Barack Obama talks so eloquently about turning down the temperature and all this stuff, but some of his supporters don't seem to get it.

There's a recommended diary over at DK calling Hillary out for "dirty politics" in NH because she played hardball with a pro-choice mailer. Yeah, it was a little misleading, but not dirty politics.

How conveniently they forget the sins of their own candidate, to wit:

At least Hillary was attacking from a liberal frame, not a reactionary one.

The diary also calls a squabble about Obama's GOTV operation in Nashua's ward 9 "voter suppression." That's not a fair characterization.

For the record, 2,137 people voted in ward 9, 881 for Hillary and 786 for Obama, so she took a net win of 95 votes. Obama lost by about 8,000.

Turnout in ward 9 was up 23% over 2004. It was up 27% citywide for all of Nashua. Hillary won every single ward in Nashua. It's not clear at all to me that even more turnout in ward 9 would have helped Obama.

Even if it had, it wouldn't have helped by much.

If Hillary is elected President, I hear that he's going to be the first openly cross-dressing First Lady in the history of the United States.

He's going to dress like a man.

There's also a rumor about Obama running around the internet -- supposedly, he fathered not one but two African-American children.

Scandalous.

As Clinton and Obama supporters in the blogosphere go to war on identity politics, it's useful to step back and remember who the real bad guys are.

On the night of the Iowa Caucus, Bill “abort black babies” Bennett said:

Well, I think it’s, again, a wonder of America here. A remarkable breakthrough this year. As the other group said, 97 percent, in fact, Iowa rural, white, farming — farming state. Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, wins this for the Democrats. I have been watching him. I watched him on “Meet the Press,” I’ve watched him on your show, watched him on all the CNN shows — he never brings race into it. He never plays the race card. Talk about the black community — he has taught the black community you don’t have to act like Jesse Jackson, you don’t have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. Great dignity. And this is a breakthrough. And good for the people of Iowa.

What a complete jackass. I love walking past the Bill Bennett memorial high roller slot room here at in Vegas at the Bellagio. What a cowardly, opportunistic asshole this man is.

dnA, guest blogging at Carpetbagger, reminds us that black people don’t vote solely based on race.

What are the odds that more whites in SC will vote for Obama than blacks in SC will vote for Hillary and Edwards combined? Not that the results will prove anything, either way, it’s just illustrative. More blacks vote for white Democrats on a % basis than evangelicals vote for white non-evangelical Republicans. (Just ask Mitt Romney.)

The Seahawks-Packers game was one of the most disappointing football games I've ever seen.

There was nothing good to take away from it. Nothing.

At least the Patriots-Jaguars game is a good one. Hopefully the Patriots will win it so I can salvage something from this shitty football day!

My previous post (on John Edwards) made the recommended list at Daily Kos, so at least the day wasn't all bad!

"...if anyone's in doubt: yes, Edwards is pissing off the right people." -- grannyhelen

#

As the primary process continues, amidst the daily barrage of broadsides fired from one campaign onto another, it's worth remembering that John Edwards is still talking about real issues.

John Edwards' campaign isn't about him. It's about us. It's about taking back power from the wealthy elites who want to run this country and putting it in our hands. It's about finally taking on the corporations that dominate more and more of the American economy. It's about challenging the system.

And it's pissing off the all right people.

Let's start with Rupert Murdoch. My, how John Edwards has pissed that man off.

Sure, Murdoch hates John Edwards because Edwards led the way amongst presidential candidates in pulling out of the Faux-news debates, helping expose his propaganda network for what it is.

But he hates John Edwards even more because John Edwards has spoken out publicly against the monopolization of America's media outlets into the hands of a small number of plutocrats like Murdoch. Murdoch's media empire fired back, calling Edwards a hypocrite, leaking confidential information, all in an attempt to smear John Edwards to avoid talking about the real issues.

Just look at the bile and vitriol spilling from these New York Post headlines. Two of the most savage attacks were directed as much as Nataline Sarkisyan and Elizabeth Edwards' as they were at Edwards.

Of course, Rupert Murdoch isn't the only right-wing corporatist to go after John Edwards with personal attacks.

Take the far-right Washington Times, for example. In the view of the editorial pages, Edwards is a “widely scorned” “sanctimonius hypocrite.” All in all, the Times says, “Mr. Edwards's rank hypocrisy is boundless.” On the bright side, he's "well-coifed" but "not ready for prime time."

Then there's that corporate wet dream, Mitt Romney, who apparently has quite a violent streak.

Every time I listen to someone like John Edwards get on TV and say there are two Americas I just want to throw something at the TV. -- Willard

You see, the problem isn't that there actually are two Americas -- one populated by wealthy elites like Mitt Romney, the other by just about everybody else. The problem is that people like John Edwards talk about the inequity of it all, and some day, the American public might decide to shove a big fat FU right in Mitt Romney's face.

Hell, even the Republican party can't stand Mitt Romney, the corporate swine.

As jamess diaried, big business is putting John Edwards on notice.

With the nation's economy increasingly becoming a volatile issue in the presidential campaign, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce is about to issue one very tough promise to spend millions of dollars against candidates deemed to be anti-business. (Are you listening John Edwards?)

National Review, the rag read by the nation's conservative elite, just absolutely can't stand John Edwards. Byron York asks the probing question: “Is Edwards a phony?” Talk about expensive haircuts -- York knows a thing or two about those, I might guess. Rich Lowry affectionately (sic) calls John Edwards "The Hater" and accuses him of "unbridled hostility."

The grand-daddy of the entire crew of corporate warriors, one William F. Buckley, actually is an exception to the "if you fear, smear" rule of thumb. He understands that populism is a grave and serious danger to the plutocracy. So he does something almost unimaginable amongst these reactionaries: he actually engages Edwards on the issues. Sort of.

John Edwards Will Give You Free Health Care

By William F. Buckley Jr.

The word among professional Democrats is that John Edwards has set the stakes on the matter of health care, and no one who wants to be president can offer less than he is offering, which is — of course — guaranteed health. That is to say, guaranteed free health care.
...
Therefore, Mr. Edwards is doing nothing more than to call for increased taxes on the wealthy. They used to call that socialized medicine, when it was instituted by Great Britain after the war. It crossed the Atlantic into Canada, which is a tidy country in which to get sick, provided you can afford to travel across the border to an American doctor.

Perhaps a tad dishonest, but you've got to give Buckley this: the man is genuinely scared of populism.

George Will, the bow-tied pugilist, blathers on passionately about John Edwards, calling him "synthetic," a “histrionic huckster” who is "delusional." Edwards:

overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them and who therefore think that opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

Will sees Barack Obama as the antidote to Edwards:

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

In a bizarre article, The Weekly Standard picks up the same theme:

John Edwards and the Damsel in Distress By William Tucker

IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND trial lawyers like John Edwards, you have to recognize their one enduring fantasy. They are knights in shining armor rescuing damsels in distress.

They'll tell you they're "standing up for the little guy" or "enforcing the Constitution" or "sending a message" or "teaching the big guys a lesson." But at bottom there's always that one image--a lonely woman, young, attractive, helpless, waiting to be rescued by some hero with a law degree.

The strange thing? The first half of the article focuses on John O'Quinn, a Houston attorney. Seems they had to work extra-hard to come up with material to fill out their laughably silly personall attack.

David Brooks plays the role of the whispering polemicist in contrast to George Will, the bow-tied pugilist. Like Will, Brooks hates John Edwards. Edwards is “old-fashioned” and thanks to Obama's victory in Iowa, “Edwards’s political career is probably over.” (Don't you wish, David, don't you wish.)

David Brooks has disliked John Edwards for a long time.

In 2004, Brooks raged (emphasis added)

The problem is that he talks about poverty in an obsolete way, which suggests he has learned nothing from the past 40 years. ... Edwards talks about poverty in economic terms.

This kind of talk is descended from Marxist theory, which holds that we live in the thrall of economic conditions. What the poor primarily need is more money, the theory goes.

We are moving toward a consensus on how to address the diverse problems that cause poverty. But when you go out on the campaign trail, you find politicians spreading polarizing disinformation. Edwards is right to talk about poverty, but by resorting to crude, populist rhetoric, he is leading in the wrong direction.

In 2007, David Brooks was still attacking John Edwards. When Hillary Clinton released her health care plan, Brooks questioned Edwards' temperament:

the plan seems to have driven John Edwards around the bend. The statement he issued yesterday qualifies as the shrillest statement issued by a major presidential candidate this year.

And finally, my favorite example of John Edwards pissing of the right people: corporate lobbyists.

(A big h/t to TheShoveler for this one.)

U.S. corporate elite fear candidate Edwards By Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same -- Democrat John Edwards.

...

"My sense is that Obama would govern as a reasonably pragmatic Democrat ... I think Hillary is approachable. She knows where a lot of her funding has come from, to be blunt," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Stanford Group Co., a market and policy analysis group.

But Edwards, Valliere said, is seen as "an anti-business populist" and "a trade protectionist who is quite unabashed about raising taxes."

"I think his regulatory policies, as well as his tax policies, would be viewed as a threat to business," he said.

"The next scariest for business would be Huckabee because of his rhetoric and because he's an unknown."

He's got them scared -- not so much about him personally, but about the ideas he's talking about.

That's why we fight.

I heard something on NBC News a couple of days ago -- Barack Obama raised $8 million the 8 days after Iowa.

I'm sure Hillary Clinton is on the same pace.

Al Gore spent $10 million total from February - August of 2000.

He won the popular vote.

John Kerry spent over $100 million.

He lost.

Democrats are spending an awful lot of money to beat each other up.

There's three of them left in the race. He'll end up raising no more than $50 million or so for the primary, while his opponents will probably raise $300 million -- or more -- between them.

All this on a primary.

Someone is getting rich.

I'm sure it's not the people who the candidates profess to serve.

Perhaps Democrats ought to be contribution to Congressional candidates?

Put simply, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama don't need your money.

They'll do just fine without it.

(John Edwards, on the other hand, does need your money. Go ahead and pony up another $10!)

I'm borrowing the headline for this post from dnA at Too Sense.

TPM is highlighting an interview with Jesse Jackson Jr on MSNBC in which he contrasted Hillary's tears about her campaign to her lack of tears on Hurricane Katrina and other issues.

TPM is highlighting this exchange using the headline: "Obama co-chair questions Hillary's tears."

The clear implication is that Jackson was questioning the authenticity of her tears, but he wasn't.

At best, this is a vague headline, but the truth is that it's powerfully misleading, further trivializing an already trivial issue.

Shame on TPM.

Update: Here's the Slate article. I also just reviewed the poll data for pre-NH and pre-IA. In Iowa, Clinton led the pre-caucus polls by a point but came in third; in NH, Obama led by 8 and lost by 2.

There's been a lot of commentary on whether Hillary Clinton's victory can be explained by the Bradley Effect, in which whites tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate, but when they head to the polls, they don't.

It's very hard to determine the extent to which this took place. Intuitively, it would seem that it did take place.

However, it didn't seem to happen with the exit poll.

According to my analysis of the exit poll data, 38.2% of respondents said they would vote for Hillary, and 36.6% said they would vote for Obama. 16.2% said they would vote for Edwards.

The exit poll therefore underpredicted the vote of each of the candidates.

Apparently, Slate has an argument for why the phone polls may have had a Bradley effect while exit polls didn't: exit poll workers in NH tend to be white, while polling firms are located around the country and employ a higher percentage of black workers. Since racial identity isn't just about skin color, sometimes people perceive some voices to be more "black" than others, and perhaps this where the Bradley effect creeped in.

I haven't looked at data to test this, but I do know that some of the polling firms use automated machines. If those firms had more accurate results, it would support Slate's theory.

Note: I haven't read the Slate article, which was referred to me by dnA at Too Sense.

I arrived at this number by going through all 69 different cross-tabs in the exit poll. For each of the cross-tabs, there are segments. The exit poll shows the portion of the Dem electorate comprised for each those segments and then the portion of that segment that voted for each candidate. By multiplying the percentage of the electorate represented by that segment with the percentage of that segment voting for the candidate in question, and then adding up the totals for each category, and then averaging the results of all 69 categories, I can arrive at pretty good estimate of what their actual reported numbers were.

I downloaded the raw data after polls closed but before (or perhaps just after) the race was called for Hillary.

Net/net -- the exit polls appear to have been right, which raises the question -- why were telephone polls less accurate than exit polls?

We don’t want to talk about tears, or haircuts, or talk shows.

This is the debate we want to be having.

This is why we want John Edwards to keep on fighting.

We want to talk about record corporate profits.

We want to talk about Exxon Mobil earning $40 billion while taking government handouts.

We want to talk about 47 million Americans without health care.

We want to talk about 37 million American parents who worry each night about feeding and clothing their children in the morning.

We want to talk about the 200,000 veterans who served their country and now go to sleep each night under bridges and on grates.

We want to talk about finishing a war that has been going on for five years and keeps growing and growing.

We want to talk about developing independent, renewable, and clean sources of energy.

We want to talk about the utter concentration of wealth in a tiny elite of Americans.

We want to talk about fixing the trade and economic policies that have been eroding the economic standing of the bottom 80% of Americans for the past three decades.

We want to talk about a reversing tax policy that allows 0.5% of all Americans to ‘earn’ 13.8% of the nation’s after-tax income.

We want to talk about reigning in corporate greed and ending poverty.

We want to talk about a reckless financial system that puts our national economy at risk.

We want to talk about finally eliminating the economic gap between African-Americans and non-Hispanic white Americans.

We want to talk about the need for tolerance.

We want to talk about healing the religious, political, racial, and sexual divisions in America.

We want to talk about the rule of law.

We want to talk about treating the United States Constitution as if it were a document that actually matters.

We want to talk about eliminating the influence of corporate special interests in Washington, DC.

We want to talk about restoring America’s confidence in their government.

We want to talk about challenging the system.

We want to talk about all this and more.

We want to talk about what really matters.

Please help us. $10, $25, or whatever you can afford.

I've seen the debate about the meaning of Hillary's "moment" today at that diner in Portsmouth.

There's nothing to debate. It was political theater, and fine political theater at that.

I don't mean that as a criticism: for the first time in a long time, Hillary Clinton proved to electronic journalists that she could put on as good a show as Barack Obama, and they ate it up.

I used to put together these kinds of media events for a living -- I've got a pretty good feel for what they look like and how they work. This wasn't some informal meet and greet with undecided voters. It was a staged event, organized for the mass media. It was 100% made-for-TV.

Look at this picture of the event:

I'd be stunned if there were more undecided voters in that room as there were journalists, yet most consumers of the mass media have no idea that this was a staged event. Why? Almost all of the images from the event were tight shots of Hillary, designed to make the event look as "real" as possible.

To the extent that I'm being critical of anything, the media is the target of my barbs. I'm certainly not being critical of Hillary -- quite the contrary. She and her team did an excellent job of exploiting mass media's weakness. This is a textbook example of earned media.

Hillary didn't come unglued. She was in control -- of everything.

Within seconds of her marginally close bout with tears (let's be honest, it wasn't that close), she had delivered a scathing attack on Barack Obama and appropriated one of John Edwards signature refrains from the debate on Saturday night ("this is personal to me").

Hillary's savvy act of political theater dominated the media today. It wasn't just the corporate MSM -- it was blogs, even this diary.

Today, she was the center of the Democratic political universe, back where she wants to be after several days in the shadow of Barack Obama.

With Hillary back in the middle, Monday was the first political newscycle that Obama has lost since Iowa. He didn't lose it by making a mistake, and he certainly didn't lose it by doing anything wrong.

Obama lost it because Hillary Clinton stole the spotlight. Everything revolved around her. She was the issue. She was the center of attention, and it was on her terms.

At the very least, she denied oxygen to Barack Obama. (Edwards has already been so desperately starved for air that there wasn't anything that she could have done to further exclude Edwards from the media's frame.) At the very best, she may have picked up a couple of undecided voters, most likely female.

Although I suspect she'll get a slight boost from the event, her move won't change the results tomorrow by much.

Even though it's all but certain she will lose tomorrow, Hillary's "moment" will form a part of the "comeback" narrative she hopes to tell. Hillary's message will be that she's going to continue the campaign because of her personal commitment to America. Her "comeback" speech will mirror the words she delivered after her "near tears," in some cases, word for word. She will use her 'moment' to symbolize her "low spot" and unless Edwards somehow sneaks past her into second place, which is not very likely, the media will buy it.

Those of us who support John Edwards or Barack Obama are probably not going to be convinced by her argument, but her supporters certainly will.

The media won't complain that she's continuing her campaign because she demonstrated once again that she can put on at least as good a show for the evening news as Barack Obama.

Today, Hillary Clinton's campaign changed gears. I don't know if it's too little too late, but I do think it was definitely smart and should remind every Democrat that this ballgame isn't over yet. The fight continues, and after Tuesday, it's going to be a new round and a new dynamic.

As much as I was impressed by Hillary's media savvy, I was depressed and angered by the utter vapidity of our system.

This evening, ABC News was my main news source. Here's my weak imitation of Atrios:

Shorter ABC News: Hillary was emotional, but will voter's respond? Obama wants politics of addition. Romney thinks he'll lose to McCain. Iran semi-attacked the a U.S. Navy vessel, which showed great restraint by not starting a war.

The only story that resembled anything close to something with true meaning was the one about Iran, but given that it was reported from deep inside the Pentagon by Jonathan Karl, I don't trust a damn word I heard.

John Edwards was once again marginalized from the broadcast, even though national polling shows that he's gotten almost as big an Iowa bounce as has Obama (+5 for Edwards, +6 for Obama).

ABC gave Edwards a few moments to comment on Hillary's media event, clearly hoping to create a little controversy to boost their ratings.

An innocent explanation is that they've just decided that nobody in a America gives a hoot about the stuff that John Edwards is trying to talk about.

Well, if that's what they're thinking, then they're wrong.

I'll end this diary with a little "candidate video" I just put together. These are the kinds of issues we need to be talking about. This is the reason why it's worth keeping up the fight.

Team Hillary's attack on John Edwards' town hall event with the Sarkisyans is heartless.

(Emphasis added.)

“Senator Clinton’s speeches are about people she has actually helped and changes she has actually made, not stories she’s pulled from the newspaper and included in her stump,” Mr. Carson wrote in an E-mail message.

Mr. Carson’s comment was in reference to an emotional town hall event Mr. Edwards held in Manchester early Sunday afternoon, featuring an appearance by the parents of Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old leukemia patient who died in December after her insurance company denied her a liver transplant.

Stone cold heartless.

Edwards' response:

Speaking at a news conference after the Manchester event, Mr. Edwards responded to Mr. Carson’s comment when a reporter read it to him.

“The Sarkisyans contacted me because they believe I’m the kind of president who will actually fight for their daughter,” Mr. Edwards said. “People who have been through these difficult times against entrenched, powerful moneyed interests – they get it. They get it in a serious way. They’re not looking for somebody who’ll make deals.”

Then after spending an hour on his campaign bus, en route to his next event in Keene, Mr. Edwards called another news conference – before his next event had even started.

“This campaign doesn’t seem to have a conscience,” he said, adding that he had been thinking about the comment from the Clinton campaign. “The more I thought about it, the idea that somehow everything is about them, I mean, it’s an indication that they have no conscience about what’s at stake here. These families are who this is about. It’s not about them, nor is it about me. It’s about whether we’re going to actually stand up and fight for these people and how much we care about them.”

John Edwards is right.

Update: Here's video from the town hall
(h/ts: TomP, NCDem Amy, Edgery)

Nataline's mother and brother:

John Edwards with Nataline's father: