A few days ago, Hillary Clinton regaled us with a story of her heroic bravery:

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." --Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008.

Just one problem. Her claim was completely untrue. As Michael Dobbs wrote in The Fact Checker column for the Washington Post, Clinton's story is not supported by the facts:

The Pinocchio Test

Clinton's tale of landing at Tuzla airport "under sniper fire" and then running for cover is simply not credible. Photographs and video of the arrival ceremony, combined with contemporaneous news reports, tell a very different story. Four Pinocchios.

I already knew that Dick Cheney and Barack Obama were cousins.

But I didn't know that Barack Obama and George W. Bush were cousins too.

(He's also cousins with Brad Pitt!)

This is post 1 of 5 posts on this topic:

Post 1: Suddenly, Pat Buchanan makes Bill O'Reilly look moderate
Post 2: Debunking Buchanan: Jeremiah Wright served in the Marines, but Pat Buchanan didn't serve his nation
Post 3: Debunking Buchanan: Taxing and spending edition
Post 4: Debunking Buchanan: False characterization of Barack Obama's speech
Post 5: Debunking Buchanan: Violent crime and racial fearmongering

::

Patrick J. Buchanan (h/t: D Wreck at Daily Kos):

What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.”

...

White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

...

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

(Emphasis added.)

MSNBC seriously lets this guy on national television? I wasn't a fan of canning Don Imus, even though what he said was offensive, but this crosses far past what Imus said.

Buchanan must go. He can leave the country for all I care. Let MSNBC know what you think:

letters@msnbc.com

Be sure to CC Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams:

KOlbermann@msnbc.com
dabrams@msnbc.com

(The Olbermann and Abrams e-mails I just sent bounced. I'm looking for new addresses.)

One of the most offensive statements in Pat Buchanan's response to Barack Obama's speech is this:

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

I'm sorry Pat, but Jeremiah Wright is a former Marine.

You, Pat, are a chickenhawk. You should get down on your knees and kiss Jeremiah Wright's ring for serving in the armed forces of the United States of America.

I hate to take something that a guy like Pat Buchanan says seriously, but it's important to do so in the following sense: offering a factually-based, well-reasoned response is more likely to have a positive impact on the debate than calling him the names he surely deserves.

That being said, it's still fair to characterize Buchanan's response to Barack Obama's speech as a racially divisive polemic. But it's also flat out wrong. Take this claim:

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. ...

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude? ...

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

So according to Buchanan, white Americans are footing the bill for social programs designed exclusively for black Americans to the tune of 40 trillion dollars.

Well that's just not true. In the last 40 years, the entire Federal tax burden on every single American combined has been $40.2 trillion. Even if there was a statistic on the amount of Federal taxes "white Americans" paid, $40 trillion isn't the right number. Presumably, white Americans have paid a disproportionate share of taxes -- but only because on average, white Americans have earned between $1.67 and $2 (depending on the year) for every $1 black Americans have earned.

Moreover that $40.2 trillion hasn't been used exclusively -- or even largely -- on the social programs Buchanan ticks off. During that same period of time, the Federal government has spent $45.2 trillion.

The central thesis of Pat Buchanan's response to Barack Obama's speech is that Obama's speech was really just a list of demands made of "white America."

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

This is a completely false characterization -- Obama's speech did not place the burden of racial division on any one racial or ethnic group. In fact, he treated the problem as an American problem, and identified areas where not just whites but also blacks had responsibility, at point point saying that black anger was often counterproductive. Obama made the case that there really is no such thing as black interests or white interests. For example:

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Now Pat Buchanan is not a dumb man. He knows that what he said was false. He watched the speech. He read the speech. And I fully recognize why it frightens him: the prospect of a coalition of black and white working-class Americans frightens conservatives to the core. Such a political alliance would absolutely wreck the Reagan coalition, as Obama suggested.

It's a reminder that in many ways for people like Pat Buchanan, racial division is not an end unto itself: it's a critical tool for preventing the formation of a durable progressive majority. In short, the prospect of racial unity is the biggest threat conservatism faces today.

In my fifth and final post today on Pat Buchanan's response to Barack Obama's speech, I'll address his assertion that the most pernicious form of racism is interracial crime and that black Americans are guilty of the vast majority of such racism.

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

First, Buchanan's central thesis is illogical. Interracial crime is not in and of itself racism. It should be obvious to a six year old that there is a huge difference between crime that happens to be interracial and crime that is racially motivated.

As it turns out, most crime -- including the two most heinous crimes, rape and murder -- are mostly intraracial. That fact reflects our society's racial divisions -- in a completely colorblind nation, interracial crime would be much higher. So actually, the relative lack of interracial crime is a manifestation of our racial problems.

So for the past week week or so, Barack Obama had fallen behind Hillary Clinton in the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll -- but now he's regained his lead. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton today regained the lead in the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll for the first time since March 9. It's pretty funny and a reminder that the explanation for a lot of the "trends" we see in polls is the same thing that allows people to occasional beat the casinos: random chance.

Meanwhile, the so-called "honesty gap" between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, not to mention and Hillary Clinton and John McCain, is just enormous. If she were to manage to stage a superdelegate coup, her credibility crisis would pose a serious challenge for her to overcome.

Who would ever have thought I'd agree with the Washington Times on something? Just proves I can be bipartisan, or, more accurately, that they can be bipartisan.

The issue? GOP Kentucky State Rep. Tim Couch wants to ban anonymous Internet comments. Now while that might protect us from the occasional comma laden troll comment from one of Mark Penn's minions...I don't think Tom Paine would've looked to kindly on the idea had the whole internet thing been around way back in the day.

According to the Lexington Herald-Reader:

A bill filed in the House would keep Kentuckians from posting anonymous comments to Web sites.

House Bill 775, filed Tuesday by Rep. Tim Couch, R-Hyden, would require anyone who contributes to a Web site to register a real name, address and e-mail address with that Web site. The person's full name then would be used whenever he or she posted a comment.

Web site operators who violate the disclosure law would be fined $500 for a first offense and $1,000 for each subsequent offense.

The legislation has no chance of actually becoming law. That's a good thing because as Couch says in apparent opposition to his legislation (sic):

"When you're anonymous, you can say anything you want to about someone, and nobody knows who you are," he said.

Exactly. I'm glad Tim and I could agree on something.

By the way, on a total side note, I think he's the father (or at least close relative of) Tim Couch, the NFL quarterback who comes from the same town in Kentucky. That probably makes him as American as apple pie, even though even though he has no respect for American Constitutional principles.

I just finished integrating the Disqus commenting system into the blog. It's got a ton of benefits over the old system, including threading and user accounts. User accounts are nice because you can have your own username on any blog that uses Disqus (such as AMERICAblog). The user accounts also cut down on spam and trolls (yes, I know Mark Penn is shedding a tear now).

A new CBS News poll conducted yesterday shows that 69% of registered voters thought Obama did a good job addressing race relations and 71% thought he did a good job explaining his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. 70% said it wouldn't impact there vote, while 14% said it would make them more likely to vote for Obama, and 14% said it would make them less less likely.

Keep in mind that quite apart from the substance of this issue, from a political viewpoint this was by far the biggest challenge that Barack Obama has ever faced. In fact, it's the biggest challenge any candidate has faced so far this campaign.

He not only rose to the occasion, but he did so in pretty spectacular fashion.

Jack Tapper has another rock solid piece of reporting proving that Hillary Clinton was in fact dishonest about her record on NAFTA, the centerpiece of her campaign in Ohio. Tapper writes:

I have now talked to three former Clinton Administration officials whom I trust who tell me that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton opposed the idea of introducing NAFTA before health care, but expressed no reservations in public or private about the substance of NAFTA.

Yet the Clinton campaign continues to propagate this myth that she fought NAFTA tooth and nail because she opposed the substance of the bill.The campaign claims over and over that she did not support NAFTA. That may be emotionally and intellectually true -- but actions speak louder than misgivings.

Wednesday, Tapper's sources were anonymous. Today he has named sources from the meeting in question:

Julia K. Hughes, senior vice president of the same organization is likewise incredulous of the Clinton campaign's claims.

"This is such a non issue to us, because obviously it was a pro-NAFTA group and a pro-NAFTA event," says Hughes. "It was a 100 percent pro-NAFTA event. No one suggested any inklings of doubt since part of the agenda was to promote enthusiasm for passage of NAFTA."

Did that include then-First Lady Clinton?

"Absolutely. She was the highlight of the event. She was absolutely the capper to the event. It was a positive rally. I assure you if there had even been a hint of waffling from her -- because we were in the last days before NAFTA passed and it was a pretty hectic time -- we would have freaked out."

Now it's up to the media. Will they cover the fact that she won Ohio on a falsehood, or will they cover it up?

Recently I heard somebody describe the media as a lagging political indicator.

Well, they are proving that saying to be correct, finally recognizing that Hillary Clinton does not have a serious shot at the nomination.

It started in earnest yesterday, with Adam Nagourney's Political Memo in the New York Times. Last night, both ABC and NBC ran packages making the same case, though slightly different emphases.

Today The Politico jumped on board in two separate pieces, one by Ben Smith, the other by Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen.

And now Mark Halperin, sort of a self-styled cross between David Broder and Matt Drudge, is offering essentially the same message: it's all but over.

These are not brilliant insights. For weeks now, anybody who could add 2+2 could see that Hillary Clinton was almost certainly not going to be the nominee. But the press horde didn't want to do the math, despite the best efforts of straight shootering "geeks" like Chuck Todd to talk some sense into them.

I just took a look at the February FEC reports and one thing jumped out at me.

In February alone, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama raised $35.8 million from donations of no greater than $200. $12.2 million of that was by Clinton, and $23.6 million by Obama.

Compare that to John McCain. He's raised just $12.3 million from $200-and-below donors -- for the entire campaign.

Update: I should also add that with $55 million raised in February, Barack Obama raised more in the shortest month of the year than John McCan has raised during the entire campaign. (Kind of a nice bookend to the news that Obama's speech has been viewed more times on YouTube than every clip on John McCain's channel.)

Richardson made the endorsement in Portland Oregon, which holds its primary on May 20.

Beyond its intrinsic value, the thing that makes this endorsement especially noteworthy is that it is yet more evidence that even former Clinton loyalists are seeing the writing on the wall.

Here's a transcript of Richardson's endorsement speech, which began with these words:

My friends, earlier this week, an extraordinary American gave a historic speech.

Senator Barack Obama addressed the issue of race with the eloquence and sincerity and decency and optimism we have come to expect of him.

He did not seek to evade tough issues or to soothe us with comforting half-truths.

Rather, he inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility.

I never thought I'd call a video clip from Fox & Friends mezmerizing...but that's exactly what this is. Once you start watching, you can't stop.

For two or three minutes (it felt like more), Chris Wallace, the host of the conservative Republican FOX News Sunday show, attacked the hosts of his own network's morning program, Fox & Friends. Wallace lamented that the all-white panel had just spent two hours bashing Barack Obama on racial issues, distorting and exploiting his 'typical white person' remark.

As you listen to the exchange, you see that the F&F hosts are really obsessed with racial resentment and what they see as reverse-racism. As one of the hosts said:

If we really want to have a discussion about race, then let's have a discussion about how there is a double standard for certain phrases and words.

Huh? This is lunacy. If you want to have an honest discussion about race, the last place to start is with the proposition that blacks are oppressing whites.

Clearly, our discourse is screwed up. But blaming that entirely on bogus claims of reverse-racism? Absurd.

Case in point: if the double-standard truly does favor blacks over whites, why is John McCain allowed to utter the racist slur "gook" with impunity while Barack Obama can't even discuss the role of race in our society without being labeled by some as a racist?

You know a "news" program has completely gone off the rails when Chris Wallace has to step in and teach them a lesson about civics and responsibility.

Update: The lone F&F host refusing to engage in the Obama-bashing walked off the set. I don't watch the show so I don't know if that's part of his normal schtick, or if it was a genuine expression of anger.

Update II: The Obama campaign weighs in.

h/t: Ari Melber

Something tells me this isn't going to end well for the Clinton campaign.

In its first two and a half days online, Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech (including this version) has been viewed 2.7 million times.

By contrast, John McCain's entire YouTube channel has delivered just 2.5 million videos -- since the beginning of his campaign, more than one year ago. It's not like he hasn't tried -- he's got 172 videos on his channel, including the truly bizarre one embedded on this page.

Another contrast: the original Jeremiah Wright video from FOX News has been played 590,000 times -- and it's been up a week longer. During the time that Obama's speech generated 2.7 million views, Wright's clip generated less than 100,000.

Obama's speech has been seen about as many times as the five most viewed videos on Hillary Clinton's channel -- combined. Most of those clips have been up for more than a month.

Obama's speech receives a 4 star rating -- Clinton's most-watched clip, the 3am ad, received just 1 star.

The Democratic Party has never in my lifetime had a presidential candidate communicating directly to so many people, pushing the media aside.

It's what so many of us have been talking about for years. Well, we've finally got it -- and the superdelegates would be absolutely crazy to throw it away.

What if a major presidential candidate had uttered a disparaging ethnic slur, and when challenged on the appropriateness of that slur stubbornly said he would continue to use it?

What if a few days later he apologized and said he would never use it again?

What would the media do?

You might have heard rumors that John Edwards was going to endorse Hillary Clinton tonight on the Jay Leno show.

Turns out they were just rumors. Ben Smith says no endorsement. Phew.

I was an Edwards supporter until he dropped out. It doesn't make a difference to me if he endorses Clinton, at least not in terms of my support for Obama.

But I would certainly lose some confidence in my ability to judge politicians. I just don't think John Edwards will endorse Hillary Clinton -- ever.

He strikes me as more of an Obama guy.

This may seem a bit obscure, but until recently there was one measure of delegates upon which Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama. svotaw1992 describes it at Daily Kos:

One lead that she hadn't lost yet has been the total delegate count including supers as well as MI&FL in full (the count with Obama gaining essentially zero delegates in MI).

Mind you, this metric is so absurd that nobody treats it that seriously. But it was the one way in which Hillary Clinton could claim to be ahead. No longer. Even using her new politburo apparatchik rules, Clinton is not winning.

Hillary Clinton's entire electability argument can pretty much be boiled down to one four-letter word: Ohio.

As she said on the night of her primary victory there:

"No person has ever won the White House without winning the Ohio primary, in either party...Somehow the people of Ohio end up picking the winners."

Now, it's worth noting that her statement was completely false. The Ohio primary didn't exist until 1912 and since then five presidents didn't win the state's primary: Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, and Nixon. Her statement is accurate for the last few elections, but it was nonetheless misleading because the Ohio primary hasn't played a pivotal role in the earlier part of the nomination process. As Ohio State University polisci professor Herb Asher said, Clinton "has taken a little bit of a liberty here."

It's a microcosm of Hillary Clinton's larger problem: credibility.

People just don't believe that she's honest and trustworthy, and now that she has misrepresented (a kind word) her position on NAFTA to the people of Ohio, she has shot her electability argument straight to hell.

It might not show up in the polls right now, but you can imagine the ads McCain will run against her in Ohio? The 527s will have a field day!

Here's a new web ad I just posted on YouTube about Hillary Clinton and NAFTA:

Say what you want about Hillary Clinton, but credibility is not her middle name. Just before the Ohio primary, she insisted that she has been a NAFTA critic "from the beginning" -- yet we have now learned that as First Lady, she actively worked to pass it into law.

During the debate in Ohio, Hillary Clinton pointed to David Gergen as proof that she was a NAFTA critic from the very beginning. Gergen sorta' kinda' backed her up:

I was actually there in the Clinton White House during the NAFTA fight and I must tell you Hillary Clinton was extremely unenthusiastic about NAFTA. And I think that’s putting it mildly. I’m not sure she objected to all the provisions of it but she just didn’t see why her husband and that White House had to go and do that fight. She was very unhappy about it and wanted to move on to health care. So I do think there’s some justification for her camp saying, you know, she’s never been a great backer for NAFTA.

But now we learn from Clinton's recently released schedules that she actually hosted a meeting in which she pushed for NAFTA passage. And David Gergen was there:

It was a room full of women involved in international trade. David Gergen served as a sort of master of ceremonies as various women members of the Cabinet talked up NAFTA, which had yet to pass Congress.

"It wasn’t a drop-by it was organized around her participation," said one attendee. "Her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA and what a good thing it would be for the economy. There was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time. Folks were pleased that she came by. If this is a still a question about what Hillary's position when she was First Lady, she was totally supportive of NAFTA.

Amazingly, the Clinton team continues to use the David Gergen defense.

ABC News Polling Unit on Clinton Pollster's Memo: 'Full of Overblown Claims'

Clinton senior strategist Mark Penn put out a polling memo today heralding a "shift to Hillary."

Peyton Craighill of the ABC News Polling Unit reports: "Mark Penn’s note is full of overblown claims based on current polling. He’s cherry picking numbers from recent polls. Much of his claim of a Clinton swing is based on the latest tracking data from Gallup in which Clinton is now ahead by 7 points. If you go back two more days Obama has a 7-point lead in a separate USA Today/Gallup poll. CBS has a new poll out today that shows a close 46-43 percent Obama-Clinton race. The CBS poll also has the match ups with McCain at 48-43 percent for Obama-McCain and 46-44 percent for Clinton-McCain. We see little indication of a shift to Clinton. Of the nine polls cited in his note, five of them are not airworthy."

("Airworthy" is a term our Polling Unit uses for polls so poorly done we are discouraged from mentioning them on air.)

McCain: Purim = Halloween

When McCain made a foreign policy gaffe in Jordan on Tuesday, it was Sen. Joe Lieberman who quietly pointed out the mistake, giving McCain an opportunity to correct himself in front of the international press corps. In Israel yesterday, NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

One of the more interesting questions in the new CBS poll concerns superdelegates.

Obama supporters were asked how they would react if superdelegates were to overturn the judgment of voters and give the nomination to Hillary Clinton.

36% said they would be angry, and 56% said they would be disappointed. 8% said they would be satisfied.

This is just more proof that if anyone thinks the superdelegates can get away with handing the nomination to Hillary Clinton is crazy. Clinton and her folks love to suggest that Obama is alienating the Democratic base, but even if that were true, we haven't seen anything like the drama that would unfold if superdelegates were to overturn the vote.

CBS News is out with a poll conducted after the Wright story broke, and although he slipped a little ground, Obama continues to fare better than Hillary Clinton.

First, the toplines (but these aren't the really interesting numbers): Obama leads McCain 48-43, Clinton 46-44. Among primary voters, Obama leads 46-43.

Probably the worst single piece of news is that Obama now trails McCain by 8 points amongst independents. The news is worse for Clinton, who trails by 11.

Overall, Obama has the strongest favorabilities of any of the candidates. What's really striking is how much stronger he does amongst independents than Clinton, as you can see in this chart. He also has a significant primary lead amongst independents, although the Limbaugh Effect can be seen among Republicans, where Clinton leads Obama.

The really interesting question though was the one about Iraq, which asked whether voters had confidence in the ability of the candidates to make the right decisions on Iraq.

Clinton ties Obama amongst Democrats, but trails him badly with independents and slightly with Republicans.

I think these numbers show that her "experience" line of argument has already boomeranged.

Even worse, it probably bolstered John McCain's standings -- amongst independents, he now leads all three candidates. I don't have trendlines for these numbers, but I can't imagine Clinton's copious praise of McCain did him any harm.

Just goes to show: Hillary Clinton has no clue how to beat John McCain. (Or Barack Obama, for that matter.)

Democratic Convention Watch:

The GOP is holding their convention from Sep 1-4, and the nominee normally gives his or her speech on Thursday evening, just after 10:00 EST. This is a big problem for NBC and the NFL. NBC pays a lot of money to show NFL games. But there's no way they would take the political heat and not show McCain's speech, and its unlikely the NFL would want to take the heat either. Yes, the speech would be available on the other networks, but the football game would attract a major audience, and the GOP, would, and appropriately so, raise a big stink.

In the above post, from Feb. 29, DCW considered the possibility that the NFL might not open on 9/4 in order to get around the McCain dilemma. But now DCW has confirmation that the NFL is opening on the same night as McCain's speech:

It just not politically tenable for a major network not to show the acceptance speech of one of the two major candidates.

And we now have confirmation that the NFL season is scheduled to start on September 4th, and that the NFL is aware that something needs to be done:

"We are aware of it and will be discussing it with NBC," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello (who grew up in Syosset) wrote in an e-mail.

All I know is that I'm happy the Seahawks picked up Duckett and Jones. G'bye, Shaun Alexander...

Adam Nagourney drops a bombshell:

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.

That argument could be Mrs. Clinton’s last hope for winning this contest.

The internet censored my initial reaction which went something like this: What the f*** is wrong with those m*th***u*k*** a**h***s?

Joe Sudbay has more, including a beaut from Lanny Davis. People at Daily Kos are also pretty outraged.

The NYT has a pretty cool interactive presentation of Barack Obama's speech, tying together the video with the transcript, allowing you to skip from section to section if you. Perfect for those with ADD.

I promise this will be my second-to-last post about the speech! (But I reserve the right the break that promise...)

I'm gonna' have to stop posting these updates at some point but I'm still absolutely floored. Since my post this morning, there have been another 700,000 video plays -- in approximately 11 hours.

Update: Obama's video has been played more times than the 20 most-viewed videos on John McCain's YouTube channel -- combined. Prediction: at some point tomorrow the video will have been viewed more often than every single video currently on McCain's YouTube channel (yes -- all 172 of them).

Via Ben Smith:

The headline from MIRS, Michigan's Hotline:

Ding-Dong, Do-Over Primary Is Dead "Time of death for the do-over Michigan primary? Call it at about 11 a.m. today."

Ben gets confirmation from a couple of different sources, so it does look like there will not be new votes in either Michigan or Florida.

Now the question will be what to do with the delegations from both states. Obviously, some sort of arrangement must be made, but the notion that the votes that took place in January are true reflections of Michiganders and Floridians is a complete joke. Also via Ben, here's a paper from a Wharton prof and Glenn Hurowitz that makes (completely obvious and correct) case that seating the delegations based on the vote from January would be unfair because many Democrats stayed home or voted in the GOP primary, secure in the knowledge that, as Hillary Clinton herself had said, everybody knew the vote wouldn't count.

In the past three hours, "A More Perfect Union" has been seen more than 250,000 times. The speech has now been seen more times than the #1 most-watched videos from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- combined.

Update @ 3:53pm - 1.7 million views -- in just a little over 24 hours. Incredible.

Let me give you some perspective on just how big a hit Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" was: in its first 19 hours on YouTube, it has been played three times as often as the most viewed clip on John McCain's channel -- and has received 170,000 more views than the most viewed clip on Hillary Clinton's channel.

By mid-day, "A More Perfect Union" will almost certainly have been watched more times in 36 hours than than the Clinton clip (her 3am ad) and the McCain clip (Bill Clinton praising his political skills) -- combined. Together, those two clips have been on YouTube for just a touch longer than 19 hours. (Clinton's two weeks, McCain's three months.) Obama's speech has already received twice as many views as the original video of Wright, posted on the web one week ago.

Another way of thinking about it: the most popular Clinton and McCain clips were both well under one minute long -- and neither candidate appeared in their own video (except for the obligatory "I approved this ad" message).

(Update: I should also note that while Obama's video is ranked at 4 stars and has 8,500 ratings and growing, Clinton's video was ranked 1 star and had 3,000+ ratings.)

The viral spread of Obama's address has blown away Obama's famous Ebenezer Baptist speech, which received 330,000 views in its first few days online. At the time, that seemed remarkable.

Now -- more than one million views -- in less than 24 hours? For a speech that itself was just over a half-hour long? Incredible.

When you hear people say that a Barack Obama presidency could be transformative, this kind of thing is what makes them think that. The amount of interest in Barack Obama's campaign is just staggering. I have never before seen a political figure establish the kind of connection with people that Barack Obama has been able to achieve.

An e-mail a friend of mine wrote me last night demonstrates what I'm talking about. As you can see, Obama's speech inspired him -- and his response to it inspired me.

Subject: Barack's speech

Admittedly, I live in a liberal city and work in a liberal area of Seattle (south of downtown). Today at noon I went to a bar/grill place to have lunch and Barack's speech was on a few of the plasma TVs at the bar.

I've got nothing brilliant to say about "A More Perfect Union" that hasn't been already said. The only thing I'd like to emphasize is this: if you haven't yet watched or read the speech, please do. Since I suspect most people visiting this blog have already done that, please take the next step -- encourage your friends and family to watch it too, so that they can make up their own minds.

The interest and excitement in this speech is just staggering. Within about six hours, over 200,000 people had watched the speech on Barack Obama's YouTube Channel alone. By now, that number must be much higher. We won't know exactly how big the number is for awhile, because YouTube only increases its counter every few hours.

It is clear though that this speech will be the single most watched speech in Presidential primary campaign history. Barack Obama is at the center of the political universe.

Case in point: my grandmother, a Barack Obama fan, missed his speech this morning and wants to watch it. She's got a Mac at home, but normally isn't that eager to use it. Well, my mom just called me and asked me to e-mail my grandma a link to the speech, which I did. I also added a link to this blog, so hopefully she'll stop on by to see what it's all about. (In case she does: I love you Grandma!)

(Updated w/new video and new article.)

A lifetime of experience?

McCain mistaken on Iran and al-Qaida
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, mistakenly said Tuesday that Iran was allowing al-Qaida fighters into the country to be trained and returned to Iraq.

McCain, expressing concern about Iran's rising sway in the Mideast, said, "Al-Qaida is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran." He made the comments Tuesday at a news conference in Jordan; he made similar comments earlier to radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

Iran is a predominantly Shiite Muslim country and has been at pains to close its borders to al-Qaida fighters of the rival Sunni sect.

This raises the question: when John McCain goes to war, would he do it against the right people?

In case you haven't seen it yet, here is a full-length video of the speech.

I think the most important thing to say about the speech is that you should watch it, or at least read it, and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Don't form your opinion about it based on what the pundit class wants you to believe: the ultimate question most people need to answer is whether they think that as president Barack Obama would be a reflection of those video clips cable keeps on playing of Jeremiah Wright, or whether he would be a figure of racial reconciliation and progress. The only way they can answer that question is by hearing from Obama himself, and making their own judgment.

Update: Over 200,000 people have now watched some or all of the speech on YouTube. That's a pretty phenomenal debut. The most important thing here is that people watch this speech for themselves and make their own decision after watching it. I'd say we're off to a good start.

If you didn't watch Barack Obama's speech live, you can probably find it on YouTube soon. You can read a transcript here. I'd definitely recommend at least giving it a read before you listen to any punditry on the speech.

On a personal level, I found the speech reassuring -- and I think that was Obama's biggest challenge, both politically and substantively. The passage that struck me the most was this one, which I will offer without further comment:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

According to a new CNN poll, Barack Obama now leads Hillary Clinton 52%-45%. That's about as well as I can remember either candidate faring in a poll up until now.

Of course, it's true that leading in a poll is next to meaningless at this point in the campaign -- most people have already voted, and those who have yet to vote won't be voting for at least another five weeks.

Still, it's a very pleasant surprise. It was conducted Friday, Saturday, and Sunday -- after FOX started promoting the Wright videos -- and actually shows that Obama has gained ground from the previous CNN poll which he led 49%-46%.

It's also reassuring news heading into his speech later this morning in Philadelphia. One other thought: the nice thing about this controversy is that finally all eyes are once again on Barack Obama. Today, he will be setting the agenda and defining the terms of the debate. It's good to see him back in that position -- because it's a winning position.

It really is something else that the day before Barack Obama gives a speech on racial reconciliation, Bill Clinton not only suggests that he was the victim of reverse racism in South Carolina, but characterizes it as a "mugging."

The video on this page is of Bill Clinton on Charlie Rose from the middle of December, at the height of the first Clinton panic of the campaign. I suspect different people will see different things in the video, but the one thing that I think is unquestionably the case is in this interview Clinton lays out the entire campaign strategy that he and Hillary Clinton have steadfastly pursued for the last three months. They have not deviated from it one iota.

As you may have heard, Florida's Democrats have given up on the idea of doing a revote, which will no doubt give rise to renewed pleas from Clinton partisans that the only fair thing to do about Florida is to retroactively treat the state's January 29th presidential preference primary as if it were a delegate selection primary.

This idea is one great absurdities of the 2008 nomination contest. Seating the Florida delegation according to the January 29 vote would be unfair not just to voters around the country, but also to voters in Florida.

There have been a lot of very good arguments about why both of these things are true, but one that I don't think has gotten enough attention focuses on the atypically low Democratic turnout in Florida.

As you can see, in Florida (also in Michigan) most people who voted in the presidential primary voted on the Republican side. This of course was very unusual; in fact, in the other primary states, 64% of voters cast their ballots in the Democratic contest; in Florida, that number was 17% lower.

It's hard to divine from that figure exactly how many of Florida's Democrats didn't bother to vote, but if there had been delegates at stake and if campaigns had been waged, there's no doubt the primary turnout would have been significantly higher, closer to the levels seen in other states. Certainly, we're talking about several hundred thousand Floridians.

It sounds good to say "the votes in Florida should count," but the fact is they have already been counted and reported -- that is exactly what the voters in Florida were told would happen. They were never told, nor did they ever have any reason to expect, that there would be any delegates attached to that vote -- and that's why significant numbers of Florida's Democrats didn't bother to vote.

It's got to be frustrating and maddening if you're a voter in Florida, and I actually share their frustration. (The Florida state legislature, which approved the bipartisan plan to move the primary up to January 29th in contravention of both Democratic and Republican party rules, deserves every bit of grief it gets for having caused this mess.)

I'm not a fan of a revoting, but it seemed like the best of a bunch of bad options, and I can't believe that Florida's Democratic Party couldn't come up with some sort of a revote solution.

But of all the options still on the table, perhaps the worst would be seating Florida based on the presidential preference primary vote. Doing so wouldn't be fair to those of us who live in states that played by the rules, and it wouldn't be fair to the hundreds of thousands of Floridians who chose not to vote on January 29, secure in the knowledge that the vote they were skipping was a meaningless beauty contest.

I took off much of the day to go hiking with some friends who were in town from the Bay Area. (Bet you didn't know Las Vegas has some pretty cool spots to hike.)

I've been getting caught up on the days news and I just had a laugh-out-loud moment. Hillary Clinton is attacking Barack Obama on Iraq? Saying that he isn't sufficiently opposed to the war?

The same Hillary Clinton who one year ago told voters who disagreed with her vote for the Iraq war to go take a hike of their own?

NYT:

Mrs. Clinton rolled out a new response to those demanding contrition: She said she was willing to lose support from voters rather than make an apology she did not believe in.

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

ABC:

Clinton: Don't Like My Iraq Vote? 'There Are Others to Choose From'
February 17, 2007 12:23 PM ABC News' Kate Snow and Eloise Harper report: Just hours before a key Senate vote on Iraq, Sen. Hillary Clinton told voters in New Hampshire they have a choice to make about her Senate record.

Clinton, D-N.Y., again refused to apologize for her 2002 vote on a congressional resolution to authorize force in Iraq. However, she added an important new caveat in her remarks today: "I have to say, if the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from. But for me, the most important thing now is trying to end this war."

The blunt language was a veiled reference to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who was not in the Senate in 2002 and did not cast a vote on the resolution, though he was a vocal opponent of the war at that time, and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who has since renounced his vote and repeatedly calls it a "mistake."

How stupid does she think we are?

Today, Dan Balz of the Washington Post wrote an article purporting to assess whether or not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama could win the support of white men. Of course, the article was really more about Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton, as the headline reveals:

White Male Vote Especially Critical
Questions Remain Over Obama's Ability to Appeal to Demographic

Balz argues:

The results in Ohio in particular raised questions about whether Obama can attract support from this crucial demographic.

But in Balz's own article he refutes his own thesis. After FOURTEEN paragraphs, he offers up this this juicy morsel:

In 27 states where exit polls were conducted, starting with Iowa on Jan. 3 and ending with Mississippi last week, Clinton won the white male vote 11 times and Obama 10 times. In five states, they basically split the votes of white men. Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) carried white men in South Carolina.

C'mon Dan. You think we don't see how hackish your analysis is?

It would be nice if the WaPo hired reporters who either understand the subject matter they cover, or who weren't biased. Someone like Mark Blumenthal, perhaps. He wrote this in mid-February (before Ohio):

Much was made this week of Obama's performance among white men in Virginia. Indeed, his support with white men was seen as both the key to Obama's Potomac Primary victories, as well as a sign of broadening support to include those formerly in Clinton's base. Others are skeptical, even worrying that while male superdelegates might tip the scale toward Clinton.

In fact, Virginia was neither the first state (nor even first Southern state) where Obama bested Clinton among white men. Nor was it the state where he won this group by the largest margin. Obama has been doing well with this group since the beginning of primary season.

Below is a table of the Clinton/Obama vote among white men, from exit poll data from every contest thus far. The table is ranked in descending order, with the state showing the largest Obama margin at the top.

Moreover, if you include caucus states in the calculation, it's almost certain that Barack Obama has won the white male vote overall (for those who insist on slicing and dicing America like Mark Penn).

Perhaps it would be fair to ask if Barack Obama can win the votes of racist white men, but then again, the answer to that should be pretty obvious -- and it's not clear how many white man are that racist, and how many of those who are wouldn't also be sexist -- and vote for John McCain instead of Hillary Clinton. My guess: there's a lot of overlap.

And while Balz's article did touch on some issues related to that, he and his headline writer framed the article in a deeply dishonest way.

I guess the good news is that at least we can put to rest the silly notion that the MSM is biased in favor of Barack Obama.

(I'm sure Team HRC will disagree -- according to her new rules, the MSM showed its pro-Obama bias by reporting the fact that he had won eleven straight contests, building an insurmountable pledged delegate lead in the process.)

On Saturday, Mike Allen offered an article on politico.com arguing that the Jeremiah Wright's comments will prove to be a problem for Barack Obama over the long-run, not so much on racial issues but as a way of challenging Obama's patriotism.

For the most-part, it's a hackish run-down of conservatives pressing the guilt-by-association line, bashing Barack Obama for the statements of his former pastor. In the column, Allen quotes Bill O'Reilly, Newt Gingrich, and Tony Perkins (head of the far-right Family Research Council) in his column, but fails to quote a single pro-Obama source. C'mon, Mike. Do your job.

The thing that really crossed a line, however, was this paragraph:

And it revived conservative chatter about Obama’s patriotism that has been fueled by rumors he does not put his hand on his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance (false) and stopped wearing a flag lapel pin (true).

Allen's statement about the flag lapel pin is so misleading that it almost appears to be a deliberate attempt to smear Barack Obama.

Especially in the context of this article, the clear implication of Allen's statement is that Barack Obama does not wear a flag lapel pin to express reservations about America. Allen, of course, saves his ass by not directly saying this, but what he leaves out (intentionally or otherwise) is just as important as what he lives in.

He doesn't tell the reader that Barack Obama has directly addressed the issue of why he does not wear a flag lapel pin. The reason, Obama says, is that he is offended by the notion that patriotism can be reduced to a button on a jacket. It in no way whatsoever is a slight against America or this country. He just feels it is important to express one's patriotism in more meaningful ways. You can agree or disagree, but you can't say that his reasoning is anti-American -- and that is the clear implication of Allen's irresponsible language.

Moreover, given the fact that Barack Obama has publicly addressed this issue, it's hardly fair to call it a rumor. Allen's job is words, so he ought to know the definition of the term. From Merriam-Webster:

1: talk or opinion widely disseminated with no discernible source
2: a statement or report current without known authority for its truth
3 archaic : talk or report of a notable person or event
4: a soft low indistinct sound : murmur

You see, the proposition that Barack Obama "stopped wearing a flag lapel pin" is not a rumor. It's a fact, explained by Barack Obama.

The rumor is that Barack Obama is not sufficiently patriotic. The rumor is that the reason Barack Obama does not wear a flag lapel pin is to express his disdain for America.

Those rumors are false.

Allen's article smacks of McCarthyism. I expect it from right-wingers. But journalists?

Hopefully, Mike Allen was just being sloppy. Everybody has bad days. It's even possible he's getting swept up into the hysteria and will once again find his independent voice.

It's definitely worth keeping an eye out for this kind of stuff, though -- not just from Mike Allen in particular, but from all reporters.

I'm surprised by how much media coverage there was of Speaker Pelosi's statement that superdelegates should support the winner of the pledged delegate battle. (Pleasantly surprised, mind you, very much so.) David Broder talked about it on Meet the Press and NBC Nightly news even did a little story on it during their broadcast. You gotta' love how the superdelegate thing has really broken through if there are stories about it on the evening news.

Anyway, as I wrote yesterday, Pelosi's comments, combined with Iowa county convention results and the NYT article on superdelegates, show that a consensus is emerging within the Democratic Party: Barack Obama will be our nominee.

Still, there will be -- and should be -- more voting. Probably even in Michigan and Florida. The bottom-line though is that in order to win the nomination, Hillary Clinton will need to win at least sixty percent of the vote in just about every single contest from here on out.

Between you and me, there's no way that going to happen. But she's got every right to try.

The one thing that I hope is that when the Pennsylvania vote on April 22 roles around, the press keeps in mind that Clinton must win at least sixty percent to remain plausibly viable. (The attached chart should help make it clear why.) If she fails to hit that threshold, they need to take that into account in their ongoing coverage of her campaign. I'm not saying that they should stop covering her, but they need to start exercising better judgment when covering her attacks on Obama; otherwise, they will be at that point merely aiding and abetting the McCain campaign -- not to mention boosting Clinton's hopes for another shot in 2012.

I am operating under the assumption that Barack Obama's poll numbers are going to take a temporary hit because of the media's fixation on the incendiary words of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

What's weird is that today, Obama actually gained a point and Clinton lost a point in Rasmussen Reports' daily tracking poll, expanding his lead to three points. He maintained a three point lead in the Gallup daily tracking poll.

I still wouldn't be surprised -- indeed I sort of expect -- his numbers to go down for at least a little while.

Perhaps, however, most people really are looking at the issue as a question of whether or not Barack Obama actually believes anything Jeremiah Wright says. As Andrew Sullivan argues in this must read post:

The relevant - the only relevant - question is: are Obama's beliefs represented by the handful of video clips of the most incendiary of Wright's sermons? Or to unpack it a little further: Does Obama believe that black people should damn America? Does he believe that racial separatism is a viable option? Is he a black liberation theologian?

Seriously, I can find absolutely no evidence that he is, and if anyone can, I will gladly eagerly air it.

Please read Sullivan on this. Nobody is doing a better job of addressing the fundamental issues and questions raised by this story.

Is anybody aware of a good (and free, or nearly free) service that allows a website (hint: not this one...) to allow people to sign up for a mailing list?

Last fall, John McCain said that he wanted a Christian to be president because he felt that the Christian faith was a better guide than other faiths. He also said that his faith was an important part of his qualification to lead, adding the the United States Constitution established the America as a Christian nation.

Leave aside for the moment whether John McCain's religious bigotry is acceptable in modern America.

Instead, ask yourself what the media would have done if Jeremiah Wright had uttered those words, especially if he had been talking about race instead of religion?

What if Barack Obama himself had said them?

Yet when John McCain spews religious bigotry during the middle of a presidential campaign, the media barely paid his comments any attention whatsoever.

And then a few months later, when the conservative propaganda outlet FOX News plays old archive footage of Barack Obama's pastor (not Barack Obama himself) delivering a hateful sermon, all the sudden it's the biggest issue in politics.

That, my friends, is bias. There is a double standard -- and Barack Obama is not the beneficiary.

Now, to be fair to John McCain, subsequent to the interview, said that he would vote for a non-Christian if he felt that a non-Christian was in all respects the best candidate. But has not Barack Obama explained in no uncertain terms that he rejects what Jeremiah Wright said?

And unlike John McCain, Barack Obama repudiated all aspects of Wright's bigotry. McCain merely clarified the obvious: that his religious bigotry was just one element of his decision-making process.

Apparently, according to the media, you can partially reject your own words -- but if you completely reject someone else's, there must be a bigger, deeper story.

Does it make any sense to you? Me neither.

Something worth remembering:

No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

M.J. Rosenberg inspired me to share this short story. Twenty-something years ago, I was bar mitzvahed at an orthodox temple in New York. My rabbi, a wonderful man, was (and is) far more conservative than I am politically, yet I thought at the time and continue to think that he was a wonderful rabbi. No one should judge Rosenberg's political views, nor mine, nor Barack Obama's, purely on the basis of what our religious leaders believe.

Three things happened this weekend that might not get much time on cable television, but were huge developments nonetheless.

1. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she thinks superdelegates ought to follow the results of the primaries and caucuses, specifically identifying pledged delegates as her key metric.

2. During yesterday's Iowa County Convention, Barack Obama gained total of nine additional delegates -- eight from John Edwards supporters, and one from Hillary Clinton supporters. This shows that Clinton's attacks are backfiring, and that the Democratic activist base is rallying around Barack Obama.

3. Finally, today The New York Times reports that based on dozens of interviews, undecided superdelegates generally agree that they should back the will of the voters.
   

These three things, taken together with the fundamental delegate math, suggest a consensus is forming: Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party's nominee.

Hillary Clinton's delegate math is even tougher than most people think. As you can see from this chart, even if she were to win 60% of the pledged delegates that remain on the calendar, she would still fall short of the lead -- and would need a large majority of superdelegates to overturn the results of the primaries and caucuses.

Given the clarity of Speaker Pelosi's position, the trends revealed in the NYT article, and the Democratic activist base that is consolidating around Barack Obama, there is just no way Hillary Clinton will win support from enough superdelegates to overturn the vote.

More importantly, there's almost no chance that Hillary Clinton will win 60% of the remaining delegates. She's only broken the 60% threshold in three states -- Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. In all likelihood, she'll end up winning about 50% of the remaining delegates, perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more. At that point she will need to win such an overwhelming majority of the uncommitted superdelegates that she probably won't even contest the nomination in Denver.

To put her superdelegate challenge in perspective, according to Democratic Convention Watch, in the last month Clinton has gained 6 superdelegates -- and Barack Obama has gained 46.5 (some superdelegates only get half a vote). That means Barack Obama has won nearly 90% of the superdelegates over the last month. There is no way that Clinton can reverse that trend without winning huge pledged delegate victories -- and such victories are exceptionally unlikely.

Even if the Florida and Michigan situations were to be resolved with new votes in those states, Clinton's delegate hurdle would be all but insurmountable. The only chance she'd have is if she were to win 60% of the remaining delegates, and as I've shown above, the chances of that happening are remote at best.

Now, none of this means Hillary Clinton should be forced to quit the race. That's entirely up to her and her supporters. It's none of our business.

At the same time, especially given these numbers, Hillary Clinton does have a responsibility not just to the Democratic Party but also to the country as a whole to do everything possible to keep this campaign civil. That means no more "shame on you" moments, no more praising John McCain at Barack Obama's expense, no more mocking of Obama supporters, and no more equivocation when asked about false smears.

As for us, we should just keep on doing what we've been doing. It's worked so far, hasn't it?