"Stop-Loss": The Thinking Man's Antiwar Movie?

I saw "Stop-Loss" yesterday, the day of the movie's premiere. Here's the film's trailer, via YouTube:

It turns out the film's first-day take wasn't all that spectacular, an outcome perhaps explained as due to the unmarketability of antiwar movies today, as noted by Nikki Finke (via Memeorandum):

I'm told #7 "Stop-Loss" opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays and should eke out $4+M. Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn't expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. "It's not looking good," a studio source told me before the weekend. "No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It's a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that's unresolved yet. It's a shame because it's a good movie that's just ahead of its time."

Here's Little Green Football's response to Finke:

Right. It’s “a function of the marketplace not being ready.” Have they ever considered the possibility that the marketplace doesn’t want Hollywood’s tedious left-wing anti-American self-hating bias shoved down its throat?

Now, while I can appreciate LGF's point about the left's "self-hating bias," there's much of "Stop-Loss" that's worthy of our attention.

I began seeing TV ads for the movie a week or two ago, and I thought the film looked interesting, and perhaps worth a look, considering how much I blog about the antiwar left.

I only read one review, Kenneth Turan's over at the Los Angeles Times.

Turan often offers penetrating cinematic critiques (like his review of "The Passion of the Christ"), but on the war he's been afflicted by the typical postmodern reaction to the use of force, which has largely tarnished his credibility on matters involving cinematic portrayals of Iraq.

It's better here for me to note Turan's concluding comments on "Stop Loss":

One of "Stop-Loss' " valuable qualities is the care it takes not to take obvious sides. It respects the patriotism of the men who serve while understanding just what Brandon means when he talks about "that box in your head where you put all the bad stuff you can't deal with." His box, he says, is full, and there's nothing either loyalty or duty can do about it.

Having seen the film, I can say that Turan's blatantly false when he argues that the film doesn't "take obvious sides." Either that, or he thinks the liberal discourse on the war's moved so far to the left that the movie's confused mix of the patriotism of the main character (Staff Sgt. Brandon King, who's played by Ryan Phillippe) with his conscientious objection to Pentagon policy represents an ideologically-centrist consensus on public opinion toward the war. This is not true, as polls show.

It's this point that's key, because the movie, in the vein of Oliver Stone's "Born on the Forth of July," blurs the lines of traditional American patiotic values (respecting the conservative honor of serving the nation in battle) with the postmodern values of pseudo-patriotism representative of the post-Vietnam American left.

That's not to say "Stop-Loss" is a disaster.

Far from it. The movie's clearly tapped into a degree of societal stress at a dangerous time, when the nation's at war but the costs are borne primarily by the men and women under arms, and their military families back home.

For example, the film's opening scene of Phillippe's unit manning a road checkpoint in Tikrit provides some of the most compelling cinematic footage of urban, house-to-house combat since "Black Hawk Down." Everyday American couch-potatoes need to see these images, they need to see what modern warfare looks like, and particularly the nihilism of our enemies, who take refuge in civilian quaters, and use old men, women, and children as human shields.

Yes, there's some power in this movie, which is worth seeing and evaluating. In addition to the gritty realism of the battles scenes, the movie's well-acted, particulary as seen in Phillippe's Staff Sgt. King. In Phillippe's hands, King comes off as a vigorous all-America fighter, in Iraq and on the streets back home, where his realizes his personal beliefs have been betrayed.

I disagree with those beliefs, which is that the Pentagon's stop-loss policy is tantamount to a "backdoor draft," and that's the major problem with this movie (and where I can understand LGF's dismissal of the film).

We have an all-volunteer service, so when young Americans sign up to fight they go on the basis of choice and volition. Contractually, soldiers can be recalled to battle, and to be shocked, as Phillippe's King is when told he's returning to Iraq, is disingenuous, if not outright storytelling fraud.

Sure, families have been hit hard by the separations, the battle injuries, and the war dead. But the the consequences of joining the service are known in advance. Soldiers are not victims, no matter how hard the anitwar left tries to make us believe.

I will note a good point raised by Turan in his review, which is that for an antiwar film, "Stop-Loss" is a cut above the rest of recent installments of the Iraq genre:

Four thousand Americans and counting have died in Iraq, and the litany of unsuccessful films about that part of the world -- "The Situation," "Redacted," "Rendition," "The Kingdom," "In The Valley of Elah" among others -- is growing as well. Do not add “Stop-Loss” to that list. "Stop-Loss" is a film that does it right.

The story of a young American soldier played by Ryan Phillippe who resists an order to return to Iraq, "Stop-Loss" covers some of the same territory as those other features. The difference here is a quality of propulsive emotional intensity that pushes us over rough spots as it drives us insistently forward. An intensity that must be credited to director and co-writer, Kimberly Peirce....

This is a wrenching story of men at arms who cannot find peace outside the military circle, who return to civilian life on the horrific edge of violence and despair.

It is wrenching, but the story's vital.

Americans should see this film, not just for its remarkably genuine battle scenes, but for its portrayal of the real-life costs that are required of citizens in nation not fully at arms. Those who choose to fight take up a burden, one that's not highly praised by much of the population, but one that's essential to the way of life of a free society.

In that sense, despite the essential antiwar, soldier-as-victim" sensibility, "Stop-Loss," when viewed in the totality of its message - which is hard for implacable war opponents, whose nihilist ideas will be confirmed here) - is indeed a movie of breathaking power and vision.

(Footnote: For some additional context to the antiwar culture of contemporary movie-making, see Ross Douthat, "The Return of the Paranoid Style," and Andrew Klavin, "The Lost Art of War.")

Left-Wing Establishment Cheers Wright's "Brilliance"

I noted in my earlier entry, "Obama Defends Wright on ABC's "The View"," how Barack Obama's now backing away from his already tepid criticisms of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Obama argued yesterday that Wright was a "brilliant" man whose entire "context" was being ignored by a focus on thirty seconds out of Wright's decades of preaching.

Well, fine, but that same thirty seconds has been defended ad nauseum as "brilliant" by the radical-left's identity mavens, according to Victor Davis Hanson in his incisive post this morning (via Memeorandum):

Watching the parade of apologists for Rev. Wright’s hatred—“garlic noses”; “KKK of A;” “God Damn America;” “Condamnesia;” the U.S. deserved 9/11; America is no different from al-Qaeda; we caused the AIDs virus; Israel is a “dirty word” and sought an Arab and black ethnic bomb, etc—is, well, depressing. Instead of offering distance from Wright, far too many African-American professors and pastors interviewed on the cable stations the last few nights instead praised his brilliance and inspiration.

At best, there was a feeble ‘you just don’t get it’ about the venting and wink-and-nod culture of the black church. But the net message from the African-American liberal establishment, at least I fear, seems to be something like the following: ‘Wright is not going to offer an apology and we aren’t embarrassed about his ranting, which is not ranting at all, but rather historical and biblical exegesis which we endorse. And the problem is yours, not ours, since we expect exemption—given the history of race in this country—from your so-called norms of public discourse.’

That's perfect!

If you cruise around the radical blogosphere, you'll find a cheering section for Wright's views. Far from denouncing him, Democrats and leftists argue Wright's hate sermons represent fundamental truths about America's evil.

For example, check out this from Dr. Biobrain:

I didn't want to watch any YouTube clips of him [Wright] saying these controversial things. Why bother? Guilt by Association is a pile of crap and I failed to see why Obama should be held responsible for what his pastor said. It's obvious Obama doesn't believe these things, so the whole thing was little more than just a smear against him and a blessed distraction for his two opponents....

I kept hearing about how his pastor had blamed America for 9/11 and had spent all my time insisting that it wasn't relevant to Obama. Apparently, Carpetbagger did the same thing. And then he actually saw the YouTube clip and felt as stupid as I did. Because I agreed with just about everything the guy said. In fact, not only have I been saying the same stuff, but feel that any liberal who isn't saying this stuff doesn't deserve to call themselves a liberal. This stuff is just a no-brainer [emphasis added].

It's a "no brainer" that Wright's hatred should be standard left-wing Democratic Party talking points?

Note something here: Dr. Biobrain's an alternate delegate for Barack Obama in Austin, Texas. So here we have a hard-left activist and Texas Democratic Party official saying the Jeremiah Wright's sermons are the standard of what a true "liberal" should be.

Dr. Biobrain's specifically cited Wright's sermon from April 2003, which included the following indictment of the U.S. government:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America.

“No! No No!

“God damn America … for killing innocent people.

“God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans.

“God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”

But note further the statements from Wright's sermon at Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel on Jan. 15, 2006 (via Ronald Kessler):

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body...."

"America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God...."

"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ."

"We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . ."

Reverend Wright has made numerous sermons with such denunciations, and for this he's called brilliant by the African-American liberal establishment? Not only that, Wright's hatred is so basic to left-wing ideology and politics that it's a "no brainer" for genuine leftist advocates?

Perhaps this explains why, on one hand, polls find a huge majority of the general population holding Wright's blame-America hatred as "racially divisive," while on the other, the Wright affair has not hurt Obama’s standing among Democratic partisans.

Wright's comments are endorsed by members of the far-left establshment, as well as some Democratic Party activists. This is the electoral base of today's Democratic Party. On issues of race and the war, progressive politics has moved dramatically to the left of the ideological spectrum.

I'll have more on this in upcoming posts on contempary left-wing radicalism and election '08.

See also, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

Cleaning Up Dodge: Big Picture Analysis in Basra Fighting

The eruption of intra-Shiite fighting in Iraq's just the recipe for antiwar mavens who've been straining since early last year to find purchase for their anti-Bush screeds.

But as I pointed out in my post yesterday, "Contrast in Iraq: How Do We Demonstrate Progress?," the larger picture amid the violence is the growing independence and institutional capacity of the Iraqi state. Max Boot adds a bit more to that perspective:

I have hesitated to comment on the fighting raging in Basra, which has spilled over into other cities including Baghdad, because the shape of events is so difficult to make out from afar-or for that matter even from up close. The best analysis I have seen is this article in the Financial Times which notes that Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is taking a major gamble by challenging the power of the Shiite militias–more like criminal gangs-which have seized control of Basra, Iraq’s second or third largest city and home to its only major port.

While most news coverage has focused on the renewed fighting as signs of impending doom–or at the very least evidence that the surge isn’t working so well–the FT correctly detects a silver lining: “If the prime minister succeeds, the pay-off would deliver a big boost to the credibility of a shaky government, proving that the growing national army is capable of taking on powerful militia.”

This gamble is long overdue. The British basically abdicated their counterinsurgency role in the south and allowed thugs to take over Basra. The police force is particularly corrupt. Maliki is now sending the Iraqi Security Forces to do what the Brits wouldn’t: clean up Dodge.

The risk of course is that Moqtada al Sadr’s Jaish al Mahdi (JAM)–one of Iraq’s largest and most threatening militias–will go to the mattresses in retaliation. There is some evidence of this happening with ultra-violent “Special Groups”, which have been loosely associated with JAM, ramping up rocket attacks on the Green Zone. There have also been clashes reported in Sadr City, Hilla, Karbala, and other Shiite areas.

But the Sadrist leadership has stuck by its promise to maintain a ceasefire, at least when it comes to operations against coalition forces. Even though some more mainstream JAM elements, not just the Special Groups, seem to be drawn into fighting against the Iraqi security forces and to a lesser extent coalition forces, that is not necessarily a bad thing. If we’re going to have a showdown, better to have it now then in the fall when there will be substantially fewer American troops on the ground.

The power of militias has been one of the most corrosive features of post-2003 Iraq. No prime minister, including Maliki, has shown much willingness or ability to take on the gunmen, because successive Iraqi governments have depended for their existence on political parties closely aligned with the militias, notably the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadr trend. If Maliki is now getting serious about asserting the supremacy of the Iraqi state over the militias, that is a development to be cheered. I only hope he does not lose his nerve in this hour of crisis: if well-led, the Iraqi Security Forces have the power to defeat any militia on the battlefield.

Cleaning up Dodge. I love that!

See also the Financial Times, "Maliki Risks Open Sadrist Insurrection."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Obama Defends Wright on ABC's "The View"

I watched Barack Obama yesterday morning on "The View."

Since his Philadelphia speech, Obama's starting to back further away from his (very limited) renunciations of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's hate sermons.

The key Wright discussion is seen in this YouTube:

But check out Jennifer Rubin's anaysis, which penetrates right to the heart of Obama's duplicity and evasion:

With each new utterance on the topic of Reverend Wright, Barack Obama seems to confirm his own moral obliviousness. Worse yet, he seems to have disdain for those who are troubled by his own unwillingness, even now, to break with Wright. (Contrary to his liberal apologists who insist “leaving a church is never a simple transaction,” it is exceedingly easy–you just stand up and go.)

The latest: “I never heard him say some of the things that have people upset.” Let’s leave aside for a moment the Clintonian slipperiness of the word “some.” Let’s not dwell on the quite obvious possibility that he might have heard or read comments of Wright’s approximating those on the dozens of tapes that have now come to light. Here’s the meat of it: just “people” are upset–not him mind you, since he is operating on a higher moral plane. I suppose he would have defended Trent Lott’s single remark about Strom Thurmond with every fiber of his being.

But it gets worse. Obama insists Wright is “a brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp.” So brilliant, apparently, that he has uncovered the plot by white America to kill African Americans and so insightful as to perceive the 9/11 attacks as caused by America’s own terrorism. Then there was his discerning observation that Israel is a “dirty” word. (In what time period would these type of views have been acceptable?) And after all this, Wright, in Obama’s eyes, is brilliant. This, we are told by the legions of Obamaphiles, is not supposed to affect voters’ view of Obama’s judgment.

Perhaps Democratic primary voters are immune to the implications of all this. Perhaps they still fancy Obama as a great ethical leader who is going to lead us out of our history of divisiveness and small-mindedness. Or perhaps they are just embarrassed to tell pollsters they are privately offended. But in a general election contest this is not going to go unnoticed. We will have to see if he can get any Republican votes and just how many independents will be irked by this moral obtuseness. (And that loud thud you just heard? The entire RNC oppo research team falling down in a faint. They are never going to top this.)

See also, the New York Times, "Obama Communicates, Even Without Words."

Responsible Plan? Antiwar Groups Endorse Unconditional Iraq Surrender

This post is a follow-up to my previous entry, "Iraq is Top Issue for Democratic Congressional Hopefuls."

That essay discussed the pledge of 42 congressional candidates to push for an immediate Iraq pullout if elected. One of the leaders of this unelected cohort is Darcy Burner, pictured here, who this week put out a comprehensive antiwar document, "A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq."

The plan calls for a complete pullout of all U.S. military forces from Iraq, with the exception of a minor stay-behind contingent to guard the American embassy in Baghdad.

A look at Burner's campaign homepage indicates a decidedly left-wing Democratic policy agenda; and a click over at Burner's entry at Wikipedia shows that Burner identifies herself as a "practical progressive" ideologically.

Being "practical" and "progressive" seem like reasonable attributes, but there's more to her campaign than that. Her retreatist stance on the war has apparently generated substantial hardline support among radical netroots contingents, including Daily Kos.

One netroots coalition supporting her campaign is the "Burn Bush for Burner" fundraising cell of a group called the "Netroots for Darcy Burner."

"Burn Bush?"

That sounds pretty far out. Taken literally, it almost sounds like an incitement to violence against the president. That's most likely untrue (although some of these people are terrorists). Still, it sounds a little over-the-top, if not ominous.

Well, it turns out a group called the Northwest Progressives have an announcement for another "Burn Bush for Burner" fundraiser up on their page, along with links to Barack Obama's campaign.

As I noted Wednesday, in my post, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama," the "progressive" label is today's anodyne synonym for "revolutionary socialist."

Now, as usual, I try not to take my analyses too far, with sweeping generalizations.

Burner's a Harvard graduate, married with a son, and worked formerly for Microsoft Corporation. Nevertheless, her politics places her firmly on the far-left of the spectrum, particularly in her radical antiwar advocacy, as this story from the Nation indicates:

On the late afternoon of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a grim, surreal procession made its way up DC's Capitol Hill. Down Independence Avenue alongside the House office buildings marched a single file of protesters, each clad in a black T-shirt, wearing a haunting white mask and holding a sign with the name of a civilian killed in Iraq. As they trudged up the Hill, a drummer rapped out a spare and mournful beat. Aside from several police escorts on bicycles, few were there to bear witness. Congress was in recess, the usual passel of commuters away or shuttered indoors, the streets empty under a misting gray sky. Like the real-life funerals for the Iraqi dead they represented, this re-creation, too, would pass with hardly a notice.

That morning in Washington, as protesters marched and danced and chanted, as progressives assembled for the Take Back America conference and as thousands of soldiers' families mourned their dead, Vice President Cheney gave an interview to ABC's Martha Raddatz. When she pointed out that two-thirds of Americans thought the war was not worth fighting, he answered: "So?"

"So?" Raddatz replied. "You don't care what the American people think?"

"No," said Cheney.

There you have it. To the millions who marched before the war began, to the hundreds of thousands who have protested since, to the tens of millions who voted for candidates in 2006 who pledged to end it, the Bush Administration says, more or less, Go fuck yourself.

We are now faced with two problems. One is a war that grinds on, subject only to its internal logic, each day further embedding an imperial occupation. The other is arguably even more profound, a terrifying breakdown in the basic mechanisms of democracy whereby the will of the majority is transferred into policy. We have two ostensible democracies (the United States and Iraq), each with a polity that wants an end to the war (the most recent polling from Iraq shows that 70 percent of Iraqis favor US withdrawal), yet the war does not end.

In the face of this official indifference to public opinion, it is tempting to succumb to despair. The antiwar strategy, after all, has not been static. In the run-up to the war, organizers managed to pull together the largest simultaneous worldwide demonstrations in history. That didn't work. Then the antiwar movement channeled much of its energy into electoral politics, helping to elect Democratic majorities in both houses. That hasn't worked either. So we find ourselves in the situation of Beckett's protagonist in Worstward Ho: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Although the electoral strategy has not yet borne fruit, it is still the most viable option, barring a draft or a radical turn in public opinion that would once again bring people en masse into the streets. (There are, of course, parallel strategies to be pursued. Passing a ban on mercenaries in Iraq would make the occupation untenable.) The question, then, becomes how to create the electoral conditions that maximize the power and representation of the majority who want the war ended. The antiwar caucus doesn't have enough votes to override a delusional President or enough members willing to bear the political risk of cutting off funding for the war. The solution to this impasse is, in the words of Congressional candidate Darcy Burner, to elect "more and better Democrats"--Democrats who have publicly committed to pursuing a legislative strategy to end the war.

So at Take Back America, Burner--a former Microsoft manager from the Seattle suburbs who narrowly missed unseating a GOP incumbent in 2006--with nine other Democratic Congressional challengers released A Responsible Plan to End the War. Developed in collaboration with retired military officers and national security professionals, the plan attracted the support of fifteen additional Democratic Senate and House challengers in the first week after it was unveiled (see ResponsiblePlan.com). Unlike the withdrawal plans offered by both Democratic presidential candidates, the Responsible Plan opposes any residual forces as well as permanent military bases. It flatly states, "We must stop counter-productive military operations by U.S. occupation forces, and end our military presence in Iraq." It looks toward restoring "Constitutional checks and balances and fix[ing] the ways in which our governmental, military, and civil institutions have failed us." It also addresses the need to take responsibility for a humanitarian crisis in which thousands of Iraqis who worked with US forces are in danger and millions are displaced across the region.

So there you have it, alright.

As I noted in "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama":

It's hard to deny the degree of essentially radical mobilization taking place today in American electoral politics, especially in the netroots, which I contend is replacing more traditional street mobilization as the main channel for fundamental change.

By now it should be fairly clear that even mainstream Democratic candidates are emerging as the vehicle for hardline radical mobilization this season. We know, for example, that Tom Hayden, the prominent radical 1960s-era activist and politician, has put out a call for all progressives to unite behind Barack Obama's presidential bid.

Now, as the research here illustrates, many of the most implacable, nihilist contingents of the Bush-hating antiwar left have begun to focus their energies on building a "no enemies on the left" electoral coalition for both the presidential and congressional elections.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Iraq is Top Issue for Democratic Congressional Hopefuls

In a clear sign that antiwar sentiment remains a powerful force in Democratic Party politics this year, 42 Democratic congressional hopefuls have pledged to an unconditional withdrawal from Iraq if elected to Congess.

The Washington Post has the story:

More than three dozen Democratic congressional candidates banded together yesterday to promise that, if elected, they will push for legislation calling for an immediate drawdown of troops in Iraq that would leave only a security force in place to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Rejecting their party leaders' assertions that economic troubles have become the top issue on voters' minds, leaders of the coalition of 38 House and four Senate candidates pledged to make immediate withdrawal from Iraq the centerpiece of their campaigns.

"The people inside the Beltway don't seem to get how big an issue this is," said Darcy Burner, a repeat candidate who narrowly lost to Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) in 2006.

The group's 36-page plan does not set a specific deadline for when all combat troops must be out of Iraq. "Begin it now, do it as safely as you can and get everyone out," Burner said.

The starkest difference between the group's proposal, dubbed a "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," and those embraced by many senior Democrats and the party's presidential candidates is that it rejects the idea of leaving U.S. troops on the ground to train Iraqi security forces or engage in anti-terrorism operations. The group instead calls for a dramatic increase in regional diplomacy and the deployment of international peacekeeping forces, if necessary.

One of the signatories, Donna F. Edwards, who bested Rep. Albert R. Wynn in his Prince George's County-centered district in the Democratic primary on Feb. 12, said the candidates are offering "real leadership." She also gave credit to "some in the Congress who are prepared to demonstrate the political will" to end the war, signaling that she disagrees with Democratic leaders who have been thwarted in their legislative efforts to reshape President Bush's Iraq policies.

The antiwar candidates include several challengers who are highly touted by Democratic leaders, including Burner and Eric Massa, who is running a second race against Rep. John R. "Randy" Kuhl Jr. (R-N.Y.). A few are running in Democratic-leaning districts and, should they win their primaries, are likely to win in November. Many more are, for now, longer-shot candidates running against veteran Republican incumbents.

Democratic leaders said the new candidate coalition does not signal a divide in the party's war policy.

Well, I agree with that last point.

I've noted many times how Barack Obama's pandering to the antiwar crowd. Indeed, Obama was one of the biggest antiwar proponents in Congress throughout 2007, and his main claim to big left-wing support today is that he wasn't in Congress in 2002, during the passage of the bipartisan Iraq war authorization.

Also, just yesterday, in response to President Bush's address on Iraq, congressional Democrats once again hammered the administration for "failed leadership":

Democrats in Congress assailed Bush for failed, tired leadership and questioned why he did not push Iraq's leaders to live up to promises.

"All the president seems able to offer Americans is more of the same perpetual disregard for the costs and consequences of stubbornly staying the course in Iraq," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Reid, of course, has been the biggest proponent of defeat and surrender in Iraq since the 2006 midterms.

The pledge by the "antiwar 42" just clarifies the stakes of the election, frankly. Members of this group, by winning in November, will join the already relentless congressional surrender faction, the "Out of Iraq" caucus, in continuing the push for a precipitous withdrawal from the conflict.

John McCain: An American President

John McCain's organization has released its first general election campaign ad, a 60-second spot that pumps up the Arizona Senator's all-American credentials (via YouTube):

The spot includes the announcer intoning, "John McCain: The American president Americans have been waiting for."

I love the ad. As regular readers here know, I'm a long-time McCain backer, for precisely the reasons mentioned in the ad: I believe McCain is best prepared to lead our country, and I don't think he'll flinch in meeting the challenges of the day.

Does that make me a bigot, or anyone else who identifies with the advertisment? Does trumpeting unabashed patriotism turn one into a raw Babbit-esque conformist, or worse, a jingoistic crusader for some puritanical American hegemony?

Absolutely not, but you wouldn't know it by the early smears around the web:

* Hold Fast, "American President?":

This ad is a clear signal that the McCain campaign and likely the GOP more generally are going to push narratives that imply that Barack Obama would not be an “American president.”

* Mother Jones, " McCain Ad: Cue the Ugly "American" Campaign":

Could the implication be that Barack Obama is not quite American and that he is not interested in protecting our country, which the ad describes with the feminine pronoun. In other words, the half-black dude with a funny name--who might be a secret Muslim--can't protect her. Has Lee Atwater been resurrected?

* Talking Points Memo, "New McCain Ad: "The American President Americans Have Been Waiting For":

Could the slogan be meant as a contrast against Barack Obama, with his foreign name and background?

I don't think there's really any serious debate over whether Obama's American.

Where there is some question is how much he truly loves this country and to what depth he's willing to defend it?

The same's not true for John McCain.

See my earlier post on this topic, "GOP Will Appeal to Craven Prejudices, Essayist Alleges."

Hat tip: Memeorandum.

Contrast in Iraq: How Do We Demonstrate Progress?

The wave of fighting that's broken out this week is being offered as evidence by the antiwar left that the surge has failed.

Glenn Greenwald attacked Frederick Kagan, for example, as failing to predict the outbreak of violence this week in an address at the American Enterprise Institute. Here's Greenwald:

Other than Bill Kristol and Fred's brother, war cheerleader Robert Kagan, nobody has been more wrong about more things with regard to Iraq than supreme war theorist Fred Kagan. He's also deemed by the establishment media and the Bush administration to be the most respectable and knowledgeable expert on Iraq. Within that depressing contradiction lies most of the answers as to why we have destroyed that country and will continue to do so indefinitely.

This quote is a classic example of the left-wing nihilism that's offered by prominent hardline critics of the war.

There's really nothing - no indicator of progress - that would satisfy the hard-left's implacable war opponents, who demonize the administration as the resurrection of the Nazi regime.

I don't see this as a good sign, frankly, of the power of left-wing thought. Greenwald's by no means alone in his demonizations, but let me, nevertheless, provide some contrast and perspective to the current outbreak of violence in Basra in the context of what's happening in Iraq overall.

Amid the fighting in Iraq, President Bush argued yesterday that "the battling in Basra not as a setback but as more fodder for optimism, a sign that Iraq's leaders were ready to challenge the militias that dominate the southern city with a tough security crackdown designed and led by the government's own forces."

Bush stresses the big picture: That Iraq's moving forward, that the al Maliki regime is taking independent action, and that while not glamorous, the crackdown on the militias indicates a forward movement toward greater capacity and autonomy for the Iraqi state.

It's good to remember that major military-strategic assessments have maintained the likelihood of continued violence, so this week's fighting was not unanticipated (see Raymond Ordierno, "The Surge in Iraq: One Year Later").

Also, Larry Diamond, a top democratization expert in political science, who served in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and who wrote a book on the political/strategic failures of the initial Iraq occupation, has now called the new strategy under General Petraeus a success, and that sectarian political compromise is possible but remains to be achieved.

Thus not only was there expert expectations of continued sectarian strife, it's simply not accurate to claim, as far-left critics do, that the administation's surge strategy has failed, and indeed has been a failure from its inception.

CNN's Kyra Phillips, reporting from Baghdad this morning, said that the violence in Basra should be viewed in light of the dramatic development of civil society across Iraq.

I see one of the biggest signs of this (in contrast to the gloom-and-doom antiwar spin) in the mass street demonstrations taking place in Baghdad. As seen in the New York Times photo above, thousands of demonstrators marched yesterday in a massive show of support for Iraq's Shiite faction.

The Los Angeles Times leads its report this morning by highlighting the protests:

In a sign of growing rage against the Iraqi and U.S. governments, tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims marched Thursday in their Baghdad strongholds to protest a crackdown on Shiite militiamen that has led to more than 125 deaths.

Yes, it's perhaps a sign of growing rage, but the photographic images are striking in how democratic is that rage. Amid the sectarianism, backers of the armed Shiite militias now fighting the central government have taken to the streets in peaceful protests to express their opinions and excercise their liberty to criticise the current parliamentary regime.

This in itself is one of the most dramatic displays of progress since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The al Maliki government has not called out police to clear the streets, the army has not opened fired on demonstrators, and we're not seeing a clampdown on dissent through an authoritarian backlash against the Shiite street activists.

What we are seeing is exactly as President Bush declared in his Iraq address yesterday, that "sometimes it requires grass-roots politics to get the folks in central government to respond."

This is true, as we can see from the pictures and media reports from the scene. But to acknowledge these facts would be to destroy the main antiwar Democratic talking point: That Iraq's been the greatest foreign policy blunder in history, that the country's falling apart, and that the current outbreak of violence demands nothing less than unconditional withdrawal.

The current military operations against the Mahdi army is troubling, but it is not a setback to the long-term consolidation of the Iraqi democratic regime. The peaceful protests on the Baghdad street attest to that.

See more coverage of Iraq the Washington Post and Memeorandum.

Iraq Worse Than Vietnam, Says Albright

Via Gateway Pundit, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has declared the Bush adminstration's liberation of Iraq as possibly the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history.

Here's the YouTube of Albright's "60 Minutes" interview from 1996, where, in response to the death of over 500,000 Iraqi children during the 1990s-era U.N. sanctions regime, she said "we think the price" of punishing Saddam "is worth it":

Here's the report, from the Gainseville Sun, on Albright's speech at the University of Florida:

Calling the invasion of Iraq possibly the worst foreign policy blunder in American history, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a bleak assessment of the state of world affairs before a University of Florida audience Wednesday.

"I have said that I'm afraid that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy," Albright said. "Now that's quite a statement, because it means I think it's worse than Vietnam - not in the number of Americans who died or Vietnamese versus Iraqis, but in terms of those unintended consequences. And the biggest unintended consequence in Iraq is Iran. I think one might say that Iran has actually won the war in Iraq."

Looking toward Afghanistan, Albright said things aren't much brighter.

"President (Hamid) Karzai of Afghanistan is a very fine man, but he's basically mayor of Kabul," she said. "He does not control the whole place."

Albright gave two presentations at UF, first at the Levin College of Law and then at the Graham Center for Public Service. She fielded questions about foreign policy from both audiences, and in an interview with reporters afterward she commented on the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

..."The American forces are both the solution and the problem," she said. "They are like fly paper that attracts everybody who hates us."

These are odd statements from a former bellicose Secretary of State who said in 2003:

The ouster of Saddam has indeed made the world, or at least Iraq, a better place.

What explains the change of heart?

Political expediency sure, plus a little BDS, soothed by the Obama-messiah elixer, would be my guess.

Be sure to check Gateway's post for additional commentary and links.

Saddam Hussein and the Democratic Left

Saddam Hussein's intelligence services paid the way for a Democratic congressional visit to Iraq in 2002. The New York Times has the background:

The Justice Department said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein’s principal foreign intelligence agency and an Iraqi-American man had organized and paid for a 2002 visit to Iraq by three House Democrats whose trip was harshly criticized by colleagues at the time.

The arrangements for the trip were described in the indictment of an Iraq-born former employee of a Detroit-area charity group who was charged Wednesday with accepting millions of dollars’ worth of Iraqi oil contracts in exchange for assisting the Iraqi spy agency in projects in the United States.

The indictment did not claim any wrongdoing by the three lawmakers, whose five-day trip to Iraq occurred in October 2002, five months before the American invasion.
Two continue to serve in the House: Jim McDermott of Washington State and Mike Thompson of California. The other, David E. Bonior of Michigan, has since retired from Congress....

The three-man Congressional delegation was criticized on its return to Washington as having undermined the Bush administration’s campaign to gather international support to disarm and later invade Iraq.

Ben Johnson over at FrontPageMagazine has more:

“If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then yes, we don’t mind being used.” – Rep. James McDermott, D-WA, on his 2002 trip to Iraq, financed by Saddam Hussein.

We’ve long contended the terrorists could not buy better representation than the Democratic Left gives them for free. We never knew how right we were.

The media revealed last night that Saddam Hussein personally funded the trip of three Democratic Congressmen to Iraq on the eve of the war that led to his ouster....

On September 29, 2002, the ignominious trio appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, via satellite hookup from foreign soil, to extol the truthfulness of Saddam Hussein, decry the already weakened sanctions imposed by the United Nations, and call President Bush a liar bent on war. David Bonior – who long served as House Democratic Whip, the second-highest ranking post in the House of Representatives – laid the blame squarely on the United States of America. Bonior denounced the regimen of multilateral sanctions, already weakened by the Oil for Food program, as “barbaric” and “horrific.” He backed this up with anecdotal evidence gleaned from the group’s well-supervised tour of Iraqi hospitals. Worse, the U.S. had been “trying to push and dictate” Iraq, namely by requiring its dictator verify his compliance with the cease-fire that ended the first Gulf War and the 17 UN resolutions he was currently defying. Although Saddam Hussein had frustrated all previous weapons inspections, Bonior blithely announced that he would now allow inspectors the “unrestricted” autonomy “to look anywhere.” (Of course, the inspectors’ job was not to play hide-and-seek with Iraq’s prewar WMD cache; it was to verify that he had destroyed all WMDs, as he had agreed to do as a precondition of peace in 1991.) Rep. James McDermott echoed that none of the arms imbroglio was the Iraqi regime’s fault, anyway, as “Iraq did not drive the inspectors out; we took them out.” Again, the United States was blaming the victim and punishing innocent children for her own misdeeds. When pressed about believing the promises of a murderous international pariah, McDermott said, “I think you have to take the Iraqis at their face value,” but he offered no such quarter to the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. “I think the president would mislead the American people,” he declared.

On the eve of the war, three sitting U.S. Congressmen treated Saddam Hussein as President Bush’s moral superior.

The Iraqi media multiplied the propaganda value of their visit. The Iraq Satellite Channel reported that the three were scheduled to “visit hospitals to see the suffering caused by the unjust embargo.” Yet the three expressed no regrets for acting as Saddam’s stooges. Jim McDermott told CNN’s Jane Arraf, “If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then yes, we don’t mind being used.”

Read the whole thing, but note Johnson's poweful closing indictment:

Today, even as American troops are succeeding militarily via the surge strategy proposed by John McCain, the Democratic Left’s leadership demands unilateral withdrawal that would not merely maintain a thuggish and repressive, if stabilizing, status quo; it would vacate the battlefield, create a failed state, and give the perpetrators of 9/11 a new national base of operations.

But now, just as six years ago, certain leftists “don’t mind being used” by those with a thirst for massive bloodletting.

See also, "Unwavering Commitment: Democrats Dug In on Iraq Retreat."

Surviving Wright: Obama Weathers Race and Religion Controversy

New polling data available from Pew Research suggest that Barack Obama's avoided short-term political damage from the Wright controversy of earlier this month:

The videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons and Barack Obama's subsequent speech on race and politics have attracted more public attention than any events thus far in the 2008 presidential campaign. A majority of the public (51%) said they heard "a lot" about the videos, and an even larger percentage (54%) said they heard a lot about Obama's speech, according to the weekly News Interest Index.

Most voters aware of the sermons say they were personally offended by Wright's comments, and a sizable minority (35%) says that their opinion of Obama has grown less favorable because of Wright's statements.

However, the Wright controversy does not appear to have undermined support for Obama's candidacy. The latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted March 19-22 among 1,503 adults, finds that Obama maintains a 49% to 39% advantage over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, which is virtually unchanged from than the 49% to 40% lead he held among Democrats in late February. Obama and Clinton continue to enjoy slight advantages over John McCain in general election matchups among all registered voters.

The new polling suggests that the Wright affair has not hurt Obama's standing, in part because his response to the controversy has been viewed positively by voters who favor him over Clinton. Obama's handling of the Wright controversy also won a favorable response from a substantial proportion of Clinton supporters and even from a third of Republican voters.

More than eight-in-ten supporters of Obama (84%) who have heard about the controversy over Wright's sermons say he has done an excellent or good job of dealing with the situation. Reactions from Clinton supporters, and Republicans, are on balance negative; however, 43% of Clinton voters and a third of Republican voters who have heard about the affair express positive opinions about Obama's handling of the situation.

The survey finds that, in general, Obama has a highly favorable image among Democratic voters, including white Democrats. But while Obama's personal image is more favorable than Clinton's, certain social beliefs and attitudes among older, white, working-class Democratic voters are associated with his lower levels of support among this group.

In particular, white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.

Less educated and older white Democrats, who have not backed Obama in most primary elections, hold these values more commonly than do other Democrats.

These patterns suggest the potential for future reverberations from the Wright controversy if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. More conservative beliefs about equal rights and race are not only related to negative opinions of Obama among Democrats, suggesting the potential for defections among Democratic voters, but also are associated with negative views of him in the electorate at large.

An analysis of the survey finds that holding conservative positions on political and social values is associated with a greater likelihood of supporting McCain over Obama among Republicans, Democrats and independents, and all demographic groups. In contrast, however, this pattern is much less apparent in the Clinton-McCain matchup, excepting views about women in leadership roles.

One of the few negative trends for Obama following the Wright affair is that a larger number of conservative Republicans hold a very unfavorable opinion of him in the new poll than did so in February. The survey also finds that Obama no longer enjoys the favorable image rating advantage over McCain among independents that was apparent in previous polls.

Thus, it's clear that there's considerable polarization surrounding Barack Obama and his relationship to Reverend Wright.

Note, too, that the decline in Obama's favorables mirrors Michael Barone's analysis of Rasmussen's surveys following the Wright video revelations. Plus, Pew's findings on less-educated and older white Democrats indicate Obama's key vulnerability: He's got a values gap among traditional Americans, which could tilt a significant number of these folks over to the GOP in November.

Indeed, Gallup reports today that the Democrats may see significant defections among their more conservative partisans:

Democrats are at most risk of losing the support of independents, conservative Democrats, and, among Hillary Clinton supporters, less well-educated Democrats if those voters' preferred candidate - Clinton or Barack Obama - does not win the party's nomination. Black Democrats appear loyal to the party regardless of who wins the nomination.

Thus, the overall impact of the Wright controversy will be to bolster GOP outreach efforts toward middle-of-the-road general election voters in the fall.

For some competing perspectives on such activities, see also, "The Wright Path? Race, Patriotism, and GOP Election Strategy," and "GOP Will Appeal to Craven Prejudices, Essayist Alleges."

Ecoterrorism and the Democrats: More on the Radical Left

This entry's the second in my series on progressives for Obama (see also the introductory post, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama").

Recall the premise of the series: I'm examing the nature of today's far left-wing movement in campaign '08, particularly the degree to which contemporary radicals are rallying to the Obama banner. So far, there some's evidence for this in Tom Hayden's call earlier this week for the left to unite behind the Illinois Senator, " Progressives for Obama."

Well, it turns out that Captain Ed's got an interesting post that provides some key insight to the direct action mindset and mobilization of today's radical left wing activists. Check it out:

Salon asks what should be a rather simple question, but the answer apparently eludes them. Should someone who commits violent acts on civilian targets in order to promote their radical political views be called a terrorist? Apparently, the sobriquet only applies if one actually kills people, at least in Salon’s eyes. If you’re a quiet violin teacher who conspires to commit arson on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front for radical environmental causes, the government should give you a pass:

Earlier this month, on March 6, a federal jury in Tacoma, Wash., found Waters guilty of two counts of arson for serving as a lookout at the University of Washington fire. According to two women who testified against her in return for dramatically reduced sentences, Waters hid in a shrub near the Center for Urban Horticulture with a walkie-talkie, ready to alert the others if the campus police strolled by. Waters testified she wasn’t even in Seattle that night.

Although Waters was on trial for only the University of Washington arson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman charged that she was part of a conspiracy — a member of a “prolific cell” of the Earth Liberation Front, responsible for 17 fires set in four states over five years. Ten conspirators have pleaded guilty and been sentenced; four have fled the country; three are awaiting sentencing. Waters, the only one of the accused to have pleaded innocent and therefore the only one to have stood trial, now faces 20 years in prison. …

Prosecutors celebrated the guilty verdict against Waters as a signal victory in the campaign against “eco-terror,” a mission that the U.S. Department of Justice has made the centerpiece of its domestic counterterrorism program. “This cell of eco-terrorists thought they had a ‘right’ to sit in judgment and destroy the hard work of dedicated researchers at the UW and elsewhere,” U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan declared in announcing Waters’ conviction. “Today’s verdict shows that no one is above the law.”

Civil libertarians draw a different moral from the verdict. For them it is evidence of how the Justice Department has exaggerated the threat of eco-sabotage; they see Waters’ story as a disturbing example of the misuse of federal authority and the excessive reach of the American counterterrorism program in the wake of 9/11. As Lauren Regan, director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., remarks: “There’s a question of whether burning property is really the equivalent of flying a plane into a building and killing humans.”

The CLDC asks the wrong question and does so in the wrong context. Of course torching research facilities doesn’t equate to flying planes into buildings and killing 3,000 people. If the law did equate the two, Waters wouldn’t face 20 years in prison– she’d face the death penalty, and have 3,000 life sentences as her only alternative. Despite the vapidity of Regan’s response, the law has enough nuance to handle the different scales of terrorism.

But let’s not make any mistake here. What Waters and her co-conspirators did was terrorism, and should be investigated and prosecuted as such. The ELF and its “elves” want to force change in the nation by violence and force because they cannot get it through legitimate, democratic means. Not only to they want to destroy medical research facilities, homes, car dealerships, and Lord Glorious Hope knows what else, but they want to terrorize the people who would use such facilities into submission to their agendas.

It doesn’t matter what the cause might be. It might be abortion, tax reform, or stopping elderly abuse. When its advocates turn to violence to intimidate people into adopting their positions, then they have crossed the line from free speech to terrorism, and it strikes at the heart of democracy. The government of a free people have the duty to ensure that law-of-the-jungle tactics get stopped and carry huge consequences to the people who use them, in order to deter others from adopting them.

Salon’s Tracy Tullis calls it “alarming” that the federal government used “post-9/11 counterterrorism laws to pursue and prosecute an environmental activist”. Briana Waters stopped being an activist when she traded in picket lines for arson conspiracies, and became precisely the kind of criminal for which these laws were written. If she didn’t want to do 20 years in prison, she should have stuck with the picket signs.

Be sure to read the Salon piece, which really illustrates the true essence of "fringe" movements. These people of the Earth Liberation Front are truly radical in their orientation, and in the University of Seattle burning they destroyed $2.5 million in property, while no one, mercifully, was killed (this time).

Now, to be clear: There's no mention of partisan political ties between the ECL terrorists and the Barack Obama campaign. Still, a quick link to the Earth Liberation Front homepage indicates (as of March 27, 20008) that some activists in the eco-liberation movement advocate closer ties to the Democratic Party, specifically the Al Gore global-warming ayatollah wing (also via AP):

They say the environmental movement remains strong - building on the work of grass roots activists, or supporting mainstream advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore, or going deeper underground to avoid the fate of the 10 activists brought to justice in Eugene. “The environmental problems on the planet aren't getting any better, they're getting worse,” said Jim Flynn, former editor of the Earth First! Journal and a veteran of protests in Eugene. “People will do what it takes to either try and stop environmental degradation, or draw attention to it” [emphasis added].

That's about it. I make no more claims than that, but I will continue to update the series.

See also my earlier post on eco-terrorism, "Ecoterrorism Suspected in Seattle New Home Fires."

The Gore Theory of Campaign '08

Joe Klein of Time 's got a theory that if things continue to deteriorate for the Democrats, with, for example, Barack Obama failing to decisively wrap up the campaign with some big final-lap wins, Al Gore could be the answer for the Democrats.

Klein notes that the month of April provides a key decision timeframe:

It's the moment when pundits demand action—"Drop out, Hillary!"—and propound foolish theories. And so I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I'm slouching toward, well, a theory: if this race continues to slide downhill, the answer to the Democratic Party's dilemma may turn out to be Al Gore.

This April promises to be crueler than most. The two campaigns have started attacking each other with chainsaws, while the Republican John McCain is moving ahead in some national polls. At this point, Clinton can only win the nomination ugly: by superdelegates abandoning Obama and turning to her, in droves—not impossible, but not very likely either. Even if Clinton did overtake Obama, it would be very difficult for her to win the presidency: African Americans would never forgive her for "stealing" the nomination. They would simply stay home in November, as would the Obamista youth. (Although the former President is probably thinking: Yeah, but John McCain is a flagrantly flawed candidate too—I'd accept even a corrupted nomination and take my chances.)

Which is not to say that Clinton's candidacy is entirely without purpose now that she is pursuing a Republican-style race gambit, questioning Obama's 20-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright. Democrats will soon learn how damaging that relationship might be in a general election. They'll also see if Obama has the gumption to bounce back, work hard—not just arena rallies for college kids but roundtables for the grizzled and unemployed in American Legion halls—and change the minds that have turned against him. The main reason superdelegates have not yet rallied round Obama is that the party is collectively holding its breath, waiting to see how he performs in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana.

He will probably do well enough to secure the nomination. But what if he tanks? What if he can't buy a white working-class vote? What if he loses all three states badly and continues to lose after that? I'd guess that the Democratic Party would still give him the nomination rather than turn to Clinton. But no one would be very happy—and a year that should have been an easy Democratic victory, given the state of the economy and the unpopularity of the incumbent, might slip away.

Which brings us back to Al Gore. Pish-tosh, you say, and you're probably right. But let's play a little. Let's say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. Let's also assume—and this may be a real stretch—that such elders are strong and smart enough to act. All they'd have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their superdelegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What if they then approached Gore and asked him to be the nominee, for the good of the party—and suggested that he take Obama as his running mate? Of course, Obama would have to be a party to the deal and bring his 1,900 or so delegates along.

I played out that scenario with about a dozen prominent Democrats recently, from various sectors of the party, including both Obama and Clinton partisans. Most said it was extremely unlikely ... and a pretty interesting idea. A prominent fund raiser told me, "Gore-Obama is the ticket a lot of people wanted in the first place." A congressional Democrat told me, "This could be our way out of a mess." Others suggested Gore was painfully aware of his limitations as a candidate. "I don't know that he'd be interested, even if you handed it to him," said a Gore friend. Chances are, no one will hand it to him. The Democratic Party would have to be monumentally desperate come June. And yet ... is this scenario any more preposterous than the one that gave John McCain the Republican nomination? Yes, it's silly season. But this has been an exceptionally "silly" year.

It's Klein who's silly, along with all those Democratic Party insiders who say this is a good idea.

McCain won the nomination fair and square: He hung in and hustled, carrying his own bags at airports terminals in the run-up to New Hampshire. He campaigned harder than any of the other candidates in the race. He stuck to his principles on the issues, like Iraq, and the GOP voters - with the exception of many base conservatives angered at McCain's apostasies - saw him as the rightful heir to the GOP nomination crown.

But what about Al Gore? What's he done?

Well, he's a rock star on the left, of course, something of a messiah himself, at least on global warming.

But he's damaged goods, as any political analyst worth his salt will tell you. If this year's already looking like a reprise of 1968, wait until the Dems nominate Gore. He's the Hubert Humphrey of the 21st century. His nomination will divide the party's base between the left's global warming ayatollahs and the "movement" activists who see Obama as the savior of antiwar, genuine "progressive" politics.

Ultimately, a Gore nomination will show to the entire country that the Democratic primary process failed, that it resulted in a disenfranchised electorate - not only in Florida and Michigan - but around the nation, where primary and caucus goers poured the hearts out to choose the candidate of their choice.

Perhaps there'd be some pleasure in Gore securing a second chance, the opportunity to mount another run for the White House after his disastrous campaign in 2000, when he chose to run as a populist, abandoning perhaps the biggest advantage he had: The Clinton-Gore's record of considerable peace and prosperity.

No, Klein's not serious - he's silly, sure, but not serious.

The Democrats need to finish out the primary, and the superdelegates need to do the right thing, which, even with only a couple of more wins for Obama, will be to throw their weight behind the Illinois Senator. He's the "one" this year, for good or ill, Jeremiah Wright or Samantha Power, be what may.

Anything else will make the '68 Chicago riots look like a hayride.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Wright Controversy Damages Obama, An Update

This entry's a follow-up to my earlier post, "Wright Controversy Damages Obama, Polls Find."

Last weekend Hillary Clinton appeared to open up a gap in polling over Barack Obama, on the heels of the Wright sermon controversy.

Yet, the results of a new Wall Street Journal poll finds Clinton and Obama in a statistical dead heat:

The racially charged debate over Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor hasn't much changed his close contest against Hillary Clinton, or hurt him against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC polls with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, called the latest poll a "myth-buster" that showed the pastor controversy is "not the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign."

But both Democrats, and especially New York's Sen. Clinton, are showing wounds from their prolonged and increasingly bitter nomination contest, which could weaken the ultimate nominee for the general-election showdown against Sen. McCain of Arizona. Even among women, who are the base of Sen. Clinton's support, she now is viewed negatively by more voters than positively for the first time in a Journal/NBC poll.

The latest survey has the Democratic rivals in a dead heat, each with 45% support from registered Democratic voters. That is a slight improvement for Sen. Obama, though a statistically insignificant one, from the last Journal/NBC poll, two weeks ago, which had Sen. Clinton leading among Democratic voters, 47% to 43%.

But hold on, here comes Michael Barone with an analysis of the week's polling trends, which indicate some deterioration for Obama:

Has Barack Obama been hurt by his association, now revealed to most American voters, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Has the pope been hurt by his association, among people who don't like Catholics, with the Roman Catholic Church? The numbers from Rasmussen Reports supply some answers—mostly in the direction of yes.

The key dates here are March 13, when ABC News ran its report of Wright's rantings, and March 18, when Obama made his speech in Philadelphia in which he condemned some of Wright's remarks but refused to renounce him. Keep in mind that Rasmussen's numbers represent those on, typically, the last three nights (or the last night) before the date of the release.

Check the whole thing.

Barone indicates that Obama's unfavorables have been inching up, a trend coinciding with John McCain's favorables ratcheting upwards. That analysis is combined with some general election matchups in which McCain beats Obama in the general election, giving the Arizona Senator an edge in key states important for an Electoral College victory.

Apparently, these trends have not gone unnoticed among Democratic Party big wigs, and while things are dynamic, similar trends have been reported by Gallup, for example, in its post today, "Democratic Groups Most at Risk of Deserting."

Update on the Basra Offensive

Jules Crittenden's got an incisive analysis of the direction of battle in the Mahdi offensive in Iraq, and the media spin on it:

NYT declares the offensive as stalled, but fails to provide anything to back that up. Sounds more like 30,000 troops are engaged in heavy fighting, and an ultimatum has been issued. NYT fears a repeat of the 2004 Najaf fight. Me too, though not for the same reason. NYT fears a fight that would make it difficult to send home U.S. troops and usher in a new period of violence. I fear a fight that ends prematurely, leaving the Mahdi Army intact and Sadr claiming a new victory.

See also, Gateway Pundit, "It's Just Another Day of the MSM Hanging Out With the Enemy."