The Viennese Squeeze writes me to highlight her delight in finding a couple of feminists in a post below.

Robin Morgan is one her leading feminist lights, which is OK with me, although the link comes through Judith Warner, another feminist who correctly calls Ms. Morgan’s “Goodbye to all that No. 2″ a “screed.”

I personally found Ms. Morgan’s … uhm … polemic to be little more than a Manichean frothy bubble surrounding the same-old toddler’s temper tantrum about not being fair and not getting her way, but opinions are like rectums, everyone has one.

My opinion nonwithstanding, Bridezilla, the “running of the brides” every year in Boston, indicates that it’s women, not men, who are the biggest stumbling block for feminists. While it is true that Democratic Party WHITE women by a 57-43 majority support Hillary over Obama (black women, not so much; race apparently trumps gender for them), when you look at polls of women voters of all political stripe, you’ll find that the biggest “Hillary Haters” (has anyone bothered to trademark that phrase? I hereby claim it! TM All rights reserved) in America are not the big, bad, old, white guys, it’s WOMEN.

Even upon a shallow inspection of Ms. Morgan’s piece, it’s clear that the biggest problem for and with feminists lies with women. You can shout about women being put in Burkas, but it’s Islamic women that police the patrimonial custom; you can rage at female mutilation in Africa, but it’s women who insist upon it and who perform the wretched cutting. And, btw, has anyone noticed that the practices that feminists decry the loudest just happen to be a product of the cultures of dark-skinned, third world folk?

Perhaps my feminist friends can go to Africa or the Middle East and take up their White Girls Burden of civilizing the colonialized nations and we could get some latter day Rudyard Kipling writing going. It’d make better reading.

blogblah, agent provacateur and the 15th Marquis of Ennui writing from his non-ancestral abode, Pont du Ennui, whilst awaiting the feminized poker game scheduled for tonight.

SIGH. After all my brilliant baiting of feminists, above, I still feel it necessary to update contra. Read this by ABC’s Jake Tapper, who I really think is a very good and strong reporter:

Sen. Hillary Clinton went on the offensive today during her campaign sweep through Ohio, vigorously scolding her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, over two mailings his campaign made that she said misrepresented her views and created a division within the Democratic Party.

SIGH. OK. If John McCain, Obama, Edwards or anyone else had attacked an opponent’s campaign tactics like this, would the word “scold” be used? Hell, McCain would “launch a fusillade” and Edwards would “lambast” or Barry O would “barrage”.
In addition, use of such militaristic and sports jingo attached to men is equally bad. This is just bad language usage all around, in so many ways. How about: Sen. Clinton took offense at her opponent’s campaign today during her sweep through Ohio, accusing Sen. Obama of misrepresenting her views in two mailings she found divisive.

(An Aside) Damn right it’s divisive, Hillary. You’re lucky I’m not working on Barry’s campaign or you’d see some “divisive” mailers for sure. Dividing you and my candidate is precisely what those mailers were meant to do. Myself, I’d have written a mailer that said: First, Sen. Clinton was all for NAFTA, but things didn’t work out so well for the industrial workers of Ohio. So, now that the factories have all moved out of the country, she has four new ways to fix that. Just like she voted for the war in Iraq and now that things didn’t work out so well for the country and 4,000 Americans have shed blood in this senseless war, she has a string of proposals for how to fix that, too. Isn’t an ounce of Obama prevention worth a pound of Hillary’s cures for her own mistakes?

This, by the way, is the absolutely wrong way to respond to Obama’s mailers. If I’d been working for Hillary, I would never, ever let her do this. The “negative” about her is that she’s seen as a “bitch”. Everybody’s first wife and mother in law. Yeah, yeah. Unfair, but an accurate portrayal of her widely held negative image. I would never let her get red faced and wag her finger like Bill did. She does look like a “scold” to those so inclined to see her that way already. But here’s the deal: BHO spent a good bit on those mailers. They are not cheap. She’s getting free airtime. I would have told her to hold up those mailers and look right into the camera and say: “Barry. Silly season? That’s what you said last night. This is beneath you and it’s beneath a candidate who has raised all our hopes that politics can be different this time around. Stop this. We disagree but you can face me with your disagreements like a man instead of sneaking around with this low level of distortion and false innuendo. Anyone who wants to know where I really stand on these issues can go to my website or call 1-800-HILLARY.” End of press conference. Just walk away and don’t take questions.

SUNDAY UPDATE: APPARENTLY I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO LOOKED TWICE AT “SCOLDED” IN JAKE TAPPER’S STORY. HERE IS HIS RESPONSE AND DISCUSSION OF SEXIST LANAGUAGE IN REPORTING.

saw this tagline on a dKos comment and loved it:

Now, go spread some peace, love and understanding. Use force if necessary. – Phil N DeBlanc

I think today is one of the most exciting and interesting days of politics I can remember in my whole life because it’s so raw and naked and out there.

On the Republican side, Sen. McCain got hit today hard and right where he lives. The New York Times reveals a questionable relationship between the 72 year old Arizonan and a 40 something lobbyist for the telecoms along with a review of McCain’s tour with the Keating 5, a popular smash and grab punk group of days of yore who were often called upon to entertain at the Savings and Loan trough and a few newer questions or issues about some work McCain did for the said blonde’s clients. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt, coming out just right at this one particular moment, it being a presidential campaign where your integrity’s on the line, right, John?

On the Democratic side, supporters of Sen. Clinton are forming a 527 group (this is a strange form of poker in which a buy-in is $100K with a $10M total pot.) Sen. Clinton is all in. They are going to run, we are led to believe, “contrast” ads. You know, the ads that say “my opponent favors this and I’m shocked, shocked to learn there is gambling at this establishment.”. A bunch of unemployed party hacks and ad men are going to lead this sorry parade.

Power plays.

Obama has gone anti-Nafta and pulled in the union endorsements, AFL and Teamsters, et al., trying to lure in Ohio voters and make it a knockout.

The 527 is a game the Clinton’s have played before when they passed NAFTA back in the 90s. They called in all those chits all at once. And, you know what? $100,000 is cheap for a presidential chip. If Bill came to me, I’d write the check as long as I was one of those Silicon Valley and outsourcing global market guys. The win is worth billions and the loss would be a big swing. Cheap.

I actually admire Hillary for this. It’s cold and ruthless and brazen use of political power. She may lose, but she actually is going to go down fighting. She’s told herself and everyone else that she can win and it’s show time. She’s pushing all in. If she doesn’t win, she loses the presidential race AND all those favors. The centrists of the Democratic Party are the establishment that the Clinton’s created and they will either win or walk away from a lot of power and money. They are pushing back. You can call it cold and calculating, but it’s also tough and bold. If she really is good enough and smart enough and tough enough to be president, there’s no stopping now. Good luck to her. I’ll actually be happier to vote for her in November now than I would have been a week ago. Like Yoda says, there is no “try”, there’s only “do” or … go back to New York. I think Barack has your number, Hillary, but you go, grrl. Make it interesting. Show us how it’s done.

It’s the same on the Republican side. The New York Times didn’t pull this out of their ass. Hillary knows who is behind this. The “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” Yeah. I’m not kidding. The money behind the Limbaugh/Coulter wingnuts who brought us the “Arkansas Project” in the first place. The ones that won’t let McCain go until the evangelicals and Yahoos are satisfied. The guys with “fuck you” money who want the naval aviator to remember that Wall Street rules the GOP. Pretty naked shot across the bow. It’s also a good bet it’s some of those lobbyists and their clients who got the pushback when he was doing McCain-Feingold. This story was the product of a hurt sense of entitlement and perhaps disillusionment that fell into foul hands and it was groomed and fed to the New York Times as sure as can be.

With Bush in the tank and without an obvious “heir” to the throne, there’s a good bit at stake in this White House election. Think about the billions going to defense and all those contracts that got unbribeable after Abramhoff. There’s some serious shit on the line.

Man, it’s just raw, naked power right out there in public for all of us to see. Did we really think we’d get a “maverick” and an “insurgent” without the good old boys and their networks having their say? Money and naked corporate power are unmasked and the dogs of war let slip. Time to cry havoc, I suppose, and gird our loins.

Tally HO! The game’s afoot, Watson!

blogblah!!!

Wisconsin 96% reporting:

Obama 58%
Clinton 41%

(per Daily Kos)

Sen. Obama won males 3-2 and split women evenly, winning both over and under $50K/yr families. Blacks less than 10% of pop., but delivered 4/1. Young voters and Independents strongly for the candidate from neighboring Illinois.

McCain, also claiming victory on the GOP side over hapless Huckabee, takes a swipe at Obama, claiming the “experience” mantle and repeating also Hillary’s charge of lack of substance and accomplishment.

Hillary again doesn’t mention her loss or congratulate Obama; she unveils new advert, “Night Shift”, and goes back to the theme of too many pretty words and not enough “hard work”, and claims to be the better commander in chief as a result of her travels and experiences. She starts using a telepromter (Obama does).

Obama wows crowd of 20,000 in Houston, saying there are many good ideas in America, but that Washington, D.C., is where those ideas go to die.

Hillary’s polling lead in Ohio and Texas are now much smaller with the Lone Star State nearly a draw after being ahead as much as 20% both states. Her campaign at least says it’s a little confused and disgruntled with the delegate system in Texas, having just found out what you guys read about several days ago here on this blog. Maybe they read it here first. It COULD happen.

No word from Hawaii on results at this writing, except that turnout is double of the last two election cycles. Obama went to school and lived there and his half sister campaigned as a surrogate while Chelsea got the plum assignment from her mother’s campaign. I’d rather be there than the below zero temps in Green Bay (Big Island was 80 as voting closed with some showers).

Word is floating out there that Hillary will call it quits after March 4 without a clear victory but there’s countervailing rumors that she’ll go “scorched earth.” Ya’ll know I think it’ll go to at least Pennsylvania and no longer than North Carolina, but what the hell, my guess is as good as just about anybody’s but Bill at this point. He certainly seems the better candidate in the sense that I think he’s run a better campaign, leaving aside any points you may wish to award for public speaking for him as well as policy for her. I just mean the ad buys, the time allocation, the fund raising the precinct organizing are all amazing and well coordinated. It’s a sure sign of a winning campaign. Losing campaigns are in disarray because they’ve become reactive (and they are often reactive because they are losing. It is NOT a tautology! Shut up. No one knows what that word means anyway.).

Went to a real good AA meeting tonight to get away from the laptop when there weren’t any results yet anyway and before that, while the polls were still open, fixed myself pork chops, red potatoes and whole green beans boiled with onion and bacon grease. Slopped up that juice with the buttered whole wheat bread slice just like the southern fried boy I am. My cholesterol is through the roof but it was good, if plain, fare.

I want to be in Tucson. I want to take my daughter crayons and feel her forehead and fetch her water. I wouldn’t know if money makes you happy but I can darn sure tell you from experience that a lack of money can be a wretched inconvenience.

David Letterman takes note that Fidel resigned in Cuba today and that he was expected to turn over power to his younger brother, Raul, or maybe his idiot son, Fidel W. Castro.

love you guys. say “hey” to your mom an’ ‘em. drive careful now.

blogblah

Yesterday, I wrote at some length about Sen. Clinton’s campaign and misogyny and uttered the opinion that some of the opposition to her is not grounded in sexism, but is merely and solely attributed to a dislike for her position on Iraq and Iran and for the method and reasoning of her campaign.

I’m sure they didn’t read my blog, but in today’s Huffington Post and New York Times two women write columns accusing me and all other middle aged white men of being misogynists where Hillary is concerned. In the NYTimes, Judith Warner begins with a conversation over doughnuts with two men who say they go for the younger women and that morphs into … well just read it and don’t miss the comments that follow. On HuffPost, Karen Stabiner takes a poke at a comment made by Obama and turns it into a bra burning meltdown. (Along the way, Ms. Stabiner forces me to think about Sen. Clinton’s genitalia, mensus cycle and — since she’s 60 now — her menopause; none of which are topics I find appealing.)

My short and sweet response to both columns is this:

Has there been racism and sexism in the Democratic Party primaries? Why, yes, there has and no doubt about it. The difference? Sen. Clinton and her older, white female supporters whine about it and Sen. Obama doesn’t. Sen. Clinton’s campaign at present is founded upon a cold blooded attempt to use racial animus — Latinos vs. African Americans — but there is no conspicuous dividing of the genders by the Illinois senator.

This is the clip of Obama’s comment that generated the controversy:

As to Ms.Warner’s lament that men get older but not mature: yeah, what about it? Remember when we were 16 and I was desperate to go out with you but you wanted a college soph instead? Yeah. Tables now turned and you don’t like it. Sorry about life mistreating you that way. Try dating that guy who is only 5’6″. He’s been wondering his whole life why women couldn’t see past his height and fall for the great guy he is inside. Or maybe you could see past the dollar signs in that calculating libido of yours and date a guy who doesn’t have $100 bills falling out of his pocket, even though you might have to pick up the dinner check every other time. Don’t mind me, though. I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s all our fault. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

Meanwhile, John X provides me with what may be a lot more interesting and long term topic: the end of reading and the dumbing of America, via this article in the Washington Post.

A post script on the feminista gnashing of teeth about the Hillary nutcracker: I’m offended, too. In fact, I was offended when the far right first came up with it in 1993. This isn’t something Obama has done, nor his supporters. It’s an artifact of the 15 years of Hillary bashing that started with Hillarycare and her “baking cookies” comment way back when. It’s part of why I don’t think she can win in November; it’s too late to change her image after a decade and a half of negative image crafting. The people I speak to who are “Hillary haters” can’t be reasoned with, their dislike of her is non-rational and they simply will not listen to any other viewpoint. Is it sexist? Certainly. It’s also reality that 45% of the voting public has bought into that viewpoint and will hate her and never vote for her no matter what. She has the highest “negatives” of any political figure I know about, including the current president, who so much more deserves our contempt.

A further aside as to the nutcracker… . There have always been emasculating women, but it’s only been since the mid-70s that this behavior pattern has been clothed in feminism. For myself, I’ve come to the place that I avoid women — feminists or not — who see me as an older home to be remodeled to fit their tastes. I’m not an old car to be restored and made a classic. I don’t want to be “fixed” like my cat, who my sister and mother gleefully got chopped. I rather like myself and don’t think of myself as broken and therefore needing fixing. If you don’t wish to be portrayed as a “nutcracker”, try changing your co-dependency behaviors before you start pointing your fingers at my supposed lack of evolution. Maybe it is simply a matter of wishing to be accepted for who I am and as I am. You know. Unconditional love. The same thing you with your sagging breasts and flabby ass also want. Ooops. There I go again. Sorry. So sorry. All my fault, my most grievous fault.

blogblah

AFTERNOON POSTSCRIPT

Just in case you wondered, here’s a “Red State” review of the Dem. nomination campaign. Just thought you’d like to see how Republicans think. Perhaps you ladies who think Obama is misogynist might want to consider how Republicans view the worldview of Obama and see where you fit in. Or, maybe you just aren’t yet familiar enough with the creeping COMMUNIST/SOCIALIST agenda of the Democratic Party and its Main Stream Media lackeys.

EVENING UPDATE

For some reason, I’ve run into some vintage Molly Ivins, the late and great Texas pundit and friend of Gov. Ann Richards. Just before her death, she had some words about the campaign we’re seeing now.

First, only because it’s short, a recollection by a blogger, Myra MacPherson of Neiman Foundation of Journalism at Harvard, of Molly:

In December 2006, the ever-prescient columnist and best-selling author Molly Ivins was asked whether or not Barack Obama should run for president. Her answer: “Yes, he should run. He’s the only Democrat with any ‘Elvis’ to him.”

Next, a bit of a column by Molly about Mrs. Clinton:

“I will not support Hillary Clinton for president”

AUSTIN, Texas — I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, “Look, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.” Bobby Kennedy — rough, tough Bobby Kennedy — didn’t do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

THIS IS GETTING OBSESSIVE

I knew we men weren’t Neanderthals! Actually, we are just what we’ve often been labeled — dawgs. Or, at least we can be trained like one, according to this article in Newsweek.

One of my favorite quotes from anyone, anywhere and anytime is something from Ring Lardner Jr., who said:

“The race is not always to the swift nor the fight to the strong, but that’s the way the smart money bets.”

One of the things that has gone on in the presidential primary race is a lot of discussion about who can win in November, of course, as well as who will win in this or that primary or caucus. I’ve done some poll-based horserace posts as you all know.

However, along with that, in the blogosphere as a whole there’s a good bit of discussion about racism and sexism and how those cancers on our society have affected coverage of the races as well as voting. If you want to read extended discussions about the role of race in voting, try doing a Google search of “Bradley Effect”.

Sen. Clinton’s supporters see sexism everywhere, if I read their comments correctly on the places I read on the internet (Daily Kos, Andrew Sullivan, Talking Points Memo, Firedoglake, RedState, etc.). They have some good evidence on their side, there’s no doubt, and the rantings of Chris Matthews are repulsive but mild compared to stuff I see elsewhere. It ain’t easy being a woman. Hillary’s supporters, especially her older, white female vote demographic, get riled up regularly and I don’t blame them. They’ve seen the subtle slights and the not so subtle pushbacks in their offices and workplaces and it isn’t right and it isn’t fair. They are protective of their standard bearer.

On the other hand, sometimes you just lose. Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world, but sometimes he just loses and it’s not about race. Michael Jordan was the best basketball player of all times, but he took some hits and some losses and it was not about race. Muhammed Ali didn’t retire undefeated even though he was “the greatest of all time,” as he famously declared. Sometimes, ladies, she is just going to lose and that’s what competition is all about and it has nothing to do with her gender.

I mentioned Chris Matthews in particular because a lot of the sexism seen by Sen. Clinton’s supporters is seen in the media’s coverage of the elections. It seems to them that Hillary is held to a different standard than either McCain or Obama. They are right. However, I don’t think that “double standard” that actually exists can rightfully be placed merely at the feet of sexism. When you want to talk about Rezko but not John Hsu, when you want to talk about Exelon and not about Wal Mart, when you want to talk about personal finances and he releases his tax returns and you don’t … well, that’s going to draw some unfavorable press regardless of your gender.

In addition, Sen. Clinton has a history with the media and not all of that history is so happy from the point of view of the press. Over the course of many years, Sen. Clinton’s history includes a lot of “spin” and a few instances (“Hillarycare” in 1993 comes to mind) of highhanded dismissal and a couple three just outright lies. Obama does not carry that baggage. He hasn’t been chummy with the press by any means, but he also hasn’t outright lied and misled them. About Rezko, he’s admitted that letting the sleazeball builder buy part of his family home’s yard was “boneheaded” on his part. Imagine that! An admission that he was wrong. You won’t hear such things from the new Clinton fast-response “War Room”.

I also think I personally would be more likely to listen to the claims of sexism in the press and electorate if, as I previously wrote, Hillary was running her campaign as a woman instead of on her co-equal with any man policy and issue experience and … whatever the hell it is she’s running on now.

Has there been racism? We need look no further than Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell’s pronouncement about his race with Lynn Swann in which he says that some whites in his state just can’t bring themselves to vote for a black and he figures it made about a 3% difference in his race. Say what you will, but the former President’s comparison of Sen. Obama’s primary win in South Carolina with those of Jesse Jackson in ’84 and ’88 were pretty raw efforts to portray Obama as a black niche candidate with no real chance. One of the reasons us Obamaniacs got so twisted up about that is because the Illinois senator has been very very very careful not to run in that niche, in fact, to become “post-racial”. Since it came on the heels of true racial animus in a very conservative southern state, a place where racism is a very observable phenomena, it made things worse. On top of that, we’d already had Clinton supporters forward emails about Obama supposedly being a muslim, “shuck and jive” in New York, “Hussein”, so what else do you need to know?, and all that, it seemed like not just one slip of the tongue, but a pattern that had to be acknowledged at the top. Whether Bob Kerry or BET’s Johnson, campaign gaffes about race in Hillary’s campaign SEEM to be a still unacknowledged bit of racism from a quarter where it’s least appreciated, a stab in the back from a trusted friend, the Clintons.

As you also know, I think there are some very good reasons why Hillary has lost more states than she’s won and none of those wins can be easily ascribed to sexism while they can all be put down to something easily understood and quantified: Obama outworked and outspent Mrs. Clinton a bunch of places she thought she could carry with nothing more than her superior name recognition. Sometimes, Hillary, you just lose.

Now, it seems that Sen. Clinton is playing a sort of double reverse race card. She portrays Latinos as a monolithic group that dislikes, fears and won’t vote for a black. I’m not sure who should be more insulted, but I know I am. The very fact that she’s using this demographic as a racial identity wedge in a DEMOCRATIC PARTY primary is offensive to me, even though it’s what I’d expect from a Bush (and maybe McCain). I would dislike this ploy regardless of the gender or race of the candidate. I don’t oppose you because you’re a woman, I oppose you because I don’t like the way you campaign, Sen. Clinton.

All that being said, I’ve written that I wish Sen. Clinton had run as the transformative candidate she might be and now it’s time for me to give some advice to Obama. It’s just about too late for him to do this in Ohio and Texas (and R.I. and Vermont, also on March 4), but he could certainly do this for PA and NC. He should speak to gender. Address it in a straightforward way. I believe he should say that nurses and teachers aren’t paid enough for what they give to our society for no other reason than those jobs are traditionally held by women. I believe he should say that day care providers are the hidden underpinning of our society and economy and require and deserve to be regulated and subsidized so that women can go to work without going crazy with worry about their children and the cost of just getting a job taking up such a large part of the gain of the income from the job. Single mothers with school age children are almost as numerous as married couples with children, but they don’t get the tax breaks and our tax system would be better if this were addressed in real dollars for single mothers. When politicians talk about the loss of jobs overseas, we think of men in hard hats but that isn’t the reality. A great many of those jobs were held by women in the garment industry, for example, and a good place to make that observation would be in North Carolina where 1000s of those jobs evaporated over the past 25 years. The women who support Hillary have a point and it’s a good one: women bear the brunt of high heating home costs, of subprime mortgages, of high gasoline prices, of low service industry wages and the list goes on. I believe that Obama should say that the problem that women have with government is not that their co-workers call them a “bitch”, it’s that the economic deck is stacked against them. We can’t stop guys from ranking on gals, but we can eliminate the structural economic hurdles they face. If Hilllary won’t run as a transformative candidate for women, then the transformative candidate can extend his transformation over both genders.

But, what do I know?

Back to the horserace: Obama up in Wisconsin and Hawaii. Hillary wins Ohio but only gets a draw in Texas, especially when the delegates are counted, and Obama is made to look better by wins in Vermont and R.I. Pennsylvania will be a fight, but Obama wins on the back of better organization. North Carolina goes big for Obama and the race is over except for a few “deadenders” and the “automatic” superdelegates slide to Obama. Courtesy delegations of “uncommited” delegates will be seated from Michigan and Florida under the supervision of Dean, Edwards and Gore as “party elders”.

The general election against McCain will be superclose and is too far in the future for me to foresee anything else about it.

blogblah

P.S. My daughter in Tucson has pneumonia and I am right on the verge of just taking off to go see her even though I know I’ll just be one more thing to worry about. So, if I disappear, that’s where I’ve gone.

P.P.S. A bunch of documents, clothing and other stuff belonging to/related to JFK, Oswald and Ruby has been found in a Dallas safe according to Reuters. Get out your tin foils, the conspiracy theories will now begin to spin again. The CIA in Havana with a mafia hitman. Or, maybe Colonel Mustard in the library with a noose. Just a minute, I’ll decide.

Meanwhile, a U.K. paper reports that it takes the average bloke three years before he’ll propose and another couple after that before the actual, no kidding “I do”. I’m wondering if there is someone I met in 2005 who needs a proposin’?

Finally, this video for no reason except I’m feeling mischievious and rambunctious:

UPDATED EARLY FEB 16

A failure to recognize the importance of being out-organized in Iowa as well as the significance of an early caucus state 3d place began to cast doubt on Sen. Clinton’s stance as “inevitable”. While she was being the frontrunner, Sen. Obama was able to present himself to voters in his own way — as a reform minded, “clean and articulate” (Sen. Biden regrets … ), non-race-baiting stemwinding speaker. Later, she’d try to portray him as a sleazy southside Chicago ward heeler, but by then it was too late.

Her “electability” argument failed on Super Tuesday. She was no more electable than Obama and they fought to a tie.

“Ready on Day One” seems shakey in light of campaign staff turmoil — is this how she reacts to crisis? Cold dismissal and just ignore her losses? Doesn’t take personal responsibility, does she?

Now she’s got Latino “firewalls” and “wait until March.”

I wish she’d at least make it a noble end. I wish she would just say flat out that the White House needs a woman and a woman’s point of view. She calls herself transformative, why doesn’t she try BEING transformative and just get down and dirty and talk about gender? She’s a codependent mommy with a 10 point plan to fix everything. I’d frame every damn issue in terms of “the children” whether it was the mothers of wounded veterans or the debt we’ve piled up on our grandchildren or the costs of raising children and emergency room horror stories and on and on and on. It’s the vision thing, as we used to tell Bush I. I’d completely change the story from this insider campaign demographic superdelegates crap and I do it dramatically. I’d go to Walter Reed Hospital or some such in every state and visit wounded soldiers’ parents. I’d be in day care centers and nursing homes and not factories. I’d be saying every day that I could bring something to the White House no other candidate can bring — a mother’s heart, the heart that’s been broken by so many slights from men who underestimated her willingness to work hard and succeed in a man’s world. Perhaps I’d be just ever so slightly more subtle, you understand, but I swear to God that if I were her, I go down fighting in the ring and not in the back rooms of a convention hall. I’d defy them to deny me and destroy the hopes of every adolescent girl in the country, in the face of their shattered mothers’ wrath. If I’m Mark Penn, I tell momma to get mad and line everybody out and use the slogan: “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, and mommas all over this country ain’t happy.”

She can’t do that.

Sorry.

POST SCRIPT: I FOUND THIS QUOTE FROM THE GRUBBY LITTLE DICK MORRIS AFTER I WROTE THE ABOVE ABOUT HILLARY. DO YOU THINK HE READS MY STUFF? JUST SAYIN’.

She could have waged a grassroots, small-donor, Internet campaign of change based on being the first woman running for president with a serious chance of victory. The charisma could have been hers, the excitement hers and the novelty hers. But by embracing experience and pretending to be safe and tested, she deadened the excitement her candidacy could have generated.

HERE’S THE LINK. I CAN’T BELIEVE I THINK LIKE THAT WORM. OH, WELL. TURNS OUT HE WROTE HIS SHIT ON FEB 13, TOO.

I’m looking for a game-changer, someone willing to dare to be great. Maybe Obama will fail. But, I believe he will fail greatly and well. I won’t be ashamed if I lose because I think he — and we — did our best and didn’t go down without a fight. From day one, he “re-brands” America in a way that destroys a lot of prejudices we’ve well earned in the past few years. It’s a transformative start. I’m a lawyer and I hate what’s happened to our Constitution, our laws, our courts, the Department of Justice, my profession. He’s a constitutional law professor. He knows this Bush stuff is screwed up and I believe he will quickly move to change all that. He knows this war is whack but he’s not stupid about getting out (“We need to do a better job of planning to get out than we did planning to get in.”).

The Republican Party, I think one way or another are replaying the film of the helicopters lifting off the Embassy in Saigon. It paralyzes them in Baghdad. Trillions in debt, a recession, a war that can’t be won or lost. And, McCain managed to twist himself into knots over the looney far right social agenda.

Obama will win Wisconsin by about 5% and do better in Hawaii. Hillary will win both Ohio and Texas, but not get enough delegates to make up all the slack. Obama will win — barely — in Pennsylvania and big in North Carolina and it will be over.

Obama’s message will be policy oriented and include swipes at McCain about equally as Hillary over the next three weeks. By Pennsylvania and North Carolina, he will begin painting a picture of McCain as “the past” and attack his former “maverick” credentials by portraying them as mere flip flops — he was against the tax cuts before he was for the tax cuts. The campaign will become a reality show narrative but he will be the nominee at the convention as superdelegates break to him in the background. That’s only to keep our interest, though, because I think much of the latter part of the campaign the fix will be in and the stuff in the papers will be a kabuki show.

So, why do they keep playing the game now that I’ve called it? Go figure.

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Yesterday, Obama won the “Potomac Primary”, putting Virginia, Maryland and D.C. in his win category by large majorities. Today, both candidates are in Wisconsin for next Tuesday’s contest, Hillary having given up on Hawaii (?). A Republican Party sponsored poll by Strategic Vision shows Obama slightly leading in Wisconsin.

She says she’ll catch back up on March 4 in Ohio and Texas or, at the least, by Pennsylvania in April. We don’t yet know if North Carolina will “count”. One of my mainstays is a site called “Real Clear Politics” — it has real clear polling and real conservative commentary. It accumulates polls and data from other sources and does a rolling track of the average of the reports. It presently shows Obama leading: 1. In earned delegates; 2. In total delegates: 3. In total votes; 4. In total votes including Florida; 5. in the national polls against Sen. Clinton; and, 6. in the national polls against Sen. McCain.

Most of the pundits are starting to count her out and, it seemed to me, Obama made a “pivot” during the past week and is now running for president and not the nomination. Today, he “framed” an economic issue: he stood in a GM plant in Wisconsin and told them not to look for applause lines because he was announcing a new jobs creation program. He proposes to spend $210 billion over 10 years on two programs, one that creates environmental “green collar” jobs and another that restores infrastructure such as bridges and highways. I think this is an extraordinarily good idea in that it kills two birds with one stone, but I’ll save that discussion for another day. For now, let’s just say that over the past week or so he has been putting more and more substantive policy positions in his speeches, he’s been looking across the party divide at the presumptive GOP nominee and doing less of the rah-rah stuff.

That’s actually pretty classic “underdog” stuff in a campaign. First, it’s the warm and fuzzy introductions and getting to know you speeches and ads and only later the specifics of policy differences and ending with negatives on the other guy and a “hey, let’s all get along together” close. All along, he’s been ignoring Hillary, in a way, because the GOP has been beating Al Gore and John Kerry by “defining” those two guys in a year-long “narrative” of the campaign. Now, they won’t do that so easily with Obama because he’s “pre-framed” himself and defined his own identity. The GOP has also pre-“framed” the debate, but for the past 15 years against Hillary, their favorite punching bag. I think at first the GOP went after Hillary because Bill was “bulletproof” and going after his wife was a way of getting under his skin (we’ve seen that he can lose his head in her defense just this year.) This is all also very much in harmony with Obama’s 50 state campaign, going for delegates and wins even in the “red” states. Now, even GOP voters in the red states have seen the soft and conciliatory image ads Obama has run in those states. Republicans also know who Obama is, but on his terms and not Rush Limbaugh’s.

Obama’s jobs program also helps him sew up the raw gashes in the party. For a long time, supporters of Hillary, especially older white women, have complained that Obama doesn’t have the “policy heft” of Hillary, who can list 35 proposals she favors at the drop of an issue category. This “movement” stuff just doesn’t grab them, they want specific legislative goals that advance the people who sit at the kitchen table and pay the bills. It’s an old fight in the Democratic Party that goes back to the 19th Century. It’s the “process progressives” versus the “program progressives.” Without giving a history lesson, it’s the difference between those who emphasize fair housing and those who insist on building low cost/low income housing first. This is Obama trying to fill the gap between those positions, putting the environment as a big national goal (movement) and backing that up with “green collar” jobs that move away from energy dependence (global warming, the war in Iraq) and give people jobs to help us work out of the recession that Bush is leaving us with. There’s an extra special little Wisconsin spin on all that: the infrastructure jobs proposal is front and center in a state that remembers the collapsed bridge next door in Minn. better than we do here in Oklahoma (Is Minn. an even later primary state?).

From another perspective, Obama makes a major jobs policy speech and rips the horserace questions off the front pages to a certain extent because all those stories are about her and not him.

Meanwhile, there’s Hillary’s electoral “firewall” in Ohio and Texas to talk about. Again, I’ll try to be brief and I’m going to leave out Ohio all together for today and focus on Texas. (Last month, a poll showed Sen. Clinton ahead 23 in Ohio and this month’s only poll shows her 17 points ahead.) First, Texas has a very wierd election this time (for an extremely detailed explanation of the Texas election, I’m indebted to the texas obama blogger who is wonked into this.) : it’s part primary (daytime) and then turns into caucus (after 7 p.m.). No place but Texas has such a thing as far as I know and I can’t really figure out how that’s going to work exactly, but I’ll say this: it seems to me that Obama’s excellent “ground” organization and his upper educated and upper financial class block seems to me to give him some advantages over Hillary’s blue collar, high school grads. Next, let us not forget the shitty deal that Tom Delay pulled in Texas with redistricting. I still think it’s unconstitutional, but that’s another argument. Almost all the urban blacks in Texas have been crowded into a very few congressional districts as have the heavily Latino congressional districts along the southern border. If there really is a black/brown divide, the two will cancel out in the porportional delegate scheme of the Democrats. I don’t see it in the papers or even on the ‘net, but there’s an “understory”: Texas, more than most states, has a very deep “hate Hillary” strand and it even infects the Democrats. It’s an open primary, so independents will also be able to come to the caucuses and I think they will to vote against Sen. Clinton; they hate her just that much. My conclusion is that while the pundocricy says that Sen. Clinton “must” have all three of her firewall states, I think Texas is a place where Obama may surprise. If she “must’ win by more than 5 percent or more than 15 percent (in order to get the delegates she needs to catch up in earned delegates), then I don’t see her doing it in Texas. In fact, I’m persuaded by this anonymously blogged piece on Talking Points Memo that she’s dead in the water.

A final caveat: Hillary leads the only poll available to me by 12 points in Texas, and never let it be said she can’t fight and couldn’t win with that kind of “leg up”. Obama may not cruise without a good fight. I think she knows these 5 things she needs to win.

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Do I have a chance with that woman? Now, I can figure it out. Here’s the formula.

Flibbi, is there one of these for women, does this apply to you or is this one supposedly male only?

Nary a word about bowling in the whole formula. Imagine that.

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