Indiana Race Part III…IV?

Professor Taylor at PoliBlog links to this story from the Congressional Quarterly which quite scientifically projects what I said last week and earlier this week: Indiana doesn’t matter.

Indiana offers 72 delegates that will be apportioned by the results of the voting. Forty-seven of those 72 are directly related to results in Indiana’s 9 congressional districts. Of those 47, CQ predicts Obama and Clinton will split them right down the freaking middle with Clinton earning 24 and Obama 23. I figure if CQ is wrong by a few thousand votes in every district the result may come back a surprising 24 for Obama and 23 Clinton–a major (MAJOR) upset for the “Comeback Kid” but still close enough for her to drag on her continued presence in this race.

Of the rest CQ says this:

The other 25 pledged delegates at stake — 16 “at-large” delegates and nine party leader and elected officials (PLEOs) — will be distributed in proportion to the statewide vote. The 16 at-large delegates will split 8-8 if the winner takes less than 53.1 percent of the vote. The statewide winner is guaranteed a 5-4 victory among the nine PLEOs; it would require 61.1 percent of the statewide vote for a 6-3 edge.

So the remaining delegates will be apportioned based on statewide totals, and of course, we know that race is close. Two local pollsters have it a deadheat (48/47) and (46/46). Survey USA has Clinton by 9 with Obama closing the gap. (I don’t know if any of those polls were done after Rev. Wright’s most recent ridiculousness and none of them are post-Obama’s speech from yesterday). At any rate I suspect that the statewide delegates will be split basically down the middle with a tiny edge to Clinton.

If she’s lucky she will tighten her 159 delegate deficit by two or three. She will widen her superdelegate lead here by another handful–which still leaves her behind in the popular vote, behind in the delegate vote, and behind in votes overall.

¿Puede Ganar en Indiana el Sr. Obama? [No lo sé.]

This question is so blindingly obvious I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it on my own yet…nor have our local NPR affiliates. “The Latino vote” has been one of those bizarro story arcs for the whole campaign season and, like most northern states the recent wave of Latino immigration is a story on the tips of every tongue. The combination is the result of a natural fit. Get on it WFYI!

I have been saying that Obama’s populist jibber-jabber should appeal to Latin Americans who are not only accustomed to but seem to like politicians that cater to populist policies. But Clinton, probably because of something her husband did 15 years ago, seems to pull their vote anyway.

But Indiana, as I mentioned a few days ago, is a battleground state, sitting between Clinton-dominated Ohio and Obama-lovin’ Illinois. The demographics of the area show that its about 25% Latino, which should favor Obama getting the Latino vote there since East Chicago, Gary, Whiting, etc in the Lake County region (for those of you who are map-skillz deficient) is the part of the state that borders Chicago…Illinois….Obama’s home state. Their major news outlets are all Chicago-based. The name recognition for Obama in that region is particularly strong.

But if Clinton is able to rally the Latino vote here the same way she’s been able to elsewhere it could significantly undercut Obama’s lead in the delegate-heavy, urban northwest–an area that, without Latinos, would clearly favor him.

This is a particularly relevant threat for him since that region is steel mill-heavy too–if Pennsylvania taught us anything.

Obama should start putting soccer in his “I can play sports” repertoire.

Rev. Wright: Shut Up; Sen. McCain: Keep Talkin’

In-and-out blogging today so I can get back to my for-pay work–both topics meant to annihilate any lingering doubt that I might not be totally in the tank for Democrats in 2008 (It’s sometimes hard for me to forget that I once said good things about Senator Lugar.)

Reverend Wright
Reverent Wright knows better than I do which path will best serve his flock but here’s my opinion: If he really wants to promote social justice, if he really wants to help black people in American society, then helping Obama get elected is certainly as viable a plan–if not more viable–than him finding more ways to publicize his obviously antagonizing views.

Yes, I understand, he wants to antagonize; he wants to speak The Truth to The People–such is his obligation under the doctrine of his church. But part of being a good leader is understanding that there is a good time and a bad time for all things, a season, if you will…I read that somewhere. I’m not asking that he not say “God damn America,” I’m asking that he not say it right now. Is the second week of November just too far away? Honestly, one gets the feeling (and I am that one) that this is less about spreading the doctrine of black liberation theology and a lot more about collecting speaker’s fees–striking while the iron is hot and whatnot. If the love of God on Earth is made visible through the promotion of social justice then Wright will surely burn one day for flexing his vanity and working against the efforts of the larger movement.

The New DNC Anti-McCain ad:
Some thoughtful people have chimed in on McCain’s repeated admission that he doesn’t care if we stay in Iraq “for a 100 years” or “10,000.” To some, it seems that to continue to rag on McCain for his statements is purely and illegitimately to take them out of context. To others, like TPM’s Josh Marshall, these attackers are fully in the right because they are “using the senator’s own words.” The release of the new DNC ad has reignited this debate.

I had hoped to chime in on this myself before someone else made the proper defense but Marshall did it today. Basically it might be true that most of the attacks, to a very minor degree, take McCain’s statements out of context. He did say that he didn’t care if we were in Iraq for a 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 years. But he did not mean that we would be continuing the Iraq War for that long. What McCain meant was that we would occupy Iraq indefinitely under a similar arrangement as we have with Germany or Japan and boatloads of other nations, which, given the nature and success of those arrangements, is hardly a controversial policy.

The problem, as Marshall correctly points out is that:

…there’s little reason to believe our occupation of Iraq will ever be like that. We tried this in Lebanon; the French tried this in Algeria; the British even tried it in Iraq. Western countries have a very poor history garrisoning Muslim countries in the Middle East. Iraq isn’t like Germany or Japan, not simply because of the history of the country but because both countries accepted decades-long US deployments as a counterweight to threatening neighbors. The relevant point is that McCain believes American troops should stay in Iraq permanently. His pipe dream about Iraq turning into Germany doesn’t change that.

That’s the crux here, Iraq will continue to be a deadly experiment in imperialist overreach for years into the future and will likely never transform into anything else. So the fact that McCain really hopes that our 10,000-year occupation is a peaceful one is completely irrelevant. Marshall and I both love this elegant restatement of the point from the New Yorkers‘ Rick Hertzberg:

McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal–that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we’ll stay.

So regardless of whether or not you believe that McCain meant that we would have a 100-year-long war in Iraq or not, his policy will result in one, and thus this ad and all others that accuse McCain of endorsing a 100-year war in Iraq are 100% justifiably and correct. The fact that he has deluded himself into believing that that is not the case makes him more deadly, not less. This is a case where the context hurts McCain rather than helping him. Out of context he is merely calling for 100 years of war with Iraq presumably in an effort to secure the safety of Americans. In context he’s strategically incompetent and dangerously naive about national security matters; and his incompetence and naivete will result in a 100 year long war. Vote for him at the peril of your sons and grandsons (and their kids, and their kids’ kids…at least.)

Pennsylvania Post Mortem

I’m just dropping in real fast to leave some rabbit-pellet sized commentary on the results of the Pennsylvania primary last night. Hillary won big. Check out all the pollsters and commentators to find out why or how. I just want to comment on a few things, all of which, to some degree are related to why I haven’t blogged about the state of the campaign for a while.

None of this matters anymore. Obama and Clinton will be charging my state, Indiana, now. As a matter of fact, I think she’s in my city, giving a speech right now, as I write this. I thank them both in advance for the wheelbarrows of money they bring with them. I will gladly where a PORCH DOG PROUDLY SUPPORTS ___(Fill in the blank)___ for whichever candidate will pay for the insane amount of money it now takes to get to and from my poorly-paying non-profit job.

And this amount of attention has already inspired some of the local commentariat to say something akin to “for the first time, Indiana matters during the primaries.” No we don’t. No state has mattered since Tsunami Tuesday when both candidates proved that both would stay in and continue to split each states’ votes basically down the middle thereby depriving both of them the overwhelming majority needed to lock up the nomination.

More to the point, Obama came out far enough ahead on February 5 that it was mathematically impossible for Clinton to win the lead at all and pragmatically impossible that either would do it. So, while previous Super Tuesdays reduced the remaining states to no more than symbolic democratic value by choosing the nominees before their primaries, Tsunami Tuesday has reduced states to merely repeating the decision of all previous primaries. Each subsequent primary has amounted to negligible gains in the overall division of delegates.

The voters in Indiana don’t matter. Superdelegates in Indiana matter. For example, some of the talk today is whether Baron Hill will endorse Clinton (because that’s who his district seems to support) or whether he will go for Obama to undercut the progressive vote that currently supports one of his three competitors in the primary.

And Indiana superdelegates are just a smaller version of what the race has come to mean nationally. Large victories in certain states, like Pennsylvania, are supposed to act as messages to unpledged superdelegates around the country. Clinton’s 9-point victory in the Keystone State yesterday is supposed to reassure the ambivalent that she has what it takes to win in November.

But that is all neither here nor there. What it has really come down to is this: the superdelegates are either going to vote for Obama and therefore confirm the votes of the majority of the nation, or they will vote for Clinton (who cannot earn the majority vote at this point) and deny the majority opinion. How you feel about that is the largest determinant on how you feel about this continuing primary season. Personally I would prefer if Indiana’s vote didn’t matter in the old fashioned way it used to not matter.

Clinton has been unrelenting in her pursuit of seating the Michigan and Florida voters–a tactic that is as undemocratic as it is disgusting. But if she finds a way to convince the rules committee that doing so would benefit the party (it won’t) she stands a better chance of gaining the nomination but still at the risk of alienating a large segment of her voters.

Furthermore, Pennsylvania proved nothing. Pennsylvania will go to the Democrat in November (most likely) regardless of whether Clinton or Obama is on the ticket on Election Day. They will go Democratic because 160,000 Republicans have already switched parties there (a deficit of 320,000 to the Republicans) and that number is likely to grow between now an the general. They will go Democratic because of the war in Iraq and they will vote Democratic because of the economy which is only going to get worse between now and the fall. At the very least we are going to see increased gas prices during the summer which is sure to hurt McCain’s continued support of Bush’s military and economic “strategies.”

Sure Pennsylvania is a swing state, but the numbers are in and in the general they support Clinton and Obama not one or the other. Voting preference in the primaries does not reflect voter preference in the general and superdelegates are more aware of this (I would hope) than the general public and (apparently) the reporters covering the race.

Clinton deserves kudos for her big win last night (kind of) but she should still just sit down and let Obama and the DNC take on McCain.

Blueprint for the Presidency?

I had a Jay-Z/Obama joke but WordPress won’t let me post it. You can see it here.

Obama the Elitist! Seriously?

I’m about as pro-Obama as I’ve been pro- any candidate since as far back as I can remember following politics–and I’m counting the several years when I was really too young be at all sensible about such things. Like, when I was 5, Ronald Reagan was pictured on a horse pretty regularly and that may be one of the reasons I can’t quite shake the warm feelings I have of the Gipper. As a steady reader of Cracked magazine from 1984 to 1988 the various comic iterations of Reagan were always more favorable than their satirical swipes at Mondale too. I even have a solid memory of a Cracked magazine cover that showed Bush (41) debating Dukakis who was so short he had to stand on a box!!! (WHOO!) Hee-larious. I throw those in there only to add contrast to the way I like Obama. Even compared to my youthful, completely uncynical-about-government five-to-thireen year-old self, I’m pretty pro-Obama.

And I offer that paragraph as my way of “full disclosure” for what is about to come.

Are people really upset by the things Obama said in San Francisco?–because—if they are– they need to find a way to relax. That probably isn’t the way I’d say it if I were a Democratic worker or an Obama campaign staffer, but …I don’t know…seriously?

One comment I read on the topic quoted Obama at length with a link to the full transcript at Time’s website with the additional commentary that “reading them in context doesn’t make them better.” Well, I had read the quoted paragraph and thought: What’s the big deal? So I went to Time’s website to see if reading them in context made the comments worse.

It turns out that on that one point the commenter was right, reading them in context changed nothing whatsoever about the quoted passage. Obama was right when I read him out of context and he was right when read in context.

Except for a brief stay in northern Virginia I’ve only ever lived in economically depressed areas–often in economically depressed areas of economically depressed areas. I myself have been economically depressed for most of my life. Sometimes due circumstances growing up and sometimes do to poor decision-making on my own part.

I currently live in a state, Indiana, that self-identifies as a “blue collar” or a “manufacturing” state, despite the fact that the factories, plants, and farms here started closing down decades ago never to return. DECADES AGO. And despite the fact that, like most states, our largest growth sectors are service and health. Among Indiana’s most recent major success stories is its catering to the bio-engineering folks.

And you know what? The people are bitter. They do distrust the government. They do think that free trade agreements and immigrants have colluded to deprive them and theirs of their well-being. They do believe, at best, that their government has stood by and allowed this to happen and, at worst, have been an integral part of this demolition of their quality of life. Part of that bitterness is evident in the mere self-identification as an industrial state when in fact Indiana is hardly any such thing anymore. Like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Indiana would be more accurate to call itself “a McDonald’s state” or “a strip mall state” or “a Wal-Mart” state since that’s the employment that defines not just the character of the state but also it’s shifting landscape. But it doesn’t–for a couple of reasons. One, of course, is America honors its working class heroes and has for a long time…at least in its rhetoric. There is honor in being a “manufacturing state” that one cannot find near the grease trap of a Wendy’s. But the more important reason that Indiana (and Ohio and Pennsylvania) identify as “blue collar states” is because, they are upset that those jobs left and they want them back. Each successive presidential election comes with a slew of promises that those jobs are coming back and they never do. Living lives of constant disappointment and deprivation makes one bitter.

I suppose that it does require a little bit of care to fully parse the following sentence:

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

But parsing or not, it does not say that people are ignorant or mean or stupid or unsophisticated. It does not say that religion is “economically based” or anything else. What it says is that people are looking to the wrong things in order to create their politics. It says that when the real concern should be how to put food on the table, people are voting for the president that won’t take away their guns. It says people should be voting on how we are going to retrain an outmoded workforce but instead they’re focus on religious differences. It says that when people need to be concerned with how their government can and should be guiding them to better futures they are more concerned with how many immigrants walked through the desert last year.

Once again the people prove themselves incapable of perceiving the irony of real life. To react the way they did to this sentence actually proves how right Obama’s statement is. Now people are screaming: “Did you hear that, Obama thinks that I’m an ignorant redneck because I own a gun!” “He thinks I’m stupid because I love the Lord!”

So they have found a way to ignore their problems by concentrating on the second part of a statement that tried to remind people what their real problem is. Unbelievable.

But let’s take it one step forward. Obama was a community activists before he was a state senator. In that capacity he worked with some of the poorest people of one the country’s largest manufacturing centers (and third largest city). If Obama is an “elitist” who doesn’t understand working class America then what chance does corporate lawyer Hillary Clinton have? Or the son (and grandson) of a Navy admiral? Their positions are practically the definition of “elite” in America’s “military-industrial complex.”

Perhaps the only person in the country who can out elite these two is George Bush. As the son of a senator George Bush meets the minimum standard of “fortunate son” set by Creedence Cleawater Revival. But Bush’s dad went on to serve as head of the CIA, vice president, and president. Bush (43) himself was the CEO of an oil company and owner of a baseball team. AND he’s president. His brother was governor of Florida. His family is still regular visitors to the Royal House of Saud and…last I heard…Bush’s niece Lauren repeatedly has to defend herself against rumors that she is dating this or that prince. She is currently dating Ralph Lauren’s son.

I guess what I’m saying here boils down to this:

1. The statement would not be that bad, even if it was wrong.
2. It wasn’t wrong.
3. You can bitch about Obama’s “elitism” all you want but your choices are between his elitism, Clinton’s elitism, or McCain’s elitism and the latter two are head and shoulders more distinguished than Obama’s is and you’d have to be willfully ignorant to think otherwise.

Boycott the Olympics? But What About My Dreams?

It is important to note right off the bat that Clinton did not call for a boycott of the Olympics. Much of the boohooing and jeering from the headline-only-reading blogizens is that Clinton is demanding that Bush take the drastic-yet-worthless move of pulling our athletes from the competition ruining their lives for nothing more than a stern fingerpointing at Hu Jintao. Unless I failed to read the story properly (check for yourself here, but when you check please read more than the misleading headline and read [for godssake] the opening sentence) she has merely stated that she thinks the president should boycott the opening ceremonies.

Many would claim that that this is just a symbolic gesture that doesn’t mean anything and will lead nowhere but to offending our growing trade partner, China..and of course ruining the Olympics (woe upon woe!). Sure, a handshake, a cold shoulder, raising your voice when angry, being late to a meeting discussing irrelevant topics are all symbolic gestures but they do indicate a certain amount of satisfaction or dissatisfaction both to the recipient of that symbol and to those who witness it. That is the stuff of diplomacy. Much of diplomacy has always been about showing up to the right parties, having your name next to the right people at the right time, shunning those that attempt to act outside the system. Diplomacy…as a distinct way of convincing people to do what you want them to do without forcing them to through brute force…is an art that pulls its power from psychology and sociology, as well as rational and intellectual appeals. Furthermore this sort of symbolic communication can be timed for the utmost efficacy.

There’s a lot of money in the Olympics. Perhaps more importantly there is a lot of prestige that comes with being granted the Olympics–prestige that is, in part, related to the Olympics mission: promoting transnational brotherhood through the power of sport. And roll your eyes if you must, but the Olympics have repeatedly proven themselves to be an important venue for stating things of importance. And country’s will go extremely far to protect the glittering image that got them awarded the Olympics to start with.

China, for example has spent billions (billions) preparing for the coming tide of visitors from all all over the world. They have tightened several laws and loosened some others.

For another example, look to Mexico in 1968. Not the black-fisted salute, although that image is important not because it happened, or because it happened at a sporting event, but because it happened at the Olympics. I’m talking about the student protests a few months before the summer Olympics games that were thought to be so embarrassing for the Mexican government that the government arranged to have the protesters massacred. A move that, while horrible and dramatic, did significantly quiet the amount of domestic protest in Mexico during the games. I’m not condoning the massacre of dissidents (what a grandly self-destructive move that would be). I’m citing it as an example of the extremes that governments will go through in an attempt to not sully their reputations at Olympic time. Turns out that student massacres are bad way to not have your reputation sullied but that is neither here nor there at the moment.

After admitting that I’m a reader of Daniel Drezner’s blog, it would probably be wrong of me to not credit him for saying first what I’m about to say. Basically Clinton’s proposal is limited in scope, designed to draw attention to China’s extreme violations of human rights (and its clear vision that there are no such things as human rights) without entering into an all-or-nothing pact that would hurt American businesses, American athletes, or our burgeoning relationship with a major world power that over the last 20 years or so has made significant improvements in the human rights area, to say nothing of their increasing importance in American foreign policy interests like the six-party talks with North Korea.

It is possible, even, as Drezner points out, to make this statement even more important by acting in conjunction with the leader’s of Germany, France, and ideally some developing nations as well. Furthermore, it is possible that Bush could use the threat of a boycott to illicit some immediate concessions from China, specifically on the Darfur front, if Bush can convince France and Germany not to go through with their possible and planned boycotts respectively.

The alternative is to do nothing and that seems to be the consensus of many. That, since we won’t change China overnight with a symbolic boycott of the opening ceremonies we might as well do nothing at all, after all, why risk offending a country that holds so much of our debt and has such strategic value as an ally and trading partner? Well, that recommendation denies how much has diplomacy goes on with China every day. China did not wake up one morning and decide to be America’s trading partner. Nor did America simply wake up one morning and decide to be China’s. That series of agreements was the result of a series of diplomatic tits for tats–China agreeing to certain policy constraints to gain access to America’s markets and America promising to, among other things, cool the hot rhetoric we have historically aimed at China. Basically, the threat of an Olympic boycott is exactly the kind of thing we have done with every reluctant ally-in-waiting. Only the effect of such a move today is amplified because of our trade relations and because of the Olympics.

To do nothing with Hu Jintao still listed as one of the top 20 human rights violators is really to condone that activity. There is no two ways about it. That is not to say that a boycott of the opening ceremonies is the only way to make a statement, there are plenty of things that can be done, and likely will be, but an opening ceremony boycott would not be the knife in China’s the back as many would like to paint it…nor would it destroy the dreams of our hard-working athletes or ruin the Olympics. As a matter of fact, I would think that a lot of the athletes participating in this year’s games are just as distraught as some of those recommending a boycott–although conflicting personal and professional interests will keep them from saying so for the moment. An acknowledgment from the president that America will participate in the games in a spirit of brotherhood through sportsmanship but does not condone the ruthlessness of the PRC might help alleviate some of the guilt that they are feeling for participating in such a grand money-making event for the Chinese dictatorship.

Greenwald v Drezner

I was going to write about this story from yesterday’s NY Times which describes the sad fate of the Sabal Palm Audubon Center which, thanks to a completely backward, short-sighted, and ultimately futile public policy will find its way to the other side of the new fence being erected along the US’s southern border. Mostly what I want to point out is that this such a pure case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face that I almost can’t put it into words. What is the fence supposed to do? Stop illegal immigrants. Why? Because illegal immigrants are a drain on our resources and dilute the labor pool thereby lowering wages–the combined effect of which lowers our quality of life. So, to defend against this lowering of living standards it seems reasonable, somehow, to wall Americans away from a gorgeous nature preserve that exists, at least in part, to raise the quality of life of those that live near enough to enjoy it.

Furthermore, America’s inability to halt illegal immigration is falsely believed to be an infringement on its sovereignty. Well, what better way to get a handle on your sovereignty that to essentially cede your country to another country? I mean, after all, if there’s no America to immigrate to, we win! Right?

But instead I want to jump in on a little cross-blogging warfare that cropped up yesterday between two bloggers I respect immensely, Glenn Greenwald at Salon (dot com) and Tufts University professor, Daniel Drezner at his personal blog. I want to jump in not because either Greenwald or Drezner need me to defend them but because I tried to comment on Drezner’s blog yesterday and I got a weird 404 Error and if I don’t tell it to someone I might just combust.

Basically yesterday Greenwald published this where he lists various NEXIS search results that, to him, indicate that the mainstream press is more interested in covering Obama’s bowling record than the fact that John Yoo’s legal “opinion” that the president is king of America and that torture is fine and dandy became effectively US law.

In response, Daniel Drezner wrote this where he critiques Greenwald’s methodology on a variety of points and concludes that

“Greenwald might be a good blogger/columnist, but he’s not that great at social science.”

Ouch.

Apparently Megan McArdle at The Atlantic (dot com) also chimed in but I don’t care because I didn’t read her article and Greenwald (among others) is pretty good at successfully ripping her arguments to tiny little pieces. Those two spawned this response from Greenwald today.

Basically Drezner and Greenwald are talking past one another here. Drezner (rightfully) critiques Greenwald’s methodology while not addressing the more salient point of whether or not the press is overly concerned with Lewinksy rumors and under concerned with vital policy considerations at the national level. Meanwhile Greenwald chalks up Drezner’s critique of methodology as defense for an indefensible press corps.

I’m not a social scientist but I can generally see bad social science when it occurs. And Greenwald’s is clearly flawed, not just for the reasons that Drezner, which are three:

1. the news cycle hasn’t played out for all the stories yet,
2. the press runs more stories when the participants make comments on them and
3. the press (and the country) are more concerned with America’s future not it’s past.

To flush out point 1, Greenwald begins his post with the fact that “in the past two weeks” several very important stories have broken and among them are Mukasey’s slip up that the Bush team failed to listen to a phone call that might have prevented 9/11¹ and the John Yoo memo. He then does a NEXIS search going back thirty days and because “Clinton and Lewinsky” gets 1,079 hits and “Yoo and torture” only gets 102 he determines that the MSM is horrible.

Let’s just start here, the MSM is horrible, but why (why oh why) if these exciting and important stories only date back 14 days, would you search back 30? Should the press have been reporting on the Mukasey/ 9-11 slip up before he made it? So “Obama and Wright” gets thirty days of hits while “Yoo and Fourth Amendment” only gets 14? Of course the numbers aren’t going match up, but they also aren’t going to give you an accurate picture of what’s going on.

And “Clinton and Lewinsky,” is a particularly misleading search² because there are at least three different stories there

1. The famous one starring the ex-president and his intern
2. the new rumors about the ex-president’s wife and the intern and
3. the shenanigans starring the ex-president’s daughter being asked about the intern.

I think that Greenwald does a pretty good job reducing Drezner’s other arguments: 2) That the press reports more on stories that those involved comment on: e.g., Obama did not give a bowling press conference and it still got 1,043 hits³while John Yoo has talked about his role in the White House and the two Yoo searches combined only yielded 118 hits; and 3) that the press is more concerned with the nation’s future and not its past.⁴

A better comparison would chart the daily hits for each story as it played out across their news cycles. The Wright story for example played out over several weeks with peaks when the story broke and again when Obama gave his widely covered speech in response. “Obama and Wright” is turning up at least two stories over the entire 30 days. Furthermore, “Obama and patriotism” (1,607 hits) is likely turning up many of the same stories since the crucial moment of Wright’s sermon was his “God damn, America” line. So the question is, when the press is covering a story to at their fullest, how much did they cover it–not how much did they cover it since some arbitrary date in the past.

In any case, even with better methodology I think Greenwald would still be able to prove his point. The numbers are so far apart that it is fairly clear that if one were to measure them in the way I suggest the petty stories are still going to come out the clear coverage winners. And there is no reason that “Obama and bowling” should be getting over 1,000 hits. It simply doesn’t matter at all. Or, if “Obama and bowling” is going to get over 1000 hits then “Yoo and torture” should be as well. It’s a more important story. And so, while Drezner may be accurate in his charge that Greenwald could have done a better analysis, it does not follow necessarily follow that Greenwald’s conclusion is false.

Greenwald, for his part, is here a victim of the same poor thinking he so often (rightfully) points out in others. He is forever defending his comments from attacks. I honestly couldn’t begin counting the number of times he has felt compelled to add an update or a new post that says something to the effect of “Just because I defended X in this instance doesn’t mean I support X for president or think that X’s party is handling this situation appropriately. I just meant what I said, that X is being reasonable and taking the right approach.”

Drezner is right, at least on point 1, that Greenwald’s methodology was poor. Drezner could have, as I did, point out more ways that Greenwald’s methodology was poor. Even if Drezner’s analysis itself was incorrect on points 2 and 3, a critique of Greewald’s social science does not amount to a defense of the press. It is simply what Drezner said it was, a critique of Greenwald’s approach. And Greenwald should know that.

1. They didn’t; Mukasey is just a liar and a fear-monger

2. And I know Greenwald knows it because he’s mentioned all three of them on his blog

3. “Obama and Wright” to prove Drezner’s point got over 3,000…although I repeat, the counting was unfair. The Wright story is getting two more weeks of NEXIS hits than the bowling story and is arguably more important.

4. Even though the president who wanted that Yoo memo is still in office and the country is poised to elect a guy who is unlikely to roll back the “president is king” part of the opinion even if he rebukes the “torture is good” part.

Huckabee Gives Wright Some Slack

I know I have at least one  Huckabee fan as a semi-regular reader so I thought I’d post this (I snagged it off Ezra Klein’s blog): Huckabee on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (he of “God damn America” fame).

 And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…”

Barack Obama’s Speech on Race

I just finished hearing (and reading) the speech Obama gave today. I thought it was excellent. In terms of performance, Obama did not reach the heights he has with previous oratorical efforts but he definitely got close, especially in the second half. He bumbled a couple of times, nothing big at all and he recovered gracefully. He varied very little from the speech that was sent out to reporters ahead of time.

(The version provided here [PDF] was edited, by me, to account for the minor differences. I did not edit in phrases that were repeated do to pauses, nor did I mark pauses for applause or what were clearly errors in delivery except for one that Obama himself edited to fit in. I marked conjunctive additions and substantial changes made for either clarity or rhythmic reasons).

What is most striking about this speech, and there are a handful of striking things, is its level of nuance. It is not a sound-byte heavy speech and when there are sound-bytes to be had, they are likely to favor Democratic opposition. Saying that Reverend Wright “has been like family” to him has already been picked up by Fox News despite the fact that the phrase is immediately preceded by “as imperfect as he may be” (4).

Another striking element is that I just can’t imagine any other person, politician or not, being able to pull this speech off other than Obama. His eloquence combined with his mixed racial and ethnic heritage make him uniquely capable of delivering a speech on the innumerable reasons it is difficult to talk about race in this country.

Would even John Edwards, populist that he is, be able to talk straightforwardly enough to say that “…the white community…[must acknowledge]…that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people” (7) or that white people have justifiable resentment toward government actions like busing or “…when they hear that.an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed” (6)? I don’t think so.

Would any current politician risk quoting William Faulkner in any speech about race, if they ever got brave enough to give a speech about race?

I doubt it.

I guess the last most striking thing about the speech is that I think it might work. The hardcore racists and the hardcore conservatives in this country were never going to vote for Obama to begin with. They were lost to him before he was in the race. They will use Reverend Wright’s sermons to galvanize themselves and to convince themselves that they are making the right decision based on something other than emotional reasons. But for those voters who were considering Obama but that might have gotten scared away by his association with Reverent Wright, I think this speech may help assuage their fears. Furthermore, and more importantly Obama has re-engineered the biggest strike against him so far into nearly 40 minutes of free press coverage. He gave a speech today that every news outlet in the country either covered or aired. In that speech Obama looked presidential to the Nth degree. He was reasoned, he was calm, he was humble, he was eloquent. He was sensitive and level-handed on a possibly riot-inducing issue. He favorably worked in the OJ trial. He called attention to the ridiculousness of modern campaign coverage without sounding whiny. He appeared literate and well-educated without appearing elitist or demagougish. He sounded respectful not only of his Republican opposition but of the differences over racial issues within the Democratic Party. He was even able to extend the wide expanse under his protective wing to Hillary Clinton without appearing to be condescending to her campaign at all.

It was a master stroke of politicking. If Obama goes on to win the election in November, those that chart the course for such things will mark today’s speech as an important move. It was exactly this sort of thoughtful response to vicious attacks that Kerry failed to do in 2004. One thing Obama has made clear is that he is rubber and everybody else is glue. If you attack him he will use his 9th level verbal judo to make you look like an ignorant buffoon. In the wake of his speech those that continue to attack him on this issue are already finding that they look insipid or worse.

The speech is worth the read but, obviously, it’s better if you can watch or listen to it. We simply don’t talk about race in this country at this level and for Obama to do so is fairly amazing. It’s going to be an important moment in this election cycle and it may well prove to be one of the more important moments in early 21st century politics. Of course, I may be too optimistic when it comes to these things. Get back to me in 20 or 30 years, will ya?