McCain's ties to Rod Parsley and John Hagee in TAP

**UPDATE: This story has legs.**

Two articles by The American Prospect on the link between McCain and two of the nuttiest religious nutballs out there -- Rod Parsley and John Hagee (also this):

1. McCain's "Spiritual Guide" (on Parsley)
2. McCain's Apocalyptic Support (on Hagee)

PS: Also see this and this.

And here are the two articles' full-text:

1. McCain's "Spiritual Guide" (on Parsley)

Yesterday at a rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, John McCain was flanked by Rod Parsley, who called the candidate "strong, true, consistent conservative," according to the Columbus Dispatch. McCain referred to Parsley, who preaches the same word of faith doctrine as the televangelists under investigation by McCain's fellow Republican Senator Charles Grassley, a "spiritual guide."

Later, according to the Dispatch:


Parsley said he supports McCain because the senator will be tough on national security and "protect the unborn."


The megachurch pastor, criticized in the past for mixing religion and politics, acknowledged that McCain isn't the ideal candidate for evangelical Christians, who overwhelmingly backed President Bush in 2004.

"Yet at the same time, when you put John McCain up against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the ideological and philosophical differences are overwhelming," Parsley said.

In conservative circles, Parsley's considered one of the religious kingmakers in the 2008 presidential race. While he's not universally loved in evangelical circles by any stretch of the imagination, McCain is likely very pleased with the, er -- shall we call it an endorsement? Add John Hagee, the chairman of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), along with McCain-endorser Gary Bauer, who serves on CUFI's board, and Parsley, who is a CUFI regional director, and it looks like McCain is lining up the support of a contingent of the Christian right that could make McCain's off-the-cuff bomb-bomb-Iran and 100 years in Iraq remarks seem, well, prophetic.


--Sarah Posner

Posted by Sarah Posner on February 27, 2008 10:56 AM

2. McCain's Apocalyptic Support (on Hagee)

John McCain picked up the endorsement yesterday of San Antonio televangelist and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) founder John Hagee, who cited the candidate's opposition to abortion and "support" of Israel.

Even though Hagee hosted Mike Huckabee for a guest sermon at his church last December, his support for McCain is not a huge surprise. Last year, Hagee and McCain had a private breakfast in San Antonio after which Hagee declared McCain "solidly pro-Israel", which, in CUFI parlance, is code for opposition to a two-state solution. Hagee contributed $1,000 to McCain's campaign (although he also later contributed to Huckabee's as well.)

This past summer, McCain appeared at CUFI's annual summit, where he "joked" about how hard it is to do God's work in the city of Satan. (He repeated a similar line earlier this week at a town hall event in Cincinnati at which McCain "spiritual guide" Rod Parsley shared the stage.) While McCain might be able to laugh this off as a little quip about the foibles of Washington, to followers of Hagee and Parsley, "spiritual warfare" is a very real part of everyday life, in which they, as godly people, do battle with Satanic forces. When talking about CUFI, though, talking about battles is really no joking matter, since Hagee has been beating the drum for war with Iran -- which he believes will result in the world-ending battle at Armageddon -- for over two years.

At the CUFI summit, McCain got a lukewarm reception, and many participants I spoke with were skeptical about his socially conservative credentials -- although Israel was a top issue, abortion was also high on their lists. Most I spoke to supported Huckabee, who at that point (July 2007) was still an asterisk, and some others Sam Brownback -- who is now supporting McCain. But as far as Hagee's endorsement goes, I guess there's not much of a question now what Hagee's upcoming sermon is going to be about.

--Sarah Posner


Posted by Sarah Posner on February 28, 2008 8:37 AM

Hagee is probably worse than Parsley, although it's a tough call. The former is in love with the idea of starting WW3 with Iran. I love how even the most supposedly "independent" and "maverick" members of the GOP are still groveling suckers at the feet of these fat hypocritical preachers.

Last night's Ohio debate

So this was what HRC was referring to last night, with her line about the media oogling over Obama? (more here on the debate, more here on SNL & Obama)

Largest growth in religious affiliation? Unaffiliated.

Well, this is encouraging:

Maybe one day we'll have an inversion, and about 84% of people will be nonreligious...

Although the importance of religion in our society must not be underestimated, neither must secular America, especially the trend as it applies towards younger Americans, something I've emphasized before:

The proportion of atheists and agnostics increases from 6% of Elders (ages 61+) and 9% of Boomers (ages 42-60), to 14% of Busters (23-41) and 19% of adult Mosaics (18-22).

Looking at very recent polls, around 18% of Americans do not believe in God. This trend is in line with other recent assessments of the state of atheism, and the disparity in numbers between "atheist" and "82% of people believe in God" confirms that people are still reluctant to self-identify with "the A word" despite their admission that they don't believe in God. In the largest religious self-identification survey ever undertaken, 14% of those surveyed reported "no religion" but only 0.4% explicitly as "atheist". A more recent Baylor study found only 50% of "religious nones" identify as "atheists" -- again note the disparity between non-religious persons and people willing to identify as "atheist" and/or be active in some sort of atheist organization. Another recent poll in The Nation shows that the number of nonbelievers is much higher than commonly recognized - at around 27% not believing in a God (those willing to self-identify as atheists is still much lower).

The trends are clear: although nonreligious persons are still a minority, we are a very rapidly growing one.

Regardless of the exact number, the number of atheists visible in politics is next to zero, and that is unlikely to change. Atheists are still distrusted and that prejudice won't change overnight. And that's a lot of why people are reluctant to use the label, even when they admit that they aren't theists; I really think part of it boils down to groups like the RRS. Part of it can be attributed to the corrupt and increasingly-irrelevant Religious Right and their hatred and intolerance. When atheists start to look like those people (intolerant of religion in general), we're the mirror image of Falwell and D. James Kennedy, which turns people off in droves.

And that's scary.

Hilarious Clinton vid by Slatev

I love it.

Hilarious.

Obama wins Democrats Abroad -- 11 / 11

Remember that Democrats Abroad contest I mentioned a week ago? Obama won it hands down: 2-1.

February 21, 2008, 1:15 pm
Make That 11 for Obama

By Brian Knowlton

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama won his 11th straight nominating contest on Thursday, carrying the Democrats Abroad global primary by a 2-to-1 margin over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and prevailing among American expatriates in every region of the world.

The results represented thousands of ballots submitted from Americans in 164 countries and territories from Feb. 5 to 12.

The overseas Democrats were allocating a small number of delegates –­ 4.5 — on Thursday, under a proportional system that allotted 2.5 to Obama and 2 to Clinton. A further 2.5 will be determined at a Democrats Abroad convention on April 12 in Vancouver, Canada. The group also holds 4 superdelegate votes, for a total of 11 votes at the national convention in late August in Denver.

But in a close contest, Democrats Abroad said they felt particularly engaged.

Democrats Abroad for the first time allowed votes to be cast online, though others were cast by mail, fax or in person, and they came in “from Antarctica to Zambia ­– from A to Z,” said Christine Schon Marques, the group’s international chair, in a phone interview from Geneva. “Many people overseas are very concerned about the war in Iraq; they’re looking for change.”

One of the Antarctica voters was Adam Lutchansky, a 26-year-old Alaska native who just finished a six-month stint working in the power plant at McMurdo Station and voted via the Internet.

“We only get mail service six months out of the year and it takes about a month for a letter to make a round trip to the U.S.,” he said by e-mail message, “but even here in Antarctica we have a dependable Internet connection. It was great to finally see a political body get onboard with the security and flexibility of the Internet.”

By way of comparison, Mr. Obama’s global 66-to-33 percent lead over Mrs. Clinton was nearly identical to the edge he recorded in states like Minnesota, or his home state of Illinois.

Mr. Obama won by strong majorities in every region and nearly every country. The senator, who was born in Hawaii, did particularly well in the Asia-Pacific region, winning 79 percent of the vote in Japan and 76 percent in Indonesia, where he lived as a youth. He also did well in Europe, carrying more than 70 percent of the vote in France and Switzerland.

Mrs. Clinton won in Israel, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines. Her best regional showing was in the Americas, with 44 percent of the vote.

Republicans do not hold a global primary. They cast votes directly in their home districts, as overseas Democrats also have the option of doing.

To recap:

Basically, the DNC is allowing expatriates to vote overseas using e-votes and paper ballots in local polling places. The voting began on Feb. 5 and will end today (12). The results should be in...some time soon.

Although some might downplay the significance of an estimated 20,000 votes from all around the world, I think they are a strong barometer of what diverse and well-informed people think about the Democratic horse race. Obama is expected to pull out a victory, and I will ramble more about it later (when that happens) with more numbers and such.

There is a great article at TNR on it, as well as Wired.

I think this is a great win for him.

Real differences between Barack & HRC

If you want to get a feel for the substantive policy differences and voting record bifurcations of the two Democratic candidates, read this and this.

In the meanwhile, enjoy the newest national poll numbers showing this race is a dead heat, with Barack steadily gaining ground:

Baby Bible Bashers

**UPDATE: There is more attention on this now, and you can watch the full program clips here (as of now)**

As if you need more incentive to gag than seeing young kids scared out of their minds by religious bullshit: demons, hellfire, God's anger...then take a gander at Samuel Boutwell and other "pint-sized preachers" featured in Channel 4's "Baby Bible Bashers" series. They are placed outside of abortion clinics, made to scream at the "homersexshuls" that are ruining our country and using gay penguins to transform us into Sodom...

You can watch a lot of this on YouTube, or see a clip of him here.

We've seen this little brainwashed joker Boutwell before, and in his interview with Juju Chang on ABCNews, which you can see the extended version of on YouTube (see another clip here), when asked why he was preaching, he admitted that his dad wanted him to. When she asked him further questions, he was stumped. It became painfully obvious he was regurgitating the shit he'd been programmed to.

Clinton & Obama surrogates present science proposals

Well, it wasn't exactly Science Debate 2008, but it was something, at least. At least we've made some progress. Now wait and see how poorly the McCain proposals stack up against the Democrats'...oh, wait, he has no such proposals on his site, unlike Barack's technology and energy/environment sections and HRC's innovation and energy sections.

More animal outrage

I just read the CNN article about the largest beef recall in American history, and watching the accompanying video made me want to cry and punch the slaughterhouse workers at the same time. They take these poor sick diseased animals that are unable to stand and jab them with electric prods, stab them with forklifts, drag them by ropes attached to one foot...

The animals literally scream in pain. It's horrible. If you can't see the ethical implications, you're not capable of rational thought.

If you want to see more animal abuse TV, see here. If you need rational arguments for becoming a vegetarian, or at least cutting meat down to a rare item in your diet, see here. As I said a few months ago, some people just don't understand the environmental impacts of the meat industry -- how much of our fresh water supplies are polluted and how much forest is burned simply to raise cattle. The toll is significant. It really can't be overstated. For those interested in sustainability and the relationship between oil and agriculture, the data is out there.

"Meet your Meat" (12:28), narrated by Alec Baldwin, follows below:

Oil industry conference

The question is not that at some point in the future, demand for oil will outstrip production. The question is whether it has already come.

Another CNN Money article examines the question of peak oil, which I've written on here and here within the past few months. There are a few eye-opening quotes from oil industry executives:

"An oil crisis is coming, and sooner than most people think," said John Hess, chief executive of Hess Corp (HES, Fortune 500)., the integrated oil and gas company with 2006 sales of $29 billion. "All oil producers are not investing enough today."

Rising income of consumers has propped up demand even as crude prices have spiked five fold in the past six years. Hess offered some perspective: On a unit-to-unit basis, oil is still about 10 times cheaper than a Starbucks latte.

Runaway growth in oil use in India and China - the two countries are expected to boast a combined 1.2 billion vehicles by 2050, up from 20 million a few years ago - is expected to push demand above supply sometime between 2015 and 2020, Hess said.

"It's not a matter of endowment, it's a matter of investment," he said.

A small but growing number of analysts disagree with Hess' assertion that there is enough oil in the ground. They say production of oil has peaked or will peak soon, followed by a slow but steady period of decline that could cause major social unrest.

Oil executives, while acknowledging that crude deposits are ultimately limited, said that new technologies should keep crude production rising for at least several decades.

"Many perceive the supply challenge as one of scarcity," said Mark Albers, a senior vice president at Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500). "There is no question oil is a finite resource, but it's far from finished."

Albers pointed to a U.S. government survey saying the world has three trillion barrels of oil left - compared to the one trillion used so far in history.

The question is how those three billion barrels are stored: are they heavy crude? Shale oil deposits? Far below conventional drilling limits at around 5 miles?

Many of these reserves would be more expensive to produce than the current price of oil would make profitable. Obviously, if we narrow our supply down to these reserves, the price would escalate further and make recovery economically feasible. However, at those same prices, producing energy from alternative and renewable resources would be morally, environmentally and economically superior.

Even as they claim that there is still plenty of oil left, they ignore the essential question of whether the rate of production can keep up with the rate of demand. The short and simple answer is...no.

Later in the article there are some admissions from executives that the oil industry will have to play a positive role in addressing climate change. They sound more realistic than the chimp-in-chief...whose days, by the way, are thankfully numbered:

Obama wins VA, thoughts on Democrats Abroad

**UPDATE: I updated the primary results files after last night's wins for Obama. He now leads in the popular vote and has won 22 states to Clinton's 13.**

So it looks like Barack will win VA (probably MD & DC as well). Next week, he should carry HI & WI as well. Then, it will be a nice two week break until the Mar 4 contests in OH, TX & PA. He'll gain ground in those states by then. I am pretty optimistic about things. I can't believe it's been over a year since I decided to support him.

Something interesting I just started reading about today: Democrats Abroad. Basically, the DNC is allowing expatriates to vote overseas using e-votes and paper ballots in local polling places. The voting began on Feb. 5 and will end today (12). The results should be in...some time soon.

Although some might downplay the significance of an estimated 20,000 votes from all around the world, I think they are a strong barometer of what diverse and well-informed people think about the Democratic horse race. Obama is expected to pull out a victory, and I will ramble more about it later (when that happens) with more numbers and such.

There is a great article at TNR on it, as well as Wired.

One of the most fascinating points about this global election (talked about in the Wired article) is that the technology being developed could/should be used one day in online voting in all elections. I don't see why not -- fraud is possible in any system, and a feedback email could be auto-generated that would send back to the person (immediately) a .pdf version of their completed ballot as a "paper record" and to confirm their choices. Real-time data collection would give the results to the exact vote to the exact minute.

Who wins a protracted primary battle?

A few days ago, I left a comment on TCR that I thought a protracted primary election would help, not hurt, the Democrats in the general election. My logic is that the media will continue to give lots of air time to the Democratic candidates, that the supporters of said candidates will continue to be energized and enthused, and that the GOP attack machine(s) will have a more difficult time honing in on two targets.

After reading this analysis of what a long primary could mean, I still feel the same way:

The record of the party is mixed in binding up its wounds. President Jimmy Carter was hurt by Ted Kennedy's primary challenge in 1980, and lost to Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton overcame a series of contentious primaries in 1992 with Jerry Brown.

Democrats have a reason for concern, said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian. With Mitt Romney out of the race and Mike Huckabee not a real threat, McCain has the time to hone his themes, criticize the Democrats, raise money for the general election, bone up on the economy and begin the process of choosing a running mate.

"His differences with some conservatives are important, but now he has time to repair them," Zelizer said. "Choosing someone more conservative would be one thing."
...
Rosenberg, who is neutral in the race, said that Obama or Clinton will likely emerge as the front-runner by mid-March, and that would blunt any head start McCain has on the general election campaign.

In any case, Wayne, a Georgetown University historian, predicted that Democratic leaders and office-holders - the so-called superdelegates - will want to resolve the contest soon, and will gravitate to the front-runner.

"They're politicians," Wayne said. "They will go whichever way the winds blow."

I simply don't think that people will be satisfied with a primary decided by superdelegates on either side. I would be pissed for either Barack or Sen. Clinton if the person who won the most votes/pledged delegates lost the primary because of backroom pandering. I mean that: whichever Democratic candidate wins the most pledges and votes ought to be the next POTUS. And I'll stand by those words no matter whose name it applies to, come March, April or August.

While I think a long primary could be a boon for the Dems, of course, a protracted legal battle would be very ugly, should legal recourse be sought in a scenario like the one outlined above: one candidate wins the most votes & pledged delegates but loses because of superdelegates. Would the candidates engage in litigation, or would they defer to the will of the DNC under the auspices of "for the sake of the party" (cue Romney's twisted illogic). One of Bush's hack 2000 election lawyers writes:

As the convention nears, with Sen. Clinton trailing slightly in the delegate count, the next step might well be a suit in the Florida courts challenging her party's refusal to seat Florida's delegation at the convention. And the Florida courts, as they did twice in 2000, might find some ostensible legal basis for overturning the pre-election rules and order the party to recognize the Clinton Florida delegates. That might tip the balance to Sen. Clinton.

We all know full well what could happen next. The array of battle-tested Democratic lawyers who fought for recounts, changes in ballot counting procedures, and even re-votes in Florida courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 would separate into two camps. Half of them would be relying on the suddenly-respectable Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision that overturned the Florida courts' post-hoc election rules changes. The other half would be preaching a new-found respect for "federalism" and demanding that the high court leave the Florida court decisions alone.

Let's all hope it doesn't come down to that.

CNN Analysis: Barack beats Sen. McCain

CNN has Barack beating Sen. McCain, but HRC just tying him.

PS: Barack has won 18 of the 31 states so far. See my updated primary results.

HRC and tax returns, education gap

Yeah. Remember that little thing I mentioned a month ago, and a long while back in May, about the difference in Obama's efforts towards transparency and HRC's? It's come back up:

Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters, zeroed in on Mrs. Clinton’s loan and said that her decision not to disclose her income tax returns raised questions about the loan.

“I’ll just say that I’ve released my tax returns,” he said, responding to a question about tax returns. “That’s been a policy I’ve maintained consistently. I think the American people deserve to know where you get your income from.”

Mr. Obama stopped short of issuing a call for Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton to release their returns.

“I’m not going to get into the intricacies of their finances,” Mr. Obama told reporters as he flew to a rally in Nebraska. “That’s something that you’ll have to ask them.”

Nebraska holds nominating caucuses on Saturday.

Clinton campaign officials said she would release her returns if she won the nomination. The officials said there was enough information in her public Senate financial disclosures to assess her personal finances.

Her Senate forms do not list exact deductible expenses like interest or medical costs. The tax returns would show exact interest and dividends from investments, not just the ranges on the disclosure forms.

Mrs. Clinton has been an advocate for transparency in campaign finance, as has Mr. Obama.

For all the confidence expressed by the Clinton campaign, the onus remains on Mrs. Clinton to show fund-raising muscle, in view of her raising less and relying on the loan as well as a $10 million transfer last year from her Senate campaign account to her presidential account.

Advisers said the loan was made on Jan. 28 from Mrs. Clinton’s share of her personal funds that she has with Mr. Clinton. They said it was not a bank loan, nor was collateral needed to secure it. The advisers said no investments were liquidated to make the loan.

The loan was not disclosed widely until after the vote on Tuesday night, Clinton advisers said, for fear that the news might make Mrs. Clinton look like a fading candidate. Several donors said Wednesday that they were concerned that the campaign was essentially running on fumes, especially when they learned that some aides were working without pay. Shortly after midnight Wednesday, however, the Clinton team issued an e-mail message saying that it had raised $3 million in 24 hours. By daylight on Thursday, the advisers said the campaign was so successful that all aides would be paid and that Mrs. Clinton’s war chest seemed to be stabilizing.

The advisers used the conference call in part to focus attention on the Ohio and Texas primaries. The aides say Mrs. Clinton believes she has a better chance in those states than in many of the contests this month like Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington State.

“I think we’ll have some bumps in the road, some difficult states in the next week or two,” Mark Penn, the senior strategist of the campaign, told the donors.

He and Mr. McAuliffe emphasized the importance of the Ohio and Texas primaries.

Want to know why they're looking ahead to Ohio and Texas, instead of today's primaries? David Brooks tells us why -- the education gap between HRC voters and Barack supporters:

Hillary Clinton is a classic commodity provider. She caters to the less-educated, less-pretentious consumer. As Ron Brownstein of The National Journal pointed out on Wednesday, she won the non-college-educated voters by 22 points in California, 32 points in Massachusetts and 54 points in Arkansas. She offers voters no frills, just commodities: tax credits, federal subsidies and scholarships. She’s got good programs at good prices.

Barack Obama is an experience provider. He attracts the educated consumer. In the last Pew Research national survey, he led among people with college degrees by 22 points. Educated people get all emotional when they shop and vote. They want an uplifting experience so they can persuade themselves that they’re not engaging in a grubby self-interested transaction. They fall for all that zero-carbon footprint, locally grown, community-enhancing Third Place hype. They want cultural signifiers that enrich their lives with meaning.

Obama offers to defeat cynicism with hope. Apparently he’s going to turn politics into a form of sharing. Have you noticed that he’s actually carried into his rallies by a flock of cherubs while the heavens open up with the Hallelujah Chorus? I wonder how he does that...

Observe the marketplace. The next states on the primary calendar have tons of college-educated Obamaphile voters. Maryland is 5th among the 50 states, Virginia is 6th. But later on, we get the Hillary-friendly states. Ohio is 40th in college education. Pennsylvania is 32nd.

But it’ll still be tied after all that. The superdelegates will pick the nominee — the party honchos, the deal-makers, the donors, the machine. Swinging those people takes a level of cynicism even Dr. Retail can’t pretend to understand. That’s Tammany Hall. That’s the court at Versailles under Louis XIV.

And that's what kills me.

The BS on Barack as "the most liberal" Senator

Media Matters has an item explaining why the National Journal's rankings of Barack as the Senate's most liberal member are bogus.

Don't get me wrong: there is nothing bad about being liberal. Hell, people like Krugman ought to be reminded of this whenever they act like HRC is more progressive than Barack.

But...isn't it convenient that in 2004 the Democratic nominee also happened to be ranked this way by the National Journal? And how there is no real logic to the assignment of "conservative" and "liberal" to the votes cast?

Steve at The Carpetbagger Report points out that:

Better yet, National Journal’s press release on the rankings noted the criteria was based on 99 key roll-call votes last year: “Obama voted the liberal position on 65 of the 66 votes in which he participated, while Clinton voted the liberal position on 77 of 82 votes.” So, Clinton voted for the liberal position 77 times, Obama voted for it 65 times, which makes Obama the chamber’s single most liberal member. Got it.

More from Steve Benen here and here.

More reasons to worry about the economy

**UPDATE: 2/9/08, the hits just keep on coming**

I was introduced to Nouriel Roubini through a friend's stepdad, and I'm glad I was. A few days ago, Roubini gave us the 12 steps to a systemic financial crisis, and today he tells us why the government and Fed's actions leading to successful aversion of this crisis is unlikely.

I've posted interesting snippits below, they are long but worth the read:

Senator Clinton won't sign the AFA Pledge

*UPDATE: The story is old news, and she supported the measure shortly after The Nation piece was written. Ed Brayton goofed up and I goofed up by repeating his story. The only way I can still try to spin this is to wonder why the initial delay on her part...

Read about the American Freedom Agenda Act and see the pledge here.

Another reason to support Barack over Senator Clinton: she won't support the American Freedom Agenda Act. More on that here and here.

Time to diagnose this as an act of God

I know it's wrong of me to feel this way, but when I see 60 tornadoes hit the SE and leave 50 people dead, I have to wonder why people can't make the logical connection to God's wrath in the same way that they do when a "liberal" or non-Christian area gets hit with a natural disaster. Oh yeah, it's because they're fu#$*ng stupid.

Maybe God's angry that TN went for Hillary and the SE went for Huckabee?

Politics notes

A few politics notes:

Obama leads in pledged delegates, those who have to vote with the people. He lags with superdelegates, those who are apparently better than other Americans and get to decide close races for us:

It looks like Obama, by the narrowest of margins, won last night’s delegate hunt. By our estimates, he picked up 840 to 849 delegates versus 829-838 for Clinton; the Obama camp projects winning by nine delegates (845-836). He also won more states (13 to Clinton’s eight; New Mexico is still outstanding), although she won the most populous ones (California and New York). And Obama’s argument that he might be the most electable Democrat in a general election was bolstered by the fact that he won nine red states versus four for Clinton. Yet with Clinton’s overall superdelegate lead (259-170, based on the lists they've released to us), and when you toss in the 63-48 lead Obama had among pledged delegates going into Super Tuesday, it appears Clinton has about 70 more overall delegates than Obama does (1140-1150 for Clinton versus 1070 to 1080 for Obama). It’s that close, folks...

See this and this for more details. Yeah, it pisses off John Aravosis too.

Barack has raised $6.7M since the polls closed on Tuesday. I did my part ($25), for the third time. On the other hand, Hillary and Bill are tapping into their personal fortune (how did they make $30M???).

Obama is pointing out the "let's return to the '90s" stuff isn't so smart.

The huge gap between GOP and Dem primary voting is an encouraging sign for November:

Obama/Clinton voters: 14,460,149
McCain/Romney/Huckabee voters: 8,367,694
Or, 73% more Democratic voters than Republican voters...

Some economics logic from Bill Gross at PIMCO for moving away from supply-side insanity that supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent (i.e., John McCain's plans) and towards demand-side, liberal economic policies. Looks like the market is catching on to the ill prospects of further coal-powered plants. Bernanke is tanking among fellow economists.

Faux News threatens Barack and Hillary for avoiding the partisan network. "Fair and balanced"? You decide.

Poor Dobson & RR. Watch 'em squirm with schadenfreude.

JibJab VDay Striptease

I made another JibJab movie, this one a funny striptease for Valentine's Day, rather than about politics like the last one:

Don't send a lame Valentine's Day eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

Primary results in table form

**PS: RealClearPolitics documents the vote tallies, so I'm done updating mine, although I am still the only person (so far as I can find) making mine available as an Excel file.**

LAST UPDATED: 5/5/08 @ 5:15 AM

I don't know why this sort of workup of the primary results isn't more readily available:

Get it HERE as .pdf, HERE as .htm, HERE as .jpg, HERE as .png, and HERE as .xls (Excel '07, R-click and "save as").

My data is from CNN. Here is Barack's data and here is Hillary's.

See this post from DKos for arguments about the (non)merits of using the popular vote tally:

Point Number 1: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no candidate would ever go to Iowa or New Hampshire. They'd spend all their time in big urban areas all over the country from the outset of the campaign, racking up raw numbers. What would be the point of even visiting New Hampshire if you could camp out in Brooklyn? Concrete Example: Barack Obama would not have spent only a day and a half in California before the Feb 5 primary. He would have never gone to Idaho. Duh.

Point Number 2: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no state in its right mind would ever hold a caucus, instantly disenfranchising itself. Concrete example: Minnesota-Missouri. Minnesota gets credit for 214K votes, and Missouri gets 822K votes, but they each get 72 delegates. Is Missouri's voice 4 times more important than Minnesota's?

Point Number 3: The arbitrary distinction between who gets to vote in these primaries is nothing like the general election, where everyone registered gets to vote. In the primaries, sometimes it's just Dems, sometimes Dems and Indies, sometimes anyone. Concrete example: Texas gets a million more votes than similar overall population New York (2.8M to 1.8M), even though New York is far more Democratic, simply due to this arbitrary restriction on who can vote (NY = closed, Texas = open).

Overall point: regardless of the fact that Obama will win the popular vote, it is completely illegitimate in this race. THIS IS NOT LIKE POPULAR VOTE IN THE GENERAL ELECTION.

Also see Barack's page where delegates are tallied. This is cross-posted to my personal page.

Politics notes

A few politics notes:

The bankrupting of our country under Bush is incomprehensible. Taxes for the ultra-rich were cut at the expense of the poor and elderly, as their programs were slashed in order to make up for the account deficits. Senator McCain and other GOP candidates intend to continue his economic policies.

On that note, Ezra Klein delves in to the policy differences between Barack and Hillary. He finds that:

In his book The Audacity of Hope, he admits to appreciating the Gipper's understanding of government's failings. "Reagan's central insight," he wrote, "that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic … contained a good deal of truth." This insight was hardly peculiar to Reagan; it was shared by a generation of community organizers, Obama among them, who fought with public bureaucracies every day. This insight has led Obama to the belief that individuals should experience a government as gentle and unfussy as possible. In my talks with his advisers, the term "iPod government" repeatedly came up, a reference to Obama's desire for a sleeker, easier-to-use state. This guiding principle helps explain how he came up with a health-care plan without an individual mandate. Obama's fears that care would prove unaffordable and individuals would be left begging for exemptions from some unconcerned bureaucrat outweighed concerns that the healthy would opt-out of the system and that the insurers wouldn't cover everyone at a fair price if "everyone" meant only the sick. It's that thread that reconciles his philosophical preference for single-payer with his programmatic eschewing of universal care. Single-payer is simple. Mandates are more complicated, and Obama fears that a mismatch between affordability measures and care costs will leave individuals fighting with the state for coverage. Better the policy be meeker and the experience smoother than risk a strong policy's potential to force the unsuspecting into unwanted dealings with an unfamiliar bureaucracy.

Similarly, Obama's stimulus plan is essentially a quick, across-the-board tax cut. Clinton's is a series of tax credits and targeted subsidies. The difference between the plans, again, is between the ease-of-implementation of Obama's and the specificity of Clinton's. Her targeted credits help worthwhile programs and do more to target the worst-off, but in so doing, they create an essentially means-tested stimulus package that would require beneficiaries to prove their distress. Obama, by contrast, offers a large payroll tax rebate that would require little in the way of administration.

In this, as in much else, Obama betrays a universalist streak. Government is simplest when it is unspecific—it's when it starts trying to subdivide the population and impact only targeted groups that it becomes hard to administer (think of how little trouble seniors have accessing a universal program like Social Security versus how much trouble the poor have trying to determine eligibility for a means-tested program like Medicaid). If Kennedy wanted a rising tide to lift all boats, Obama wants us all in one boat to better navigate the waves. But before he can rehabilitate the universalist approach to government, the experience of interacting with government must be bettered. In a world where a trip to the DMV is such a Kafkaesque odyssey that you can actually hire individuals to undergo the torment for you, unifying the public square first means beautifying it. So Obama's detailed plans for more government accountability and transparency precede and even take priority over his plans for what the newly accountable and transparent government should do. Till that day when government is reformed and citizens' trust is ensured, that new government must be used with care, and its capabilities should not be overestimated.

Harold Pollack responds to Krugman about Barack and mandates. His points about the study summarized:

So we're back where we started: two plans, both with guaranteed availability of insurance regardless of health status, both with subsidies. One has a mandate with (as yet undefined) enforcement mechanisms. The other has no mandate but (as yet undefined) financial disincentives for free-riding. Until the two plans are better specified, there is no basis on which to estimate how many people will wind up not buying insurance under either plan, and therefore no basis for any firm estimate of costs to the taxpayer.

This is hardly justification for the holy war the Clinton campaign is waging on Obama on the mandate issue.

David Brooks follows up on the same issue (Clinton's mandates and dealings with health care):

Moreover, the debate Clinton is having with Barack Obama echoes the debate she had with Cooper 15 years ago. The issue, once again, is over whether to use government to coerce people into getting coverage. The Clintonites argue that without coercion, there will be free-riders on the system.

They’ve got a point. But there are serious health care economists on both sides of the issue. And in the heat of battle, Clinton has turned the debate between universal coverage and universal access into a sort of philosophical holy grail, with a party of righteousness and a party of error. She’s imposed Manichaean categories on a technical issue, just as she did a decade and half ago. And she’s done it even though she hasn’t answered legitimate questions about how she would enforce her universal coverage mandate.

Cooper, who, not surprisingly, supports Barack Obama, believes that Clinton hasn’t changed. “Hillary’s approach is so absolutist, draconian and intolerant, it means a replay of 1993.”

Kevin Drum makes his case for Obama.

The evolution of Hillary's views on Iraq by Spencer Ackerman show a complete lack of clarity and track with polling figures, this is the sort of thing that will hurt her badly in the general election:

...Clinton set herself up to run for president as both a pro-war and an anti-war candidate—depending on the contingencies of the war and the politics of the moment.

Clinton’s statements during October 2002 have received much attention. But what she’s said in the intervening years demonstrates a vertigo-inducing lack of clarity. Her position tracked the political zeitgeist elegantly: cautiously in favor of the war before it started; enthusiastically in favor of it during its first year; overtaken with doubt during 2004; nervously against withdrawal in 2005; cautiously in favor of withdrawal ever since—and all without so much as an acknowledgment of her myriad repositioning. At no point did she challenge the prevailing assumptions behind the war.

This will come back to haunt her.

"Yes We Can" video

This is pretty amazing.

Celebrities featured include: will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, my wife Valetta and Nick Cannon

Obama

Both Gallup and Rasmussen show Obama benefiting from Edwards' departure.

Christopher Hayes at The Nation makes the case for Obama in '08. Read it below:

The Choice

by CHRISTOPHER HAYES

[from the February 18, 2008 issue]

It's gotten to that time in the primary contest where lines are drawn, camps are solidified and conversations around dinner tables grow heated. My friend Dan recently put it this way: "You start talking about the candidates, and next thing you know someone's crying!" The excellent (and uncommitted) blogger Digby recently decided to shut down her comments section because the posts had grown so toxic. The recent uptick in acrimony is largely due to the narrowing of the field. While once the energy was spread over many camps, it is now, with the exits of Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards, concentrated on just two, leaving progressives in a fierce debate over whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would make the better nominee, and President.

According to polling data as well as my conversations with friends and colleagues, progressives are evenly split or undecided between the two. This is, to me, somewhat astonishing (about which more in a moment), but it also means that at a time when other subgroups within the Democratic coalition are leaning heavily toward one candidate or the other, progressives are at a moment of maximum leverage.

Insofar as the issues discussed during a presidential campaign are circumscribed by the taboos and pieties of the political and media establishments, they tend to be dispiriting for those of us on the left. Neither front-runner is calling for the nation to renounce its decades-old imperial posture or to end the prison-industrial complex; neither is saying that America's suburbs and car culture are not sustainable modes of living in an era of expensive oil and global warming or pointing out that the "war on drugs" has been a moral disaster and strategic failure, with casualties borne most violently and destructively by society's most marginalized and--a word you won't be hearing from either candidate--oppressed. And yet, this election is far more encouraging (dare I say hopeful?) than any in recent memory. The policy agenda for the Democratic front-runners is significantly further to the left on the war, climate change and healthcare than that of John Kerry in 2004. The ideological implosion of conservatism, the failures of the Bush Administration and, perhaps most important, the shifts in public opinion in a leftward direction on war, the economy, civil liberties and civil rights are all coming together at the same time, providing progressives with the rare and historic opportunity to elect a President with a progressive majority and an actual mandate for progressive change.

The question then becomes this: which of the two Democratic candidates is more likely to bring to fruition a new progressive majority? I believe, passionately and deeply, if occasionally waveringly, that it's Barack Obama.

Had you told me a few years ago that the left of the Democratic Party would be split between Obama and Clinton, I'd have dismissed you as crazy: Barack Obama has been a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a loyal and reliable ally in the State Senate of progressive groups. For the Chicago left, his primary campaign and his subsequent election to the US Senate was a collective rallying cry. If you've read his first book, the truly beautiful, honest and intellectually sophisticated Dreams From My Father, you have an inkling of what young Chicago progressives felt about Obama. He is one of us, and now he's in the Senate. We thought we'd elected our own Paul Wellstone. (Full disclosure: my brother is an organizer on the Obama campaign.)

That's not, alas, how things turned out. Almost immediately Obama--likely with an eye on national office--shaded himself toward the center. His rhetoric was cool, often timid, not the zealous advocacy on behalf of peace, justice and the dispossessed that had characterized Wellstone's tenure. His record places him squarely in the middle of Democratic senators, just slightly to Clinton's left on domestic issues (he voted against the bankruptcy bill, for example). As a presidential candidate, his domestic policy (with some notable exceptions on voting rights and technology policy) has been very close to that of his chief rivals, though sometimes, notably on healthcare, marginally less progressive.

But while domestic policy will ultimately be determined through a complicated and fraught interplay with legislators, foreign policy is where the President's agenda is implemented more or less unfettered. It's here where distinctions in worldview matter most--and where Obama compares most favorably to Clinton. The war is the most obvious and powerful distinction between the two: Hillary Clinton voted for and supported the most disastrous American foreign policy decision since Vietnam, and Barack Obama (at a time when it was deeply courageous to do so) spoke out against it. In this campaign, their proposals are relatively similar, but in rhetoric and posture Clinton has played hawk to Obama's dove, attacking from the right on everything from the use of first-strike nuclear weapons to negotiating with Iran's president. Her hawkishness relative to Obama's is mirrored in her circle of advisers. As my colleague Ari Berman has reported in these pages, it's a circle dominated by people who believed and believe that waging pre-emptive war on Iraq was the right thing to do. Obama's circle is made up overwhelmingly of people who thought the Iraq War was a mistake.

Clinton's fundamentally defensive conception of how to defuse the Republicans on national security (neutralizing their hawkishness with one's own) is an example of a larger problem, rooted in the fact that so many of her circle served in her husband's Administration. Their political identities were formed in the crucible of crisis, from the Gingrich insurgency to the Ken Starr inquisition. The overriding imperative was survival against massive odds, often with a hostile public, press or both. Like an animal caught in a trap that chews off its leg to wriggle away, the Clinton crew by the end of its tenure had hardly any limbs left to propel an agenda. The benefit of this experience, much touted by the Clintons, is that they know how to fight and how to survive. But the cost has been high: those who lived through those years are habituated to playing defense and fighting rear-guard actions. We know how progressives fared under Clintonism: they were the bloodied limbs left in the trap. Clintonism, in other words, is the devil we know.

Which brings us to the one we don't. A President cannot build a movement, but he can be its messenger, as was Reagan. Part of what tantalizes and frustrates about Obama is that he seems to have the potential to be such a messenger and yet shies away from speaking in ideological terms. When he invokes union organizers facing Pinkerton thugs to give us our forty-hour week, or says we are bound to one another as "our brother's keeper...our sister's keeper," he is articulating the deepest progressive values: solidarity and community and collective action. But he places more rhetorical emphasis on a politics of "unity" that, read uncharitably, seems to fetishize bipartisanship as an end in itself and reinforce lame and deceptive myths that the parties are equally responsible for the "bickering" and "divisiveness" in Washington. It appears sometimes that his diagnosis of what's wrong with politics is the way it is conducted rather than for whom.

In its totality, though, Obama's rhetoric tells a story of politics that is distinct from both the one told by Beltway devotees of bipartisanship and comity and from the progressive activists' story of a ceaseless battle between the forces of progress and those of reaction. If it differs from what I like to hear, it is also unfailingly targeted at building the coalition that is the raison d'être of Obama's candidacy. Consider this passage from Obama's stump speech:

I've learned in my life that you can stand firm in your principles while still reaching out to those who might not always agree with you. And although the Republican operatives in Washington might not be interested in hearing what we have to say, I think Republican and independent voters outside of Washington are. That's the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have in this election.

Obama makes a distinction between bad-faith, implacable enemies (lobbyists, entrenched interests, "operatives") and good-faith ideological opponents (Republicans, independents and conservatives of good conscience). He wants to court the latter and use their support to vanquish the former. This may be improbable, but it crucially allows former Republicans (Obama Republicans?) to cross over without guilt or self-loathing. They are not asked to renounce, only to join.

Obama's diagnosis of the obstacles to progress is twofold. First, that the division of the electorate into the categories created by the right's culture warriors is the primary means by which the forces of reaction resist change. Progress will be made only by rejecting or transcending those categories. In 1971 a young Pat Buchanan urged Richard Nixon to wield race as what would come to be known as a wedge issue. "This is a potential throw of the dice," he wrote, "that could...cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half." Obama seeks to stitch those halves back together.

Second, that the reason progressives have failed to achieve our goals over the past several decades is not that we didn't fight hard enough but that we didn't have a popular mandate. In other words, the fundamental obstacle is a basic political one: never having the public squarely on our side and never having the votes on the Hill. In this respect the Obama campaign is uniquely circular: his political appeal is rooted in the fact that he's so politically appealing. This means that when he loses, the loss affects him worse than it would other candidates, since it also cuts against his message. But when he wins, particularly when he wins big, as he did in Iowa and South Carolina, the win means more because it reinforces the basic argument of his campaign.

The question of who can best build popular support for a progressive governing agenda is related to, but distinct from, the question of electability. Given a certain ceiling on Clinton's appeal (due largely to years of unhinged attacks from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"), her campaign seems well prepared to run a 50 percent + 1 campaign, a rerun of 2004 but with a state or two switching columns: Florida, maybe, or Ohio. Obama is aiming for something bigger: a landmark sea-change election, with the kind of high favorability and approval ratings that can drive an agenda forward. Why should we think he can do it?

The short answer is that Obama is simply one of the most talented and appealing politicians in recent memory. Perhaps the most. Pollster.com shows a series of polls taken in the Democratic campaign. The graphs plotting national polling numbers as well as those in the first four states show a remarkably consistent pattern. Hillary Clinton starts out with either a modest or, more commonly, a massive lead, owing to her superior name recognition and the popularity of the Clinton brand. As the campaign goes forward Clinton's support either climbs slowly, plateaus or dips. But as the actual contest approaches, and voters start paying attention, Obama's support suddenly begins to grow exponentially.

In addition to persuading those who already vote, Obama has also delivered on one of the hoariest promises in politics: to bring in new voters (especially the young). It's a phenomenon that, if it were to continue with him as nominee, could completely alter the electoral math. Young people are by far the most progressive voters of any age cohort, and they overwhelmingly favor Barack Obama by stunning margins. Their enthusiasm has translated into massive increases in youth turnout in the early contests.

Finally, there's the question of coattails. In many senses there's less difference between the two presidential candidates than there is between a Senate with fifty-one Democrats and one with fifty-six. No Democratic presidential candidate is going to carry, say, Mississippi or Nebraska, but many Democrats in those states fear that the ingrained Clinton hatred would rally the GOP base and/or depress turnout, hurting down-ticket candidates. Over the past few weeks a series of prominent red-state Democrats, most notably Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, have endorsed Obama. When I asked a Democratic Congressional candidate in the Deep South who he preferred at the top of the ticket, he didn't hesitate: "Obama is absolutely the better candidate. Hillary brings a lot of sting; he takes some sting out of them."

Whoever is elected in November, progressives will probably find themselves feeling frustrated. Ultimately though, the future judgments and actions of the candidates are unknowable, obscured behind time's cloak. Who knew that the Bill Clinton of 1992 who campaigned with Nelson Mandela would later threaten to sanction South Africa when it passed a law allowing the production of low-cost generic AIDS drugs for its suffering population--or that the George W. Bush of 2000, an amiable "centrist" whose thin foreign-policy views shaded toward isolationism, would go on to become a self-justifying, delusional and messianic instrument of global war? In this sense, Bill Clinton is right: voting for and electing Barack Obama is a "roll of a dice." All elections are. But the candidacy of Barack Obama represents by far the left's best chance to, in Buchanan's immortal phrasing, take back the bigger half of the country. It's a chance we can't pass up.

Indeed.