Hillary's the Better Candidate

William Kristol has a few interesting observations on the Democratic race, with a nod to Hillary Clinton's considerable assets.

Kristol's like me: I dread the thought of a Democrat in the White House next year, but the political science of this year's primary battle is endlessly fascinating (and of course the Democrats' increasingly implosive tendencies are just too good to be true).

But here's Kristol, via Memeorandum:

The fact is Hillary Clinton has turned out to be an impressive candidate. She has consistently defeated Barack Obama when her back was to the wall — first in New Hampshire, then in several big primaries on Super Tuesday, on March 4 in Ohio and Texas, and then last week in Pennsylvania, where she was outspent by almost 3 to 1, yet won handily.

She is, of course, still behind in the race, and Obama will most likely be the nominee. His team has run the better campaign. In particular, it realized how important the caucus states could be: Obama’s delegate lead depends on his caucus victories.

But Hillary may well be the better candidate. After all, for all the talk of Obama’s extraordinary ability to draw voters to the polls, Clinton has defeated him in the big states, including California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Obama won his home state of Illinois, but she won Florida, where both were on the ballot but didn’t campaign.

Furthermore, if you add up the votes in all the primaries and caucuses — excluding Michigan (where only Hillary was on the ballot), and imputing the likely actual totals in the four caucus states, where only percentages were reported — Clinton now trails in overall votes by only about 300,000, or about 1 percent of the total. By the end of the nominating contest, she may well be ahead on this benchmark — one not entirely to be scorned in a democracy.

Hillary has achieved this despite much disparagement of her candidacy by liberal commentators, and in the face of the media’s crush on Obama. Even those who started out being well disposed to Clinton have moved toward Obama, if only out of concern that the prolonged race is damaging Democratic prospects in the fall.

Obama understands his advantage with the media, as he perhaps inadvertently demonstrated over the weekend on “Fox News Sunday.” In the course of dismissing much pundit commentary for typically overreacting to events, good or bad, Obama explained, “Well, look, after you lose, then everybody writes these anguished columns about, why did you lose?”

Obama chose a nice word: “anguished.” You’re only anguished by an Obama defeat if you’re rooting for an Obama victory. Obama was tacitly acknowledging that much of the liberal media has been hoping he’d win. Now, they’re rooting for him to close the deal.

That’s fine. If I were on the left I might be rooting for that too. But this focus on Obama has resulted in a refusal to give Hillary her due. It’s startling how much of the commentary on the Pennsylvania results has had to do with Obama’s flaws and mistakes — rather than Hillary’s strengths and successes. Maybe in Pennsylvania, they were voting for Clinton, not simply against Obama.

Which leads to this question: Will the media this week give Obama a pass on refusing to debate Clinton before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6? Will he be chastised for his lame excuse? “We’ve had 21, and so what we’ve said is with two weeks, two big states, we want to make sure we’re talking to as many folks as possible on the ground, taking questions from voters,” Obama said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Will it be left to conservatives like the estimable blogger “Allahpundit” (at hotair.com) to (sarcastically) state the obvious? “What’s the most efficient way to communicate with voters? Surely not at a massively promoted, televised, highly watched debate. Much better to hold a few town halls and meet and greets.”

We have had four one-on-one debates so far — and each has been revealing. A debate without a moderator, as Clinton has suggested, could be particularly interesting. But debates would give Clinton equal time in the spotlight, and would make Obama’s advantage in paid media in Indiana and North Carolina far less significant.

That's cool! Allah's getting his due at NYT!

Plus, not only would the debates give Clinton another showcase, addtional meetings will provide more opportunites for the public to see Obama's slick prevarications.

A look at Obama's website reassures us that he's got policy specifics, but when he's confronted with real questions on his character and integrity, the Illinois Senator not coming out anywhere near Lincoln-esque.

McCain Running Strong as Democrats Tumble

I'm watching Howard Dean on CNN's American Morning right now. The DNC Chairman's trying to justify the party's new McCain attack ad seeking to smear the Senator's comments on a likely long-term commitment on Iraq.

Dean also confirmed the conventional wisdom that the Democrats' division heading into the summer could spell disaster for the party's fortunes in November.

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that presumptive nominee John McCain's holding up just fine, which seems counterintuitive, given how big a Democratic year this should be:

Why is this man smiling?

Arizona Sen. John McCain could understandably be scowling: He could face a more difficult political landscape than any presidential candidate in a generation.

Only 39% of Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party he represents, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows. A record 63% say the Iraq war he defends was a mistake. The disapproval rating for President Bush, the incumbent McCain has embraced, has hit 69%, the most negative assessment of any president since Gallup began asking the question 70 years ago.

Yet in what seems to be the most promising election for Democrats since 1976 — when the aftermath of the Watergate scandal opened the door for Democrat Jimmy Carter to win the presidency — the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows the presumptive Republican presidential nominee within striking distance of either Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Sen. McCain will not be a pushover in Ohio," cautions Ted Strickland, the Democratic governor of one of the nation's most important battleground states. "It will be a hotly contested race."

At least at the moment, McCain's personal qualities — his stature as a Vietnam war hero, reputation as an independent-minded Republican and persona as a strong leader — are trumping the significant policy disadvantages he faces in pursuing a third consecutive term for the GOP in the White House.

The protracted and increasingly bitter rivalry between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic nomination is a boost for McCain, too.

The article goes on to note that 1 in 5 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents will likely vote McCain if Barack Obama's the party nominee, and in general election matchups, Republicans line up more solidly behind McCain than Democrats do for Obama. ("Nine of 10 Republicans backed the Arizona senator, compared with eight of 10 Democrats who supported the Illinois senator.")

All of this helps explain the crazed frustration on the hard left of the blogosphere.

Distorting McCain's record on Iraq isn't enough for some. Extreme partisans hope to portray neoconservative ideology as the present evil of the world:

Believe it or not, I’m not thrilled with this ad [the new anti-McCain "100 Years in Iraq" spot], and not because it hits too hard or is a little below the belt. No, my opposition to this ad is that it’s not hard enough; it doesn’t go deep enough.

Listen. We need to go beyond Iraq on this. We need to go after the ideology. I think it is imperitive to look past the political liability for Republicans that Iraq has become and start making the argument that Iraq wasn’t an isolated incident, that these people are more than willing and capable of causing the same kind of disasters elsewhere in the world.

That’s what I want to see in these ads, not just that Iraq was a mistake, everyone knows that, but there needs to be a massive movement to explain to the electorate A) why Iraq was a mistake and B) that neoconservatism is just about doomed to repeat Iraq over and over again for as long as we keep voting these people in office.

We should round it all off with a nice C) that things here at home are only going to get worse with each following war that these people keep thrusting us into.

We already got a majority of Americans with us on Iraq being a bad thing, we need to quit flogging the dead horse and move on to the next argument.

And that next argument is what? That a McCain adminstration's going launch American wars of aggression from Iran, North Korea, to Syria?

Such talk doesn't make much sense.

It's a combination of loathing for the forward exercise of U.S. military power (such as the current Iraq deployment), demonization of neoconservative ideology as an unmitigated evil, and extreme left-wing fear-mongering seeking to escalate their hatred of Republicans to the next level, a degree of frustration that's already indicated in attacks on the GOP as some neo-fascist regime of apocalyptic proportions.

Photo Credit: USA Today

Mississippi Attack Ad Shows Obama's Difficulties and Liabilities

Via Memeorandum, Ben Smith reports that Mississippi GOP congressional candidate Greg Davis is running campaign spots tying his Democratic opponent, Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers, to Barack Obama (on YouTube):

Here's Smith's commentary:

The Republican candidate in a special election to fill an unexpectedly contested seat in a conservative Mississippi congressional district is using recent controversies surrounding Senator Barack Obama to tar his Democratic rival.

A television ad from Southaven Mayor Greg Davis tells viewers that his Democratic rival, Travis Childers, a realtor and Prentiss County official, has accepted the endorsement of "liberal Barack Obama."

Then, with Childers' face beside footage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it says, "When Obama's pastor cursed America, blaming us for 9/11, Childers said nothing."

Then: "When Obama ridiculed rural folks for clinging to guns and religion, Childers said nothing."
"He took Obama's endorsement over our conservative values. Conservatives just can't trust Travis Childers," the ad concludes.

Unlike a much-reported North Carolina Republican ad attacking Obama, the Mississippi spot is actually airing on television.

The spot marks Obama's rapid ascent in conservative demonology, to a place in an attack ad in a contested race that -- until several weeks ago -- would have been lent to Teddy Kennedy or Hillary Clinton. A National Republican Congressional Committee spot airing in the same district seeks to link Childers to Obama, John Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi.

The ads are a mark of how difficult, with the nomination apparently within his grasp, Obama will find it to stay above or outside the traditional, bitter partisan divisions he so often deplores.

Meanwhile, as the ad airs, McCain's rhetorical stance seems also to be working: in a column the editor of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal deplores Davis's ad, and gives McCain credit for denouncing such spots.

Of course McCain's principled stance is working. He's stayed away from any hint of attack politics all year.

But note again Smith's clarification of Obama's predicament: The Illinois Senator's long portrayed himself as the post-partisan alternative this year, but his own inexperience and campaign failings are opening him up his vulnerabilities to the real hardball world of GOP electoral competition.

What's interesting too is how Hillary Clinton predicted earlier that she'd be better prepared to battle the Republican Party in the gloves-off arena.

With the GOP preparing to attack Obama up and down the ticket this year, Clinton's going to have even more firepower in taking the Democratic nomination to the convention - recall yesterday that Michael Barone showed that Clinton now leads Obama in the popular voting throughout the primaries.

Things are getting really interesting!

Desperate on Iraq, Democrats Wage "100-Year" Smear

In a sure sign that antiwar radicals will continue to pull the Democrats to the far left-wing fringe of American politics throughout the election, the DNC's rolled out a new antiwar campaign spot smearing John McCain's statement on a likely-long term commitment to the Iraqi people, via YouTube:

The New York Times has some background:

Using footage from the now-infamous town hall meeting way back in January when a voter and Senator John McCain went back-and-forth about how long the United States would stay in Iraq, the Democratic National Committee has begun broadcasting a new ad.

In addition to the clip of an excerpt from the exchange in Derry, N.H. (which we’ve written about a few times before and posted the full video), the Democrats’ ad then unfolds with footage of violent scenes from the war.

It ends with a photograph of President Bush and John McCain together, and asks: “If all he offers is more of the same….is John McCain the right choice for America’s future?”

In the commercial, Mr. McCain’s words speak for themselves, not misstated as they have been on the campaign trail as though he called for 100 years of war. In the initial exchange with voter Dave Tiffany, and in subsequent interviews, Mr. McCain made it clear he was not talking about extended combat, but about the fact that he wouldn’t mind maintaining a presence in Iraq to assist with stability. (He likened it to the continuing presence of troops in South Korea or Bosnia.)

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” today, Howard Dean, the chairman of the D.N.C., again criticized Mr. McCain for being O.K. with staying in Iraq for a hundred years. Mr. Dean said he was not distorting Mr. McCain’s words. But, he added:

“Now, does anyone think, who’s watching this show, that if you keep our troops in Iraq for a hundred years, people won’t be attacking them and won’t be setting off suicide bombs and won’t be having militias go after them? I don’t think so. And most Americans don’t think so. What Senator McCain is saying doesn’t make any sense. We cannot be in Iraq for a hundred years. Those dollars belong in America. We’re in trouble in this–in, in America. And, frankly, the Bush-McCain economic program has put us in trouble in America. That money needs to be here in America.”

The Republican National Committee issued a lengthy response today, recapping its opposition to another D.N.C. ad against Senator McCain released last week. The Republicans contend that the advertising campaign violates federal election law, allegedly by coordinating with the Obama-Clinton campaigns.

“This morning we saw yet another advertisement being announced by the Democrat National Committee which is not only illegal, but a complete distortion of Senator McCain’s comments and record.

“Over the course of the next six months, we expect the DNC to wage a respectful and honest campaign, which means adhering to the law. Howard Dean and the D.N.C. should immediately cease and desist from airing these advertisements. And if the D.N.C. fails to act, both Senators Clinton and Obama should immediately call on them to do so.”

Mr. Dean was asked about those allegations by Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press” this morning, and Mr. Russert noted that Virginia Republicans had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Mr. Dean replied: “Yeah, that is a joke. There’s no evidence for that whatsoever, and it’s plain untrue. Neither one of the campaigns ever saw this ad or knew anything about it before we put it on.”

You be the judge.

McCain has repudiated mudslinging racial politics in the North Carolina ad wars.

Yet we see the Democratic Party opportunistically protesting alleged GOP "Willie Hortonism," while at the same time demonstrating that it's perfectly willing to smear the presumptive GOP nominee with fear-mongering footage of combat that surreptitiously suggests an "endless war" for American forces in Iraq.

See also Allahpundit on the New York Times' summary.

**********

UPDATE: The Swamp adds a little perspective on Howard Dean's motivations (via Memeorandum):

Now, with 63 percent of Americans surveyed calling the deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq a mistake -- a peak in the Gallup Poll's surveys of war sentiment -- Dean is banking once again that a candidate's support for the war might be his undoing. It matters little if it's a "100-year war'' or simply the six-year war with which McCain, like Lieberman, an adamant supporter of the administration's latest war strategy, will be running.

In other words, it's a war, period, and the Democratic Party will opppose it incessantly to bring the party's nihilist surrender forces to power.

Barack Obama's Unfamiliar Narrative

Things just keep grinding along in Democratic Party nomination politics.

We're now seeing the advocacy of what might be called "comparative radicalism" among various factions within the Democratic base.

Libby Spencer, for example, a known revolutionary socialist among the leftosphere, is cheering Hillary's radicalism as if she was a bona fide '60s-era bombthrower:

Hillary's associations are much more damning. Unlike Obama, who was just a kid when the big stuff went down, Hillary was there and an active participant.

Ms. Libby seems to be minimizing Obama's extremely close relationship to domestic terrorist William Ayers (although Hill's no closet right-winger, to be sure).

But check out Raina Kelley's new piece on Obama over at Newsweek, "An Unfamiliar Narrative
With Barack Obama, It's About Much More Than Just Race":

If Obama seems alien, it may not be simply because he's the African-American presidential front runner, but because he's an African-American politician who doesn't flaunt his scars. Instead, he seems improbably blessed with good fortune and holds himself up as an example of the American Dream as reality. As he says again and again in speeches, only in this country would his story be possible.

The story of an African-American who rose to great heights despite the color of his skin and the humility of his beginnings resonated with white, blue-collar voters facing tough times in Wisconsin and Iowa. But in Ohio and Pennsylvania, his message fell short. Even taking into account the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. uproar, which certainly fueled racial doubt among some whites, it seems unlikely that race alone explains the difference in states that are so similar in so many ways.

But other Obama missteps have helped to create the impression—fueled by the Clinton campaign and some in the press—that Obama is a fussy, stuffy elitist who speaks grandly about America but looks down on Americans from a higher, distant place. None was more ridiculous than the wholly manufactured flag-pin controversy. Yet why didn't Obama simply point out that neither Hillary, nor George Stephanopoulos, nor Charlie Gibson, nor most people in the Philadelphia debate audience was wearing pins, either? Did that mean their patriotism was in doubt? Other stumbles have proved harder to deal with. Michelle Obama's comments about only now finding pride in America and Obama's own "bitter" comments on guns and religion have allowed fellow millionaires Clinton and, more and more, McCain to paint him as out of touch with working folks.

Does John McCain really run out to Costco when there aren't a couple of dozen camera-toting reporters along for the ride? Does anyone really believe Hillary feels a deep kinship with deer hunters? Please. Yet it's working, in part because Obama does seem to lack that natural (or fakeable) humility that Americans require of successful presidential candidates (even George W. Bush summoned it, at least the first time around). Though hardly disdainful or haughty, Obama has a whiff of entitlement that can border on self-congratulation. He is the smartest kid in the class, and he knows it. This is a strange sight for those of us used to a black rhetoric that often falls back on slavery and segregation to ward off charges of pride. It was only last year, after all, that Al Sharpton huffed: "Ain't too many of us grew up in Hawaii and went to Harvard." Black voters are now united behind Obama, but many blue-collar white voters still don't quite seem to know what to make of him. When voters ask themselves the age-old polling-booth question "Is he like me?" they aren't necessarily wondering about his race.

See also, Jeff Jacoby's piece on Obama's radical ties, "Obama's 'Mainstream' Friends."

Education Still at Risk After Twenty-Five Years

As Chester Finn reports in his piece, "Twenty-Five Years Later, A Nation Still at Risk," yesterday marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the landmark education report, "A Nation at Risk."

How has American education fared in the interval?

Today marks the 25th anniversary of "A Nation at Risk," the influential Reagan-era report by a blue-ribbon panel that alerted Americans to the weak performance of our education system. The report warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people." That dire forecast set off a quarter century of education reform that's yielded worthy changes – yet still not the achievement gains we need to turn back the tide of mediocrity.

After decades of furthering educational "equality," the 1983 commission admonished the country, it was time to attend to academic excellence and school results. Educators didn't want to hear this and a generation later many still don't. Our ponderous public-school system resists change. Teachers don't like criticism and are loath to be judged by pupil performance. In educator circles, one still encounters grumbling that "A Nation at Risk" lodged a bum rap.

Others heeded the alarm, though, and that report launched an era of forceful innovation and accountability guided by noneducators – elected officials, business leaders and philanthropists.

Such "civilian" leadership has brought about two profound shifts that the professionals, left to their own devices, would never have allowed. Today, instead of judging schools by their services, resources or fairness, we track their progress against preset academic standards – and hold them to account for those results.

We're also far more open to charter schools, vouchers, virtual schools, home schooling. And we no longer suppose kids must attend the campus nearest home. A majority of U.S. students now study either in bona fide "schools of choice," or in neighborhood schools their parents chose with a realtor's help.

Those are historic changes indeed – most of today's education debates deal with the complexities of carrying them out. Yet our school results haven't appreciably improved, whether one looks at test scores or graduation rates. Sure, there are up and down blips in the data, but no big and lasting changes in performance, even though we're also spending tons more money. (In constant dollars, per-pupil spending in 1983 was 56% of today's.)

And just as "A Nation at Risk" warned, other countries are beginning to eat our education lunch. While our outcomes remain flat, theirs rise. Half a dozen nations now surpass our high-school and college graduation rates. International tests find young Americans scoring in the middle of the pack.

What to do now? It's no time to ease the push for a major K-12 education make-over – or to settle (as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton apparently would) for reviving yesterday's faith in still more spending and greater trust in educators.

While I'm all for accountability, I'm also one of those teachers "loathe to be judged by pupil performance."

When we talk accountablity, are teachers to be responsible for a generalized student drop-out culture, especially among many of the most disadavantaged inner-city and minority communities, (see, for example, the Los Angeles Times' penetrating expose on drop-put patterns among at-risk high school students in Soutern California, "The Vanishing Class").?

Moreover, even among the upwardly-mobile demographic, the educational culture of today's college freshman privileges wealth and fame over knowledge, amid a "me-first" mentality which emerges from a Lake Wobegon environment where nearly everyone's in the "top of the class."

My own (non-statistically significant) experience finds tremendous student anti-intellectualism, and I would suggest that issues such as hostility to hard work and the culture of entitlement are some of the biggest impediments to educational excellence facing the nation.

Doonesbury captures some of what I see every day in the classroom:

Americans Pessimistic About Economy

Gallup reports a deep pessimism about the economy:

Eighty-six percent of Americans say the U.S. economy is getting worse, while 44% rate the current economy as "poor", and only 15% rate it as "excellent" or "good". These consumer sentiments represent a continuation of the strongly negative views of the economy measured by Gallup Poll Daily tracking over the last two months.

The economy's one of the major reasons this election year should be favorable to the Democrats.

But as the nomination battle drags on, the party still has no slam dunk in November.

Dick Polman, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, has more on this:

If the Democrats somehow contrive to blow this presidential election, they should be consigned to the dustbin of history - or to a display case at the Smithsonian, where perhaps they can share space with the Whigs.

Seriously, think about it. The economy is tanking, yet their autumn opponent, John McCain is on record saying, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." The Iraq war continues to kill our kids and bleed us to the tune of $3 billion a week, yet McCain, who sometimes confuses the Sunnis with the Shiites, remains its unapologetic cheerleader. Meanwhile, nearly 80 percent of the American people think the country is on the wrong track - a legacy of the current Republican president, who now has the highest disapproval rating (69 percent) in the history of the Gallup poll.

Yet, McCain is deadlocked in the polls with his two Democratic rivals. He is traipsing around the nation on his "Time for Action Tour," blissfully unscathed and husbanding his septuagenarian strengths, while the Obama and Clinton armies burrow ever deeper into their respective trenches, emerging every so often to impale themselves on barbed wire, generally mimicking the bloody stalemate on the western front in World War I.

Given all the baggage bequeathed by George W. Bush, and the voters' traditional preference for a fresh start in bad times, one could not conjure a better Democratic environment, at least in theory. As Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, put it the other day, "based on 220 years of precedent, a McCain win would be a striking repudiation of American history, since no presidential candidate of a two-term incumbent party has ever been elected under this set of severely adverse conditions."

The Democrats, so bedazzled by the choice between a black man and a woman, have been joyfully anticipating that they would write the history of 2008. But if they don't get their act together with all deliberate speed, and tame their latest impulse for self-destruction (last seen in 1968 and 1980), then it is McCain and the Republicans who will be making history this year.

It's almost strange that we're even considering a Democratic loss this year.

The economy, the war, and the recent political immobility on issues such as immigration reform should be creating a sure recipe for change.

But voters want competence in foreign policy, and the mainstream electorate will not warm to a radical Democratic Party agenda that embraces America-bashing and gives entree to 1960s-era domestic terrorists.

We hear a lot of criticisms of how long and drawn out are American presidential elections, and about the endless, deteriorating campaign negativity, but the great virtue of our politics is the crucial vetting the system provides, which helps to reveal the true nature of the candidates seeking to hold the most powerful leadership position in the world.

Clinton Has Edge in Popular Vote

I discussed the possibility of a brokered Democratic convention in my post last night, "Will Superdelegates Rubber-Stamp the Popular Vote?"

One important factor that makes a decisive convention more likely this summer is whether Hillary Clinton leads the nationwide popular vote at the end of the primaries in May.

It turns out that with her big win in Pennsylvania, Clinton may have edged ahead in the popular vote totals, according to Michael Barone:

One thing many people haven't noticed about Hillary Clinton's 55 percent to 45 percent victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary is that it put her ahead of Obama in the popular vote. Her 214,000-vote margin in the Keystone State means that she has won the votes, in primaries and caucuses, of 15,112,000 Americans, compared to 14,993,000 for Obama.

If you add in the votes, as estimated by the folks at realclearpolitics.com, in the Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine caucuses, where state Democratic parties did not count the number of caucus-attenders, Clinton still has a lead of 12,000 votes.

Moreover, she may be able to maintain that lead, despite an expected Obama victory in North Carolina on May 6, by rolling up big popular vote margins in West Virginia on May 13, Kentucky on May 20 and Puerto Rico on June 1. So it's likely that Clinton will be able to argue that undecided super-delegates should heed the will of the people.

Obama supporters can counter that claim with arguments of their own. Their candidate is ahead and will remain ahead in delegates chosen in caucuses and primaries. Michigan, where Obama was not on the ballot, and Florida have been disqualified by the Democratic National Committee for voting too early. Counting popular votes unduly discounts the results from caucuses, in which many fewer people participate than in primaries. And the Democratic Party can't afford to alienate the young and black voters who enthusiastically back Obama.

These arguments will probably prevail. Yet Clinton's popular vote lead is one piece of evidence that suggests that Obama will be a weak general election candidate. In national polls, neither Democrat seems stronger than the other: The realclearpolitics.com average of polls as this is written shows Obama leading John McCain 46 percent to 45 percent and Clinton and McCain tied at 46 percent apiece. But they don't run the same in different states.

SurveyUSA's 50-state polls released in March showed that electoral votes would go to different parties in 15 states depending on whether McCain was pitted against Clinton or Obama. And it is electoral votes that determine who will be president.

There are states where Obama runs stronger than Clinton. They include most of the West -- notably Colorado, a state Democrats lost in 2000 and 2004 but which has trended their way since. They include states in the Upper Midwest, like Minnesota, and New England states like Connecticut and New Hampshire, which Democrats won in 2004 but where Clinton seems weak.

But Clinton seems to run stronger than Obama in the industrial (or formerly industrial) belt, running west from New Jersey through Pennsylvania and Ohio to Michigan and Missouri. Obama's weakness among white working-class voters in the primaries here suggests he is poorly positioned to win votes he will need to carry these states in November. This is not a minor problem -- we're talking about 84 electoral votes.

Obama has also fared poorly among Latino and Jewish voters in every primary held so far. This is of consequence most notably in Florida, which has 27 electoral votes. In 2000, Al Gore won 67 percent of the vote in Broward County and 62 percent in Palm Beach County -- both have large Jewish populations. In this year's Florida primary, Obama lost those counties to Clinton by 57 percent to 33 percent and 61 percent to 27 percent. No Democrat can carry Florida without big margins in Broward and Palm Beach.

Obama's weakness among Latinos and Jews could conceivably put California's 55 electoral votes in play. Los Angeles County delivered an 831,000 vote plurality for John Kerry in 2004. Most of that plurality came from areas with large numbers of Latinos and Jews.

Barack Obama's 20-year association with his "spiritual mentor," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his "friendly" relationship will unrepentant Weather Underground bomber William Ayers and his remark that "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians "cling to guns and religion" do not help him with any of these key voting groups. And his discomfort, evident in the Pennsylvania debate, when he is greeted with anything but adulation does not augur well for his ability to stand firm and show a sense of command in the face of the stringent criticism he is bound to receive as the Democratic nominee.

Hillary Clinton's current and tenuous popular vote lead may not persuade Democratic super-delegates to reject the candidate who has, after all, won more delegates in primaries and caucuses. But it may prompt some to think hard about Electoral College arithmetic.

See also, "Clinton Says She Leads in Popular Vote."

Hillary is No Mainstream Moderate

One of my commenters, Tom the Redhunter, has suggested that if he had to choose, he'd take Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama:

If my only choices were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama I'd choose and vote for Hillary hands down. Much as she's wrong on virtually every issue, she's much better than Obama, which tells you about what I think about him.

I agree with Tom, but in all of my reporting on Obama's fundamental radicalism, it's important not to forget that Hillary Clinton's still a far left-wing Democrat, and she'd take the country in a social democratic direction should she be elected.

Indeed, while I loved her Crown Royal and beer moment a couple of weeks back, I'm certain that if she somehow prevailed in November, the far left of the Democratic Party would be firmly in her camp (even the bulk of the current progressives for Obama who're now demonizing the New York Senator).

With these points in mind, take a look at this FrontPageMag piece on Hillary's history of radical ties on the far left:

Integral to Hillary Clinton's triumph in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday, Jacob Laksin observed in FrontPage Magazine, was convincing Keystone State voters that she “understood the curious ways of more humble folk.” The former feminist liberationist, who channeled dead spirits, belittled those who “stayed home and baked cookies and had teas,” and labored to sue handgun manufacturers for daring to make the Second Amendment possible morphed herself into a gun-toting, whiskey-swilling church lady. Her reinvention as a redneck queen only went so far, though: she did tremendous damage by emphasizing Barack Obama’s ties to anti-American radicals Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. She has, in short, been lucky in her choice of opponents: a mature candidate would have thrown both under a bus at the first opportunity. Obama’s refusal to do so, likening one to his grandmother, has allowed Hillary to present herself as the voice of mainstream moderation.

She is no such thing.

Conservatives, amused at the once-invincible Obama finally facing tough questions, would be ill-served if they allow her to establish her new image as a plain vanilla moderate. From her crusading days in Wellsley College through her choice of minister during her eight years in the East Wing, Hillary has surrounded herself with a consortium of radicals that would make Obama blush (or rather, feel right at home).

See also, "The Democrats' Radical Pique."

Obama's Ties to Ayers and Dohrn Aren't Trifling

Jeff Jacoby weighs in on Barack Obama's ties to '60s-era radicals William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. These aren't "trifling" relationships":

Obama's ties to Ayers and Dohrn aren't nearly as trifling as he suggests, and their views - today, not 40 years ago - are about as "respectable" and "mainstream" as those of, say, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's incendiary minister.

The key facts, reported by Ben Smith in Politico.com, are these: Barack Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's and Dohrn's home, when a group of "influential liberals" gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer's chosen successor. In the years that followed, Obama and Ayers would serve together as (paid) board members of the Woods Fund, a leftist Chicago foundation, and appear jointly on academic panels, at least one of which was organized by Michelle Obama. Ayers would even donate money to one of Obama's political campaigns.

Arguably, none of this would matter if Ayers and Dohrn had long ago repudiated their violent extremism. But they have always refused to apologize for their monstrous behavior. "We weren't extreme enough in fighting against the war," Ayers told the Chicago Tribune in 2001. In a memoir published that year, he exulted: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon." America, he said after Sept. 11, "is not a just and fair and decent place. . . . It makes me want to puke."

Is this Obama's idea of "respectable" and "mainstream" political thinking? If so, doesn't that tell us something about his judgment and standards?

In Chicago the other day, radio producer Guy Benson discovered video recordings of Ayers and Dohrn speaking at a reunion of antiwar radicals in November 2007. To live in the United States, Dohrn told the group, is to be "inside the heart of the monster" that is such a "purveyor of violence in the world." Ayers denounced America as an imperial warmonger steeped in "jingoistic patriotism, unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion, white supremacy . . . attacks on women and girls, violent attacks, growing surveillance in every sphere of our lives, on and on and on."

Even if Obama doesn't personally believe these things, is it really "tired tripe" to ask why he seems so comfortable in the company of people who do? Is it really "extremely stupid politics" to wonder whether such people might play a role in an Obama administration? Rather than slam the few journalists who raise such questions, might it not behoove others in the media to follow suit?

Also, Captain Ed quotes from Steve Chapman on the issue:

Would Obama be friendly with someone who actually bombed abortion clinics and defends that conduct? Not likely. But he is friendly with William Ayers, a leader of the radical Weather Underground, which in the 1970s carried out numerous bombings, including one inside the U.S. Capitol....

Obama minimized his relationship by acknowledging only that he knows Ayers. But they have quite a bit more of a connection than that. He’s appeared on panels with Ayers, served on a foundation board with him and held a 1995 campaign event at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow former terrorist Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers even gave money to one of his campaigns.

It’s not as though Ayers and Dohrn have denied or repudiated their crimes. After emerging from years in hiding, they escaped federal prosecution because of government misconduct in gathering evidence, but they don’t pretend they were innocent. In 2001, Ayers said, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” ...

It’s hard to imagine he would be so indulgent if we learned that John McCain had a long association with a former Klansman who used to terrorize African-Americans. Obama’s conduct exposes a moral blind spot about these onetime terrorists, who get a pass because they a) fall on the left end of the spectrum and b) haven’t planted any bombs lately.

You can tell a lot about someone from his choice of friends. What this friendship reveals is that when it comes to practicing sound moral hygiene, Obama has work to do and no interest in doing it.

I'll have more information as I find it.

Will Superdelegates Rubber-Stamp the Popular Vote?

With a recent survey of Democratic Party superdelegates showing Hillary Clinton with a slim 16-person lead among 476 pledged superdelegates, and with over 300 individuals still uncommitted to either Clinton or Barack Obama, it's seems increasingly likely that the party's nomination will be decided at the national convention in late August.

Karen Tumulty's got an interesting analysis on the potential endgame in three scenarios for the Democrats: (1) Clinton drops out of the race after a loss in Indiana on May 6; (2) top party leaders bring a decisive end to the content in June; or (3) the battle goes all the way to Denver.

Tumulty's look at the second possibility, that party leaders end the race in June, is worth citing:

[Everything] could change after the last two states, South Dakota and Montana, vote on June 3. That's the time party chairman Howard Dean, Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are expected to tell the superdelegates — about 300 of the roughly 800 delegates overall who have yet to commit — that it is time to make up their minds. Pelosi in particular is key, as more than 70 of those uncommitted superdelegates are House members. For many, holding back now is more a matter of principle than preference. "They don't want to be perceived as telling voters how to vote," says former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who is heading Obama's superdelegate effort.

Not since the nasty 1984 primary race between party-establishment favorite Walter Mondale and the insurgent Gary Hart has the nomination come down to the superdelegates, who also include governors, Senators and party officials. In that race, virtually all the elders got in line behind Mondale, the party's legatee. But Obama has been steadily chipping away at Clinton's once formidable lead among the superdelegates; the assumption, at least for now, is that most of those who remain would move to put Obama over the top if he emerges from the primary season with the most pledged delegates. To do otherwise would be to risk alienating the legions of new voters who, thanks largely to Obama, are participating in elections for the first time. Clinton's best hope for countering that argument would be to pull even or ahead in the popular vote.

The Clinton team also notes that the superdelegates were established in the 1980s, in the wake of successive electoral debacles, to assure that the party nominated its strongest general-election contender. If Clinton performs well in such upcoming primaries as West Virginia and Kentucky, her team argues, that will increase doubts about Obama's durability in the fall (though it has been 12 years since both states voted for a Democrat in a general election). They also hope Clinton will finish close enough to Obama to bring into the calculation the still disqualified votes of Florida and Michigan — two states that moved up their primary dates in violation of party rules and subsequently lost their delegates as a result. Should it reach a point at which the fate of those delegates would determine the outcome, that would pave the way for the scenario Democrats fear most [a brokered convention]...

People have been speculating on this possibility for nearly four months, since Clinton and Obama started trading victories in closely fought battles from New Hampshire to South Carolina to Texas.

But with the superdelegate count so close - and especially with Obama's failure to put away the nomination with key wins in middle American working class states - some decision on the nominee outside of the popular vote is all but certain.

Jason Bello and Robert Shapiro, at Political Science Quarterly, analyze some of the factors surrounding a final decision on the party nominee at the Democratic National Convention:

This election tells us that the rules are important and cannot be ignored. They matter in giving one candidate an edge over the other and also in determining the length of the primary and caucus campaigns. Another debate over the rules is brewing with respect to the Florida and Michigan delegates (313 in total), who are not being counted because the states scheduled their primaries too early. Hillary Clinton, who won handily in both states, wants them reinstated, but Barack Obama (whose name was not even on the Michigan ballot) maintains that doing so would be unfair. The Democratic Party has given each state the option of holding another contest, but this seems unlikely. For now, these two states’ delegates will not count; the Clinton camp has one final recourse, an appeal to the credentials committee, but that option is still months away. This situation is problematic for the Democratic Party, because it does not want the nominee choice to depend on a bureaucratic decision made at the convention. In a similar vein, many Democrats do not want the "super delegates"—the ostensibly uncommitted set of party leaders—to determine the outcome either, a possibility that emerges when the nomination race reaches the convention undecided. Super delegates were not intended to follow the popular vote; they were created to bring independent judgments to the process. However, we must remember that the principle reason that the elec-torally consequential convention became so rare over the past 30 years is that a push for popular democracy put the power in the hands of the voters, all of whom decide before the convention. This year presents an entirely new situation and will be the first time since the democratization of the primary that the super delegates will be asked to vote decisively. We expect that the same norms of popular democracy that drove these reforms will put enormous pressure on the Democratic delegates to vote in accordance with either the outcomes of their state contests or the winner of the final tally up to the convention. Although a number of Democratic uncommitted delegates have already endorsed either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, we would be surprised if the super delegates on the whole do not support the leader in committed delegates and reverse the outcome. It therefore remains unclear whether arriving at the convention with the results undecided matters if the super delegates simply rubber-stamp the results of the primaries and caucuses. Should the parties get rid of the super delegates? The answer remains unclear. The purpose of the convention today has changed; it is less a deciding mechanism and more a chance to rally around the nominee and showcase upcoming stars. The presidential nomination process has never been a fully democratic process, though it has become more democratic over time. Eliminating the super delegates would be another step in this direction, but a more democratic process may not be what the parties are looking for.

Will the superdelegates "rubber-stamp" the popular vote from the party's primaries and caucuses?

Party leaders, activists, and voters had better hope so.

If not, 2008 is likely to see the most undemocratic Democratic nomination battle since 1968, amid potential unrest in the streets (a youth cohort venting its rage through unconventional participation), while disgruntled rank-and-file party members boycott the general election on November 4, handing the GOP a remarkable victory amid circumstances for the Republicans that appear less than auspicous.

GOP Targets Obama on General Election Liabilities

Andrew Sullivan's probably going to be calling foul from here until November, but it sure looks like Barack Obama's paving the way toward a very competitive GOP general election campaign.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, Republicans have targeting Obama in a series of tough campaign spots around the country, and some local Democrats are having the audacity to back away from the radioactive Illinois Senator:

As they promote their candidates and try to pave the way for GOP victories this year, Republicans have begun making their case to voters in advertisements featuring a new star: Barack Obama.

In North Carolina, a TV ad shows Obama's former pastor making racially charged comments. An Internet ad attacks a Pennsylvania congressman for endorsing Obama's presidential bid. A New Mexico radio ad says Obama disrespects "the American way of life."

In Louisiana, a TV ad attacking Obama's healthcare agenda as "radical" proved so threatening that the House candidate it targeted, Democrat Don Cazayoux, distanced himself from Obama on Thursday, issuing a stern statement saying that he "has not endorsed any national politician."

The flurry of attacks underscores how Republicans and their allies are sensing opportunity in the increasingly battered image of Obama, whom many Democrats have viewed as their best hope for appealing across ideological lines and helping their party win in conservative areas.

The New York Times also addresses Obama's liabilities, which are making things look good for Republicans up and down the ticket nationwide:

Senator Barack Obama is starring in a growing number of campaign commercials, but the latest batch is being underwritten by Republicans.

In a sign that the racial, class and values issues simmering in the presidential campaign could spread into the larger political arena, Republican groups are turning recent bumps in Mr. Obama’s road — notably his comment that small-town Americans “cling” to guns and religion out of bitterness and a fiery speech by his former minister in which he condemned the United States — into attacks against Democrats down the ticket.

“The public, week by week, is becoming more familiar with his big-government, far-left vision for America,” said Ed Patru, a spokesman for Freedom’s Watch, an advocacy organization that is portraying Mr. Obama as ultraliberal in an advertisement running in Louisiana before a special election for a House seat.

Republicans say the new focus on Mr. Obama reflects their view that he remains the more likely Democratic presidential nominee since he continues to lead Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in convention delegates. It also shows that Republicans, who have for months characterized Mrs. Clinton as the contender who would most energize Republican voters, now see vulnerabilities in Mr. Obama that could be liabilities for other Democrats on the ballot.

“There were times when Republicans reacted with just horror that he would lead the ticket,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst. “Now there is not the sense of him being invulnerable, the magic bullet. I think there has been a major change.”

The growing Republican emphasis on Mr. Obama could also help Mrs. Clinton plead her case that she is more electable, bolstering her argument to superdelegates that Republicans are poised to pounce on her relatively untested opponent. Her advisers have been frustrated that some top Democrats rate Mrs. Clinton a greater liability for the party’s candidates in conservative parts of the country — a view still held by some strategists — even though she has shown a capacity to withstand Republican attacks.

At the same time, some Democrats privately said the new Republican push could be a backdoor effort to buoy Mrs. Clinton, the candidate Republicans initially saw as the Democrat who would most rally Republicans and spur fund-raising. It has not been lost on Republican strategists that they can give pause to superdelegates leaning toward endorsing Mr. Obama.

The Republican House and Senate campaign organizations have seized on the remark on bitter voters in particular, encouraging their candidates to make the most of it. Advertisements have been placed on the Internet, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee assembled videos for targeted states that replay Mr. Obama’s comments as somber music builds. “Mary Landrieu. A Democratic superdelegate,” says the video, referring to the Louisiana senator, who is seeking re-election this year. “Will she cast her vote for Obama?”

This is almost getting to be like picking the best kitty from the litter!

Meanwhile, Clinton's pull up even in public opinion, and she's polling better a general election matchups against John McCain, via Gallup:

The Democratic nomination race is now tied, with Barack Obama favored by 48% of national Democratic voters and Hillary Clinton by 47%.

The latest results, based on Gallup Poll Daily tracking from April 22-24, include two days of interviews conducted entirely after Tuesday's Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Support for Clinton is significantly higher in these post-primary interviews than it was just prior to her Pennsylvania victory, clearly suggesting that Clinton's win there is the catalyst for her increased national support.

Obama's lead dwindled steadily all week, falling from a high of 10 percentage points in interviewing conducted in the three days just prior to the Pennsylvania primary. However, the percentage of Democrats supporting Obama has changed little (declining from 50% in April 19-21 polling to 48% today). Most of Clinton's increased support (from 40% to 47%) has come from previously undecided voters. (To view the complete trend since Jan. 3, 2008, click here.)...

Clinton fares slightly better than Obama against John McCain in hypothetical matchups for the November election. Although both races are too close to call given the poll's margin of error, Clinton is running two points ahead of McCain, 47% to 45%, while Obama is running one point behind, 45% to 46%.

We still have over six months of campaigning before the general election. If some Democrats are running away from Obama now, just give it a little time.

Reverend Wright's making a comeback (here and here), and there's a whole lot of working class voting constituencies that Obama's yet to face.

Now that's bitter!

Progressive Hypocrisy in Alleged Clinton Violence

I'm not normally going to find myself in agreement with the Tennessee Guerilla Women, but I do appreciate TGW's post pointing out the utter hypocrisy of those far left Obama supporters who self-identify as "progressives."

It turns out Keith Olbermann's currently under fire for making comments that could plausibly be construed as advocating violence against Hillary Clinton. The background on this is at Rachel Sklar's post, "Keith Olbermann's Idea For Beating Hillary: Literally Beating Hillary.

The comments are caught on this YouTube as well:

More on the background in a minute, but here's what TGW had to say about Olberman and Obama's "progressives":

The outrage over Keith Olbermann's latest misogynistic missive -- directed at Hillary Rodham Clinton -- cries out for a little context. Keith Olbermann is the darling of "the progressives," or as they are more aptly termed these days: the Obamaphiles.

That an overt misogynist is the hero of "the progressives," strongly suggests that a little intensely critical introspection is long overdue. Because you certainly cannot be progressive while espousing blatantly misogynistic views of women.

TGW goes on to provide additional commentary on this alleged misogyny, but what was really interesting in this mini-scandal is Sklar's commentary at the Huffington Post:

Olbermann was discussing the election with Newsweek's Howard Fineman, a frequent guest. They topic was, how can a winner finally be determined in this never-ending Democratic race for the nomination? Of course, the assumption was that it was Clinton that should be shown the door (despite clearly still earning her spot in the race thanks to, um, voters). Fineman said that, all the delegate math aside, ultimately it was going to take "some adults somewhere in the Democratic party to step in and stop this thing, like a referee in a fight that could go on for thirty rounds. Those are the super, super, super delegates who are going to have to decide this."

Said Olbermann: "Right. Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out...."

What does that mean? Really, it can only mean one thing: Beating the crap out of Hillary Clinton, to the point where she is physically incapable of of getting up and walking out. At minimum. We know this. We know this because we have all seen movies where people are invited into private places to have "discussions" and the unruly party is, um, dealt with accordingly. It's an unmistakably violent image.

Do I really think Olbermann thinks Hillary Clinton should really be violently beaten to the point of physical incapacitation, or worse? No, though some have taken that statement to its logical conclusion. But it is an unmistakably violent image — and that point seems to be undisputed by those who have written about it so far (Google "Olbermann" and "take her into a room" and you'll see results like "Keith Olbermann Advocates Violence Against Hillary" "Olbermann: Misogyny 101" "Calls To End Race Turn Violent""Olbermann: How To Snuff Out Hillary Clinton"). Even Fineman seemed taken aback by the statement - there is a distinct pause after, and it's an eternity in TV time. He's not facing the camera but you can tell that the statement was jarring. (Even so he agreed, saying, "Yes, yes exactly.")

There really seems to be only one interpretation here, and the only point of debate is on whether it's okay or not. I'm going to cut that one short: It's not. To the fellow (male) journo I wrote to about this yesterday, who waved it off as just some colorful film-noir imagery, I say: can you IMAGINE if someone had said that about Obama? That he should be taken somewhere and dealt with, so that he wouldn't come back? Can you imagine if some right-winger had talked about getting Obama out of the race "the old-fashioned way?" If that last one makes you cringe, it should, because it evokes a history of violence against black people in this country that is raw and real. Well, frankly, the same goes for women — many of whom have been taken somewhere private, and never returned.

I can already hear the outcry of those who can't believe I'd equate the gender card with the race card. Well, too bad. They're both issues, they're both factors, and in the first presidential campaign where both a woman and an African-American have a real shot at the nomination, they're both all too germane. Each of the candidates is a complex person whose appeal or lack thereof can be endlessly parsed and attributed to all sorts of factors. But sexism is one of them, and part of the problem is that too many of such comments are waved away as being just jokes or not a big deal or geez, take a chill pill.

If you check the links provided, the "logical conclusion" mentioned is that some might suggest Olberman's advocating call for Clinton's murder.

I think that's going a bit far on this.

What's interesting, though, is how the Olberman "take Hillary in a room" comment reveals how nasty is the identity politics of the Democratic Party in this nomination race.

I wrote a post on this previously, "Democratic Party Identity Politics," and as well as a couple more abstract entries, for example, "Radical Schizophrenia? Making Sense of Democratic Party Constituencies," but sometimes you just have to sit back and let the razor-bladed cock (and hen) fight take it's toll.

Israel at 60: Can the Jewish State Survive?

May 14th marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Jewish state in Israel.

As a staunch supporter of the Israeli people, I'm deeply interested in debates on the future of the nation.

We'll be seeing much more commentary and analysis on this in upcoming weeks, but let me share some of the articles I've been reading on Israel's milestone.

The current cover story at the Atlantic, for example, asks "Is Israel Finished?"

The piece traces current debates in Israel over Ehud Olmert's handling of the 2006 Mideast War with Hezbollah, with particularly attention to the criticisms of the government among prominent public intellectuals, like the novelist David Grossman.

It's a good piece, and includes this great passage on the background of Israel today:

Israel’s people are among the world’s most patriotic—in a recent survey, 94 percent of Jewish Israelis said they are willing to fight for their country (by contrast, 63 percent of Americans are willing to fight for theirs), but 44 percent of Israelis said they would be ready to leave their country if they could find a better standard of living abroad. There are already up to 40,000 Israelis in Silicon Valley (and more than a half million across the U.S.), and the emigration of Israel’s most talented citizens is a constant worry of Israeli leaders. “Jews know that they can land on their feet in any corner of the world,” Ehud Barak, the defense minister and former prime minister, told me. “The real test for us is to make Israel such an attractive place—cutting-edge in science, education, culture, quality of life—that even American Jewish young people want to come here. If we cannot do this, even those who were born here will consciously decide to go to other places. This is a real problem.”

There are other, more disturbing issues, ones that many Israelis don’t care to address ... How can Israel survive the next 60 years in a part of the world that gives rise to groups like Hamas? How can Israel flourish if its army cannot defeat small bands of rocketeers? Does the concentration of so many Jews in a claustrophobically small space in the world’s most volatile region actually undermine the Jewish people’s ability to survive, an ability that was called into question little more than 60 years ago, when 33 percent of the world’s Jews were murdered?

The article portrays Israel as a country in paralysis, with the public commentariat on the left - represented here by Grossman, who is receptive to an accomodation with Hamas - opposed to Olmert's policy on Israel's West Bank settlements, and his simmmering war with the Palestinians in the absence of a negotiated compromise.

Grossman's position sounds like a recipe for self-destuction, but Olmert is in a bind himself, being sympathetic to compromise while fearful of being the prime minister who lost Israel.

But I'm also reading Foreign Policy's new essay, "Think Again: Israel," which offers an incomplete assessment of Israel's politics of survival.

The piece asks if, "Israel’s Existence Is in Danger"?

Not anymore. When Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, its Arab neighbors responded by invading. “It does not matter how many [Jews] there are,” said Arab League Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Azzam. “We will sweep them into the sea.”

Instead, disorganized and inexperienced Arab armies quickly crumbled before them. By the war’s end, Israel held more land than the United Nations had allocated it. Before the June 1967 Six Day War, as Arab states massed their forces on Israel’s borders, Israelis feared a second Holocaust. Israel’s astonishing victory showed that it had become the regional superpower, a status confirmed when it repulsed Egypt and Syria’s surprise attack in October 1973. Five-and-a-half years later, the peace agreement with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat neutralized Israel’s most formidable foe.

Today, there is no conventional military threat that remotely compares with the alliance led by Egypt. Left isolated by the Israeli-Egyptian peace, Syria has carefully observed a cease-fire since 1974. Afraid to risk full confrontation, Damascus has supported substate forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Along with other guerrilla groups, they employ terrorist tactics and rocket fire. Those methods have claimed many Israeli civilians’ lives. But on a national level, they’re equivalent to a chronic illness, not a fatal disease.

The essay also asks if , "Hamas Seeks Israel’s Destruction":

In its dreams. Hamas’s founding charter, issued in 1988, defines Palestine as “an Islamic waqf”—sacred trust—“consecrated for future Muslim generations.” That includes pre-1967 Israel. All of Palestine, says the charter, must be liberated by jihad. Diplomacy is a “vain endeavor.” The document turns the goals of radical Palestinian nationalism into timeless religious truths.

Yet with time, Hamas has indeed changed. It hasn’t renounced its charter, but has stopped referring to it. The movement has gradually morphed into a hard-line but more pragmatic Islamist organization. A milestone was its decision to participate in Palestinian Authority elections, even though the Authority was born of the Oslo agreements with Israel. In its 2006 election platform, Hamas stressed liberating the land that Israel occupied in 1967, even while insisting that it would not renounce the claim to pre-1948 Israel or Palestinians’ right of return.

This balancing act looks much like the change that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) underwent a generation ago, when it adopted its 1974 “phased strategy”—willingness to establish a state in part of Palestine while maintaining a claim to the rest. For the PLO, that was a way to justify participating in diplomacy on the future of the occupied territories, and it was a step toward recognizing Israel. Today, there are disagreements within Hamas over whether to negotiate directly with Israel. However, the organization appears willing to accept a de facto two-state solution and long-term cease-fire, as long as it doesn’t have to recognize Israel outright.

Not that Hamas has turned moderate. It hasn’t renounced “armed struggle,” including attacks on civilians. It may be willing to put up with Israel’s existence, but it still hasn’t negotiated with itself the way to say so publicly. Nonetheless, an eventual agreement with Israel is within the realm of the possible.

The essay's written by Gershom Gorenberg, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect.

I think Gorenberg badly misrepresents the nature of Hamas - and for more to that effect, see Caroline Glick's essay on Jimmy Carter's recent meetings with that terrorist organization, "Revealed Truths vs. Revealed Lies."

Also, Gorenberg doesn't really address Israel's demographic problem. Can Israel survive as a democracy if the Jewish population loses its majority status?

The Atlantic piece sums it up:

Political parties of the left and the center see the “demographic threat” to Israel’s Jewish majority as an existential menace nearly on a par with that posed by Iran and its nuclear program. The demographic trend has raised fears that Israel will become a state like pre-Mandela South Africa, in which the minority ruled the majority. But if the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza were given the vote, then Israel, a country whose fundamental purpose has been to serve as a refuge for persecuted Jews, and to allow those Jews to have the novel experience of being part of a majority, would disappear, to be replaced by an Arab-dominated “binational” state. Yet Israel has not found a way to escape the West Bank.

This is the biggest problem.

As left-wing anti-Israel groups in the West continue to demonize the Jewish state with incessant cries of "apartheid" and demands of the "right of return" for Palestinians, Tel Aviv will continue to face a crisis of existential proportions.

I'll have more on this, but in the meanwhile check out the question of worldwide support for Israel's survival across the Jewish diaspora, in Hillel Halkin's, "After Zionism: Reflections on Israel and the Diaspora."

Who's Your Favorite Public Intellectual?

We've all got 'em: A favorite author who's influenced the way we see the world. Some scholar or activist whose thinking's opened up new vistas in our own lives.

I go back and forth on this, of course.

In the past few years I've enjoyed Robert Kagan ("Power and Weakness") and Juan Williams (Enough).

I think some of Jamie Kerchick's recent writings are really cool ("The Anti-Neocon Fervor"), but I don't think he's really established enough to rate up there among today's top public intellectuals.

I'm thinking about this because Foreign Policy's put out the call for readers to vote for "The Top 100 Public Intellectuals":

They are some of the world’s most introspective philosophers and rabble-rousing clerics. A few write searing works of fiction and uncover the mysteries of the human mind. Others are at the forefront of modern finance, politics, and human rights. In the second Foreign Policy/Prospect list of top public intellectuals, we reveal the thinkers who are shaping the tenor of our time.

Foreign Policy's already got its list of the top 100. Kagan's on there, as well as David Petreaus, who's also a hero of mine. Samuel Huntington's a great inclusion too!

I don't see Williams or Kirchick, although lefties will love the inclusion of Paul Krugman, and true radicals will rejoice at the listing of Noam Chomsky!

So, don't delay: Submit your vote today!

Defining Success in Iraq

Frederick Kagan's got a new essay laying out a metric for determining American success in Iraq, at the Weekly Standard:

The president's nomination of generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno to take command of U.S. Central Command and Multinational Force-Iraq, respectively, was obviously the right decision. By experience and temperament and demonstrated success, both men are perfectly suited to these jobs. Given the political climate in Washington, however, their nominations are likely to be attacked with the same tired arguments war critics used to try to drown out reports of progress in Iraq during the recent Petraeus-Crocker hearings. So before the shouting begins again, let us consider in detail one of the most important of these arguments: that no one has offered any clear definition of success in Iraq.

Virtually everyone who wants to win this war agrees: Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia. This has been said over and over. Why won't war critics hear it? Is it because they reject the notion that such success is achievable and therefore see the definition as dishonest or delusional? Is it because George Bush has used versions of it and thus discredited it in the eyes of those who hate him? Or is it because it does not offer easily verifiable benchmarks to tell us whether or not we are succeeding? There could be other reasons--perhaps critics fear that even thinking about success or failure in Iraq will weaken their demand for an immediate "end to the war." Whatever the explanation for this tiresome deafness, here is one more attempt to flesh out what success in Iraq means and how we can evaluate progress toward it.

Read the whole thing.

I can guarantee you that no matter what definition Kagan provides - no matter how rigorous - he'll be attacked as "wrong" again.

I can hear it now: "These stupid, evil neocons, all of these chicken hawks ... they've been wrong all along! Why should we listen to another Kagan spinning the same old web of lies? Oil, oil ... American imerialism ... the neo-fascist regime ... that's what it's all about! Forget about precise definitions. It's the big lie! Ahhh."

Of course, Kagan anticipates this, and throws down the challenge:

Here is a gauntlet thrown down: Let those who claim that the current strategy has failed and must be replaced lay out their own strategy, along with their definition of success, criteria for evaluating success, and the evidentiary basis for their evaluations. Then, perhaps, we can have a real national debate on this most important issue.

Thank goodness for the Kagans.