Iran's Mahdi Failure in Iraq Leads to Lebanon Proxy War

Lebanon is now roiled in proxy warfare, a new round of conflict rooted in the wider realm of Middle East and international politics.

This video shows the dramatic civilian impact of the fighting in Beirut:

Nibras Kazimi, a Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute, argues that the outbreak of fighting in Lebanon is an extention of Iran's loss of influence in Iraq, following the defeat of the Mahdi army in March:

Ostensibly, Hezbollah is responding to the Lebanese government’s decision to sack the security chief of Beirut’s international airport, and to dismantle Hezbollah’s secure landline-based communications network that had been expanded recently.

What could have spurred-on this over-reaction on Hezbollah’s part, which has been manifested so far with flexing its muscles in the Sunni area of Beirut, seemingly showing-up the government as weak and vulnerable?

I believe Iran needed to show the United States and its Arab allies that it can humiliate them by overrunning the government they back in Beirut and that they’d be unable to do anything about it, and I believe that Iran needed to make this point now because the Mahdi Army in Iraq has collapsed.

Iran has been backing certain factions of the Mahdi Army with training and arms as an investment in a force for chaos, which can be held in reserve and unleashed against the Americans in Iraq in the event that George Bush may order a bombing run against Iran’s illicit nuclear program this summer—something he’s be egged-on to do by U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan....

But ever since Prime Minister Maliki launched Operation Cavalry Charge on March 25 in Basra, the Iraqi government, with some U.S. air cover and logistical support, has been engaged in a war of attrition with the Mahdi Army; witling away the once-sharp and threatening capability of Iran’s investment in terror. Whereas these ‘Special Groups’ could launch 30 to 40 projectiles into the Green Zone a few weeks ago, today they can only manage one or two rockets. The Iraqi Army and the US military have pushed on into all the redoubts of the Sadrists, notably Sadr City where some 1200 fatalities (a significant number of them non-combatants) have occurred.

Maliki has also ordered the Iraqi Red Crescent to prepare an initial contingency plan to absorb 100,000 refugees from Sadr City, indicating that he is not backing down....

The Sadrists and the Iranians have been reduced to bravado and PSY-OPS: one account has it that the Sadrists have a plan to take over the Green Zone within seven hours, and that they can take over Basra within 24 hours. Another is that General Suleimani of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard actually controls events in Iraq.

But in effect, Iran has lost the deterrence value of its investment in the Sadrists.

That’s why Iran needed to flex its might in downtown Beirut, to embarrass the Saudis and others who can do very little to bail-out Siniora’s government. The ruse seems to have worked: Saad al-Hariri basically rescinded the government’s orders against the airport security chief and the communications network today.

But see also the Charleston Post and Courier, which argues Iran's now launching its latest Middle East power play in Beirut:

For the past year [Iran] has encouraged Hamas in its violent takeover of Gaza to attack Israel with rockets supplied by Iran. The fate of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza — where the United Nations mission announced this week it is suspending humanitarian services for security reasons — is clearly a concern. For the past month Iran has also encouraged a breakaway militia in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, in its attacks on government offices and foreign embassies in Baghdad that have turned the crowded slums of Sadr City into a battlefield.

This week it was Lebanon's turn, as a power struggle between the popularly elected government and Iran's proxy militia Hezbollah turned violent, with street barricades throughout Beirut and gun battles between Sunni groups allied with the government and Shias allied with Hezbollah. Reports from Beirut say Lebanon is on the brink of civil war.

The proximate cause of the trouble in Lebanon was the courageous decision of the government on Tuesday to declare Hezbollah's separate telecommunications network in the country illegal and a threat to national security. Hezbollah used the network to conduct its war with Israel on Lebanese soil in 2006. Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday, calling the network "the most important part" of the movement's military organizational structure, said the government's decision was "tantamount to a declaration of war," The Associated Press reported.

The government position is supported by the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed Larsen. Agence France Presse reported that Mr. Larsen told the U.N. Security Council Thursday the Hezbollah organization "constitutes a threat to regional peace and security." In 2004 the Security Council called for Hezbollah to disband its militia.

In recent months Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon's parliament have refused to allow a quorum for a vote on the country's next president unless a deal is made to legitimize the organization's military structure. As Ambassador Larsen told the Security Council, Hezbollah is building "parallel institutional structures" to compete with and weaken the national government's army and other functions. U.S. officials in Iraq have charged the Mahdi Army, its leader Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran with trying to duplicate the Hezbollah "state-within-a-state" structure in Iraq.

The Iranian power grab is now on vivid display in Gaza, Baghdad and Beirut. It strains credulity to believe that these outbreaks are unrelated events.

It is a good thing the United States has troops in Iraq, and ships in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean, that can set limits to Iran's ambitions.

I'll have more updates later, but see also Walid Phares, "Hezbollah's Beirut Blitz."

Barack Obama's Flawed Judgment

Mortimer Zuckerman hits a homerun in highlighting Barack Obama's flawed judgment surrounding the scandalous relationship to Jeremiah Wright:

The political firestorm inescapably raises questions again about Obama's judgment: How naive could he be to fail to recognize the risks of such an association? One can understand how useful the pastor was in immersing the politically ambitious Harvard Law graduate in Chicago's South Side (no doubt the source now of Wright's resentment). Obama acquired "street cred." But how over 20 years could he fail to appreciate the pastor for the man he so obviously is? How could Obama borrow the title of his book The Audacity of Hope from the first sermon of Wright's that he heard decades ago, in which the pastor attacked an environment "where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another"?

Senator Obama had to know, on some level, that his association was problematic, for he rescinded an invitation to have Wright speak at his campaign launch in 2007. Now we learn, according to Wright, that he and Obama's family prayed in the basement of the old Illinois State Capitol before Obama went out to speak. It stretches Obama's credibility to assert that only now has he learned of the views of the man he trusted as pastor to his children.

In rejecting Wright, Obama says the relationship has now "changed." In his March speech on race, he said he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black community. The "change" in the relationship cannot mean he has now disowned the black community—parts of which have disowned Wright. We are left to assume he is no longer the spiritual adviser of whom Obama once said, "He is much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as it is possible and that I am not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics."

The sad outcome of all of this is that it undermines the strong support that Obama gained from so many voters. Too many people are now asking how he could not have been outraged much earlier. By escalating the racial element of identity politics, the pastor has undercut one of the major rationales of Obama's campaign, to wit, that it could and would be about healing. How is he going to be a unifier when his spiritual adviser is on TV, castigating America and scaring a lot of people?

Obama remains vulnerable for having sat for decades in the pews of a church that did good work but was racked with divisive racial rhetoric. As Juan Williams, a respected commentator on issues of race, put it, "What would Jesus do? There is no question he would have left that church."

The failure to extract himself early and decisively enough is not to question Senator Obama's commitment to transcending old racial animosities. But it unhappily sets back the progress his campaign has made. Wright deserves our condemnation for taking us backward on this difficult issue at what could have been such a promising time.

See also FrontPageMagazine's expose, "Obama's World," which suggests, "Wright may be the best known of Obama's friends and allies, but he may not even be the most controversial."

Why We Need Guantanamo Bay

Today's Wall Street Journal includes a must-read editorial on Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi, the Kuwaiti terrorist who blew up seven Iraqis in a suicide bombing last month in Mosul.

Ajmi was interned at Guantanamo Bay, before the U.S. government released him to avoid prolonged litigation following the Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul. The Ajmi bombing is the latest case of a detained terrorist suspect who was freed and returned to the field after being kept prisoner at Gitmo, freedom that led to the eventual killing of innocents in Iraq.

Lefty bloggers are always screaming about the "criminal Bush regime," but there's never any outrage at the terror. Indeed, they routinely applaud the nihilist mayhem committed by sworn enemies of the United States.

Here's some of the WSJ piece:

In April 2002, a group of Kuwaiti families retained the law firm of Shearman & Sterling to represent the Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo, including Ajmi. (An attorney at Shearman tells us the firm donated its fees to charity.) Ajmi was one of 12 Kuwaiti petitioners in whose favor the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush, which held that the detainees were entitled to a habeas corpus hearing.

At the time, we wrote that Rasul had "opened the door to a flood of litigation. . . . This pretty much guarantees that the 600 or so Guantanamo detainees will bring 600 or so habeas corpus cases – perhaps in 600 or so different courtrooms, with 600 or so different judges demanding 600 or so different standards of what evidence constitutes a threat to the United States."
The Pentagon seems to have understood this point only too well, because in November 2005 it released Ajmi into Kuwaiti custody before he could have his hearing. A Kuwaiti court later acquitted Ajmi of terrorism charges, and last month the Kuwaiti government issued Ajmi and his accomplices with passports, which they used to travel to Mosul via Syria.

Ajmi's story is hardly unique. Some 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo over the years, mostly into foreign custody. Another 65 of the remaining 270 detainees are also slated to go. Yet of all the prisoners released, the Pentagon is confident that only 38 pose no security threat. So much for the notion that the Gitmo detainees consist mostly of wrong-time, wrong-place innocents caught up in an American maw.

The Defense Intelligence Agency reported on May 1 that at least 36 former Guantanamo inmates have "returned to the fight." They include Maulavi Abdul Ghaffar, who was released after eight months in Gitmo and later became the Taliban's regional commander in Uruzgan and Helmand provinces. He was killed by Afghan security forces in September 2004.

Another former detainee, Abdullah Mahsud, was released from Guantanamo in March 2004. He later kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Pakistan (one of whom was shot during a rescue operation). In July 2007 he blew himself up as Pakistani police sought to apprehend him.

Ajmi's case now brings the DIA number to 37. It's worth noting that these are only the known cases. It is worth noting, too, that people like Ajmi were among those the Defense Department thought it would be relatively safe to free, or at least not worth the hassle and expense of the litigation brought about by cases like Rasul.

All this should give some pause to those – John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton among them – calling for closing Guantanamo. The prison is helping to save lives by keeping dangerous men from returning to the fight against our soldiers....

Our liberal friends argue that the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay have hurt America's image in the world, and that's true. Then again, Ajmi and others show that there are also lethal consequences to the legal war that liberals are waging on the war on terror. Liberals claim they are only fighting for "due process," but they are doing so for foreign enemies who want to kill innocents and don't deserve such protections. Mosul is one result.

For the liberal, terrorist-enabling case against the Bush administration's policy on enemy combatants and Guantanamo Bay, see Firedoglake, "Gitmo Show Trials: The Other Retroactive Immunity," and also David Cole's analysis of the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling in Hamdan, "Why the Court Said No."

Voters Doubt McCain on Economy, Poll Finds

The Los Angeles Times reports that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would beat John McCain in the general election.

The public finds the Arizona Senator lacking on economic leadership:

Although Democrats are still tangled in a fractious presidential primary, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would probably beat presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in the popular vote if the election were held now, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today.

McCain remains competitive, but the poll identified one important vulnerability: Voters ranked him lowest among the three candidates on who could best handle the nation's economic problems, by far the most pressing concern for the public irrespective of party, gender or income.

Of the three main candidates, Clinton inspired the most confidence on the economy, even though she appears unlikely to win the Democratic nomination.

In a hypothetical matchup between Clinton and McCain, the New York senator led the Arizonan by 47% to 38%, with 11% saying they were undecided.

And in a contest between Obama and McCain, the poll gave the Illinois senator a 46% to 40% lead over the Republican, with 9% undecided. The nationwide poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The results represent a slight shift from a Times/Bloomberg poll in February, in which McCain led Clinton by 6 points, and Obama by 2 points, within the poll's margin of error. The direction has now changed in favor of the Democrats.

"Although there is such infighting now between the two Democratic candidates, we are finding that both Democrats are beating McCain, and this could be attributed to the weakening of the economy," said Times polling director Susan Pinkus, who supervised the survey.

For example, among the 78% of voters who said they believe the economy has slid into a recession, 52% would vote for Obama, compared with 32% for McCain. A matchup between Clinton and McCain showed nearly identical results.

The poll was based on telephone interviews with 2,208 adults nationwide -- 1,986 of them registered voters -- from May 1 to 8. That time period included several days before and after the recent Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, which Clinton and Obama split.

The poll offered fresh insights for Democrats trying to discern whether Obama or Clinton would best represent their party in the fall against McCain.

For example, Clinton and McCain were essentially tied among voters ages 65 or older. But if the race were between Obama and McCain, the Republican would lead, 47% to 41%.

Among people ages 18 to 44, Obama led McCain by 55% to 35%.

Clinton generated less enthusiasm with this age group, leading McCain by 48% to 35%.

African Americans would vote overwhelmingly for Obama, the first black candidate with a realistic chance of becoming president. In the poll, he carried 79% of African Americans, with 3% supporting McCain.

If Clinton were the Democratic nominee, however, McCain's share of the African American vote would rise to 9%, roughly in line with the performance of past GOP presidential candidates. Clinton had 60% of the African American vote, with 23% of respondents in this cornerstone Democratic constituency saying they would be undecided.

Among baby boomers, the giant post World War II generation that will begin to reach retirement age in the next president's term, both Democrats edged McCain, with Clinton leading, 47% to 39%, and Obama by 45% to 37%. Whoever is elected will have to deal with the serious financial shortfalls facing Medicare and Social Security.

McCain remains competitive, however, because of his showing among older voters and independents, constituencies that both parties are vying to win. McCain leads Clinton among independents and is essentially tied with Obama.

McCain's particularly competitive against Obama, according to these numbers, as a six-point lead separates the two, a spread at the outside of the poll's margin of error.

Don't forget as well, that on questions of leadership and national service, McCain far outstrips both the Democrats. See "McCain Widely Recognized as a “War Hero."

We have a lot of campaigning ahead, in any case.

When more voters realize the implications of Obama's pledge to negotiate with Iran and Syria, as well as the folly of closer ties Obama's adivisors want to develop with terrorist organizations and state sponsors (here and here), support for McCain will skyrocket.

The Democratization of the Bachelor's Degree

Via Maggie's Farm, the Chronicle of Education reports that the Bachelor's degree is "America's most overrated product":

Today, amazingly, a majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.

Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that's terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they'd still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they're brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.

Also, the past advantage of college graduates in the job market is eroding. Ever more students attend college at the same time as ever more employers are automating and sending offshore ever more professional jobs, and hiring part-time workers. Many college graduates are forced to take some very nonprofessional positions, such as driving a truck or tending bar.

How much do students at four-year institutions actually learn?

Colleges are quick to argue that a college education is more about enlightenment than employment. That may be the biggest deception of all. Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. At many colleges, only a small percentage of the typical student's classroom hours will have been spent with fewer than 30 students taught by a professor, according to student-questionnaire data I used for my book How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University. When students at 115 institutions were asked what percentage of their class time had been spent in classes of fewer than 30 students, the average response was 28 percent.

That's not to say that professor-taught classes are so worthwhile. The more prestigious the institution, the more likely that faculty members are hired and promoted much more for their research than for their teaching. Professors who bring in big research dollars are almost always rewarded more highly than a fine teacher who doesn't bring in the research bucks. Ernest L. Boyer, the late president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, used to say that winning the campus teaching award was the kiss of death when it came to tenure. So, no surprise, in the latest annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, 44.6 percent said they were not satisfied with the quality of instruction they received. Imagine if that many people were dissatisfied with a brand of car: It would quickly go off the market. Colleges should be held to a much higher standard, as a higher education costs so much more, requires years of time, and has so much potential impact on your life. Meanwhile, 43.5 percent of freshmen also reported "frequently" feeling bored in class, the survey found.

College students may be dissatisfied with instruction, but, despite that, do they learn? A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below "proficient" levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.

This is the democratization of the four-year college degree.

It's a good thing promotion and tenure aren't dependent on student performance!

Chertoff Denied! New York Times Refuses Secretary's Op-Ed Submission

Via Maggie's Farm, the New York Times refused to run this article submitted by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff:

When it comes to illegal immigration, the American people are tired of thirty years of lip service. They want our laws enforced. As Secretary of Homeland Security, I have directed my department to pursue that mandate, using all the tools permitted by law.

This involves a three-fold approach.

First, we stem the flow at the border by increasing the likelihood that illegal entrants – and smugglers of all types – will be detected, apprehended, and removed.

Second, we drive businesses to comply with laws against employing illegal workers.

Third, when we encounter those who are here illegally, we remove them.

Granted, we need a long-term solution involving a temporary worker program, legal immigration reform, and a fair policy to deal with illegal immigrants long-rooted here.

But the American people have demanded that we first demonstrate an effective commitment to enforce current laws. And even those who are sympathetic to the painful circumstances of illegal immigration question any change that might trigger new waves of entrants seeking to benefit from still-future waves of “reform.”

Our policies respond to this demand and to Congress. They may be tough, yet they are fair, and they are succeeding.

That success has now bred a firestorm of opposition. Opponents are driven by factors ranging from an ideological commitment to open borders to reliance on illegal workforces. Apparently, their strategy is to challenge every enforcement action with exaggerated or misleading cries of outrage. These challenges add up to a position that would forbid any effective enforcement.

The New York Times editorial page is a case in point.

Regarding interior enforcement, a March 27, 2008 editorial (“A Foolish Immigration Purge”) attacked our proposal that businesses receiving letters about workers whose names don’t match Social Security numbers clear up the discrepancy within three months. Under this proposal, if a mismatch is caused by an innocent clerical mistake, the mistake is simply corrected. But if it’s caused by an illegal worker carrying a forged identity, the employer must act. Ignoring this distinction, the Times falsely implied that businesses would have to fire workers even for innocent errors.

A December 18, 2006 editorial (“Swift Raids”) protested earlier efforts at workplace enforcement. It was followed by an October 4, 2007 editorial (“Stop the Raids”) which depicted our enforcement efforts on Long Island and elsewhere as trampling on localities. But an April 16, 2008 editorial (“New Jersey’s Immigration Crackdown”) castigated Garden State localities for their enforcement efforts.

Concerning border security, an April 3, 2008 editorial (“Michael Chertoff’s Insult”) condemned our exercise of legal authority to waive certain environmental regulations that would have stopped us from fulfilling the explicit mandate of Congress to put fencing, roads, and lighting in place this year in order to stem drug and human smuggling.

The editorial failed to mention that we had previously conducted multiple environmental reviews or that the Interior Department has complained that some border areas are so endangered by smugglers that visitors and employees are turned away.

Taken together, these examples suggest that in some quarters, no enforcement technique is acceptable. Of course, if none is acceptable, enforcing immigration law becomes impossible.Perhaps that’s what some critics really want. In a March 4, 2008 editorial (“Border Insecurity”), this newspaper takes aim at the very propriety of defending our sovereignty and our laws:

“From San Diego on the Pacific to Brownsville on the Rio Grande, a steel curtain is descending across the continent. Behind it lies a nation….that has decided to wall itself off….”

In this rewrite of lines from Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain address, the editorialists outrageously compare America’s attempts to secure its own borders against smugglers with Josef Stalin’s subjugation of Eastern Europe.

In the end, the debate is not about enforcement tactics. It’s about enforcing the rule of law. Do our critics want a country where employers create economic incentives for people to come here illegally? Do they desire an America with open borders and uncontrolled illegal migration? Should federal officials tacitly allow this to happen by rejecting every meaningful effort to enforce the law?

In the end, two truths stand out. We need to continue to discuss reforms to our immigration laws. But we must continue to uphold our current laws by enforcing them.

- Michael Chertoff

Apparently, the New York Times doesn't want Chertoff discussing the New York Times' obstruction of our immigration laws in its own pages.

Obama Loses His Bearings!

Barack Obama, campaigning in Oregon, says he's visited "57 states":

And Marc Ambinder observes:

But if John McCain did this -- if he mistakenly said he'd visited 57 states -- the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment.

So, who's losing their bearings?!!

Obama Advisor Sacked for Direct Meetings With Hamas

Barack Obama's ultimate problem over the last few months - with Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, "Bittergate," flag pins, white-working class constituencies, ad infinitum - involves the question of judgment.

How does this candidate - who proclaims himself an agent of post-partisan transcendance - get involved with such incredibly divisive individuals and movements?

Sure, one might argue in defense, for example, Obama did not say "the chickens have come home to roost," but he sat in the pews of a black liberationist preacher for twenty years, was married by this foul-spewing pastor, his daughters were baptized by him, and he refused to cut ties until Wright called him a rank politician?

That's self-interested behavior alright? Noxious views are fine, but once the target's Barack himself, hey, that where we draw the line!

So now we have news that Obama's been forced to cut ties to a campaign advisor who's been in direct talks with the Middle East terrorist organization Hamas (via Ace of Spades):

One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him.

Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council.
“I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people,” he added.

Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama, responded swiftly: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.”

The article goes on to discuss yesterday's flying brickbats suggesting John McCain's "losing his bearings."

For more on that see, Captain Ed, "Obama: McCain’s “Losing His Bearings” by Noting That Hamas Wants Me to Win."

Obama's Working-Class Backlash: Race Is Not the Problem

Stuart Taylor Jr.'s got the hot essay of the day on Obama's vulnerabilities with the white working-class vote:

Is Barack Obama - now closer than ever to winning the Democratic nomination - nonetheless at a political disadvantage because of white racism, or "racial fears," or "race-baiting," or racial "double standards," as some commentators have suggested?

The evidence indicates otherwise, as it pertains both to this election and more broadly to the perennial tendency of many in the racial-grievance groups, the media, and academia to exaggerate how much white racism remains and its impact on African-Americans.

But many of the voters who have been unfairly tarred as racist do have a different flaw that Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain are working especially hard to exploit: ignorance of elementary economics and other things every high school graduate should know, which accounts for the low quality of the debate on issues ranging from the gas tax to trade to the budget.

More on voter ignorance later. First, let's examine the notion that white racism, or efforts to fan it, underlie Obama's recent difficulties in winning over middle-class white voters.

"It is an injustice, a legacy of the racist threads of this nation's history," The New York Times declared in an April 30 editorial, that Obama was so widely called upon to repudiate the Rev. Jeremiah Wright while the media have given much less attention to McCain's courtship of an equally bigoted white, far-right Texas pastor named John Hagee. The editorial pre-emptively condemned as "race-baiting" any campaign ads showing Wright in action. Times columnist Frank Rich and PBS commentator Bill Moyers voiced similar complaints. And Steve Kornacki wrote in the April 29 New York Observer that Wright was being and will be "used to stoke racial fears and prejudices about Mr. Obama."

All of this seems unpersuasive to me. True, the McCain-Hagee connection deserves more attention, which it will no doubt get once the spotlight moves past the Clinton-Obama donnybrook. But McCain did not spend 20 years as a parishioner in and contributor to Hagee's church, was not married by Hagee, did not ask Hagee to baptize his children, did not draw on a Hagee sermon for the title to his book, and did not palliate Hagee's bigotry by suggesting that his own grandmother was a bigot, too.

Wright aside, if Obama's race were a net liability with voters, he would have had no chance of winning the nomination--not with a campaign more focused on his personal appeal than on ideas and issues, and a political resume thinner than that of any presidential nominee in more than a century.

It's clear from the election returns and polls that a majority of Democrats--especially but not exclusively black Democrats--see Obama's race as a plus, not a minus. The same is true of the many independents (including me) and even Republicans who think that electing a black president would (other things being equal) promote racial healing. And those Republicans who hold Obama's race against him "are probably firmly in John McCain's camp already," as Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told National Journal's Linda Douglass.

There is plenty of residual racism, of course. But race-motivated white votes against Obama have been more than offset by race-motivated black votes for Obama, who won more than 90 percent of the black vote in both Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday.

Some commentators discern signs of white racism in exit polls showing (for example) that 16 percent of Indiana respondents said that a candidate's race was an important factor for them, with whites in this category voting heavily for Clinton. But 83 percent said that race was not important. And Clinton's majorities among whites seem attributable less to racism than to understandable concerns about Obama's belatedly severed connection to Wright, which nearly half of voters in both Indiana and North Carolina identified as an important issue.

The best evidence that the Wright factor hurt Obama far more than his own blackness is that before the turbulent pastor became famous, Obama easily won the caucuses in overwhelmingly white Iowa on January 3 and, over the next seven weeks, captured the white male vote in Maryland, Virginia, and Wisconsin and as many white male voters as Clinton did in South Carolina. Although Obama did less well among white women, the obvious reason was Clinton's gender, not Obama's race.

Obama's difficulty in winning middle-class white votes has mostly postdated the heavy publicity about Wright. Barry Szczesny, a lifelong Republican from Michigan, for example, told The Washington Post that he switched parties earlier this year to vote for Obama but had been "getting a little weak-kneed" recently because the Wright connection had cast doubt on Obama's ability to unify the country.

See also, Michael Gerson, "Sticking Points for Obama."

Blaming Teachers? Educational Accountability and Student Performance

Should we evaluate teachers according to how well their students perform?

If students do not master the curriculum, should teachers be held accountable, with the loss of employment or denial of tenure, etc.?

John Merrow, at the Wall Street Journal, goes pretty far in advocating that level of accountability:

Suppose a swimming instructor told his 10-year-old students to swim the length of the pool to demonstrate what he'd taught them, and half of them nearly drowned? Would it be reasonable to make a judgment about his teaching ability?

Or suppose nearly all the 10-year-old students in a particular clarinet class learned to play five or six pieces well in a semester? Would it be reasonable to consider their achievement when deciding whether to rehire the music teacher?

These questions answer themselves. Only an idiot would overlook student performance, be it dismal or outstanding.

However, suppose test results indicated that most students in a particular class don't have a clue about how to multiply with fractions, or master other material in the curriculum? Should that be considered when the math teacher comes up for tenure?

Whoops, the obvious answer is wrong. That's because public education lives in an upside-down universe where student outcomes are not allowed to be connected to teaching.

Ten years ago, I encountered this view in an interview with Jack Steinberg, the vice president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. Here is the exchange:

He said, "You're asking, can you evaluate a teacher on the performance of the students?"

I said, "Yes or no?"

He said, "No, you cannot."

I, incredulously, said, "You cannot evaluate a teacher on the performance of his or her students?"

He said, "Right."

Merrow continues with a discussion of New York City's debate over the use of student performance data in teacher tenure decisions, a move the teachers' union opposes.

Merrow makes a concession to factors outside of instruction that hinder student performance, but doesn't back down in his basic argument:

Of course, not every kid comes to class equally able to complete the day's assignment. Some are new immigrants, others are gifted, and still others might have a learning disability. These factors affect test scores as much as or more than who is teaching.

Still, students at whatever level of performance can also be evaluated on how much they've improved over a given period of time.

So, there's the qualifier.

If we're simply looking at student learning during a course or semester, that doesn't sound so bad. But if we're looking at larger indices, like the number of students passing state assessment examinations as part of a high-stakes testing regime, with high percentages required for "measureable competence," a lot of teachers are going to get fired.

Judging teaching effectiveness is a tricky thing.

Which teachers have been the most important in our lives? The ones that "made" us learn the most, or the one's who set the standards of excellence, with high expectations of achievement, and who were available and accessable, and worked to advance the progress of their charges.

In my educational career, teachers and professors like that were the "best," although I don't know the numbers of students passing their classes or advancing to degree attaintment status in the academic program of record.

I consider myself a good classroom instructor. Whether I'm great - or the best - depends on what students or outside evaluators think. I like to think of myself as professional, taking my job seriously and fulfilling my formal responsiblities with excellence to the best of my training and abilities. I know the material I teach (recall the issue of uncredentialed instructors at low-income schools), so it's methods that matter in getting students to learn, but I still have difficulties in performance outcomes.
But, in some ways most importantly, I simply care for my students, and I want them to perform well. I'll go to bat for them in tutoring or mentoring if they'll put some effort into their work.

But at community colleges, faculty face a crisis of epic proportions in the numbers of students who cannot perform at freshmen-level indicators of competence, which often means that students don't advance in the programs.

A report on California's community colleges in 2007 found:

Only one-fourth of California's community college students seeking a degree transferred to a university or earned an associate's degree or certificate within six years, a report released Thursday found.

The report noted major institutional factors, like funding levels and full- to part-time faculty ratios, although family and individual-level sociodemographic factors are also key:

The report also found that completion rates were higher among students who attended colleges full time, were enrolled continuously, completed an orientation course and registered on time for most of their courses.

"The colleges with the lowest transfer rates are typically those in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, areas like Southwest Los Angeles or Oakland," said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jack Scott (D-Altadena). "It's the same pattern you see with in K through 12 schools."

So, how do we sort things like this out?

Many of the students not progressing toward their degrees are failing academically, and the schools in "sociodemographically disadvantaged areas" are the ones that need the biggest push to high standards and accountability.

But we're going to deny tenure to teachers whose student fail to pass courses and fall short of annual progress?

I don't have the answers. But I can share some thoughts from a Joel Parkes essay in the Los Angeles Times, from May 2000, which is unavailable online.

The piece is entitled, "Something Wrong in Our Schools? Let's Blame Teachers," and Parkes' is concerned with teacher accountability and merit pay:

Next year I'll teach fourth grade, and my students will have been socially promoted through every grade and, by defininition, won't have the skills necessary for the work that the state and district standards require of them to do. Some of them, five or 10, won't even know the alphabet, through no fault of mine, but they won't be held accountable. I will be.

Out of frustration over not being able to do the work, a number of my students will chronically disrupt my class, so my learning environment will be adversely affected daily. There is no meaningful consequence for disruptive behaviour at my school, so none of those students will be held accountable in any meaningful way. I will be.

Other students will be so discouraged at not being able to do the work that they will make no effort. They will seldom complete homework assignments and will produce virtually no work in class. Our senior assistant vice-principal has stated that "we don't retain [hold back] students for not trying," so the students who do no work won't be held accountable. I will be.

I'll give you two historical examples of accountabililty and leave your with a question.

First, when the Roman legions marched, they built roads and bridges, some of which survive to this day. When the legions had to cross a river, the engineers were called on to design and build a bridge. After the bridge was built, the engineers stood under the bridge while the army crossed. That's accountability, but at least they had what was necessary to build the bridge.

On the other hand, when the Khmer Rouge seized Cambodia, they took the teachers and the other educated people to the rice paddies and said, "You're so smart and educated. Make the rice grow faster or we will kill you." So there were a lot of dead teachers in Cambodia. Accountability? The Khmer Rouge certainly thought so.

Consider, please: As a teacher, I have no control over a school system that does not require students to meet standards in order to move on to the next grade. But I am to be held accountable.

Parkes' story is a powerful example of why teachers might resist merit pay or tenure decisions based on student performance.

At my institution, and similarly situated community colleges, the students who arrive in our classrooms most often do not test into appropriate levels of academic preparation. Majorities of our students are assessed at remedial levels of language, reading, and computational proficiency.

Then we expect them to master abstract theories of political science, or philosophy, or psychology, so that they can transfer to a university and move on in their careers and lives.

I understand conservative frustrations with unions, and demands for merit pay or charter schools. I am conservative on these issues too.

But when there are so many other variables involved in explanations of student under-performance, calls for teacher accountability and teacher retention based on student performance are difficult to support.

The Coming Post-American World?

Fareed Zakaria's got a new book out, The Post-American World.

I'm familiar with the book's thesis from two recent articles from Zakaria, "The Future of American Power," at Foreign Affairs, and "The Rise of the Rest," a book excerpt and this week's cover story at Newsweek."

I'll be picking up a copy of the book soon, but I can suggest now that Zakaria's got some tensions in his thesis, or at least in his presentation.

In terms of his thesis, as evidenced by the Foreign Affairs piece, Zakaria starts out with a lengthy section comparing the U.S. today to Great Britain's decline from imperial grandeur in the early-20th century. He then he elaborates a theory of how the United States' contemporary great power profile has changed, amid a hypothesized narrowing of the gap between American preponderance and our closest rivals in the international system.

Zakaria suggests that while international politics is now undergoing transformation, the U.S. is not in a traditional sense undergoing "relative decline"; that is, the key is not that the U.S. will be overtaken, but simply that the world around the U.S. has changed: The United States will remain the dominant country, but the international power gap will no longer be a gaping chasm, as was true through much of the post-World War II era, among those countries that were outside the bipolar order of U.S.-Soviet strategic competition.

Here's nice summary:

In trying to understand how the United States will fare in the new world, the first thing to do is simply look around: the future is already here. Over the last 20 years, globalization has been gaining breadth and depth. More countries are making goods, communications technology has been leveling the playing field, capital has been free to move across the world -- and the United States has benefited massively from these trends. Its economy has received hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, and its companies have entered new countries and industries with great success. Despite two decades of a very expensive dollar, U.S. exports have held ground, and the World Economic Forum currently ranks the United States as the world's most competitive economy. GDP growth, the bottom line, has averaged just over three percent in the United States for 25 years, significantly higher than in Europe or Japan. Productivity growth, the elixir of modern economics, has been over 2.5 percent for a decade now, a full percentage point higher than the European average. This superior growth trajectory might be petering out, and perhaps U.S. growth will be more typical for an advanced industrialized country for the next few years. But the general point -- that the United States is a highly dynamic economy at the cutting edge, despite its enormous size - holds.

In Zakaria's piece - especially in his comparison to Britain's fall from hegemonic status - I'm finding a striking resemblance to Joseph Nye's work, especially Nye's 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (which was a rebuttal to Paul Kenney's Rise and Fall of the Great Power, 1987).

Nye's research - coming at a time of significant debate on American decline - turned out to be very accurate in its analysis of the enduring nature of American power, for example, where he suggests the differences in capabilities between Britain and the United States:

As we will see ... none of the other major world powers is now overtaking the United States in military and and economic power. Although Western Europe has the skilled population, the GNP, and the improved Common Market coming in 1992, few observers believe that European integration will progress soon to a single government or single security policy. Similarly, China may become a potential rival of the United States over a much longer term, but China's human and technological infrastructure is much less developed than that of the United States or even the Soviet Union. And while many Americans believe that Japan's economic strength is a greater challenge than Soviet military power, economic competition is not a zero-sum game where one country's gain is its competitors loss. Thus, far, Japan has chosen the strategy of a trading state rather than that of a military power. There is no current analogue to the Kaiser's Germany.

With the exception of Nye's allusion to a durable Soviet power profile, the remainder of the passage is fairly prescient. China's probably now the key competitor to the U.S., after the decline of Russia in the 1990s. But other than that, the durability of American preponderance is key.

Nye also elaborated his theory of "soft power" in the 1990s, and one of his key conceptions was of power as a layer cake, with U.S. unipolar hegemony on top, a middle level of economic interdependence among the world's advanced industrialized democracies, and a bottom layer of increasing transnational globalization among the other remaining state and non-state actors of the world.

Compare this to Zakaria's notion of the "post-American world," in his Newsweek article:

We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now—science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It also led to the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the Western world. The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th century, was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations. For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged—something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver behind the third great power shift of the modern age—the rise of the rest.

At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension—industrial, financial, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now—one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples.

The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

So, we're not really declining, because at "the military and political level" the international system will remian unipolar. But in every other dimension, America faces a "a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now..."

With all due respect to Zakaria, this seems all too familiar - it's deja vu, a relative decline thesis for the post-G.W. Bush world. It is, in a sense. a new world order for the post-America unbound, post-neocon era.

I like it, in any case. Simply because of Zakaria's optimism.

There have been some recent arguments suggesting a return of American relative decline.

Some assert a systemic challenger in the rise of Chinese power, or imperial overstretch in America's prolonged conflict in Iraq, for example, respectively, in G. John Ikenberry's, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West," and in a representative piece last year at National Journal, arguing the Bush administration's foreign policy's precipitated the "end of the American era."

I've rebutted some of these points previously, for example, in my entry, "China, International Institutions, and Power Transitions."

I would just add that Zakaria's work looks to be the most important statement on the enduring nature of American power this decade.

His research though, appears to be mostly an update of 1990s-era works - focusing on new actors, trends, and technologies - making the case for the likelihood of continued American preeminance in international life.

That's why I suggest Zakaria's got some presentation problems: We're not at the end of the Pax Americana, although the Newsweek article's subheadings suggest it.

We're also not genuinely in a "post-American" world, for while we are seeing the "rise of the rest," the traditional bases of American global preponderance remain intact - other key actors are just not so far behind.

We'll see more economic, cultural, and technological diversity on the world stage, but it's not likely that a new great power will supplant the United States soon, at least in the traditional conception of international power transitions.

Neo-Confederate Hate Comments: An Update

In response to my recent post on the paleoconservative anti-Semitic hate comments I've received recently, Red Phillips took issue with me at his neo-confederate blog, "Messing With the Neocons."
I suspect Phillips' post is sending more hate-filled commenters my way, as evidenced by these two recents drive-by attacks, which were signed "Anti-Niewert-Douglas Alliance":

I welcome a president that will fail to get the job done. A president no one will listen to. A president whose first order will be for handouts for the "desperate" highway window washers calling us "damn MFing crackers" for telling it to get the hell away from the car, how "white privileged" of us.

Donald Douglas on the other hand is in fear that his own pet welfare, the pointless war, made more pointless with uncontrolled immigration from the "axis of evil" pouring in by the millions each year to the west that paradoxically the neocons approve, will end.

Donald doesn't understand democracy; he views the position of the presidency as that of a warrior-king; one who dictates and his word is done.

He should be sent packing into darkest africa; where the neocon ideology is more appropriately IQ matched.

Also:

"Can Obama win over working class whites?"

"I don't think he's going to have an easy time of it."

You (Donald Douglas) are so far removed from working class whites, a billion miles more from where Obama is. You are decadent rot, filth, a preppy vest wearing teabagger, who doesn't call Abu Ghraib torture because you've been there, and it was fun. You are all that is wrong with America. You are more Liberal than Liberal.

These comments were left in two of my entries, "Obama's Claim to Transracial Postpartisanship is Dead," and "Clinton Pledges to Fight On."

As always, the attacks were left pseudonymously and without an e-mail address - complete cowardice, but representative of much paleoconservative extremism.

I've now deleted them at my Haloscan dashboard. I post them here to clarify and document the nature of these fanatics.

Obama Looks Like Carter

Hey, hey ... Barack Obama looks like Jimmy Carter!

The Carter-Obama comparison could have dire implications, unfortunately.

See, "Carter's Hamas Hug Haunts Obama."

Hat tip: Jules Crittenden

Has Wright Hurt Obama?

There's some controversy as to whether Jeremiah Wright has hurt Barack Obama politcally.

In an earlier post, "Indiana for Hillary Clinton!," I cited ABC News polling data suggesting Wright had a significant effect on Democratic primary voters, with Clinton winning those swayed by Wright by 70-30 percent over Obama.

Note that some political science analysis, from the pre-Indiana period, suggests Obama hasn't really been damaged by the Wright fallout. The Monkey Cage offers this interesting graphic:

The chart provides some visual, data-plotting evidence showing how the ups and downs of the Wright scandal, "Bittergate," the flag lapel issue, and so forth, have had little effect on vote choice in earlier Democratic primaries.

Of course, Indiana and North Carolina broke pretty much along racial lines, with Obama emerging as the candidate of black Americans:

Race again played a pivotal role in Tuesday's Democratic presidential clashes, as whites in Indiana and North Carolina leaned solidly toward Hillary Rodham Clinton and blacks voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, exit polls showed. Almost half the voters said they were influenced by the focus on Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama, the Illinois senator battling to become the first black president, again failed to make an appreciable dent in a crucial voting bloc that has consistently eluded him – working-class whites. But he was piecing together a coalition that besides blacks included the young, first-time primary voters, the very liberal and college graduates.

According to preliminary results from the Indiana exit polls and final data from North Carolina, about two-thirds of whites in both states who have not completed college were supporting Clinton, which the New York senator could use to fortify her argument that she would be the stronger Democratic candidate in the November general election. Of 28 states that have held primaries in which she and Obama competed before Tuesday, Clinton had prevailed with working-class white voters in 25.

Wright was a looming factor in the voting, with nearly half in each state saying he was important in choosing a candidate. Of that group, seven in 10 in Indiana and six in 10 in North Carolina backed Clinton.

Those discounting him as a factor heavily favored Obama. In North Carolina, Obama got more votes from people saying they discounted the Wright episode than Clinton got from those affected by it, while in Indiana the two groups were about equal in size.

Among whites, eight in 10 in both states who said Wright affected their choice went with Clinton. That was well above the six in 10 whites overall who supported her.

In both states, two-thirds of Clinton's white voters said Wright was important. That compared to eight in 10 white Obama supporters who said Wright was not a factor.

Note though, as I said in my earlier post, that Obama's clearly evincing some liabilities with white working class constituencies:

These numbers will continue to weigh over Obama's head, as he increasingly looks to win the coastal elites in Boston and San Francisco, while becoming increasingly vulnerable to a general election rout to the GOP as large numbers of Democrats defect from Obama's shady socialist sham of post-partisan appeal.

Polling data do support these points. For example, USA Today offered this analysis from polling data earler this week:

Barack Obama's national standing has been significantly damaged by the controversy over his former pastor, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, raising questions for some voters about the Illinois senator's values, credibility and electability.

Fox News offered a polling analysis after Wright was in the news recently:

As the Rev. Jeremiah Wright travels around the country on a speaking tour and as Sen. Barack Obama tries to distance himself from the controversial pastor, Americans are making some harsh judgments on Wright’s message, according to the latest FOX News poll.

On the surface, a majority of Americans (52 percent) says they care very little or not at all about the relationship between Obama and Wright, and four in 10 say that relationship would have no impact on their vote; however, a look below the surface shows how much this issue is influencing the presidential race.

Those disinclined to vote for the Illinois senator based on his ties to Wright (44 percent) outweigh those who would be inclined to vote for him (12 percent) by a wide margin. While the margin is somewhat closer among Democrats (36 percent disinclined; 16 inclined), the toll on Obama is still quite severe.

And, despite that the bulk of independent voters (49 percent) says the issue would make no difference to their vote, the lessened likelihood to vote for Obama outpaces greater likelihood by a nearly 8-to-1 margin (39 percent to 5 percent).

Finally, Hillary's favored to win Tuesday's primary in West Virginia, where just 3.3 percent of the state population is black - thus the vote breakdown in the Mountain State will further clarify the nature of Obama's weaknesses with white working class constituencies.

See also, "Polls split on effect of Wright on Obama."

Slim Path to Victory for Hillary

The Washinton Post has the key story, "Clinton Spurns Calls to Quit Race," discussing Hillary Clinton's perseverance amid dwindling options.

But check out this passage, from the Wall Street Journal, "Democrats Look to Life After Clinton":

The key to success for Sen. Clinton is to win her disputed claim to a majority of the 366 delegates from Michigan and Florida. The party disallowed both delegations because the states held primaries in January earlier than party rules allow. Sen. Clinton won both, though no candidates campaigned in the states due to the party's sanction. Sen. Obama and several other Democratic contenders at the time removed their names from the Michigan ballot. Party talks to reach a compromise to seat them have so far been fruitless.

But even the admission of Michigan and Florida wouldn't be enough for Sen. Clinton to overtake Sen. Obama's lead in delegates. So her hopes ultimately hinge on what is proving harder than ever after Tuesday's outcome: persuading superdelegates that she would be a better candidate against Sen. McCain than the less-experienced, less-battle-tested Sen. Obama.

The superdelegates are critical because neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. Clinton can build a nominating majority from the pledged delegates yet to be won in the six remaining primaries through June 3.

That means the main action in the nomination race has shifted to the Capitol. There, a virtual presidential primary is playing out behind the scenes among elected Democrats. House Democrats account for 235 of the 795 superdelegates. All of these representatives are up for re-election, so they are particularly interested in which candidate is at the top of the ballot. So far, 80 have come out for Sen. Obama, with 79 for Sen. Clinton. The other 76 remain uncommitted.

Sen. Obama only recently passed Sen. Clinton in endorsements from governors and members of Congress. As the former first lady and a two-term senator, Sen. Clinton began the election year with an early, big lead in endorsements, but picked up few subsequently. Since February, Sen. Obama's endorsements have exceeded hers by a margin of 5 to 1 as many in the party establishment signaled their desire -- along with the voters -- for a new face promising change in Washington.

After her morning campaigning in West Virginia, Sen. Clinton hustled back to Washington to meet individually with uncommitted House Democrats at party offices away from the Capitol.

This strategy, as everyone knows, will divide the party even further, perhaps causing an irreconcilable rupture in the battling party constituencies come summer.

Some insiders in the Clinton camp are leaning toward throwing in the towel, so we'll see if Clinton's stand in West Virginia means she simply wants to go out a winner.

On the superdelegate math, see the Chicago Tribune, "Clinton's Math Problem: Candidate Faces Daunting Task: Rack Up 67% of Available Delegates."

See also Memeorandum.

Obama's Claim to Transracial Postpartisanship is Dead

Hillary Clinton is out campaigning today, and as she hits the hustings her best case for continuing is to convince the superdelegates that Barack Obama's unelectable in the general election.

The Wall Street Jounal touches on Obama's liabilities:

With his victory in North Carolina on Tuesday, Barack Obama took a giant step toward the Democratic presidential nomination. The irony is that he is doing this just when Hillary Clinton has finally exposed his potential weaknesses as a general election candidate.

The Illinois Senator can certainly breathe easier having dodged a loss in North Carolina, where he once held a big lead. As usual, he swept the under-30 crowd as well as the educated, upscale liberals in the central part of the Tar Heel State ....

But his victory in North Carolina depended heavily on his overwhelming (91%) share of the black vote, which made up about a third of the primary electorate. Mrs. Clinton won 61% of white Democrats in North Carolina, according to the exit polls, and 65% of white Democrats in Indiana. Mrs. Clinton also broke even among independents. Clearly Mr. Obama's early promise of a transracial, postpartisan coalition has dimmed as the campaign has progressed and voters have learned more about him.

The controversy over his 20-year association with his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, seems to have hurt in particular. About half of North Carolina Democrats said the Wright issue mattered to them, and they voted decisively for Senator Clinton. The former First Lady won easily among late deciders, which also suggests that Mr. Obama's rocky recent performance has cost him. And the Chicagoan continued his poor showing with rural voters, especially in white Democratic counties in Indiana. These are the voters John McCain will have a chance to get in November.

These are also the data points the Clinton campaign will now press with the superdelegates who will ultimately decide this contest. But the bitter political fact for the New York Senator is that her late-game rally may not matter. To nominate Mrs. Clinton now, party insiders would have to deny the nomination to the first African-American with a serious chance to be President, risking a revolt among their most loyal voting bloc.

Yeah, risking a revolt, literally, in the streets of Denver where Obama's radical supporters are planning to "Recreate '68."

Frankly, it's hard to imagine Hillary prevailing in her call to generate decisive superdelegate backing. But some outside the campaign are making the case for her to continue.

Ed Koch has suggested that "Obama's a sure loser, Clinton should fight on."

Obama's the weaker general election candidate, but I dread an Obama administration even more that the second coming of the Clintons!

Clinton Pledges to Fight On

Why should Hillary Clinton continue her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination?

Many commentators are saying last night was Barack Obama's, and in the absence of an exceedingly dramatic political event, there's no way for Hillary to win without leveraging party rules to shoehorn into the nomination. Indeed, at least one report suggests that Clinton plans to exit the race by June 15.

Yet CNN, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post are reporting the Clinton's hanging in there.

Here's CNN's report:

Despite an overwhelming defeat in North Carolina and a narrow victory in Indiana, Sen. Hillary Clinton vowed to stay in the race until her party has a nominee.

"I, obviously, am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee. That is what I've done; that's what I'm continuing to do," she said Wednesday in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

The focus of the Democratic race now turns to the superdelegates, because they outnumber the remaining pledged delegates.

Neither Sen. Barack Obama nor Clinton is expected to win the 2,025 delegates needed to capture the nomination during the remaining contests. That means the superdelegates -- party and elected officials who are allowed to vote during the national convention -- will probably decide who becomes the nominee.

Hillary can shift the momentum back to her side a big with a win in West Virginia next Tuesday.

But that may not be enough, as Michael Tomasky:

Next week's primary, in West Virginia, will probably be her biggest win yet, even if she never sets foot there. It's a white, blue-collar state with tiny black and "creative class" populations. So she'll get a win there. And she'll win the following Tuesday in Kentucky.

But those states now are hardly the main battleground. The battleground at this point is the hearts and minds of the superdelegates. The key thing to watch over the rest of this week is how many superdelegates declare themselves for Obama (277 uncommitted superdelegates remain). If reports over the last week or two are to be believed - Missouri senator Claire McCaskill, Obama's biggest Senate supporter, saying that most Capitol Hill legislators are already quietly behind Obama and just waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger - then the effect of Tuesday's results might be that they start declaring themselves for him in greater numbers.

Assuming the superdelegates start breaking, Clinton will be reduced to one last option if she chooses to fight: go nuclear on Florida and Michigan. The Democratic party's rules and bylaws committee - a 30-member panel that tilts slightly toward Clinton in sentiment - will meet on May 31 to talk about what to do about the two states.

It does look rough, and that nuclear option's about as controversial as can be.

But Clinton could redouble her appeals to the superdelegates that Barack Obama faces a crisis of electability in the general election. Indeed, Thomas DeFrank argues that Clinton's strength with the white working class remains the only "ugly" reason to stay in the race:

While the case for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race is shakier than ever, one ugly reason for staying in could be found Tuesday amid the ruddy, sun-kissed Hoosiers who cheered her on to victory at the Indianapolis Speedway.

With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama - for reasons that are disturbing.

"I'm kind of still up in the air between McCain and Hillary," said Jason Jenkins, 32, who cited information from a hoax e-mail as a reason to spurn Obama.

"I'll be honest with you. Barack scares the hell out of me,"he said. "He swore on the Koran."

Obama did manage to pull in many white voters, but still encountered similar sentiments from a man who refused to shake his hand at a diner in Greenwood, Ind.

"I can't stand him," the man said. "He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned."

Such feelings leave Clinton and the Democratic Party in a tough spot. With the largest number of remaining delegates nowbeing party insiders, they have to decide if Obama can overcome enough of that antipathy - essentially deciding if enough working-class whites will back away from the black candidate, whether because of the false Muslim rumors, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright flap or old-fashioned racism.

"I think that's right," said former Bill Clinton pollster Doug Schoen. "Obama showed that he could put together that coalition in North Carolina. In Indiana, he was less successful."

"He has to convince people that he can win over working-class whites in places like Florida, Ohio and Michigan," Schoen said.

Can Obama win over working class whites?

I don't think he's going to have an easy time of it.

Obama's strength last night was that he consolidated the black vote, especially in North Carolina, and benefited in Indiana from some Hillary fatigue among white women, white Catholics, and union households, groups unlikely to stay solidly in Obama's column over months of campaigning that will bring out further fine points of the Chicago socialist's elitism and poor judgment.

Blacks are the most staunch interest group supporting the Democrats, but being the candidate of black America and the coastal elites in Boston and San Francisco simply recycles the electoral flaws of the Democrats in 2000 and 2004.

John Judis discusses Obama's general election weaknesses in more detail, for example with this note on the racial vote:

As the primaries have proceeded, he has become more dependent on strong, almost unanimous, support from African American and young voters. For instance, he lost the California primary in February, but he still beat Clinton by a whopping 55 to 35 percent among white men. In North Carolina, where the white Democratic electorate is liberal and tolerant (only five percent of the primary electorate voted against Obama because of race, compared to over 11 percent in Pennsylvania and Ohio), Obama could still win only 36 percent of white voters. In the fall, when African Americans will only make up about 23 percent of North Carolina's electorate, he would have to win 38 percent of all whites to carry the state.

Read Judis in full.

These are the talking points Hillary Clinton should be offering as she prepares the case for challenging Obama at the convention. It's a tough argument to make, and the party elite may indeed have quietly lined up behind Obama, wishing to avoid a bitter denouement in Denver, but if Hillary decides to hang on longer, it's the most realistic argument she can make.

See also, Marc Ambinder, "7 Reasons Why Clinton Should Stay In The Race," and CNN, "Superdelegates Await Clinton's Next Move."

Photo Credit: Time

Hillary Clinton Maximus Decimus Meridius

"You simply won't die" declares Emperor Commodus to Maximus on the floor of the Colosseum, where the former general to Marcus Aurelius has emerged victorious in the deathly games.

After last night's Hillary Clinton squeaker in Indiana, the press and the blogosphere are outraged this morning, like Commodus, declaring incredulously "You simply won't die."

That's Hillary's neverending campaign, of course. It just keeps going, and going, and going...

Ann Althouse, reacting to the New York Times' editorial calling for more debate on the issues, cries, "I wish they'd say why there's reason for her to continue instead of pretending there are some issues that could be emphasized and sharpened!"

What's next for Clinton? Exploiting party rules to keep hope alive!

The Los Angeles Times lays out the details of Clinton's "nuclear option":

Tuesday's voting in Indiana and North Carolina put Hillary Rodham Clinton no closer to overtaking Barack Obama on the path to the Democratic presidential nomination. That now leaves Clinton with one overriding task: to make the path longer.

For most of the year, June 3 beckoned as the end of an exhausting nominating calendar, the day that the final states hold primaries to choose between Clinton and Obama. But now, Clinton is preparing to push the contest beyond the voting phase of the process and into the realm of committee meetings and credentialing rules, where her campaign believes she may have a chance to overtake Obama before the party's nominating convention in late August.

For voters who are weary of the contest -- and for the growing number of Democratic leaders who say the ongoing duel is damaging the party -- Clinton's course means continued uncertainty over whether the party can unify to focus on beating presumed Republican nominee John McCain.

Tuesday's voting all but ensured that Clinton, who shows no signs of giving up and vowed in her Indiana victory speech to go "full speed on to the White House," will now try to lengthen the nominating process.

There's some speculation that Clinton's cancelling of morning talk show appearances is a sign of desperation, or of reassessment.

But whatever's the case, Hillary's making some of the biggest decisions of her long campaign today.

Is she out?

"Not yet, not yet," as Juba would say.