Yesterday at TPMCafe, Rick Perlstein kicked off a week-long examination of his new book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. I’ve been asked to join this week’s cafe (a fun departure from writing about politics through a feminist lens), and I recommend checking it out, because the book is wonderful. And very relevant to today’s post topic: “Reagan Democrats“. The seeds of creation for this group of voters means they’re probably more “Nixon Democrats”, a name that would at least show how fruitless getting them back into the fold might be.

Ezra’s post gently puts to rest the ancient Democratic hobbyhorse of lamenting the loss of that percentage of white working class voters that long ago quit voting their economic interests and started voting against uppity black people and women, and against the “liberal elite”. Interestingly, the “elite” label doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to liberals—the lower you go on the income ladder, the more liberal you tend to be statistically speaking:



So why do Republicans win when (because of Republican policies no less), the number of people falling below the cutoff line greatly outnumbers the people falling above it? In part, because the higher you get up the income ladder, the more likely you are to vote. Also, there’s racial issues (gender a bit less, because while women are more liberal than men, they also vote more regularly, so it probably evens out):

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This is getting so tired now — lower the discourse, then trot out with a lame apology that doesn’t address the horror of what was said. Faux News contributor Liz Trotta doesn’t even attempt to sound sincere with this bullsh*t mea culpa:

“I am so sorry about what happened yesterday with that lame attempt at humor…I just really fell over myself in making it appear that I wished Barack Obama harm or any other candidate for that matter. I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended. It’s a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes in saying things we wish we hadn’t said.”

Let’s take a look at what she said that got her into hot water. I don’t see any other candidates mentioned in her assassination joke:

“and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh..um..Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor]….well both if we could [laughing]”

Please.

(10:40 AM: Wow, people — is this topic so radioactive that no one is willing to comment on it? I’d actually like some feedback.)

I’ve laid off commenting about the dustup regarding the announcement of the 55 blogs selected for the DemConvention State Blogger Corps over the last few days in the hope of receiving more information regarding the program and handling of the fallout. There were actually two points of contention about the selection process that have been covered unevenly in the blogosphere.

1) Lack of racial diversity in the state pools selected (given the overall composition of the Dem party), and the fact that there is a different level of access to the state delegation given to these blogs on the floor at the Dem National Convention versus the general blogger pool, which will be announced this week;

2) The charge that there were political factors that went into the decision-making process for state blogs that resulted in highly qualified state blogs not making the final cut. This was the suggestion that state parties were consulted and were able to give thumbs up or down to specific blogs that may have been hard on the state parties.

Item number two has already been heavily covered in the progressive blogosphere, while outside of black blogs, the first item has been largely and curiously ignored by the top-tier blogs. As is the norm on such things, my position seems to straddle that group of progressive blogs. On the one hand, I think the problem is due to 1) an inability of state blogs to include more minority contributors; 2) some may not have thought about a lack of minority perspective on state and local issues as important; 3) those state blogs have truly tried by haven’t seen interest from POC who are well-versed in state and local issues who are able to/want to contribute to a state blog.

On the other hand, some of the black/brown bloggers have seen the selection results and have tossed “Jim Crow” charges out there — meaning overt, purposeful exclusion. I don’t see purposeful exclusion, what I see is a DNCC that wanted blogs represented at the convention in an unprecedented way, but was unable to see or fully address the minority representation problem (and we’re not only talking about racial minorities) it was going to create with its selection system.

The bottom line is that the lack of minority participation at the state blogger level is real, and it is a problem for the Democratic Party as well as the blogosphere.

However, both reactions aren’t particularly helpful in terms of improving dialogue long term — the defense shields go up, and nothing positive usually comes of this. It’s been frustrating to see it all unfold.

I was contacted by Aaron Myers, the director of online communications for the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee, and spoke with him a couple of days ago to ask him about the credentialing process, the details in level of access, and some logistics, in an effort to get some information on the record. My notes are below the fold.
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Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr has secured the nomination of the Libertarian Party for president, and this news has no doubt has given the GOP a big case of agita.

“I’m sure we will emerge here with the strongest ticket in the history of the Libertarian Party,” Barr stated in his victory speech shortly after being selected as the Party’s nominee. “I want everybody to remember that we only have 163 days to win this election. We cannot waste one single day.”

…”We’re proud to present to the American voters Bob Barr as our presidential nominee,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis. “While Republicans and Democrats will fight for their own power in November, Libertarians will fight for Americans. Bob Barr is one of the strongest candidates in the Party’s 37-year history, and we look for him to have an enormous impact in the 2008 race. Republicans and Democrats have good reason to fear a candidate like Barr, who refuses to accept the ‘business-as-usual’ attitude of the current political establishment. Americans want and need another choice, and that choice is Bob Barr.”

The GOP already knows John McCain’s support is soft (to be charitable) with the lunatic Base, so an opportunity to cast a protest vote is a real problem. Barr supported Bush’s drug war and authored the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 while a congressman; out of office, he’s reversed his position on those issues, as well as lobbied for the legalization of medicinal use of marijuana.

I decided to venture over to the swamps of Freeperland to see what the knuckle-dragging crowd thought of Barr’s nomination. It’s after the jump.
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(UPDATE: See Francis’s take here and here. Also read the post over at A Slanted Truth about why these assassination remarks cut deep.)

How on earth do these sick people at Fox News get away with sh*t like this? Here is Liz Trotta, brought on to comment about Hillary Clinton’s ill-conceived remarks, and Trotta not only blurts out “Osama”, but laughs and “corrects” herself, suggesting it would be a good idea to knock both off. My god.

“and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh..um..Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor]….well both if we could [laughing]”

This is yet another example of filing the edges off of the egregious casual mention of assassination, so that those offended and concerned about such casual talk are eventually the ones perceived with a hangup. It is a caustic and disgusting tactic frequently used by Fox, Limbaugh and the rest. It surfaced a while ago in regards to overt racism in the conservative MSM (see my post Filing the edges off of racism). Watch for more of this crap.

More here.

Hat tip, floozy.

The party’s over for the GOP, my friends. This race is the Democrats’ to lose (and what’s scary is we’re fully capable of doing so).

A planned mega-fundraiser for the GOP, featuring President Bush and John McCain, has now been scaled back in the face of a daunting problem: Too few people actually wanted to buy tickets.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, fundraiser set for this Tuesday in the city’s convention center failed to sell enough tickets, leading to fears that the anti-Bush protesters might end up outnumbering actual attendees.

What’s the new plan now that the huge convention center can’t be filled? To hold gatherings in private residences away from media prying eyes in the Phoenix area.

As we all know, a dump of less-than-favorable information always happens on a Friday, and something of this magnitude — 71-year-old cancer survivor and war torture survivor John McCain’s health records — happened on the Friday of a holiday weekend — and the terms of review of them were curiously restricted. (Newsweek):

During his first presidential run, eight years ago, McCain disclosed hundreds of pages of records to reporters as he sought then to counter what aides called a “whisper campaign” questioning his mental fitness. In those records, medical personnel concluded that his years in prison, including solitary confinement, left him with no psychological wounds. Aides said McCain has had no mental evaluations in the past eight years.

This time, a small group of reporters reviewed 1,173 pages of medical documents that span 2000 to 2008 over several hours in a conference room at a resort just outside Phoenix and a few miles from the posh Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, where McCain receives most of his medical care under a pseudonym — which reporters were asked not to disclose.

By the way, we never learned in February that McCain had yet another cancerous growth removed from his face:

McCain’s most recent exams show a range of health issues common in aging: He frequently has precancerous skin lesions removed, and in February had an early stage squamous cell carcinoma, an easily cured skin cancer, removed. He had benign colon growths called polyps taken out during a routine colonoscopy in March.

The cancer issue, while a relevant health issue to consider when electing someone to the highest office in the land, is not nearly as critical as the fact Sen. John McCain hasn’t had a mental evaluation in eight years. More below the fold.
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KO was overwrought on Friday, but what he said was spot on. What Hillary Clinton did by invoking Robert F. Kennedy’s late primary win (and, unnecessarily, assassination — for the second time in two months) to bolster her case for staying in the race is beyond the pale.

It became more so after the non-apology (the usual “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” and it didn’t at all address the context of assassination and Obama). It was more egregious that her comparison in the remarks to Bill’s 1992 race that she claimed wasn’t wrapped up until June, something she has also repeated, wasn’t even true.

While she said that he only wrapped up the nomination in June of that year, he was viewed as having secured it in March, when his last serious opponent dropped out.

FYI: The number of hate groups operating in this country has increased 48% since Bush took office. Taking what Clinton said lightly or as an indication of a moment of fatigue is not an option (for me, anyway).

Between the political dog whistles floated and denied over the course of the primary season by the Clinton campaign, and the overt statements by voters that race is an issue for them, you simply cannot ignore the first black man to be a serious contender for the presidency is a man with a target on his back and words do mean something — particularly coming from a candidate. That Senator Clinton’s campaign doesn’t care to or doesn’t want to admit what she said has an interpretation other than a slight to the Kennedy family is BS. We’re not talking about her believing she wants something horrible to befall her opponent, it’s the lack of discretion and judgment in raising the issue not once, but twice.

Sadly, our country is too sick and too incapable of dealing with the race-based hatred, ignorance and fear that has bubbled up during this primary season, and the reality is that we have a man willing to take the personal risk to run for president in spite of this.

And that is what Keith Olbermann addressed.

The transcript is here.
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Wow, talk about hardball. This was on CNN this AM, and it looks like the Clinton camp is tossing out some kind of not-so-veiled convention chaos blackmail card for the VP slot, and/or a way for the New York senator to have a face-saving exit strategy. The report from Suzanne Malveaux describes three scenarios being floated by people “inside Hillary’s inner circle.”

Scenario 1: Obama “ignores” Clinton and her supporters by offering the VP slot to someone else, which her camp sees as “a total dismissal of her” and is an unacceptable endgame that one Clintonista said could lead to open civil war within the party — and that this scenario is going to have consequences. This will allegedly manifest itself as women’s groups not willing to do any fundraising for Obama, and a tepid campaign by Hillary during the general campaign.

Scenario 2: Obama offers Hillary the VP slot, knowing she’ll turn it down.( Huh? This spin is weird. Why is there an assumption that she would turn it down?) The leaking Clinton camp description here is that option obviously isn’t acceptable to the Obama camp precisely because they believe she would accept, and the two camps don’t trust each other enough to see it a workable teaming.

Scenario 3: Meet and figure out some compromise for public consumption. The idea suggested here is that Obama’s campaign would cover Clinton’s enormous debt, or back her for the Senate Majority Leader position, even though the insiders have seen no indication that Hillary wants the job in the first place, since she’s still running to win.

Raw Story has the CNN video.

OK, given the fact that this is surfacing from the perspective of the Clinton campaign, what do you think the motivations are for offering up these particular scenarios that don’t really look plausible or workable (in that it benefits Obama as the prospective nominee)?

And in other, even more surreal news, Clinton invokes RFK’s assassination in a newspaper editorial board meeting to bring up “historical context” in terms of why she shouldn’t drop out before the primaries are over. WTF?
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(UPDATE: Now that he’s going to be the GOP’s nominee, John McCain finally “discovered” how radioactive Rod Parsley is and repudiated him as well. There will definitely be a fundie eruption over this one.)

Today John McCain finally gave the boot to batsh*t fundie Pastor John Hagee of the 17,000-member Cornerstone Church in Texas after audio was released of the televangelist saying that Hitler had been sent by God to help Jews reach the Promised Land via the Holocaust. This was nothing new, however, so one wonders what rock the Arizona senator and his staff have been hiding under:

[I]n his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown”, Hagee proposed the theory that “anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves — the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive.” He also wrote that “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

Of course it would be interesting to know why this particular insanity crossed the line for McCain, since he had previously refused to reject the endorsement of Armegeddon proponent Hagee, who has condemned Catholics, gays, women, blacks and more from the pulpit and on video.

We’ve been blogging about the juicy-mouthed Patriot Pastor for a long time now. Apparently this influential nutbag has finally caught fire on the blogs.

More below the fold.
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He knew what he was getting into when he walked onto the set of Ellen’s show, and she held John McCain’s feet to the fire on same-sex marriage and legal rights for gay couples. McSame believes that same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into legal agreements, but they should not be able to marry due to what he says is “the unique status of marriage between and man and a woman.”

Wait - is this the same John McCain who made this commercial for the failed 2006 Arizona Marriage Amendment, which would have effectively banned same-sex couples from legal recognition of any kind?

Now watch his appearance on Ellen through that prevaricating lens; it’s below the fold.
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Oh yesssss…bring it on, sister:

The Memorial Day guest list at Sen. John McCain’s Arizona home runs to at least three Republicans mentioned as vice presidential running mates, but a top aide said Wednesday that vetting possible veeps is not on the agenda.

“It’s purely social,” said Mark Salter, a senior adviser to McCain.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney were all invited to a Memorial Day gathering at the senator’s home in Sedona, Ariz. Romney ran for the Republican presidential nomination in last winter’s primaries, but dropped out months ago and has endorsed McCain.

…Crist, 51, provided a major boost to McCain prior to Florida’s Jan. 29 primary with a well-timed endorsement.

Elected governor in 2006, Crist has been seen as a moderate Republican. He has championed efforts to curb climate change, and was praised by former President Clinton for his efforts to restore voting rights of felons who have completed their sentences.

Related:
* Tongues wag whether Crist’s ‘girlfriend’ is ‘the one’
* Poor Charlie Crist - he’s really desperate for that VP slot
* Howie Klein: Charlie Crist Has A “Girlfriend”– A First Step Towards Getting On The Mccain Ticket… To Nowhere?
* Oh my — more GOP closet doors are flying open…
* Florida gov Charlie Crist: leave ban on adoption rights for gays on the books

Here is a completely brain-dead quasi gay-baiting ad for Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), who tries to paint his opponent, Kay Barnes, as joined at the hip with Nancy Pelosi and her “San Francisco style values.” We all know what that means. Those values are hilariously depicted by a man in a cowboy hat dancing with two women…and even better, two of them are brown.

Talk about having zero to run on.

See the response from Barnes below the fold.
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Hillary Clinton easily breezed by Barack Obama in the Kentucky primary, bolstered again by working-class, less educated whites who made their decision to vote for her based on their unwillingness to vote for a black person. Another sad day in America.

Race played a decisive role in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s lopsided victory in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in Kentucky, the latest contest to emphasize how fierce her rivalry against Barack Obama has become among the party’s voters.

…Seven in 10 whites overall backed Clinton in Kentucky, including about three quarters of those who have not completed college. That made Tuesday’s contest one of her stronger performances yet with those blue-collar white voters — little surprise considering Kentucky has one of the country’s highest proportions of people who are not college graduates.

How much does prejudice factor into this? The Bluegrass State is living in another time, where Negroes knew their place — and one of those places was certainly not on a ballot running for president.

* About one in five whites said race played a role in choosing a candidate;
* Nine in 10 of that group backed Clinton — the highest proportion yet among the 28 states where that question has been asked in exit polls;
* Only three in 10 whites who said race was a factor said they would vote for Obama should he oppose McCain in November;
* Nearly four in 10 said they would back McCain, while the rest said they wouldn’t vote.

These results in Kentucky (and West Virginia) neatly fit David Sirota’s theory of the Race Chasm. He originally pointed out the fascinating slice of statistics for In These Times. See the graph and a snippet below the fold.
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I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.

I’m trying really hard to stay out of the rancor of the primary, because it’s making people really stupid, but good lord I can’t just ignore this.

One of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization’s two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.

Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment magnate and longtime Clinton supporter, denied the allegation. But four independent sources said that just before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Saban called YDA President David Hardt and offered what was perceived as a lucrative proposal: $1 million would be made available for the group if Hardt and the organization’s other uncommitted superdelegate backed Clinton.

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In what is a sign of the times, the Republican party is unable to field a single candidate of color with a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected to House, the Senate or governor. So much for former RNC head Ken Mehlman’s “legacy” of GOP outreach to blacks.

At a time when Democrats are poised to knock down a historic racial barrier with their presidential nominee, the GOP is fielding only a handful of minority candidates for Congress or statehouses — none of whom seem to have a prayer of victory.

At the start of the Bush years, the Republican National Committee — in tandem with the White House — vowed to usher in a new era of GOP minority outreach. As George W. Bush winds down his presidency, Republicans are now on the verge of going six — and probably more — years without an African-American governor, senator or House member. That’s the longest such streak since the 1980s.

Taking a look at the current field, the GOP only has one minority governor — Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who is Indian-American. The Dem tally? Three minority governors and 43 black members of Congress. The GOP obviously sees nothing wrong with this growing problem with gaining interest from POC in its party. Given the vitriol from the Fear of the Brown Menace wing of the party, it crapped away its prospects with Latinos as well. Look at this laugher:

Despite having a Spanish-speaking “compassionate conservative” in the White House, Republicans’ diversity deficit seems to have only widened.

WTF? Anyway, one respected member of the GOP doesn’t mind being blunt about the whiteout:

Jack Kemp, the former Republican congressman and vice presidential nominee, says the culprit is clear: a “pitiful” recruitment effort by his party. “I don’t see much of an outreach,” he said. “I don’t see much of a reason to run.”

A former black GOP candidate who declined to be identified by name offered a slightly more charitable explanation. He said the party is so broke and distracted that wooing strong minority candidates is a luxury it simply cannot afford right now.

Should we bring out the tiny violin? I absolutely cannot wait to see the pale sea of faces during the GOP convention. The party may have to resort to some sort of rent-a-POC service to avoid looking like the fossilized, insular entity it has done everything to cultivate.

Hat tip to Oliver Willis, who said:

Wanted: Racial minorities to stab your own people in the back, provide cover to destructive policies. Perks include a life long association with the party of Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, and The Southern Strategy. Inquire Within.

Guess someone told Goodtime Vito “it’s game over man.” The reason Fossella, who was arrested for DUI in Virginia (and was fornicating and procreating outside of his sacred marital bond), isn’t resigning is because there would have to be a special election held for his seat, and the Republicans don’t want to lose it. (Staten Island Advance):

In a bombshell announcement that brings the curtain down on one of the most storied careers in Staten Island political history, fifth-term Republican Rep. Vito Fossella will not seek re-election this fall.

Mired in scandal after revelations about the secret daughter he fathered with Virginia divorcee Laura Fay became public, Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) tells constituents in a letter to be posted on his Web site tomorrow that he will no longer serve them in Congress after his current term expires on Jan. 3, 2009.

“After a great deal of consideration, I have made the decision not to seek re-election to the United States House of Representatives this November,” Fossella says in the statement. “This choice was an extremely difficult one, balanced between my dedication to service to our great nation and the need to concentrate on healing the wounds that I have caused to my wife and family.”

Apparently Fossella doesn’t care about any wounds he caused in the past to his lesbian sister, as the homophobic lawmaker will not attend any family events if she and her partner are there; he also voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Related:
* Fossella’s judgment day?
* Another Republican protects the sanctity of marriage

One of the ongoing issues in this election is going to be waking people up to the fact that John McCain is a grade A, totally not moderate social conservative. This is critical for that swing vote, especially those swing voters that say, “Well, I don’t think abortion should be illegal, but it’s bad to use it as birth control.” Translation of that sentiment: “I want to be able to have an abortion if I so desire, but I reserve the right to gossip about others in tones that indicate that I’m so scandalized.” These people would shy away from a ban, of course, but they probably can be convinced to vote for someone they erroneously believe talks the anti-choice talk but won’t do the anti-choice walk.

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If you had any doubt that John McCain is a complete tool — and a prevaricating one at that — take a look at this video from Brave New Films:

Since we first released The Real McCain a year ago, our REAL McCain series has garnered close to 2 million views, with over 13,000 comments and tens of thousands more in petition signatures! Clearly, John McCain’s record is something the public wants to discuss, and yet the corporate media is doing NOTHING to present the truth. We feel obliged to continue countering the mainstream media’s love of McCain. And so we thought it was high time for a sequel: The Real McCain 2.

I would love to hear an argument from the Log Cabin Republicans, for instance, explaining why our country needs to elect McSame.

Bonus: check out the new fact-checking resource McCainpedia.

“Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures.”
–Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

That Captain Obvious winner shows up in Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column “Pity Party.” This where the real spin begins, as she distances herself from the rest of the apologists and GOP cheerleaders for Dear Leader for the last seven years. She’s the one with 20/20 vision about the disastrous political bind the Republicans are in. The Democrats aren’t the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead.

For all their fractious fighting, they’re finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They’re busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

…Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they’ve publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

“This was a real wakeup call for us,” someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. “We can’t let the Democrats take our issues.” And those issues would be? “We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives,” he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

While she’s angry at how the GOP has failed her, she underestimates the capacity of denial and blame-shifting of these clowns in an attempt to save their personal political fortunes.

I say watch the former Bush faithful. If there’s one thing the GOP is good at, it’s the taking the long view of how to make a comeback. Look at what else Davis says to Noonan — after the jump.
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You know, I wasn’t sure if my former senator was actually going to throw his hat into the endorsement ring.

(WaPo):

In the immediate aftermath of Edwards’ decision to drop from the race, both Clinton and Obama made a pilgrimage to North Carolina to huddle with the former candidate and make their pitch for his support.

By all accounts, those meetings left Edwards genuinely undecided. Obama’s message of change and his call to end the influence peddling in Washington were clearly an obvious fit for Edwards’ sympathies, but he retained some lingering concerns about Obama’s depth of experience. Clinton, on the other hand, had considerable experience but struggled to represent the sort of change that Edwards believed was necessary to win the nomination.

Rumors flew for months about Edwards’s leaning although of late it had been expected that if he endorsed a candidate, it would be Obama.

Matt Bennett, a former Clinton Administration official, described Edwards as the “troubadour of the working class” and said the North Carolina senator’s endorsement of Obama makes it “tougher for Clinton to make the case that working class Democrats can’t [or] won’t support Obama.”

During his 2004 bid for president, Edwards focused his campaign message almost exclusively on middle-class and lower middle-class people — insisting that his southern roots, his father’s experience as a mill worker and his own up from the bootstraps success story uniquely positioned him to represent their interests in the White House.

The timing of this is quite interesting, given the proximity of the West Virginia primary, where the Two Americas message that Edwards ran on is highly relevant, as is the racial divide that was in stark relief in that primary. However, a slice of this demographic, as we’ve seen, has no qualms declaring that they will not vote for a black man under any circumstances — even if voting for a Republican is against their basic economic interests. You have to think those folks are unlikely to be moved by an endorsement by Edwards.

So what, if anything, do you think this endorsement means in the greater scheme of things?

So NARAL endorsed Obama, in a move that was sure to create what you laypeople call “controversy”. The bloodletting at their blog comments is disturbing. You’d think they endorsed, oh, McCain or someone anti-choice, when they instead endorsed a pro-choice candidate they’ve had a long and fruitful relationship with.

It’s not a crazy choice, or even necessarily a badly timed one. NARAL has long thought of itself as a strategic organization, and I suspect that they think that Obama’s the better bet for beating McCain in November. And beating McCain is more important from a pro-choice perspective than the choice between Obama and Clinton, who have pretty much identical views on reproductive rights. Or maybe they think that an endorsement released now will help hurry up an end to the primary season, so the party can focus its energies on fighting McCain, who has pretty much promised to spike the Supreme Court with justices hostile to women’s rights.

In fact, they said as much in their press release.

NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC is making our endorsement now because every day that passes, Sen. McCain gets a free ride on the issue of choice. That free ride ends today.

It’s about moving onto the next stage, the most important stage: Getting a pro-choice Democrat into the White House.

There’s a scent of sour grapes in the air around the Clinton campaign, and from a feminist perspective, I’m boggled. Sure, I understand that it’s disappointing if “electing a female President” was a major priority for you and that’s getting thwarted. But if you support women’s rights, you need to put your support behind the Democratic nominee, even if it’s Obama and it’s likely to be. McCain can’t even support equal pay for women! He’s going to continue the assault on reproductive rights that the Bush administration started. If you support women, have some pity on us in our fertile years living in red states who sorely need a political break in our direction right now, namely a pro-choice Democrat in the White House. Which Obama is, in case there’s a whiff of doubt created by this needlessly contentious primary season.

The rapist/murderer-releasing, Christian Reconstructionist-supported, Man-On-Dog wannabe, former Arkansas governor, and Baptist minister-without-a-theology-degree Mike Huckabee is back in the news — at least at U.S. News & World Report, in its Capital Commerce column.

A top McCain fundraiser with access to McCain’s inner circle, as well as one of those infamous “top GOP strategists” are saying that the Arizona senator has Pastor Huck at the top of his VP pick list. U.S. News’s James Pethokoukis on the purported logic of picking Huckabee.

1) He is a great campaigner and communicator who could both shore up support in the South among social conservatives (Huckabee is a former Baptist minister) and appeal to working-class voters in the critical “Big 10″ states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

2) As any pollster knows, voters search for candidates who “care about people like me,” and Huckabee would probably score a lot higher on that quality than millionaire investor Mitt Romney. Plus, given all the turmoil on Wall Street, 2008 would seem to be a bad year to pick a former investment banker for veep.

3) Economic conservatives and supply-siders may balk, but the threat of four years of Obamanomics and higher investment, income, and corporate taxes might be enough to keep them on board.

More below the fold.
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As we’ve seen this election cycle, there’s a desperation seen in the MSM talking heads and newpaper columnists, even some blogs, to declare Barack Obama’s success a post-racial triumph in this country — that racism is rapidly becoming a distant memory.

First, take a look at this lovely T-shirt being sold at Mulligan’s Bar and Grill in Marietta/Cobb County, Georgia (h/t Jeremy from Cobb).

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ‘08″ scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

“It’s time to put an end to this,” said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. It was among the organizations planning to gather outside Mulligan’s Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon to protest the “racist and highly offensive” shirts.

Just down the street from Marietta’s famous Big Chicken, Mulligan’s has carved a provocative niche in an increasingly multicultural area, thanks to its owner’s ultra-conservative political views. If you live in Marietta, it’s impossible not to know what’s on Norman’s mind, as he posts his views on signs in front of Mulligan’s. Among his recent musings: “I wish Hillary had married OJ,” “No habla espanol — and never will” and the standard “I.N.S. Agents eat free.”

“I’m saying out loud what everyone in this town whispers,” Norman said.

…Norman said those offended are “hunting for a reason to be mad” and insisted he is “not a racist.” Why picture Obama as Curious George? “Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears, he looks just like Curious George,” Norman said.

Not a racist. I guess he doesn’t do Klan night riding on the weekends, so in his mind he’s free and clear of that label. Even sadder, he’s donating the proceeds to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I wonder what the MDA thinks of this?

More below the fold.
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Bob Barr has jumped into the race as a Libertarian candidate. Will this siphon off some of the disaffected Republicans voters who cannot stand McSame, or is this just a blip.

Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr launched a Libertarian Party presidential bid Monday, saying voters are hungry for an alternative to the status quo who would dramatically cut the federal government.

His candidacy throws a wild card into the White House race that many believe could peel away votes from Republican Sen. John McCain given the candidates’ similar positions on fiscal policy.

…Barr first must win the Libertarian nomination at the party’s national convention that begins May 22. Party officials consider him a front-runner thanks to the national profile he developed as a Georgia congressman from 1995 to 2003.

Barr, 59, quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism.

The Freepi are alternately seeing this as a good thing or a disaster spoiler situation.

And look at this fun — McCain is going to have a pain in the posterior as Ron Paul’s revolutionaries are plotting a “convention revolt.” The GOP convention may be more interesting than expected. (LAT)

[L]argely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

…But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated in late March in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

…They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who’s running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a long-term revolution for control of the Republican Party.

So eager are they to follow their leader’s words, that Paul’s supporters have driven his new book, “The Revolution: A Manifesto,” to the top of several bestseller lists.

A far greater danger.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling paranoid, I think the rumors that voting machines are rigged are floated to distract progressives from old-fashioned voter suppression tactics. I mention this, because there seems to be a trend lately of pushing for voter ID bills that are directly aimed at diverting legal voters from the polls, and now there’s one up in Missouri. I saw a presentation on this at the Texas ACLU conference, and the speaker Nina Perales from MALDEF really impressed upon me how many voters can be purged from a roll using these kinds of tactics. Often the types of ID required to prove citizenship are things that people don’t carry on them, or documents that native born citizens might easily acquire but naturalized citizens don’t have. I’m sure the document requirements vary from law to law, but the general rule of thumb is that it’s about putting obstacles between predominantly Democratic voting blocs and casting a ballot. A lot of people in targeted groups have reasons to want to minimize their contact with officials, so they will be rebuffed easily by the first person who turns them away at the polls, because they’re afraid to fight for their rights.

The voter ID bills are based on a faulty premise, which is that there’s widespread problems of people imitating others to vote. It’s a flimsy excuse, as Shark-Fu notes.

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It’s been an interesting and enlightening last few days over at BlueNC since the state primary on the 6th. As you know, Dem U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal was defeated by Kay Hagan, and the latter will face off against Liddy Dole in the fall. Incidentally, post-primary polls have Hagan at 48%, Dole at 47%. Do-Nothing Dole has a war chest that dwarfs Hagan’s, so Liddy will be able to carpet-bomb the airwaves with ads.

Anyway, the post-mortems over at BlueNC have included “thank you” posts by nearly every candidate who has participated in liveblog sessions over there during this cycle, and the one for Kay Hagan took a bizarre, contentious turn when the subject of those now-infamous questions I asked of the state senator during her liveblog came up.

More below the fold, including important Qs of the day for you all that I hope generates a lot of discussion and feedback I can take back to the folks at BlueNC.
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As a single, childless person who intends to stay that way, I have to come out strongly and self-interestedly against giving kids the right to vote. It sounds fair on its surface, but in practice, it’s just giving people extra votes because they have children, since children will vote for whoever they’re told to by their parents most of the time. Let’s face it—those scary men who insist on having 12 children to glorify their mighty cocks satisfy some bizarre religious requirement shouldn’t get 12 times as big a vote as someone like me.

Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”

Is that another variation on “misspoke”?

You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:

I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.

Why not?

“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”

What about race?

“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”

The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.

I want to believe that it wasn’t a purposeful slip of the tongue because it’s too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a “problem” because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo.

Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats. Black voters don’t turn out for Obama solely because he is black. I’ve blogged before about this bizarre train of thought — if the affinity vote is so powerful we would have seen a bum rush for Alan Keyes. What Clinton is saying is not inaccurate (polls slice and dice this way), but its use here is inappropriate and inflammatory. It’s because the last core demo left for her to appeal to is resistant to Obama for reasons that have little to do with policy differences, or 3 AM readiness. She’s brought the microtarget out into the light and it’s one many of us don’t want to face talking about, with a different name — scared white people.

She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country’s pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race — aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts — we’re left to deal with the fallout of a “poorly worded” statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases.

The question never explored is why are these people scared more about a black president (regardless of political viewpoint) than the prospect of a McCain presidency and four more years of failed economic policies that have left this very demographic high and dry? What do we want to do about this as Americans? Apparently nothing, that’s a third rail topic and there’s an election to win.

Naming it means acknowledging problems we haven’t dealt with, and exploding the myth of a post-racial America. Barack Obama may be the first post-racial candidate because of his personal heritage, but the United States of America is nowhere near “post-racial” when it comes to politics.

Obama bested Hillary Clinton with ease last night here in NC, and you can see plenty of analysis about that all over the blogosphere. On primary night I liveblogged from Southern Rail in Carrboro, where U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal held his after-party. Here are some thoughts from the evening — and observations about the big picture.

Folks gathering for the party at Southern Rail.

It was a festive atmosphere, even as results came in that made it pretty clear state Senator Kay Hagan would cross the finish line with a lot of distance between her and Jim, and she will face the useless, ineffective Elizabeth Dole in November.
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