so let's see those who say flag pins are idiotic denounce Obama's campaign support from terrorist-backing antiwar groups.

Code Pink Bundling Contributions for Obama

I've noted in a number of posts that Barack Obama's the candidate of choice for contemporary "progressive" organizations (see my series, " No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama").

Don't forget that the terminology of "progressive" has been appropriated by far-left activists in order to secure more general acceptance of their radical agenda. But as I've indicated time and again, some of the left's most hardline organizations are in the tank for Obama (see, "Anti-McCain Mobilization Rooted in Hardline Anti-Iraq Constituencies").

Now it turns out that Code Pink, the left's terrorist-backing antiwar outfit, is bundling campaign contributions for the Obama campaign, according to this report from Human Events:

The co-founder of the radical anti-war group Code Pink has “bundled” more than $50,000 for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and pro-troops groups are demanding that he return the money.

Jodie Evans, a Code Pink leader, gathered at least $50,000 from friends and associates and donated it to Obama’s presidential campaign, according to information compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog group, Public Citizen.

Evans and her son, a student who lives at her Southern California address, each also gave the maximum individual allowable donation of $2,300 to Obama’s campaign.

The donations have raised questions about Obama’s association with the more radical elements of his base. Code Pink has harassed, vandalized and impeded military recruiters across the United States in a campaign it calls “counter-recruitment.” The group also gave $600,000 to the families of Iraqi terrorists in Fallujah, whom it called “insurgents” fighting for their homes.

Read the whole thing.

I've been raising questions about Obama's "radical associations" for some time (see here for all of the follow-up entries in the "No Enemies on the Left" series).

Yet so far, this is the most damning bit of information substantiating the radical base of support for the Obama campaign.

So, while some may see Obama as fumbling over the weekend in his intemperate remarks on upper Midwest working-class Americans , others have suggested - not too far off the mark, it turns out - that Obama's indeed got some Marxist class-consciousness bona fides as the likely Democratic Party standard-bearer.

Things on the Democratic side are still shaking out, but certainly Obama, as Andrew McCarthy said the other day, "would radically alter this country" should he take power next January.

I'll have more on these developments in upcoming posts.

Obama's Comments Will Haunt Him in November

Ezra Klein suggested over the weekend that:

I'm not really sure what the big deal over Obama's comments in SF is supposed to be....As far as I can tell, few actually find the argument underlying Obama's statement controversial...

Actually, Obama's remarks are turning out to pretty controversial, as members of both the left and right have acknowledged.

Here's John Judis' essay on Obama's likely "bitter" November haunting, which references Klein in the introduction:

Some liberal commentators have downplayed the effect of Barack Obama's fundraising speech at a San Francisco fundraiser last week. But that's wishful thinking. Along with the revelations about Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright, his remarks in San Francisco will haunt him not only in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but also in the general election against John McCain, assuming he gets the Democratic nomination.

To win in November, a Democratic presidential candidate has to carry most of the industrial heartland states that stretch from Pennsylvania to Missouri. That becomes even more imperative if a Democrat can't carry Florida--and because of his relative weakness in South Florida, Obama is unlikely to do so against McCain. Ruy Teixeira and I have calculated that in the heartland states, a Democratic presidential candidate has to win from 45 to 48 percent of the white working class vote. In some states, like West Virginia and Kentucky, the percentage is well over a majority.

Some Democrats insist that Obama need not worry about these states because he will be able to make up for a defeat in Ohio or even Pennsylvania with a victory in Virginia or Colorado. But in Virginia, McCain will be able to draw upon coastal suburbanites closely tied to the military. These voters backed Democrats like Chuck Robb and Jim Webb, who are both veterans, but they may not go for Obama. And in the Southwest, McCain will be able to challenge Obama among Hispanics. So to win in November, Obama will have to win almost all of these heartland states. Which is a problem, because even before he uttered his infamous words about these voters "clinging" to guns, religion, abortion, and fears about free trade, Obama looked vulnerable in the region. A look at the white working class's relationship with earlier Democratic candidates underscores the various reasons why.

I think this is an imporant analysis, especially with respect to McCain's strengths among more traditional Democratic voting constituencies.

See also, John Fund, "Obama's Flaws Multiply," where he notes:

Michael Dukakis had a healthy lead in 1988 against the elder Bush at this time and right through the political conventions. Then came the GOP's dissection of his Massachusetts record and his tank ride.

I was thinking about the 1988 election this morning on the way to work. Fund is talking about how the Democrats tend to nominate inexperienced candidates, to their peril. My reflections back to 1988 had more to do with party electoral dynamics.

The assumption that 2008's going to be a big Democratic year flawed, and the Dukakis tank ride 20 years ago - not to mention Willie Horton - are the precedents heading into the fall.

Sure, we've got pent-up demands for effective government performance, but back in 1998 we had similar political polarization over the Reagan administration's legacy, yet George H.W. Bush won the White House that year. Indeed, I identified the Dukakis analogy for 2008 back in January, in my post, "Conservative Troubles in '08?"

Of course, Ezra Klein was only 3 years-old at the time of Dukakis' nomination, so some historical significance might be lost on him.

Hat tip: Memeorandum.

Hillary Appeals to Pennsylvania Small Town Values

Courtesy of No Quarter, Hillary Clinton's already smashing the Pennsylvania cable lineups with a new hard-hitting campaign spot taking down Barack Obama's smear of the state's "bitter" working class voters (via of YouTube):

Recall yesterday's report from the Politico, "What Clinton Wishes She Could Say":

Why, ask many Democrats and media commentators, won’t Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee?

Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won’t tell the story.

But Hillary Clinton won’t tell it, either....

Skepticism about Obama’s general election prospects extends beyond Clinton backers. We spoke to unaffiliated Democratic lawmakers, veteran lobbyists, and campaign operatives who believe the rush of enthusiasm for Obama’s charisma and fresh face has inhibited sober appraisals of his potential weaknesses.

The concerns revolve around two themes.

The first is based on the campaign so far. Assuming voting patterns evident in the nominating contest continue into the fall, Obama would be vulnerable if McCain can approximate the traditional GOP performance in key states.

The second is based on fear about the campaign ahead.

Stories about Obama’s Chicago associations with 1960s radicals Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers landed with barely a ripple. So, too, did questions about whether he once backed a total ban on handguns (he says no but in a 1996 state legislative race his campaign filled out a questionnaire saying yes). Obama’s graceful handling of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy may have turned that into a net positive against Clinton.

Well, if the new Pennsylvania "Small Town Values" ad is any indication, I don't think Hillary's afraid to "tell the story" of Barack Obama anymore.

See also my earlier entries, "Should Democratic Party Elders Be Worried?," and "Obama's Circle of Friends: The America-Hating Left."

Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine Backs Suspected Terrorist

FrontPageMagazine is currently running a series, "The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network."

Last Thursday's installment covered the group's chapter at UC Irvine, in Orange County, California: "The Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine."

Now, according to Red County, UCI's Muslim group is sponsoring a fundraising drive for Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian computer engineer and former university professor, who's accused of funding international terrorist organizations:

Thanks to the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union and the greater Muslim community of Orange County, everyone's favorite terrorist uncle, Sami Al-Arian, gets his own hagiographic screening at the Woodbridge 5 Theater on Barranca pkwy in Irvine on April 17. The show costs 10 dollars a ticket, and proceeds will go to this scum's legal defense fund. Among other charges, he is on trial for his involvement in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and his role in terror attacks responsible for hundred's of deaths in Israel.

See also my earlier post, "Muslim Students Association Seeks U.S. Destruction."

Should Democratic Party Elders Be Worried?

Wolf Blitzer assures us that the current "bitter"-ness of the Democratic nomination is damaging party prospects heading into the summer and fall:

A lot of Democrats are increasingly worried about the tough back-and-forth that is now part of the tense Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama race for the party’s presidential nomination.

There are some very passionate Clinton supporters who clearly don’t like Obama. And there are some very passionate Obama supporters who clearly don’t like Clinton. That is very evident. Just talk to both sides.

In fact, a poll in the current issue of Time magazine has alarmed many Democrats. The poll asked Obama voters if the presidential election were between Clinton and John McCain, whom would they vote for. In the poll, 16 percent said McCain and 16 percent said they don’t know. That’s 32 percent who refused to say flatly they would support Clinton – the other Democrat.

When Clinton supporters were asked whom they would support if the presidential race were between Obama and McCain, 26 percent said McCain and 18 percent said they don’t know. That’s 44 percent who refused to say flatly they would vote for Obama.

Thus, Clinton voters were more likely than Obama voters – at least in this poll – to actually pick McCain if their respective Democratic candidate lost the nomination.

Those of us who cover politics like to caution that all these polls are only snapshots. Once the political dust on the Democratic race settles, and there is an eventual nominee – whether Clinton or Obama – a different snapshot might emerge. Democrats, in the end, might still come together against the Republican candidate.

But right now, I can assure you, a lot of party elders are deeply worried that all this nastiness could wind up helping McCain.

I agree with Blitzer, although some online pundits have suggested for critics of the Democrats to just "CHILL OUT."

Check the Time poll, "Clinton Hangs Onto Lead in Pennsylvania."

HuffPo Blogger Under Fire for Obama Bittergate Uproar

One of the first things I noticed about Barack Obama's Bittergate controversy is that all the key initial links to the breaking story sent readers to the Huffington Post.

Strange?

HuffPo routinely publishes some of the most radical writings on the web, and a number of commentators there had announced they were in the tank for Obama. Why would HuffPo want to slam their own assets?

So it's no surprise to learn that Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who broke the news on Obama's San Francisco "cling" comments, is getting hammered for creating a national political scandal. The New York Times has more:

The backstory of how Senator Barack Obama’s comments about small-town voters became news is getting almost as much attention in the blogosphere as the comments themselves.

Mayhill Fowler, a blogger for OffTheBus.net, a Web site published by Huffington Post and created by Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen, was the first to report Mr. Obama’s comments — that small-town voters bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations.

The comments created an instant sensation in the media and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seized on them, hoping they would slow Mr. Obama’s momentum in the polls against her in Pennsylvania, which votes in 8 days. If Pennsylvania rejects Mr. Obama by a big margin, and voters in Indiana and North Carolina follow suit, the comment could be seen as the game-changer.

Ms. Fowler told me in an interview Sunday night that she was initially reluctant to write about what Mr. Obama had said because she actually supports him -- which partly explains why she was at the fund-raiser in the first place and why there was a four-day delay between the event and the publication of her post. Ultimately, she said, she decided that if she didn’t write about it, she wouldn’t be worth her salt as a journalist.

Some Obama supporters in the blogosphere were up in arms at Ms. Fowler. They doubt that she really supports Mr. Obama, have called her a plant for Mrs. Clinton and suggested she was deceptive in getting into the fund-raiser.

The whole episode gives a revealing glimpse into yet even more ways in which the Internet is changing the coverage of politics. And Ms. Fowler says she is surprised that she is playing a role in this revolution.

"I'm 61," she said. "I can't believe I would be one of the people who's changing the world of media." But her experience raises questions about whether the roles, rules and expectations for journalists and bloggers are different. Can a person be both? Even Ms. Fowler acknowledged that "clearly everyone is going to be re-thinking how they handle this kind of thing."

My instincts were right all along, so let me say it right here: No, you can't be a journalist and a blogger simultaneously.

Huffington Post epitomizes the problems.

Check the site out: It hosts mainstream wire service stories from sources such as the Associated Press alongside unhinged far-left rantings likely to make the skin crawl on middle-Americans nationwide.

Not only that, they eat their own:

"Faux Obama Supporter Mayhill Fowler Smears Obama."

God help Mayhill Flower!!

Mayhill Fowler is catching holy hell for her post about the San Francisco fundraiser and "Bittergate": The Huffington Post is anti-Obama. She enjoys an "above the fold" space only because she's willing to go after Obama. She must be on somebody's payroll. She's a Clinton operative. An Obama-basher.

There's more of the juicy stuff here.

And people want to tell me this isn't helping John McCain?!!

Gleen Greenwald's Latest Partisan Screed

Out in stores tomorrow is Glenn Greenwald's new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

Greenwald's got a self-promotional post up, which links to a number of left-wing reviews already available. One of these is Digby's, where she notes:

I've been thinking about torture all week-end which naturally led me to think about Glenn Greenwald's new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics which is being released today.

It's not that the book is about torture, but it is about the Republican psyche, in particular about their weird cult of masculinity, which is what leads to over-the-top notions of violent necessity in dealing with national security.

Frankly, I suspect that Greenwald's audience consists entirely of those on the far-left of the spectrum. I mean these are his people, assorted antiwar whackos, anti-FISA-fanatics, and irretrievable BDS sufferers.

As Megan McArdle noted last week, Greenwald's pretty much unhinged, always railing against anything and everything, which McArdle identifies as the "non-Glenn-Greenwald power structure."

If you check the Amazon link, most of the reviews are posted by these same hangers-on lefties, a fact which doesn't impart much objectivity to the recommendations. Markos Moulitsas notes, for example, "One of the smartest and most important new voices to emerge in politics in years." Well, that just makes my day!

But check out the Publisher's Weekly blurb-review at Barnes and Noble:

With this provocative book, Greenwald, a former constitutional lawyer and author of A Tragic Legacyand How Would a Patriot Act, purports to expose the "rank myth-making and exploitation of cultural, gender and psychological themes" by the Republican Party. The author begins his attack by targeting John Wayne, whom he sees as a template for right-wing notions of "American courage and conservative manliness." Wayne's avoidance of military service and his string of divorces, both at odds with his public image, are emblematic in this account of a fundamental hypocrisy implicit in conservative mythologies. Greenwald goes on to argue that prominent Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney display the same hypocrisy in their public ideologies and personal lives. Shouldering much of the blame are the press and the media, including Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Chris Matthews and even Maureen Dowd, all of whom propagate popular attitudes about virile Republicans and effeminate Democrats. Despite the antipathy the author feels for Coulter, his writing is much like hers. More a partisan screed than a reasoned argument meant to persuade undecided readers, this repetitive text frequently devolves into personal attacks and vast generalizations.

Not surprisingly, Greenwald doesn't link to Barnes and Noble.

I can tell you right now, though, from getting the gist of Greenwald's thesis from his blog posts, "personal attacks" and vast generalizations" pretty much sum up his writing.

Mind you, I'm planning on reading the book, so I can't claim authority beyond the snippets of Greenwald's thesis I've reluctantly absorbed from his online screeds.

But to refer back to Digby's review, where she praises this notion of the GOP's "weird cult of masculinity" .... well, this so-clalled "weird cult" might be the biggest myth going, something to which only the crazed BDS-types might attach significance

The same aggressive "warmongering" that Greenwald denounces (again and again) is more likely described as America's historical reverence for traditional values of discipline and sacrifice, support of nation, the willingness to see threats for what they are, and a culture of pro-military conservativism holding the armed forces as an essential element in the preservation of democratic society.

These are hard notions to grasp for those who see every GOP national-security talking point as the latest communique from a reincarnated Joseph Goebbels totalitarian propaganda machine.

I'll have more on Greenwald's fantasies in upcoming posts.