When even a Beltway wonk like Tim Russert can see things this clearly, it’s time to hang ‘em up and put ‘em out to pasture because the writing is on the wall and it’s so big that it can’t be ignored.
PS:
Archive for the 'politics' Category
So after Hillary’s win in PA, the new spin from her supporters, bloggers and politicans alike, is that she’s winning in the popular vote and therefore, she should be the nomiee for president. Obviously, only she can win the big states. He’s faltered now that the pressure is on him. Blah, blah, blah. You know what I say? This is a Pyrrhic victory for Clinton. She may have won the battle, but she won’t win the war.
Let’s look at a few bits of analysis from around the tubes. First, this interesting theory from Kos:
It’s my theory that no endorsement matters except those that deliver a machine. Senators have no machine, so they’re pretty worthless (like Bob Casey). Mayors and machine-state governors, like Nutter and Rendell, matter. Gavin Newsom in San Francisco, who has no machine, didn’t matter, but Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, who has one of the biggest machines in the planet, delivered strong for Clinton. Obama won Connecticut in large part thanks to New Haven’s mayor John Destefano’s efforts. In Pennsylvania, Clinton had the state’s machine working on her behalf, and it clearly helped cut Obama’s margins in the Philly metro area.
That will even work in a place like here in NJ, where the state government is one big giant machine, and we already know Jon Corzine is cuckoo for Hillary. I’m on his email list and he’s put out several emails in support of Hillary.
Then, we have the reality of the numbers, as explained by Charlie Cook:
But today, she is 133 delegates behind Obama, 1,728 to 1,595, according to NBC News. At this point last week, she trailed by 136 delegates. Since then Clinton has scored a net gain of 10 delegates in Pennsylvania, according to NBC, but has lost a few more superdelegates, so she has made little headway.
Let’s not forget that her projections of primary vote include Michigan and Florida, the two races that don’t count because they broke the DNC’s primary rules. Besides, it’s not about the votes that matters. It’s all about the delegates stupid! More from Cook:
But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.
So now that we have that down pat, let’s reexamine her victory. First off, she was projected to win the state by more than 20 points. She won it by 9. She netted 10 delegates from the victory, but hasn’t dented Obama’s lead. She’s not favored to win in North Carolina’s primary on May 6th, and Indiana is a tossup that can easily go Obama’s way if he campaigns strongly there. If she loses both of those, what then?
The most important thing is that this prolonged primary is souring a lot of people and is letting John McCain sit pretty and keep building his positive poll numbers. So yes, Clinton won PA, but at what cost to herself and the party in general? Sounds a lot like a Pyhrric victory to me.
So a group of Democrats (in this case, the Democrats in the House) finally got the memo and decided to show that they actually have some stones on them and passed a FISA bill without retroactive immunity in it. This is huge, because everyone (myself included), expected the Democrats to just cave as always and we would be on our way to ensuring that no one would ever know just who got spied on, when, or where. Basically, for the first time in years, checks and balances actually worked and kept powers where they should be.
The thing that has bothered me about the FISA fight is why hasn’t anyone really talked about the potential abuse of these powers if Bush got his way and got retroactive immunity? Let’s not forget that the FISA law was passed in 1978 as a legislative check to executive power after it was brought to light by the Church Committee that Nixon was using the FBI and CIA to spy on Americans he didn’t particularly like (radical groups, Jane Fonda’s mail, etc.). Couple this with the Bush administration’s fervent belief in the Unitary Executive, and it’s not hard to imagine this thing jumping to depths far more unsavory than they already are. More bluntly, what’s to stop them from spying on Democrats, opposing candidates, party faithful who get out of hand, etc? Why stop there? Why not spy on all of us who have things to stay that aren’t flattering to the administration? Even if we managed to find out, what could we do about it since everyone involved has managed to say that they’re not liable under the FISA law. The whole point here is that by taking away our means of finding out about the wiretapping, they’re free to tap anyone they damn well please.
My other thing is this. Isn’t part of the whole “what makes America great” thing the fact that the government can’t just spy on us? The founding fathers were smart enough to know this was needed, which is why we have a Fourth Amendment that protects against exactly this kind of stuff. Once we make it basically impossible to find out if someone is getting tapped, are we still the greatest nation in the world with the most freedoms for its citizens? Are we really any better than all of those foreign countries that we look down upon for it? I think not, and it is on this reason that I applaud House Dems for having the courage to do what their Senate colleagues could not do and get this bill passed without immunity. The greatness that is America lives on for one more day.
