The kitchen sink must be just about empty, because now Hillary Clinton is using an argument that would make Karl Rove blush: she's making the case that she's more authentically American than Barack Obama.

I've edited together the essence of her message. Even if you've seen her statement before, watch this clip -- it's short, and I promise it'll be worth your while:

There was no subtlety to her point: in her four minute long attack on Obama, Hillary Clinton used America (or one of its forms) 18 separate times. Compare that to primary night in New Hampshire, when in a twelve minute victory speech she used it just ten times.

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with using the word America in a political speech. But there is something wrong with using it as a political weapon.  And that's exactly what Hillary Clinton was doing today.

I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America. Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist, and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know — not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York.

Hillary Clinton's meaning is clear: I'm more American than Barack Obama. In case there's any doubt, consider this statement in light of the fact that Barack Obama's father was a Kenyan citizen (the elder Obama was in the United States on a student visa):

When my dad grew up it was in a working class family

And this:

I grew up in a churchgoing family

Doesn't it remind you of her "as far as I know moment?"

Is there anything she holds sacred?

About six weeks ago, Hillary Clinton accused Barack Obama of employing the worst quality of politics, reminiscent of Karl Rove. "Shame on you," she said.

No, Hillary. Shame on you.

From Bill Clinton's December 15 interview with Charlie Rose:

So I think that the rise of this is sort of crystallized for a lot of people, that I think doubling healthcare premiums has had a lot to do with this -- the further loss of health insurance coverage in America. So there's a lot of economic anxiety.

In the Republican Party, it expresses itself as this sort of very hard line against immigration. In the Democratic Party, it expresses itself in a very hard line against trade. But the real problem is we haven't created enough good new jobs.

Thanks to MasterSitsu, a kossack who alerted me to this section of the interview.

The contrast between Obama's and Clinton's remarks about bitterness is pretty striking, all the more so when you watch them side-by-side. So I put them into this five minute montage. I won't claim that I was trying to be fair to Clinton, but I did include what she said yesterday, plus the video that I had of her attack from today.

The big news for me today is that I get to vote for Barack Obama for the first time -- the Clark County (Las Vegas) Democratic Convention is today, and delegates are supposed to vote between 8am and 7pm. (Technically, I voted for Obama a month or so ago, but that convention got so crowded they had to cancel it in the middle of voting, so today is a do-over.)

In other news, if you haven't had a chance to watch my new video, Hillary Clinton: War, Lies, and Misjudgment, please check it out -- and if you like it, please digg it!

Earlier today, Barack Obama once again found himself under attack from both John McCain and Hillary Clinton. What motivated their attack? These sentences from informal remarks he made at a fundraiser in San Francisco last weekend:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Perhaps not the most elegant way for Obama to make his intended point, but informal remarks in small gatherings rarely are. But viewed in that light, Obama has nothing to be defensive about, and in his response to the McCain-Clinton attack, he stood his ground and went on offense, employing the patented Obama-Jujitsu (focused, rightly, on McCain).

I've posted the Obama's counter-attack in the video pod at the top of the page as well as in the sidebar. It is incredible -- I've never heard him talk like that before. The subtext of the McCain-Clinton attack is that Obama is an elitist. Listen to him -- you'll see he's got all the pickup truck they can handle. If he integrates this tone into his stump speech, he'll have conquered one of the key challenges he has had in connecting with working-class white voters.

Update: Over at The Field, Al Giordano hilariously dispenses with Hillary "$109m" Clinton's foolish argument: Clinton to Rural Pennsylvanians: “You Can Be Victims, Too!"

Prepare yourself, because something really weird is about to happen.

Here's what it is: I'm going to blog approvingly about something Michelle Malkin wrote.

Now, don't worry. I'm not going soft on ya'. This may very well be the last time I ever read something she has written without cringing.

But this...this brought a smile to my face (emphasis added):

Everything that’s wrong with the Beltway GOP elite in two words
By Michelle Malkin  •  April 11, 2008 02:14 PM

Trent Lott.

Out of touch, privileged, elitist, entitled, helpless, hapless, clueless. Gack. Via WaPo, it appears he’s having trouble adjusting to life as a “man of the people.”

Also, side note -- I've been spending much of the day working on a new video to capture Bill's bizarre embrace of some aspects of Hillary's Bosnia tale. I hope to have it up sometime this evening, but it might not be ready until the morning.

I can say this: so far, it's a fun video editing project!

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from Carthage, an Obama supporter who posts here and at The Field. She had found a video that I'd been desperately searching for: that moment in February, 2007 when Hillary Clinton not only refused to admit making a mistake on Iraq, but also told people they ought to consider supporting Obama or Edwards if such an admission was important to them.

I've taken that clip and integrated it into a new video, Hillary Clinton: War, Lies, and Misjudgment. Here it is:

As always, let me know what you think, and if you like it, please digg it and share it with friends!

NPR:

Barbosa says she was pretty fair to her clients and got them the best deal she could in the marketplace. But she says there was plenty of incentive not to put the customer first: Lenders would offer her 1 percent or 2 percent of the price of the loan as a kickback if she persuaded her client to take a higher interest rate. That was legal and commonplace.

...so I'm watching this video I found on digg of a kangaroo jumping around on the loose in an Australian city, and I decided to digg it. The first comment?

I think this story should be about the kangaroo sniper lady...

Update, Friday morning: I just posted the video of Bill's remarks. Now I'm going to go catch a couple hours of sleep. When I wake up, I'll be working on a new Hillary (and Bill) in Tuzla trailer.

On Thursday, Bill Clinton decided to complain about the media and used Hillary's Bosnia story as example #1. (Transcript from ABC, with my own debunking.)

BILL: A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me. But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. Did y'all see all that. Oh, they blew it up. Let me just tell you.

"One time late at night"? Um, not exactly, Bill. Try at at least three different days -- and at least 2 of them were not late at night at all. And it was 1996, Bill. 1996!

BILL: The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark -- who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way -- both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flack jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters.

Okay...she did go into the cockpit. But the airplane's pilot said the flak jacket thing was bunk. Nice, irrelevant story about Wes Clark, by the way.

BILL: So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.

Whoa there bill. Did you not see the eight-year-old girl reading Hillary and Chelsea that poem?

BILL: Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you woulda thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this.

Yeah, she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt...except for that other First Lady, Pat Nixon, who went to a war zone in Vietnam in 1969.

BILL: And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11:00 at night, too.

Again, with this 11:00 at night nonsense! Repeat after me Bill:

• December 29, 2007
• February 29, 2008
• March 17, 2008 (2x)

None of them at 11PM. None!

p.s.: It's even worse that you're blaming her age for the her Bosnia lies. If you think she can't tell a straight story at 11PM at night, what's she gonna' do at 3AM?

Today, Gallup offered more data confirming the correlation of education levels with general election preferences. Here's the numbers, along with Kerry and Gore for comparison's sake:

As you can see, the gap between the two candidates is large -- double digits in every category except "some college." On balance, Obama is in better position than Clinton, stronger in three of the four categories, falling short only among voters with a high school education or less.

Overall, this confirms that Obama will be the Democratic Party's strongest nominee. Still, I'd like to see him do a lot better among voters with just a high school education. We can't afford a Kerry-like performance.

So why does Hillary Clinton do better than Obama with these voters? Part of the explanation is that these voters genuinely like Hillary Clinton, who knows how to connect with them.

At the same time, these numbers suggest that less-educated voters are reacting against Barack Obama. So what's turning them off? Race? Bad bowling? Cerebral rhetoric? Clinton's attacks?

I'm sure all of those are having an impact, but I think probably the biggest turn-off to these voters is the false Muslim smear -- which more than any other group of voters, these voters believe to be true. Take a look at this data from a recent Pew survey:

It's pretty breathtaking, eh? Those with a high school education or less were three times as likely to believe Obama was a Muslim than college graduates.

Compare these numbers to those of Hillary Clinton. Among those who believe Obama is a Muslim, Clinton trails McCain by 10 points -- a whopping 16 points closer than Obama. Meanwhile, among voters who believe Obama is a Christian, he leads McCain by 8, Clinton by just 3.

I put together a spreadsheet and estimated that most of McCain's owes most of his lead over Obama among these voters to the false Muslim smear, and probably one-third to one-half of the gap between Obama and Clinton versus McCain is a result of the smear.

This is actually good news. To the extent that the education gap is a function of false perceptions, then correcting those false perceptions should mostly erase that gap.

Viewed in that light, a good chunk of the education gap isn't so much a weakness as it is a problem that can be fixed.

In the spin room, I'd call that an opportunity.

Oh, John. Where did the maverick go? We used to love you!

To be fair, it was a robocall reminding me that Clark County Democratic Party (Las Vegas) is holding its convention on Saturday and that I needed to get my butt over there to vote for Barack. Already on the calendar, Bill!

Andrew Sullivan posits that McCain's lead (recently more of a tie) is fleeting, and others agree.

I think one of the things likely dampening the poll numbers for both Obama and Clinton is that in the midst of a campaign, partisan supporters of each candidate have strong, self-generated incentives to believe the worst about their opponents.

In the case of Clinton supporters, you need look no further than Lanny Davis and his take on Jeremiah Wright. I'd like to think that most Clinton supporters in normal times would reject what is being said about Obama by Davis, but now they have a strong incentive to grab a hold of anything that they believe might help them win,  no matter how shaky it might be.

In the case of Obama supporters, you see it when we read David Brooks or Peggy Noonan without realizing that in some ways they are merely setting the rhetoric which they plan to use against Obama during the campaign. Or in my personal case, accepting the New York Times account of a Clinton yarn without remembering that the New York Times has the same credibility issues as does Clinton.

The key fact right now is that Obama is going to win, but the campaign won't end until Hillary Clinton decides to concede.

A couple of weeks ago, John McCain promised not to help homeowners at risk of losing their own homes.

It is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.

He must still be having those mixed-up memory problems, because today he flip-flopped on that promise:

McCain, in Shift, Seeks U.S. Help for Homeowners

Senator John McCain, who drew criticism last month after he warned against broad government action to solve the deepening mortgage crisis, pivoted Thursday and called for the government to help qualified homeowners with subprime mortgages refinance and get federally guaranteed 30-year mortgages.

Both Clinton and Obama called McCain out for his sudden reversal. Nice to see that.

Colin Powell has a lot to answer for on Iraq, but he remains a potent political force in America. It's a pretty big deal when he speaks as forcefully -- and positively -- as he did about Barack Obama, especially when it came to Jeremiah Wright. (From ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast 4/10.)

Lanny Davis is wrong:

Clearly Mr. Obama does not share the extremist views of Rev. Wright. He is a tolerant and honorable person. But that is not the issue.

Andrew Sullivan is right:

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.

Today, Jake Tapper today presented the case for fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Barack Obama, now being pimped by Sean Hannity and Karl Rove as well as the Clinton campaign.

Tapper's thesis was that Obama is vulnerable because he has "some connections" to Willam Ayres, a sixties radical who planned bombings against the U.S. government (Ayres never killed or hurt anyone outside of his own organization). The connections? In 1995, Obama visited Ayres' home and Ayres later contributed $200 to Obama's state senate campaign. They appeared on the same panel in 2002, and though Tapper doesn't mention this, I think they were both members of a non-profit board. Ayres' wife is also active in the school that Obama's children attend.

Ayres is now a professor at the University of Illinois, and there is absolutely no indication whatsoever in anyway that Barack Obama holds any of Ayres' objectionable views. In fact, Obama, who was eight when Ayres was an active radical, has specifically denounced Ayres activities, and does not have close relationship with the man.

So there is no "there there." Still, the Clinton camp has pressed the case that this should be an issue -- never mind the fact that Bill Clinton actually pardoned several domestic terrorists, including a one-time member of Ayres' group arrested with 740 pounds of dynamite in her trunk.

Other than the tidbit about Hannity and Rove (big surprise), the only new piece of information in Tapper's article is this nugget:

Former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, has not endorsed Obama precisely because he worries Obama is not tough enough to deal with attacks such as these, such as the fact that this Ayres story is still out there, with very little pushback from Obama -- or even, frankly, any acknowledgment as to why some voters might not like the idea of Obama being friendly with a man such as Ayres.

Color me skeptical. I don't believe Edwards nor anyone close to him has communicated this to Tapper. My view is that Edwards non-endorsement of Obama has more to do with their disagreement on health care than anything else.

But if Edwards has communicated this to Tapper, then I'm disappointed in him for participating in a whisper campaign of this nature.

If Tapper's claim is accurate, Edwards should air his concerns publicly, giving Barack Obama a chance to respond. Whispering has a way of magnifying fear, because it raises doubts and uncertainty that can only be resolved by raising questions in the public sphere. That can be initially uncomfortable, but in the end, it's the only way to fully dispense with irrational concerns.

If, as I suspect, Tapper inaccurately described Edwards' concerns about Obama, I'd like to see Tapper issue a correction.

In the last few days, Hillary Clinton's campaign has finally seemed to recognize that she very well might lose, firing Mark Penn (with an asterick, the size of which no one seems to know) and hiring Geoff Garin, who immediately pledged there will not be a "thermonuclear climax" to the campaign.

At the same time, her campaign has continued press a two-front attack on Barack Obama, accusing him of hypocrisy in a new radio ad campaign and, on at least two public occasions, continued waging a campaign of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) against Barack Obama. (Specifically, I'm talking about Lanny Davis and Ed Rendell.)

On the surface, this may seem schizophrenic, but I actually think savvy is more like it. The Clinton operation is now trying to deliver its attacks in more sophisticated fashion, recognizing the catch 22 she faces. They know the only way Clinton can win is by knee-capping Barack Obama, but if she is seen as knee-capping Barack Obama, then she can't win.

The only way that a sustained attack on Barack Obama can be executed without Clinton paying a personal price is if surrogates like Lanny Davis do the dirty work.

The problem for Clinton is that given Obama's commanding lead, it is unlikely that anyone other than the Clintons' closest friends (Davis goes back decades) will do their dirty work.

That means it will soon fall back onto the candidate herself to lead the attack. At that point, the question will be whether Hillary Clinton is willing to scorch the earth if no one else will do it for her.

In her personal life, Hillary Clinton may be $109 million richer than she was seven years ago, but on the campaign trail, her money woes are mounting.

According to Sacramento's CBS13, UC Davis is getting ready to serve the deadbeat Clinton campaign with collection papers. The university is owed more than $6,000 from an event held there this past January. The expenses include:

• $500 for the school's marching band
• $250 for janitorial cleanup services
• $5,600 for security provided by the UC Davis Police

The television station reports that Clinton's Sacramento office closed two months ago, and that the Clinton campaign press office did not return a reporter's phone calls.

UC Davis will send its final notice to the campaign this week. If that doesn't result in payment, the university's next step will be to send the bill to a collection agency.

Update: As Joe Sudbay notes, tonight's big Elton John fundraiser means Clinton has got enough cash to pay back her creditors -- they better jump on it!

Bill Buckner returned to Fenway today and received a five minute standing ovation. Video at HuffPo, along with his classic error in the 1986 World Series. As an '86 Mets fan, I'm glad for the guy -- I really am -- though I can guarantee you the fans wouldn't have been this effusive if the BoSox hadn't won the '04 and '07 World Series.

On a related note, never wear a Cubs batting glove under your fielding glove, at least not if you play first base for the BoSox in the World Series.

Actually, there are so many reasons Barack Obama is winning. But at the center of it: judgment, intellect, and steady resolve -- three traits he displayed brilliantly before the Iraq war. As Obama reminded Democrats on Nov. 23, 2004:

It's important for us to stand our ground and take our licks, rather than what sometimes is our habit, which is to cave and whine about it afterwards, which makes us not only look weak, but petty.

So let me see if I get the rules right.

It'd be okay if Bill were to support free trade agreements during Hillary's presidency, even if she opposed them.

But when Bill was president, she had to to a "good soldier" (David Gergen's words) on NAFTA, helping to secure its passage even though she personally opposed it?

That's either sexist as hell, or she was in fact inwardly as well as outwardly a supporter of NAFTA. Which is it?

As journalists prepare the inevitable obituaries for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, I hope we will remember what is -- at least for many of us -- the single most important reason that Hillary Clinton is losing the presidential nomination: her stubborn refusal to admit she made a mistake in voting for the war in Iraq. As she said in February, 2007:

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.

I have been fruitlessly hunting for a video Clinton's remarks, but today a reader (Carthage, here and The Field) tracked one down and got it to me. It's an ordinary CNN report, but watching it I'm still dumbfounded.

I still remember when I first heard those words, and I still believe they doomed her candidacy. As kos put it at the time:

The closer we get to the primaries, the more Hillary will realize that she can't escape her Iraq dilemma. I don't want her to apologize. I want her to say, "I made a mistake." Edwards did it. Just about every other Democrat who idiotically trusted this president and supported the war has done it. Had Hillary done this last year, the issue would be moot.

To be sure, Hillary Clinton says that knowing what she knows now, she would not have voted for the war. She gets no great credit for that concession, however. Anyone with a pulse would vote against the war if given a do-over with the benefit of hindsight.

But in life you don't get do-overs, and she did have enough information at the time to have made a different decision. She did make an error in judgment -- an avoidable one, and by refusing to admit that fact, she offered us no indication that she would avoid the very same error in the future.

Hillary Clinton will not have completely lost until she exits the race, whether it's in the next few weeks or it's in August. And as long as she stays in, the campaign continues, for better or for worse.

But there's no doubt that she will lose, and that moment from February 17, 2007 in Dover, New Hampshire is the single most important reason why.

One of the most amusing spectacles of the campaign has been watching Hillary Clinton claim that she didn't vote to authorize war, that she was only voting to put inspectors on the ground inside Iraq, and that Bush abused the limited authority that he was given. That doesn't seem to be what she thought on March 20, 2003 when she supported the following resolution:

I don't mention this to take Clinton's claim seriously. Just the opposite, in fact.

...so I could write headlines like Oliver Willis, who asks Sean Wilentz to stop whining:

And If I Was Six Inches Taller, Had Abs Of Steel And Looked Like Denzel Washington I Would Be Jessica Alba’s Baby Daddy. But I’m Not.

...If Senator Clinton wished to run for the nomination of a party with a winner-take-all nomination process, she would be well within her legal rights to do so - she simply needed to have changed her party affiliation to Republican.

And Bob Johnson brings breaking news out of Memphis: Calipari suggests new rule be applied retroactively, giving Memphis win.

No wonder John McCain can't come up with an Iraq policy that makes sense -- he still has no idea what's actually going on there.

What do you expect from a guy who finished 894th out of 899 in his graduating class?

Now that the Colombia story is starting to gel, there's another story that deserves some discussion: the relationship between the Clintons, their aides (including Mark Penn), and the U.A.E.

A good place to start would be the Dubai ports deal.

Here are some links:

Another update from reader BF:

The more I watch Barack Obama, the more impressed I am by his intellectual capacity. You just don't expect to see political leaders communicate with the clarity that Obama does.

I'm saying this after watching his questioning of Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker. He wrapped up with the fundamental question that the Bush Administration has failed to answer. What does victory mean? What are our goals? What are we trying to achieve?

Needless to say, Petraeus and Crocker didn't answer. In fact, they were nearly speechless.

How can we ever expect to leave if we don't even know what we're doing there?

To the best of my ability:

• 2005: Bill Clinton paid $800,000 to speak to Latin American audiences by a Colombia-based business investment organization that supports the Colombian trade agreement. On the trip, Clinton praised the Colombian and other trade agreements. He had supported the Colombian agreement since 2000.
• April 2007: Al Gore withdraws from an environmental conference in Miami to avoid appearing with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, widely criticized for human rights and labor abuses. Gore calls Uribe's record "troubling."
• April 2007: The Colombian government hires Glover Park Group, a lobbying firm founded by Clinton administration officials, to help win passage of a free trade agreement with the United States. Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's current communications director, was a principal employee and currently retains an equity stake in the firm.
• May 2007: The Colombian government hires Burson-Marsteller, a public affairs firm headed by Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, to support the free trade agreement.
• May 2007: Obama joins Chris Dodd and six other Senators in expressing "grave concern regarding the infiltration of important Colombian state institutions by terrorists and drug traffickers" to Sec'y of State Rice (via Think on These Things).


Clinton and Uribe, June 2007

• June 2007: Bill Clinton accepts "Colombia is passion" award from Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. "We need to remember that we are friends," said the former president. "We need to remember that we want to share a common future."
• March 31: Penn meets with Colombian government to push trade deal.
• April 2: Colombian President Uribe attacks Barack Obama for opposing the trade deal.
• April 4: Penn's meeting becomes public. The Clinton campaign says Penn's meeting was unrelated to the campaign, but the Colombian government does not corroborate that account.
• April 5: The Colombian government announces it is firing Penn.
• April 6: Penn loses his title with Clinton campaign, though the extent to which his influence will diminish is unclear.

What more is out there? And given the Clintons' deep organizational and personal ties to Colombia, does anybody really believe that mark Penn's 3/31 meeting was entirely apolitical?

Finally, a note to keep this in perspective. As Ben Smith notes, prominent Obama supporters like Tom Daschle are advocates of the Colombian deal, and on balance, Obama -- like Clinton -- seems to be a proponent of more trade, not less -- although he has been steadfast in his support for labor and environmental standards.

The key difference is that Obama himself does not seem to have any personal financial ties to Colombia, certainly none such as the link between Bill Clinton and Alvaro Uribe, and neither do his top campaign aides.

Update: Reader BF alerted me to a May 07 entry, now added. Obama and Dodd expressing grave concerns about Colombia to Condoleeza Rice.

Sam Stein:

Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the trade pact, and representatives of that organization tell The Huffington Post that the former president shared their sentiment.

In June 2005, Clinton was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches throughout Latin America. The organization is, ostensibly, a development group tasked with bringing investment to the country and educating world leaders about the Colombia's business opportunities.

Even if Clinton wins 56% of the remaining delegates -- a near impossibility -- she'd still need 65% of the uncommitted superdelegates to stage a coup. That's not going to happen.

Two more weeks until Pennsylvania, which means in two more weeks it could be all over. If Clinton doesn't manage to get 60% of Pennsylvania's delegates, she will have absolutely no path to the nomination.

I think the press will set 55% as the key benchmark, which is far too generous, so they will probably continue paying attention to Clinton, but her small flicker of hope will be completely extinguished if she falls short of 60%.

But even though the press will be paying the irrelevant Hillary Clinton attention, we don't have to. So here's my proposal:

Let's go on strike against talking about Hillary Clinton as a political opponent if she doesn't get at least 60% of the delegates in Pennsylvania. For the balance of the month of April, we will not mention her name as a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination. We can then reevaluate in May.

What do you think? If she can't win enough delegates to attain relevancy, it'll time be time we focused on McSame, eh?

Update (via Andrew Sullivan): More evidence that Clinton is unlikely to hit the 60% threshold. Quinnipiac gives her a 50-44 lead, down slightly from her 50-41 lead last week -- and women may be moving towards Obama.

Update II: Two more polls, one by Rasmussen and one by SurveyUSA. Rasmussen has it as 48-43 for Clinton; SurveyUSA has it as 56-38 -- a huge 18 point lead. As Carthage notes in the comments, SurveyUSA has a track record as one of the most accurate pollsters out there, adding:

HRC rising in PA.  We need to keep working like we are 30 points behind, and not let the expectations be raised!

I started criticizing the war in Iraq before he did.
-- Hillary Clinton, 4/5/08

Yes, that's a pretty crazy thing to say, but this being Clinton, there's some parsing involved. In her mind, anything that happened before January, 2005 doesn't count, because she and Barack Obama weren't both in the Senate.

Okay -- but as Jake Tapper documented, Clinton's story was flat-out false.

I did a bit of digging, found the video of Barack Obama on January 18, 2005 at Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearing. This is the Barack Obama we love -- intellectual and sincere, respectful but uncompromising. And criticizing the Iraq war as a U.S. Senator -- before Hillary Clinton.

Here's Clinton on Saturday (extended version here):

As Tapper explained, the only evidence Clinton's folks could come up with to defend her claim was a written statement from January 26, 20058 -- eight days after Obama questioned Rice. Note that this was a statement for the record -- she didn't give it herself, and may never have seen it.

Meanwhile, a few weeks later, in February 2005, she was touring Iraq with BFF John McCain.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, and Sen. John McCain were part of a five-member congressional delegation visiting Iraq. Faleh Kheiber, AP

Clinton says insurgency is failing

BAGHDAD (AP) — As 55 people died in Iraq on Saturday, the holiest day on the Shiite Muslim religious calendar, Sen. Hillary Clinton said that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was failing.

Clinton, a New York Democrat, said insurgents intent on destabilizing the country had failed to disrupt Iraq's landmark Jan. 30 elections.

"The concerted effort to disrupt the elections was an abject failure. Not one polling place was shut down or overrun," Clinton told reporters inside the U.S.-protected Green Zone, a sprawling complex of sandbagged buildings surrounded by blast walls and tanks. The zone is home to the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy.

When they returned from Iraq, Clinton and McCain made a joint appearance on Meet the Press. Not surprisingly, she was hardly critical of the war. Sorry, no video, but I've posted the full transcript of Iraq-related questions put to Clinton here.

Meanwhile, the truth is that Barack Obama has been consistently strong on the Iraq war:

Marc Ambinder makes essential points in back-to-back posts:

1. The most important failure of the Clintons' campaign is theirs and theirs alone.
2. Mark Penn was not fired. In fact, he was on the campaign's regular messaging call today.

What you're really seeing here is thoroughly desperate campaign spinning out of control in its final weeks -- soon to be days.

Also, credit where credit is due: Yesterday, The Nation's Ari Melber, kossack dawnt, and Politico's Ben Smith all saw through the Penn smokescreen.

Update: Ben notes that Clinton folks are still saying that the "central point here is that he's out, not that he's in." Color me skeptical.

...does The Page (Halperin's site) sometimes look embarrassingly like a steaming hot press release, straight from Camp Clinton? (Large image after the jump. And yes, I know this blog is partisan, but Halperin is supposed to be "objective"!)

Here it is at 12:30PM Pacific time on April 7:

↑ Shrink post ↑

This is the kind of thing you can easily forget in the middle of a campaign:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, and Sen. John McCain were part of a five-member congressional delegation visiting Iraq. Faleh Kheiber, AP

Clinton says insurgency is failing

BAGHDAD (AP) — As 55 people died in Iraq on Saturday, the holiest day on the Shiite Muslim religious calendar, Sen. Hillary Clinton said that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was failing.

Clinton, a New York Democrat, said insurgents intent on destabilizing the country had failed to disrupt Iraq's landmark Jan. 30 elections.

"The concerted effort to disrupt the elections was an abject failure. Not one polling place was shut down or overrun," Clinton told reporters inside the U.S.-protected Green Zone, a sprawling complex of sandbagged buildings surrounded by blast walls and tanks. The zone is home to the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy.

When they returned from Iraq, Clinton and McCain made a joint appearance  on Meet the Press. I've included the Iraq-related questions put to Clinton after the jump. (Sorry, no video!)

It's a light edition, but in my defense, I've been doing a lot of blogging -- and even more video work!

2Pac - Keep Ya Head Up

Sean Wilentz has a pro-Hillary essay at salon.com that arguing that "if the system made sense," Hillary Clinton would win.

Wilentz favors a state-based winner-take-all system, and it is indeed true that if we retroactively instituted a winner-take-all delegate allocation method, Clinton would have a lock on the nomination.

But there's a glaring flaw with this argument: if the system were winner-take-all, Obama would have used a different strategy -- resulting in different outcome.

WaPo's Michael Dobbs (The Fact Checker guy who gave the Tale of Bosnian Sniper Fire four Pinocchios) has a really good truth squad article from January about Clinton and Obama on Iraq. There's lots of interesting tidbits -- including that it seems that Clinton and Obama have differed on two Iraq-related votes, not just one as Clinton had claimed.

I don't quite agree with his net takeway (that they've both been fibbing a little) but then again, he wrote this in January, before Clinton took her campaign of disinformation and put into overdrive.

A few minutes ago, I was trying to hunt down a video clip of Hillary saying this:

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.

Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful -- but I did run across this prophetic post by kos that made the search at least somewhat worthwhile:

Hillary: I wasn't wrong on Iraq
by kos - Sat Feb 17, 2007 at 07:00:18 PM PDT

The closer we get to the primaries, the more Hillary will realize that she can't escape her Iraq dilemma.

Hillary Clinton in Eugene, Oregon on Saturday:

I started criticizing the war in Iraq before he did.

Seriously. She said that. No joke.

I mean at least with sniper fire, there was a chance -- however slim -- that she'd get away with it.

But this? This is just plain crazy.

Now, this being a Clintonism, there's a bit of parsing involved. But even using Clinton's convoluted metric, her statement is false. ABC's Jake Tapper explains:

Clinton on Saturday told Oregonians, "when Sen. Obama came to the Senate he and I have voted exactly the same except for one vote. And that happens to be the facts. We both voted against early deadlines. I actually starting criticizing the war in Iraq before he did."

It's an odd way to measure opposition to the war -- comparing who gave the first criticism of the war in Iraq starting in January 2005, ignoring Obama's opposition to the war throughout 2003 and 2004. (And Clinton's vote for it.)

But even if one were to employ this "Start Counting in January 2005" measurement, Clinton did not criticize the war in Iraq first.

Tapper goes on to show that Obama criticized the Iraq war on January 18, 2005 during Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearings. Clinton says she started criticizing the war on January 26, 2005 -- 8 days after Obama.

Of course, Clinton's "January '05" metric is absolutely inane -- Obama opposed the war from the beginning, and she supported it. But it is rather hilarious that even by her own ridiculous standards, her story is false.

I'm probably going to be doing a new video about this last tale, but to tide you over and to start setting the record straight, here's a video about Barack Obama's record on Iraq:

Got any ideas, suggestions, or recommendations on what other video clips -- pro and con -- that I should include?

Long overdue. Also, last week Charlie Black, who was not only McCain's top campaign adviser but also the long-time chairman of Mark Penn's lobbying firm, resigned from Penn's firm to go work full-time on the McCain campaign.

Update: Changed title from Mark Penn Resigns to Mark Penn Sidelined. Sidelined (Ben Smith's words) is better way to put it. Penn is still with the campaign -- just in a less powerful role (at least officially).

Update 2: Changed "Sidelined" to "Loses Title." I like the way Ari Melber puts it best -- Mark Penn has lost his title. I tend to agree with dawnt: it's smoker and mirrors. Penn will continue to hold at least as much power as he did before losing the title.

Back in early January, John Edwards put a spotlight on Nataline Sarkisyan, a murder-by-spreadsheet victim who had just died because an insurance company refused to authorize treatment for her leukemia.

In the final debate before New Hampshire, Edwards raised Nataline's case as an illustration of the importance of fighting against corporate power. He then spoke about his work in the U.S. Senate to help pass the patient's bill of rights -- legislation that George Bush and the GOP eventually blocked.

Amazingly, Hillary Clinton launched into an unprovoked attack on Edwards. To some, it seemed as if she was blaming Edwards for Nataline's death. If she wasn't, she came damn close.

Here's what Clinton said:

CLINTON: You know, Senator Edwards did work and get the patient bill of rights through the Senate -- it never got through the House. One of the reasons that Natalie (sic) may well have died is because there isn't a patient's bill of rights. We don't have a patient's bill of rights.

The very next day, Edwards held a town hall event with the Sarkisyan family. Once again, the Clinton campaign launched an unprovoked assault on Edwards, accusing him of exploiting a tragedy for political gain.

Edwards: No Conscience in Clinton Campaign

KEENE, N.H. – John Edwards angrily took on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at two news conferences in a row on Sunday, saying that her campaign “doesn’t seem to have a conscience.”

Mr. Edwards was responding to a comment from Jay Carson, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, who suggested that “the references in 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. Mr. Edwards had recently incorporated the story into his stump speech as a criticism of insurance companies.

The town hall with the Sarkisyans actually highlighted the core problem with health care in America: our system of private insurance.

Clinton's story, on the other hand, put at least as much blame on the front-line providers as it did on the system, in the process placing the focus on the wrong part of the system.

Note @ 12.38pm: I've updated this post with the material from the debate.

For the record, via Taylor Marsh (I think she may live here in Las Vegas too, yikes!), Big Tent Democrat has what seems to be the officially unofficial response by the pro-Clinton blogosphere to the whole health care story debacle.

Perhaps the biggest open question at this point is whether Clinton continued telling the story after her campaign learned it wasn't true. It seems likely that she did based on the following timeline:

• Clinton told the story Friday night during a speech on Grand Forks, ND. The speech began at 9:45PM Eastern time. (It was 8:45PM local.)
• According to Google News, by midnight that same night, the New York Times had published its story.

Unless the NYT waited to contact the Clinton campaign until 9:45PM Friday night, Clinton told the story after her campaign had been told -- and accepted -- that the story was false.

Since the article was published at midnight, If the NYT did wait until 9:45PM to contact Clinton, it would have had to have done so in the next two hours and fifteen minutes. Given the late hour and the narrowness of that window, that seems to be a very unlikely scenario.

Therefore, in all likelihood, the Clinton campaign was aware the story was false as Clinton continued to tell it.

If that is proven true, then the question becomes: why did Clinton continue to tell the tale? Were people afraid to tell her? Were lines of communication bad? Did they think nobody would notice?

It's doesn't just go to credibility -- it also goes to judgment.

Update on April 7, 2008: The AP is out with a report that partially vindicates some elements of Clinton's story. The essential facts from the story:

• The deceased woman "did in fact have health insurance when she and her baby died."
• At an earlier time, the woman was uninsured and did run up bills and was refused treatment at a clinic. It is not clear when that earlier time was.
• The woman went to an O'Bleness facility 30 miles to the north and was treated there.
• The woman's aunt felt "medical professionals did all they could to save" the woman.
• The woman's town has "about 2,000 residents and two medical clinics. One is affiliated with O'Bleness, the other is the Holzer Clinic, part of a nine-facility chain."
• The woman did not go to the local O'Bleness clinic and "''she would not have been turned away for lack of payment'' if she had sought treatment there."
• Holzer, the other clinic, says it has no records of the woman going to its clinic at any point in the last five years.

This is still a bit of a mystery, because the woman's aunt says she was refused care in her hometown, but both of the clinics there deny that to be the case.

I'll update if there is any further clarity.

***

Major update: I've completely overhauled this post. The original is here.

OVERVIEW:

Saturday's New York Times described a horrifying tale told by Hillary Clinton in speeches over the past month:

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

Just one problem: the story, intended to illustrate the need for a universal health care system, turns out  to have been false. According to Times, contrary to what Clinton had claimed, the deceased woman actually did have insurance and did receive care.

Moreover, according to the Times, the non-profit hospital where the woman was treated says the Clinton campaign had never contacted them to check if the story was true. For its part, the Clinton campaign has conceded it had never vetted the story, and accepted that the story was not true.

:: 

THE GOOD NEWS: HILLARY CLINTON
DID NOT IMAGINE SNIPER FIRE:

Clinton was told the story by a local sheriff's deputy in Ohio, and her versions of the story seem to match the ones he shared with her and the media five weeks ago. So it's pretty clear that she didn't make anything up on her own, at least not anything major.

She did, however, spend one month of her campaign using a compelling but false story -- one that her campaign had never bothered to check -- as a key part of her argument for universal health care, which she says is the centerpiece of her campaign.

Sounds kinda' like the way Bush handled the imaginary WMDs in Iraq. Just because something makes a good story doesn't make it true. Just because something helps you make a case for a policy you support doesn't make it true.

If you're the president, you've got to check your facts.

::

VIDEO:

You really have to watch Hillary Clinton tell the tale to get a sense of why the Times report will reinforce the hardening perception that she has a reckless disregard for the truth. Here is a CNN discussion of the affair, including a clip of her telling the story Friday night in Grand Forks, North Dakota:

Here's ABC Evening News from Saturday:

Can you imagine telling a story like that day after day after day and not checking the facts?

::

MEDIA COVERAGE OF CLINTON'S HEALTH CARE TALE: