After Hillary Clinton’s historic 41-point victory in the West Virginia primary, two questions loom: How long will Barak Obama cling to his shattered dreams of the presidency, and how much damage will be done to the Democratic Party by his stubborn and divisive refusal to accept the obvious?

UPDATE – Below: How will Obama win an Electoral College majority? at Salon by Paul Maslin, former pollster to Howard Dean. (h/t BDBlue)

UPDATE 2 – Below: Skirting Appalachia, an Op Ed in the NYT opining on Barak Obama’s Electoral College strategic options by Charles Blow, Art Director at National Geographic -and why not? (h/t again to the sharp-eyed BDBlue)  Read more 

I posted on it last night.

Today, both Susie Madrak and Digby join the fun.

We’re ahead of the curve, folks!

So says Gabor Steigart in Der Spiegel:  Read more 

Then again, perhaps they’ve already got his autograph.

“No flash?”  Read more 

He’s regaining his sanity, get this man more Kool-aid, Stat!:

While the Daily Kos diary in question is specifically arguing that the Cooper plan was great (although that is implied), it does take as its main point that health care reform failed in 1993-1994 because Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton, weren’t nice enough to conservatives. If only Hillary Clinton had been nicer to conservatives, then we could have had great health care plans like Jim Cooper’s. Hell, Jim Cooper himself says so. And look, David Brooks agrees, so it much be right.  Read more 

Yglesias:

On television, of course, it’s difficult to make a nuanced point…

I think that “of course,” is rich, don’t you? But going on the teebee does have one powerful point in its favor:  Read more 

[Welcome Sideshow readers!]

“Him”? Not.

USA Today:

“I said I voted for ’em,’” Edwards said in an interview shortly afterwards with USA TODAY. “I’m a Southerner. … It wasn’t meant to be male or female.”

So — not to wax triumphalist — Corrente was right to be skeptical and the OFB wankfest on a putative Edwards endorsement was completely misplaced.

Like that never happened before.  Read more 

[Welcome, Sadly No and Balloon Juice readers. Vanilla shot with your ramen? Cinnamon? I, for one, welcome our new “creative class” overlords; we welcome your hatred, if any. Because every time the OFB use the word “desperate,” a kitten dies…]

As alert reader gqmartinez points out, $30 is a month’s worth of food, if you need to live on ramen noodles. And as alert reader BDBlue points out, it’s 15 weeks worth of school lunches for one of your kids.

I’ve done that math, because after the dot com bubble burst, that was the situation I was faced with, and I was lucky, because my situation only lasted for months. Except I can top gqmartinez: My survival formula was dollar store spaghetti sauce. You can get two days out of a jar, and even with spaghetti, I could still get change back from my thirty! That was before things got really bad, and I went to the cans of generic pork and beans, 4 for a dollar. Plus, since by that time the gas and the electricity were off, I could heat the beans with the hotplate after stringing an extension cord out into the hall and plugging it into a socket I’d screwed into the light for the purpose. Too risky to boil water that way, I felt. What if I heard someone on the stairs and had to cut the power when the spaghetti was only half boiled?

$0.25 a day.

Now, to Stoller, $30 is what? Seven vente lattes and a croissant? I’d say. Though maybe he goes for the pumps of vanilla syrup instead of the croissant. I really wouldn’t know.

So, keeping the math in mind, let’s look at Matt Stoller’s latest attempt to unify the party over at Cheetopia:  Read more 

This post started out as a comment, but I’m going to make it into a post. For a discussion of the need to replace haka with a term equally fit for the purpose, see here. IMNSHO, the two best candidates that emerged from Corrente contributors were wankfest and lek. For now, I’m using wankfest, for reasons stated below. Those who prefer the alternative, please read on!

***

At this point [lambert blushes modestly] I’m something of a subject matter expert on the semiotics of propagating certain words (terms; memes) in the blogosphere.  Read more 

WKJM burbles happily:

If you missed the two-night Hillary-O’Reilly lovefest extravaganza (as I did, deliberately), we’ve got an easier-to-digest six-minute highlight reel just for you…

Yeah, with a lead-in like that, I’m sure I can totally trust the highlights to represent the event accurately. No doubt about it. None.

Seriously, you’d think Obama supporters like “Marshall” would have learned something from about the perils of doctoring “editing” videos from their recent experiences, but n-o-o-o-o!

Which reminds me:

ABC called the doctored video of “War Room” that smeared the Clintons a “the definition of a dirty trick”; in other words, Ratfucking. And not only do we know that an Obama supporter created it, the Obama campaign has issued a classic “non-denial denial.” Sounds to me like there just might be a story here!

So, I thought I’d see if the tribunes of the people in the blogosphere had done to advance the story, and —- I know this will surprise you — *** crickets *** Not one single solitary link on the whole front page. Zip. Zilch. Nada. (Although I did find the burbling noted above.)

So, is it only TPM’s 2008 campaign coverage that’s completely corrupt? Or everything?

And how do I tell?

If I had reportorial resources, like WKJM does, there’s are the questions I’d ask:  Read more 

Our story thus far:

* * *
An as yet unnamed Obama supporter [JedReport?] doctors a “War Room” clip to insult IN voters before the IN primary, featuring Clinton supporters Carville and Kantor, and it gets propagated (somehow) onto the A list, who never (I have to assume) checked the YouTube’s provenance or got a transcript, and who should have known better.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, the thing goes viral before it gets debunked. What I’d like to know is who blogwhored the YouTube to the A list, but we’ll never know that. No doubt Hillary will lose a few votes because of this. Well done, Obama supporters! Ain’t this new kind of politics grand?

* * *

Well, now we have a transcript, and would you believe it, there’s nothing to the story at all*. Jake Tapper—who took his post down when problems began to surface—actually does some reporting:

Official Transcript: Kantor Never Impugned Hoosiers

Forgoing for a moment the dirty trick of the doctored clip from “The War Room,” which falsely had Mickey Kantor using a racial slur, the filmmaker behind the documentary has posted the clip on his Web site to clarify that other point of confusion — what Kantor was referring to when he cursed.

Tilmmakers Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker write: “We would like to respond to some erroneous statements made today about our film, THE WAR ROOM. These statements alleged certain remarks to Mickey Kantor that simply are not true. The transcript of the scene in question confirms this.”

The official transcript:

MICKEY KANTOR: Look at Indiana. Wait, wait. Look at Indiana. Forty-two, forty. It doesn’t matter if we win. Those people are s——ing (oh, excuse me) in the White House. How would you like to be… Look at Texas, go down to Texas.

CARVILLE: Even.

MICKEY: Yeah. Thirty-nine, thirty-nine.

CARVILLE: Perot’s kind of holding, isn’t he?

GEORGE: He held.

MICKEY: Yeah, he held. His numbers held. I’m sort of surprised, frankly.

So Kantor was NOT insulting Hoosiers, he was experiencing a moment of schadenfreude about the Bush (Sr.) White House.

And now Jake asks a very interesting question:  Read more 

The man shows how it’s done. Surprise, the Kantor film clip video smearing the Hillary campaign was doctored. Nevertheless…  Read more 

Hard to tell. Here’s a classic:

Polls show voters drift to Clinton ahead of next primaries

Yeah, like voters could never make a conscious, informed decision to vote for Hillary. Villagers, they just suck.

Here’s an excellent example of the kind of decision making that headline tries to airbrush out:  Read more 

Froomkin — who I don’t read nearly as often as I should, since chinless wonder Fred Hiatt buried the link to his columns — is dispiriting but brilliant:

Party of the Damned
The last White House Correspondents’ Association dinner of the Bush era — the ultimate celebration of chumminess between the most powerful people in the world and those who are supposed to hold them accountable — was a dispiriting, mostly humorless affair.

In the audience at the dinner and at its endless pre- and post-parties, a fin-de-siecle degeneracy was on full display. Throngs surrounded aging professional floozy Pamela Anderson, a guest of Bloomberg, who happily posed for countless photos in a dress that exposed the preponderance of her two most outstanding achievements. Key members of the White House’s torture-management team— Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state Colin Powell — along with leading torture apologists — Attorney General Michael Mukasey, CIA Director Michael Hayden, former White House spokesman Tony Snow and current spokeswoman Dana Perino — were fawned over as honored guests.

At the end of his speech, the man who waged war against the press received a standing ovation from the conquered.

Plus linky goodness:  Read more 

Yes, I suppose we do.

Partially in response to Bringiton’s earlier post about, as I interpret it, the complacency of comfort. Perhaps it’s not merely laziness. Perhaps, after 2000 and 2004 we had come to expect a reliable, pro-democracy media critique from the Boiz on the blogs. Perhaps the missing media critique by the Boiz has contributed to large swaths of the democratic base not really knowing what’s going on in Florida and Michigan. Perhaps the Boiz, as a group, have been more responsible than the republicans, the media, and the competing candidates themselves at dividing us.

We all know the media isn’t going to do democracy any favors. That’s what the glorious media critique was supposed to accomplish, right?  Read more 

Jonathon Wiseman:

If the American people are growing weary of the protracted Democratic nomination fight, they’ve got nothing on the candidates, their staffs or their staffs’ families.

Yes, except no.  Read more 

Alice Palmer and Obama’s first campaign, when he knocked out the politician who recruited and introduced him to fundraisers and others who could help him (like Ayers, etc) —

“… “She went out and recruited Barack.”

So everything seemed set. Palmer would move to Congress and Obama would take her place in the Illinois Senate.

But then Palmer lost the special congressional election. Suddenly, this well-liked community leader faced being out of office after four years in the state Legislature.

…

Palmer finally asked Obama to halt his legislative campaign so she could run for re-election.

He refused. …”  Read more 

As the Democratic primary wears on, a little montage for the person that must be defeated this fall.

Of Barry’s latest awsum speech, full of “pretty cool” “dogwhistles” — one of which was giving Hillary the finger — Spencer burbles:

Starting at 2:20, bear witness to perhaps the coolest subliminal cultural reference [to this extremely presidential Jay Z tune] in the history of American politics.  Read more 

Who else but Lord Kos? Massive takedown by eRiposte, with lots of linky goodness. Go read.  Read more 

Which is really unfair.  Read more 

What I saw was every gotcha question that’s “out there” now, posed to both candidates (and Hillary took a hit on Bosnia). You may think that gotchas suck, but that’s not the same thing as saying that the gotchas were unfairly played.*

There is, in fact, a reason why there were and are more gotcha questions for Obama than for Hillary: Hillary’s baggage is known, and Obama’s is not. Duh!

So, I don’t see this debate as being different in nature from what has gone before. The track was muddy, but both horses had to run it. And one horse won going away — as measured by undecided, students, and focus groups, as opposed to pundits and bloggers**—so naturally the loser’s handlers are blaming their loss on the conditions, not their horse.

So, it’s entirely natural and expected — see under Gore, Goring of — that the narrative would be shifted from Hillary’s win either to:

1. Crude approach: They attacked Obama!!

2. Sophisticated approach: What’s wrong with the media?

from the actual event that unfolded in front of everyone’s eyes, which is that Obama got beaten like a gong. The debate showed what is nothing more or less than the truth: That he’s just not ready to be President. I mean, if George and Charlie can throw the guy off his game, could that possibly have any implications at all?  Read more 

My God. It’s so fucking obvious that neither highly trained reporters nor extremely well-paid consultants can see it. Jeff Zeleny of The World’s Greatest Newpaper (not) types a Democrats in disarray story that includes this quote from an actual voter:

Cindy Phillips, 54, a flight attendant from Leetsdale, Pa., said she had intended to vote for Mrs. Clinton before the latest feud developed. But she said her position was solidified by Mr. Obama’s remarks that many small-town Pennsylvania voters, “bitter” over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

“He just doesn’t know Pennsylvania,” Ms. Phillips said in an interview. “People here are religious because that’s their background, not because they’re mad about jobs.”

Yet so powerful is the gravitational pull of the “bitter” meme — which, of course, helps Obama because the antidote to bitterness is, you guessed it, “hope” — that just a few paragraphs down, Zelezany types:

Indeed, advisers to Mr. Obama concede, his job has been made that much more complicated by his remarks about bitterness among small-town voters. Though it remains unclear what effect the episode will have in the long run, it has suddenly prompted a series of questions — and worry — from Democrats about whether Mr. Obama could weather a Republican onslaught in the fall, should he win the presidential nomination.

No, goddammit, no!

It’s not the “bitterness” it’s the “cling to”! It’s Obama denying working class voters the same complexity and nuance that he claims for himself when he gives speeches about his own relationship to his pastor and religion!  Read more 

Riverdaughter:

In other news, Obama won [tonight’s] debate handily with his brilliant rhetoric and freshness. Everything he said carried the weightiness of a moment in history. His policy statements, delivered right after hers, were extraordinarily well developed and detailed. He more than accomplished what he needed to do tomorrow night. This performance has already boosted his numbers in PA and he has, in fact, already won by losing by less than 20 points. It is time for Clinton to drop out for the good of the party.

What she said, except for one detail:  Read more 

[Welcome, Shakespeare’s Sister readers. See Paul Lukasiak for an explanation of why this is happening. “Flailing”? “Spittle”? Project much?]

 Read more