Right Wing Nut House

Obama’s problem associations with Wright, Rezko, and Ayers have really got the creative juices flowing on the left as they twist themselves into rhetorical and intellectual pretzels trying to downplay or dismiss, their candidate’s monumentally poor judgement in hanging around with these folks for much of his adult life.

Some may read this apologia for Obama’s associations from Reed Hundt at TPM Cafe and shake their heads in wonderment at the cluelessness of the author. Others may marvel at the sheer brazenness of Hundt’s dismissive comments about Ayers and Wright, admiring the guts it took to reveal oneself as an idiot.

Still others may laugh at the appellation “Swiftboating” as a descriptive for people who tell the truth about what Wright and Ayers have sermonized and accomplished in the past that makes them such problematic friends. Even the candidate has accepted as true what these hateful FOO’s (Friends of Obama) have said and done thus making the charge “Swiftboating” Obama pretty silly - as if the candidate would “Swiftboat” himself.

But as an anthropological exhibit showing an utter lack of honesty and integrity by the left in commenting about people that ordinary Americans find despicable, Hundt nails it:

It ought to be beneath senator McCain to have his side label Obama as a terrible person because he has failed to shun a fellow who did wrong 40 years or is not a patriot because he neglected to wear a flag on lapel, or declined to disavow a Korean War vet and pastor because he spoke too harshly one Sunday. McCain went to Vietnam to re-open peaceful relations, so he knows the place of forgiveness. He is a man of military honor and knows how to respect a friend and a foe. Hence, it ought to be beneath McCain to tolerate attacks against Obama that closely resemble the despicable charges bush launched against McCain in South Carolina in 2000. It should be the case that mccain doesn’t just pretend to stop these attacks, but actually does so. Aside from his laissez-faire positions on iraq and the economy, McCain’s primary disqualification for the oval office is that he knows these vile, crazy attacks are wrong for America but he won’t stop them.

Hundt has walked the bases loaded and set the ball on a tee for me to hit. Far be it for me to not oblige him.

“…he has failed to shun a fellow who did wrong 40 years…”

Yes, some may think trying to blow up the Pentagon is “wrong” although many more people might also believe that carrying out that act of barbarism and to this day not regretting it (indeed, wishing to have tried to commit more mayhem) puts such an individual beyond the pale of ordinary society. Most would agree that we should consign unapologetic miscreants like Ayers to the outer darkness where only criminals and radical wackos (and liberal universities) will have dealings with him.

Instead, Hundt believes we are “swiftboating” Obama by pointing out in the Age of Terror that our President being on a first name basis with an unrepentant terrorist is probably a bad example to set and causes most Americans with half a brain to wonder “What is that guy doing with William Ayers?”

For in truth, Ayers has not only not repented his criminal acts, he still holds views of America that are so outside the mainstream - hateful and laughably adolescent views they are - that carrying on a long term friendship with this lout calls into question not only Obama’s judgement but his sanity as well. Indeed, his campaign said after the ABC debate that Ayers and his wife, fellow former terrorist Bernadine Dohrn were “respectable fixtures of the mainstream in Chicago.”

Ayers most recent pronouncements (and Dohrns) are contained on some audio tapes dug up by a small radio station in Chicago and blasted over the internet on Wednesday by Powerline and Hugh Hewitt. The tapes show that Ayers and Dorhn are in the mainstream of Chicago politics only if Josef Stalin is mayor and Pol Pot is Cook County Commissioner.

This would come as a surprise to Mayor Daley who also has had kind words to say about Ayers/Dorhn - no doubt because he doesn’t wish to anger the liberals in Hyde Park and because he has a sneaking admiration for the former terrorist’s chutzpah. Daley is also a crook who gets away with his crimes which at least gives him something in common with Ayers. There is no excuse for Obama.

Hundt knows all of this and yet chooses to dismiss Obama’s association with Ayers in a way that suggests we shouldn’t be beastly to the candidate for hanging around with an ex-shoplifter. Pardon my gas but that fart ain’t stinkin’.

“…or declined to disavow a Korean War vet and pastor because he spoke too harshly one Sunday…”

First, I would ask my readers with an IQ above 60 to stop screaming at your monitor. Mr. Hundt can’t hear you and you are disturbing the dog who thankfully, can’t read what this monumentally dishonest and royally idiotic liberal has written about Jeremiah Wright. Otherwise, your beloved pooch might jump up on your desk and urinate on the screen -which is better than Hundt’s ridiculous notion of Wright’s rantings deserve.

Yes, everyone knows that Reverend Wright did quite a bit more than “speak harshly” about America, about whites, about Jews, and just about anyone else who this misanthropic nincompoop railed against in his sermons. If Hundt believes Wright saying “Not God Bless America but God Damn America” to be only “speaking harshly,” I would hate to see how he would categorize some of Bin Laden’s diatribes. Perhaps Osama is “just letting off steam” or maybe he’s “remonstrating” against the US.

Wright, of course, is a bigoted, America hating, anti-Semitic, nut case who believes AIDS was invented by the government to kill black people. And questioning Obama’s knowledge of his “Spiritual Advisor’s” outrageously hateful and despicable views is extremely relevant in that the candidate has denied being aware either in public or private that his pastor held to these positions.

If found otherwise, Obama is a bald faced liar. And it would appear just looking at what Tom Blumer has been able to come up with that either Obama looked the American people in the eye during his speech in Philadelphia and lied through his teeth or he was asleep during Wright’s sermons and never read any of the Trinity Church bulletins or purchased any tapes of his unbalanced pastor’s talks.

Blumer, by the way, makes a compelling case that Obama was wide awake during the services, went so far as to take notes of Wright’s sermons in the space provided by the church bulletin, and purchased at least one tape of Wright’s talks.

When Hundt makes his stupidly dishonest point that Wright preached his hate mongering only “one Sunday” he is either ignorant or is clumsily trying to excuse Obama’s incredible lack of judgement in continuing his association with a man the vast majority of Americans would have shunned like the plague after only one of his outbursts.

Instead, the candidate spent 20 years absorbing a worldview so at odds with the reality that is America that one can legitimately question Obama’s gut feelings about this country. This may anger the left but most of the rest of us see questioning Obama’s beliefs about America as a logical and reasonable outgrowth of the importance the candidate himself places on his relationship with Wright.

And this brings us to the essence of why Ayers, Wright, Rezko, Auchi, and other FOO’s are legitimate campaign issues; Obama’s claim that despite his lack of experience, it is his superior “judgement” that should recommend him to the American people. Obama conveniently tags questions about his associations as “distractions.” But are they?

Krauthammer:

With that, Obama identified the new public enemy: the “distractions” foisted upon a pliable electorate by the malevolent forces of the status quo, i.e., those who might wish to see someone else become president next January. “It’s easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics” and “trivializes the profound issues” that face our country, he warned sternly. These must be resisted.

Why? Because Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those “Saturday Night Live” parodies were so devastatingly effective.)

Then came the three amigos: Tony Rezko, the indicted fixer; Jeremiah Wright, the racist reverend; William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. And then Obama’s own anthropological observation that “bitter” working-class whites cling to guns and religion because they misapprehend their real class interests.

In the now-famous Pennsylvania debate, Obama had extreme difficulty answering questions about these associations and attitudes. The difficulty is understandable. Some of the contradictions are inexplicable. How does one explain campaigning throughout 2007 on a platform of transcending racial divisions, while in that same year contributing $26,000 to a church whose pastor incites race hatred?

You explain it either one of two way; towering hypocrisy or a disconnect from the way things are percieved outside of his own narrow, elitist social circles. I lean toward the latter but don’t dismiss the former. And this gets to the issue of Obama’s “judgement” that Ed Morrissey handles quite nicely:

Remember that one of the campaign slogans for Obama was “Judgment to Lead”. I often use the picture of Obama with that slogan on the lectern just to emphasize that Obama himself opened the debate over his judgment. Now that people want to start asking about the judgment he claims as his superior quality for the election, he wants to label it a “distraction”, but without it he has nothing else to offer except three undistinguished years as a backbencher in the Senate.

With no track record of legislative accomplishments and no evidence of any real engagement in change, judgment would have eventually become a focal issue for Obama anyway, even if he hadn’t brought it up himself. That means his judgment in launching his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist like William Ayers becomes relevant and germane, especially since the political connections between the two continued after Ayers announced that he wished he’d gone further in his political violence. Even in 2007, Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn talk about overthrowing the “corporate government” of the United States, to replace it with something more akin to Red China.

What is Obama’s judgment on Ayers and Dohrn? They’re “respectable figures of the mainstream in Chicago.”

The left will continue to downplay, dismiss, or just plain lie about Obama’s associations and why they are important. But as revelations continue to bubble up from the murky depths of American radicalism about these two characters and others, questions about Obama’s judgement, his core beliefs, his honesty and integrity, and how he feels about the rest of us will continue to be raised.

I would say to Mr. Hundt that this is not “Swiftboating” - not by any means. If by using that term you imply that Obama is being falsely accused you are greatly mistaken. Accusations based on audio and video evidence that slaps ordinary Americans in the face with their virulent hatred and radical chic doctrines do more to undermine your candidate than anything Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or the right wing “noise machine” could ever do.

I stand corrected.

Actually, the fact that I’m sitting quite comfortably doesn’t matter as much as the fact that I was wrong.

Hillary Clinton did not - I repeat, did not - score a double digit victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.

As of now, CNN’s official tally of Hillary’s win shows her with 54.7501939494590227735948765900% of the vote to Obama’s 45.40193856383920203294874665848% percent of the vote for a victory margin by Hillary of 9.301929348375758339929219919287%.

So many of you were adamant that it was wrong of me to make the claim that Hillary won by “double digits” that I felt a correction was in order. In fact, some of you went to great pains to show me the error of my mathematical ways. Unfortunately, my Cray is down at the moment so I could only give a limited number of decimal point spread. I suppose I could have called the NSA and borrowed theirs but I understand they’re a little busy right now trying to decrypt the latest al-Qaeda intercepts so I nixed that idea.

I retract my earlier pronouncement that Hillary won by 10% or “double digits. Except if you’re talking about white voters.

Or Catholic voters.

Or Jewish voters

Or voters who go to church once a week.

Or voters who own guns.

Or voters 45-59 years of age.

Or voters 60 and over.

Or Female voters.

Or those with no college degree.

Or those who make $15-30 thousand and $30-$50 thousand, and $50-$75 thousand, and $100-$150 thousand a year.

Or those who believe the economy is the most important issue.

Or those with a union member in the household.

Other than that, Obama did great. He spent $11 million and got the stoner vote, the Limousine Liberal vote, the celebrity watchers vote, the elitist egghead vote, the atheists, anti-gun nuts, and open borders vote (the “Anti-Bittergate crowd), the perpetual student vote, and hundreds of thousands of rightly proud African Americans.

With a coalition like that, I predict that ex-President McGovern will be the first one to call with his congratulations on election night.

Conventional wisdom says Obama is not in any danger of losing the nomination as long as he remains ahead in the pledged delegate count. I would say that this is true at this point despite his blow out loss yesterday to Clinton in Pennsylvania.

And yes friends, it was a blow out. When you lose 62% of the white vote, that’s a blowout. When you lose 70% of the Catholic vote, that is a blowout. When you lose 57% of the Jewish vote, that’s a blowout. When you lose 58% of churchgoers, that is a blowout. When you lose 54% of workers making less than $50,000 a year (and win only those making less than $15,000 and more than $150,000), that’s a blowout. When you lose 63% of seniors, that’s a blowout. When you outspend your opponent by 3-1 and still lose by 10 points, that’s a blowout.

Obama was thoroughly and completely trounced, being saved only by his dominance with young voters and African Americans. Otherwise, Clinton would have gotten her 20 point win and we would probably be looking at an entirely different campaign today.

But we’re not. And Obama is not in trouble - yet. The May 6 primary in Indiana will be an interesting test for him since he is expected to breeze to victory in North Carolina’s contest held the same day. Once again he will have the opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of the Clinton campaign - this time by winning Indiana.

Indiana does not set up well for Obama except in the southeastern northwestern part of the state where Gary, an ex-steel town with an 85% African American population will give him overwhelming support thanks to its proximity to Chicago. The rest of the state will be a problem for him - especially Indianapolis which is one of the more conservative big cities in America. And Indiana voters look something like those same rural Pennsylvania voters who just snubbed him. Clearly, he has an uphill climb to defeat Clinton in the Hoosier state.

It is in North Carolina where Obama is in a must win situation. He is way ahead in the polls at this point - anywhere from 9-13 points. But looking at the PA exit polls once again, trouble may be brewing in Obamaland that could make North Carolina and much tougher race than it appears to be now.

In a piece headlined “The Next McGovern?” John Judis at TNR shows what is happening to some heretofore strong constituencies for Obama:

For his part, Obama cut into Clinton’s advantage, but couldn’t erase it. Even though he campaigned extensively among white working class Pennsylvanians, he still couldn’t crack this constituency. He lost every white working class county in the state. He lost greater Pittsburgh area by 61 to 39 percent. He did poorly among Catholics–losing them 71 to 29 percent. A Democrat can’t win Pennsylvania in the fall without these voters. And those who didn’t vote in the primary but will vote in the general election are likely to be even less amenable to Obama.

But Obama also lost ground among the upscale white professionals that had helped him win states like Wisconsin, Maryland, and Virginia. For instance, Obama won my own Montgomery County, Maryland by 55 to 43 percent but he lost suburban Philadelphia’s very similar Montgomery County by 51 to 49 percent to Clinton. He lost upscale arty Bucks County by 62 to 38 percent.

My colleague Noam Scheiber attributes Clinton’s success among these suburbanites to the influence of Governor Ed Rendell, who campaigned with Clinton, but I wonder whether Obama’s gaffes and his suspect associations–whether with Wright or former Weatherman Bill Ayers or real estate developer Tony Rezko–began to tarnish his image among these voters. If so, the electoral premise of Obama’s campaign–that he can attract middle class Republicans and Independents–is being undermined.

Indeed, if you look at Obama’s vote in Pennsylvania, you begin to see the outlines of the old George McGovern coalition that haunted the Democrats during the ’70s and ’80s, led by college students and minorities. In Pennsylvania, Obama did best in college towns (60 to 40 percent in Penn State’s Centre County) and in heavily black areas like Philadelphia.

VDH also is channeling McGovern today:

They won’t be able to force Hillary out since she still has strong arguments — the popular vote may end up dead even, or even in her favor; while he won caucuses and out-of-play states, she won the critical fall battlegrounds — and by plebiscites; she is the more experienced and more likely to run a steady national campaign; she wins the Reagan Democrats that will determine the fall election; and by other, more logical nomination rules (like the Republicans’ fewer caucuses, winner-take-all elections) she would have already wrapped it up. There seems something unfair, after all, for someone to win these mega-states and end up only with a few extra delegates for the effort. The more this drags out, the more Obama and Hillary get nastier and more estranged from each other — at precisely the time one must take the VP nomination to unite the party.

On the plus side, Hillary is showing a scrappy, tough blue-collar talent that is critical for November — but apparently it will be all for naught, or worse, cause lots of these Middle America “clingers” to go over to McCain.

More and more, McCain will want to run against Obama and his far weaker coalition of elite whites, African-Americans, students — and closets of skeletons. More and more, we will start to see the buyer’s remorse of midsummer 1972.

In short, Obama’s base is shrinking and there is very little he can do to stop the bleeding.

This then, is the biggest race left for Obama. He is not expected to win in Indiana, or West Virginia the following week or Kentucky the week after that (Oregon is considered a toss-up). All of a sudden, North Carolina becomes a must win for him - proof that he still has that old magic and that his campaign is not falling apart, shriveling under the onslaught from Hillary, McCain, and a suddenly querulous press.

No, Obama is not in trouble because he lost Pennsylvania. But the harbingers in the exit polls tell a story by which Obama may not enjoy the ending. If he loses North Carolina, the drumbeat will begin from many Democrats to ignore the pledged delegate total and pick the candidate that has the best chance of defeating John McCain and the Republicans in November.

Correction: Gary is in the northwest not southeast part of the state. If it was in the southeast, the rest of the state would be under water, drowned by Lake Michigan.

My latest column is up at PJ Media. In it, I break down the numbers from last night’s primary win for Clinton and show why Democratic superdelegates should be worried:

Hillary Clinton received 62% of the white vote. Barack Obama received 89% of the African American vote. The question facing superdelegates is: how can they run a candidate who loses the white vote by almost 2-1 in a state they absolutely must carry to win the election? And it wasn’t just the voter’s race that made a difference. Clinton ran up astonishing majorities in the mostly white, mostly rural counties in the northeast part of the state. In Luzerne county she received 75% of the vote. She got 70% of the vote in Wyoming county. Culturally conservative but economically moderate, these blue collar voters in places like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre were considered at one time “Reagan Democrats” - reliable Democratic voters when it came to candidates on the down ballot but Republican when voting for President. In recent elections, they have returned to the Democratic party in greater numbers and have given the party a victory in the state in every election since 1988.

These are the voters Barack Obama told his rich donor friends in San Francisco were “clinging” to religion and guns rather than voting what he feels are their economic interests. Indeed, Clinton bagged 58% of gun owners in the state while taking 58% of those who attend church weekly. Obama received 56% of the votes from those who never attend religious services.

There is no evidence that Obama’s San Francisco remarks cost him any votes. But they certainly didn’t win him any, and the comments may have reinforced the image with these rural white voters that Obama does not share their core values.

The religious divide also tells a story. For the first time since 1976, Democrats won the nationwide Catholic vote in 2006. This vote is vital in several northeastern states and is important in states that lie along an arc that extends from the shores of Lake Erie in New York down through the rest of the Great Lakes, all the way to Illinois and then up through Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Catholic vote is decisive in Pennsylvania with nearly 40% of the total vote last night made up of Catholics.

I don’t think the Democrats dare nominate Hillary now that it is a certainty that Obama will win the pledged delegate race. But it is still six weeks to the end of the primary season and Obama seems to be averaging a gaffe every couple of weeks. Perhaps he will really stick his foot in it at some point and force the supers to switch to Hillary.

But his handlers have scrapped the idea of any more debates and the candidate himself is dodging the press as if they all had ebola. Being thus shielded, all we will see of the candidate and read about are the issues he and his supporters wish to highlight.

Which “issues” are those? The adoring crowds. The spine tingling rhetoric. The fainting women. How charismatic he is.

You know…all those important issues the left was complaining weren’t covered at the ABC debate last week.

One of the criteria the American people use to judge a presidential candidate is “likability” - a nebulous and indefinable attribute to be sure. Experts tell us that part of the “likability” question is whether the voter wants this guy (or woman) coming into their homes every damn day for the next 8 years via television.

Obviously, this attribute has not played a huge role in determining how people vote - otherwise people would have chosen Hubert Humphrey’s “Happy Warrior” exterior over Nixon’s dourness and certainly Gerald Ford’s steadiness over Carter’s nauseating sanctimony.

But are we really ready to spend the next 8 years with a whiner like Obama?

Chomping down on sausage and waffles at Glider’s Diner in Scranton today, with his Pennsylvania BFF (Sen. Bob Casey) at his side, Obama avoided commenting on former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas.

Asked by a reporter if he had heard that Carter reported a positive outcome from the meeting, Obama looked sternly at the reporter in question and said, “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?”

Asked again by the reporter, Obama bit — not at the question but into a butter covered bite of Glider’s specialty over-size Belgian waffles. With a wink this time he said, “Just let me eat my waffle.”

Obama whines about the unfairness of the Philadelphia debate. He whines about Hillary’s attack ads. He whines about an intrusive press (he hasn’t had a press conference in 10 days). He famously whined after a presser about Rezko “C’mon guys. I answered 8 questions already.”

He whines when he’s forced to explain his associations with people like Jeremiah Wright, Rezko, or William Ayers. He whines when the press or other candidates call him out on his lies and exaggerations. And now he has backed up his whines by pulling out of the North Carolina debate. I guess when the going gets tough…the whiners skedaddle.

Then again, perhaps Obama is doing us a favor by running away from another grilling like he received in Philadelphia. He has spared us having to sit in front of the TV and wonder what embarrassing question Katy Couric would be asking next as CBS was scheduled to broadcast the debate. Perky Katy would probably not have asked Hillary this:

Tonight, in an interview with ABC, she took a question on an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

The move from vague threats to a specific commitment — and the vocabulary seems to suggest nuclear retaliation, if not to actually say that — seems like a substantive change in the country’s approach to the Middle East.

UPDATE: Clinton aide Howard Wolfson says she wasn’t referring to, or suggesting, nuclear weapons.

One can almost imagine Perky Katy screwing up her cutsie pie face and wrinkling her button nose in disgust that we would consider being so beastly to the cutthroats in Tehran - even after they have deposited a nuclear love note on Israeli soil.

It doesn’t matter because Iran won’t attack Israel - with nukes anyway. But it sure is interesting that Hillary feels it necessary to out-gonad Obama which is admittedly a relatively easy task for the former First Lady, she being born with an extra set. Maybe she could loan our metrosexual messiah one of hers - it just may stop his incessant whining.

This actually would be a fantastic general election campaign strategy for McCain - getting Obama to whine about everything - since there are probably going to be more of these “problem associations” to come out in the months ahead:

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as “a close personal friend.”

Writing to officials in the city, Seaside, Calif., the senator said, “You will find him as honorable and committed as I have.”

Courting local officials and potential partners, Mr. Diamond’s team promised that he could “help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army” because Mr. Diamond “has been very active with Senator McCain,” a partner said in a deposition.

McCain, of course, has the same problem Obama has; he sets himself up as a different kind of politician who is above mucking around in the political sewers with special interests while carrying on business as usual when it comes to his “special friends.” In the larger scheme of things, this favor for Diamond is hardly a mortal sin. But as an example of campaign hypocrisy? Guilty as charged, Senator.

The campaign claims an aide handled the army base matter under the rubric of “constituent services.” Kevin Drum does the math:

Indeed. A “constituent matter.” McCain’s pal managed to snag this prime coastal land — complete with special water rights — for $250,000 and then sell it two years later for $30 million. That’s some serious constituent service.

Again, this is hardly unusual by Washington standards. But if I were McCain, I’d start to downplay the whole “Straight Talk Express” thing starting now.

Thankfully from McCain’s point of view, Obama won’t be able to make too much of the Republican’s associations because once he raises the subject, Rezko/Wright/Ayers will jump up and bite him on his less than ample behind.

But that is in the future. Today, Pennsylvania Democrats have the opportunity to end this marathon campaign simply by bowing to the inevitable and voting for Obama. Why they probably won’t do that is a mystery to me. Think of how the Democrats have been tearing at each other since shortly before the Texas and Ohio primaries more than 6 weeks ago. Now imagine what they’ll be doing to each other 6 weeks from now when the campaign season ends. It will be the Hatfields and McCoys on steroids with the only thing stopping open warfare is the two candidates firm belief that the second amendment doesn’t exist.

If white voters give Hillary the margins that some pollsters are saying - 57%-60% - superdelegates will be placed in the impossible position of having to make a choice between a candidate that can’t win a majority of Democratic delegates and one that will find it almost impossible to win a majority of general election voters.

That hellish choice can be avoided if Obama can get close enough in Pennsylvania today to deny Clinton her major “electability” argument. But most of the polls say that Democrats just aren’t willing to accept Obama quite yet. And the race, such as it is, will go on.

The primary campaign became something of a Salvador Dali painting this past week as the canvas on which this surreal process has been rendered revealed an image that has lost all touch with reality and descended into a miasmic dreamworld where up is down, black is white, and consequences are divorced from actions - especially in the case of Barack Obama.

Dali once famously said “The difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.” Something similar could be said for the differences between the Obama on the stump and Obama the real person. This became abundantly clear last night when the largest campaign crowd yet - more than 35,000 by most estimates - thronged to the park in front of Independence Hall to hear the probable/potential/possible next President of the United States chant his “hope and change” mantra while totally ignoring the reality of a man whose past associations include an incredible group of hate mongering anti-Americans, racist pastors, crooked “fixers,” and “politics as usual” politicians who give the lie to his pretty words and noble sentiments:

“In four days, you get the chance to help bring about the change that we need right now,” Obama said. “Here in the city and the state that gave birth to our democracy, we can declare our independence from the politics that’s shut us out, let us down, and told us to settle.”

And he blasted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the party’s nomination, even as he called her “a tenacious opponent and a committed public servant.” She is the front-runner in Pennsylvania, as Obama acknowledged last night, even though he leads her nationally.

“She’s taken different positions at different times on issues as fundamental as trade and even war to suit the politics of the moment,” Obama said. “And in the last few months, she’s launched what her campaign calls a ‘kitchen sink’ strategy of negative attacks, which she defends by telling us that this is what the Republicans would do.”

The crowd - the estimate of 35,000 came from officials at the Independence Visitors Center - began assembling early, filling Independence Mall and spilling into the surrounding streets. They waited with relative patience, chanting “O-ba-ma” whenever the music stopped, until 8:45, when the rally finally started. They gave him a thunderous greeting and cheered often throughout a speech that was crafted with the setting in mind.

That’s only the half of it. Marc Ambinder reports on what happened after the rally was over:

It wasn’t so much that Barack Obama had real fight in him tonight, or that more people attended his rally in front of Independence Hall than any other event since he announced his candidacy. It was the spontaneous demonstration of support that happened when it ended.

5,000 people (at least) had nowhere to go but up Market Street. Obama’s charge of the night: “Declare independence!” was with them. They started with the familiar “O-Bam-A.” By 7th and Market, they had graduated to “Yes we can!” By 10th and Market, with hundreds streaming in between cars on the road, they were just cheering. At first, a few Philly cops, killjoys, tried to rough the crowd to the sidewalks. It didn’t work. The cops retreated to the sidewalks. By the time I ducked into my hotel, a full mile away from Independence Park, the Obama crowd was still marching.

Have we become so cynical that despite all the evidence to the contrary - his lack of any track record in effecting change (even eschewing opportunities to do so when the presented themselves), his accepting help from politicians who practice the very kind of politics he rails against, his association with people who have no desire to “unite” the country, only tear it down - that so many would become besotted with “Obamamania” that they deliberately look the other way at this hypocrisy coming from their candidate?

This disconnect became all too visible the last few days as left wing blogs supporting Obama were beside themselves over the efforts by ABC debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephenopolous to pull back the curtain and reveal Obama as the hypocrite he truly is. Their primary beef with ABC? The moderators asked questions the candidate didn’t want to answer and his supporters didn’t want to hear. As long as the press coverage limits itself to the “issues,” only the Obama on the stump will be highlighted. As long as the press reports on the incredible crowds, the adoring fans, the candidate’s rhetorical gifts (not “issues” in any sense of the word but hey! - no one ever accused the left of being consistent about anything), Obama’s Legions are satisfied.

But let the press actually do their jobs and ask the candidate why he is on a first name basis with someone who is “proud” he tried to blow up the Pentagon and the crap hits the fan in Obamaland. Any attempt to reveal the life Obama has led outside of politics isn’t relevant. Not because it has nothing to do with why someone would cast their vote for their candidate - an incredibly stupid assumption that bespeaks an ignorance of why people vote - but simply because they don’t want to know and more importantly, they don’t want the rest of us to know.

The candidate himself pushes this idea that the press should only ask questions he wants to answer in North Carolina on Thursday:

With a voice dripping with sarcasm, Barack Obama offered a eulogy yesterday from Raleigh, N.C. “I will tell you [the campaign] does not get more fun than these debates,” he said. “They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record [note to the wordsmith: all records are new when set] because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters most to the American people. It took us 45 minutes — 45 minutes before we [were allowed to regurgitate what we've been saying for months] about health care, 45 minutes before we [got to repeat everything we've been saying for months] about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard [a reprise of the tedious argle-bargle] about jobs, 45 minutes before we [got to harangue everybody for the 12th time] about [how we can't do anything about] the price of gasoline.”

Indeed, Wes Pruden is on to something here. Any discussion of “issues” at this late date in the campaign would have put people to sleep. Now ABC, as you might have guessed, is a for-profit outfit that was horrified at the thought that people might find the candidates’ spouting for the umpteenth time their bullet points about Iraq, health care, jobs, and the price of gasoline so intensely boring that they would flip over to watch a playoff hockey game or perhaps “Deal or no Deal.” Better to make both Hillary and Obama squirm a little by having to answer questions that inquiring minds want to know - like why did you allow a self confessed, unapologetic terrorist hold a fundraiser at his house for you Senator Obama?

Obama’s answer has been recycled time and time again, given when he has been confronted with questions about Wright, Rezko, Daley, Jones, and all the other personalities from Obama’s real life away from the stump that define who he is as a man and not the messianic candidate on the stump who promises so ardently to change things:

Sen. Obama was briefly put on the spot with a question about still another of his shady friends in Chicago, but he was allowed to dance away without the obvious follow-up. What was the extent of his friendship with Bill Ayers, an ex-con and unrepentant member of a ring of cop-killers from the ’60s? This could have been a fastball but was only a floater, and the Illinois Kid sent it back sharply for a Texas Leaguer. “The notion that somehow, as a consequence of me knowing someone in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, that somehow that reflects on my values, is crazy.”

But that’s not quite the point of the question. The senator knew that Bill Ayers was more than “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and was once a member of the Weathermen when they served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a small but radical Chicago foundation of suspicious provenance. At the behest of the unrepentant Bill Ayers — who boasts that he and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, who both served time after years on the run, didn’t do enough to plant bombs to kill innocents when they had the chance — the foundation awarded $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church “in recognition of Barack Obama’s contributions.” Messrs. Obama and Ayers voted to award a generous grant to the Arab-American Action Network, to finance “actions” (not otherwise specified).

Obama’s catch-all excuse for the Wrights, Ayers, Rezkos, Auchis, Daleys, and other less than stellar characters in his past is the same for each; everyone has a Wright/Ayers/Rezko/Auchi/Daley et. al. in their past so what’s the big deal? Wright is everyone’s “crazy uncle.” Ayers is just some guy who “lives in the neighborhood.” Rezko is “one of thousands of contributors” to his campaign. In each case, Obama tries to portray himself as everyman, asking his supporters (who don’t need much urging) to imagine all the characters from their past who are less than upstanding.

My friend Shaun Mullen does the same thing:

I’ll get this turdball rolling by noting that I knew several members of the Weather Underground back in the day and am a longtime friend of one whom I invited into my home when he was a fugitive. But even in the context of those crazy times, the Weathermen were a bunch of zonked-out wannabe revolutionaries who ultimately diverted attention from their occasionally worthy causes by doing a lot of really bad stuff.

All that so noted, I had a hard time getting behind President Clinton’s pardon of two members of the Weather Underground for some very serious criminal acts on the eve of George Bush’s 2001 inauguration but have a whole lot less of a problem with Bill Ayers, a former but never arrested Weatherman and present-day University of Illinois professor who hosted a fundraiser in his home for Barack Obama when the presidential candidate was running for the Illinois Senate.

Allow me to channel Salvadore Dali; “The difference between Barack Obama and Shaun Mullen is that Shaun is not Barack Obama.” Shaun is not running for president. Shaun does not get up in front of 35,000 people and say he is better than every other politician out there because by jing, he’s for a “new” kind of politics while they aren’t. Shaun does not lie through his teeth about the nature and extent of his past associations.

The band plays on, ignoring the discordant chords coming from outside the bandshell because that would disturb their ideal of perfect harmony, perfect syncopation, perfect togetherness. For most of Obama’s supporters, tuning out the sour notes is easy. They hear what they want to hear - Obama on the stump - and ignore the music being made by the candidate in his real life - complete with beautiful melodies as well as dark, minor key atonal counterpoints that for many of us has begun to dominate our opinion of the candidate.

Will they ever gather the courage to hear the entire composition?

The left’s towering anger that exploded onto the internet after the Philadelphia Democratic debate is a little misplaced aggression in my opinion. The fact of the matter is, this is the kind of press the left created, nurtured, supported, and lionized for the last half a century.

The modern American media has its roots in the way news was first delivered over television. And the granddaddy’s of TV journalists - the men most responsible for the way that television, print, radio and now internet news operates in tone and content - were Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly.

In many ways, those two brilliant gentlemen, both with enormous professional integrity and a keen sense of the way that news was important to the American people, made it impossible to escape the “gotcha” mentality that would dominate the news landscape for the next 50 years. Friendly and Murrow were both classic FDR liberals - perhaps a little farther left in Friendly’s case - and saw the drama inherent in media confrontations as the best way to get eyeballs in front of the screen. Beyond that, Murrow especially was on a quest to destroy his ideological foes - and not just McCarthy who Murrow delayed skinning until the beast was already cornered and gravely wounded but also other cold war figures who he believed stood in the way of the naturally friendly relations with Soviet Russia we should be enjoying.

Nixon, Acheson, and the Dulleses were also damned by Murrow and Friendly and thus began a tradition in news reporting that continues to this day; savaging conservatives.

If you can name one prominent conservative figure of the last half century who has not been subject to the most unflattering, scathing, unfair and ultimately dishonest portrayal in the media then I will eat my skimmer. On the other hand, of course, the left has a pantheon of heroes from Kennedy to Kerry who have gotten the kid glove treatment from the press. Yes there was occasional criticism. But this was mostly pro-forma and somehow never quite made it into election campaigns. Curious, that.

The CBS Show “60 Minutes” refined this tactic using new technologies and added “ambush journalism” to the mix. Now it wasn’t simply a case of “gotcha” but also watching the target of the hit piece jump around like a bug on a hot griddle trying to avoid reporters running after them with camera and mike in tow. It made for wildly successful television and “60 Minutes” became the #1 show in the country for decades.

This is not to say that most if not all the subjects ambushed by “60 Minutes” didn’t deserve every squirming second they spent in front of the cameras. But one may have asked at some point, “Is this journalism?” Or is this a circus? The imitators came fast and furious on the other networks followed by investigative reporting outfits at both the national and local levels of broadcast news, radio, and finally newspapers. Much of the work done by these units was vital and necessary. But some of it was trivial and titillating rather than newsworthy. No matter. It all went into the great maw of the information delivery systems of the day and was swallowed up by the people.

The crowning moment for this news culture was Watergate. Ironically, at a point where this creation of the left reached its zenith, real journalists began to ask questions about the power of the press and the potential for abuse. But the pattern had been set and from then until now, news coverage of our politics has become more and more concentrated on digging for dirt and hopng to expose embarrassing facts about a candidate’s past which used to be the job of the political opposition but is now an obligation of the press corps.

The “gotcha” political culture is an outgrowth of all this. So why is the left complaining? They created this creature to devour their ideological enemies. Should they be so surprised that it has turned on them and is now devouring their candidate of choice in the most hotly contested primary race in decades?

Admittedly, both Clinton and Obama are sitting ducks. There literally is no one else to target at the moment. McCain is off in the shadows, largely ignored as Hillary and Obama gore each other. Also, McCain has something of a special relationship with many in the press that for the moment is allowing him to operate as he wishes. I imagine once the outlines of the general election race takes shape that will change and the press will be an equal opportunity destroyer. At least, that’s how it’s been in the past.

Not only are both candidates tempting targets but they themselves have given the press the ammunition to attack them. Hillary’s serial fibbing and Obama’s stammering excuses for his past problem associations have left the candidates wide open to the kind of “How many times have you beaten your wife today” questions that were asked by Gibson and Stephanopolous. Both journalists were doing their jobs - probing and prying, looking for soft spots. In Obama’s relationship with Ayers, they struck jello. And Obama’s dismissive answers as well as his comparing a Senate colleague to an anti-social domestic terrorist only served to highlight the candidate’s lack of understanding of why people might see a potential president of the United States being on a first name basis with Bill Ayers in the age of terror would be a shocking thing.

For those on the left who feel betrayed by the media, I would say don’t worry. By the time the leaves begin to turn the press will be back right where they always have been; standing shoulder to shoulder with the Democratic party and working to belittle, injure, and destroy conservatives and Republicans running for office.

UPDATE: Stupid Liberal Comment of the Decade

The comment by “Bobwire” I am reproducing below will cause any conservative in America to burst into laughter. I reproduce it and urge you to congratulate Bobwire on his perspicuity:

bobwire | bobnoxious@lycos.com | IP: 72.173.105.69

You have been pwned. You exist only as a button pusher.

It is a major story in the New York Times, Politico, the New York Post, and the left wing Guardian in Great Britain. It is the most curious of all Barack Obama’s problematic relationships and calls into question not only his judgement but the core of his political beliefs.

How radical are the politics of Barack Obama?

The story is about William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn - two members of the radical 1960’s terrorist group the Weather Underground and the fact that the possible next president of the United States is on a first name basis with a self-confessed bomber of the Pentagon who not only has no regrets for his terrorist action but wishes he could do it all over again.

Larry Rohter and Michael Luo of the New York Times:

On March 6, 1970, a bomb explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village town house, killing three members of the radical Weather Underground and driving other members of the group even deeper into hiding.

On Wednesday night, those events emerged as the focus of a sharp exchange between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama at their debate in Philadelphia. Mr. Obama was asked by a moderator, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, about his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former Weather Underground leader who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In the early 1970s, the Weathermen, who took their name from a line in a Bob Dylan song, claimed responsibility for bombing the Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department Building and banks, courthouses and police stations.

Charges against Ayers and Dohrn were dropped because the Feds spied on the duo illegally. But the question absolutely must be asked just what was Obama thinking having anything at all to do with this man:

Mr. Ayers is listed as a member of the nine-member board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an offshoot of the Woods Charitable Fund, founded in 1941 by a prominent lawyer and telephone company executive. According to the fund’s Web site, it has focused in recent years on “issues that affected the area’s least advantaged, including welfare reform, affordable housing” and “tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty.”

For a time, Mr. Obama was on the board with Mr. Ayers, though he no longer has a formal association with the group. At the debate, he described Mr. Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” Mr. Obama said he was being unjustly linked to “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old.”

What would any other politician have done when he or she discovered that a terrorist was sitting on the same board as they? Wouldn’t just about anyone else have said “no thank you” to such an invitation?

There’s more to this relationship than Ayers simply being a “guy who lives in my neighborhood.” The two were introduced back in 1995 when Obama was presented by outgoing state senator Alice Palmer to Ayers and other far left activists in the University Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park at Ayers house according to this story by Ben Smith in Politico. And RezkoWatch reports on 2 other forums where we know Obama and Ayers participated:

Wondering whether the three may have crossed paths is not speculation. It is a fact that they have. Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama have appeared together at a number of gatherings and academic events. In November 1997, Ayers and Obama participated in a panel at the University of Chicago entitled Should a child ever be called a “super predator?” to debate “the merits of the juvenile justice system”.

In April 2002, Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, participated together at a conference entitled “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?” sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals and the University of Illinois-Chicago. Ayers and Obama were two of the six members of the “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis” panel.

And Campus Watch reports on a farewell dinner for the radical Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, who was leaving the Arab American Action Network to take the Edward Said endowed chair at Colombia University, where Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn all gave glowing testimonials to Khalidi - whose group received $75,000 from the Woods Foundation

In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia’s SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)

This information along with the fact that Obama served with Ayers on the Board of the Woods Foundation, gives the lie to Obama’s claim that he doesn’t know Ayers very well. And both of those forums at U of C were set up by none other than Michelle Obama in her capacity as University of Chcago PR executive; evidently she too saw nothing wrong in glad handing with terrorists.

It is beyond belief that the press is just now getting around to this, the most incredible of all Obama radical associations. And the scary thought is that it will change few minds about Obama and his hypocritical brand of “new politics.”

Much of this blog post originally appears at The American Thinker 

Well, so much for any advantage relating to “elitism” the Republicans may have had with regard to Obama’s “God, guns, and racism” remarks at the San Francisco fundraiser.

Only on a planet inhabited by such ignoramuses, such geese as this GOP Congressman from Kentucky would Obama be about ready to skate on his extraordinarily arrogant and dismissive attitude toward the white middle class.

This idiot has just handed Obama the advantage:

U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, a Hebron Republican, compared Obama and his message for change similar to a “snake oil salesman.”

He said in his remarks at the GOP dinner that he also recently participated in a “highly classified, national security simulation” with Obama.

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”

Davis all but call’s Obama a stupid n*****.

Okay, now the elitist in me is about ready to emerge. But one look at this guy’s picture says it all. The Gomer Pyle ears, goober eatin’ grin, and something inbred around the eyes bespeaks a throwback. Put a uniform and a badge on this guy and I can see him aiming the fire hose at women and children in Selma.

This man should be censured by the House. Everybody in America knows by this time how hurtful and just plain wrong it is to refer to a black man as “boy.” It doesn’t matter if he calls white men “boys.” The connotations are entirely different and everyone knows it.

If the guy is so ignorant that he didn’t think it was wrong, then he’s too stupid to serve in the House - even for a Republican.

Needless to say over the next 24 hours the debate on the Obama gaffe will shift. It will no longer be how arrogant and dismissive of the white middle class is the Democratic candidate for president but rather how much did he get right in his little rant?

UPDATE: 4/15

There appears to be a gap in the commenters between those who see the word “boy” as a problem when applied to blacks and those who don’t.

My - what a surprise.

I learned not to call grown black men “boy” when I was about 5 years old (I am 54 years old). Maybe younger. The fact that many of the commenters to this post either didn’t learn that lesson or reject it because it is somehow “politically correct” doesn’t surprise me. The most casually racist stuff gets deleted by me on a regular basis if only because I don’t want my site polluted with such abnormality.

Look - most of what we on the right call “politically correct” deserves every criticism thrown its way. PC has become a straitjacket for free speech. Anyone who reads this site knows full well my opposition to most examples of PC and its debilitating effect on political dialougue in this country.

However…

There are some things you cannot say without revealing yourself to be a closet case. The “N” word is one of them. “Gook” is another. “Spic, greaser, wetback” and a few others are also verboten.

There might be 10 words in the English language out of 50,000 whose connotation is just too hurtful to others and should simply never, ever, ever be used. This is not “PC.” This is what we call “common courtesy” at the least or better yet, being aware of other people’s feelings and sensibilities. In other words, being compassionate.

One of those words that cannot be used without offending someone is “boy.” The Congressman recognized it. Most real conservatives recognize it. Why many of you in the comments cannot is simply beyond my comprehension and experience.

More than any other presidential candidate in recent years, forces beyond John McCain’s control will determine whether or not he is the next president of the United States.

With an astonishing 81% of the American people believing that the United States is on the wrong track, it seems incredible he is even in the race much less leading in some polls. With that many voters convinced that a change of direction is necessary, they usually don’t cast their ballot for the candidate representing the party of the president in power.

But thanks to a healthy assist from the Democrats who seem intent in tearing themselves apart, McCain’s lofty numbers have given the GOP hope that all is not lost and that perhaps their nominee can squeak past either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the fall.

There’s only one problem with that scenario - actually two problems - that haunt the nightmares of McCain and his staff; the fact that John McCain’s success or failure will depend on both the War in Iraq and the economy not going south between now and the election.

I can’t recall a candidate being held hostage to events to this extent. On some level, a candidate is always at the mercy of what is going on in the world. But either Democratic candidate will almost certainly have an advantage when it comes to both the state of the economy and the lack of progress in bringing our troops home from Iraq. Only dramatic improvements - not anticipated or likely - would alter that dynamic.

The economy may begin to recover in the final quarter this year if the housing crisis bottoms out and the credit crunch eases. Whether it will be noticeable enough to aid McCain is an open question. The key here is that any recession be short and mild. A spike in unemployment above 6% along with a crash in consumer confidence might doom McCain’s candidacy - as would a sudden turn for the worse in the battlefield situation in Iraq.

Iran seems to hold the whip hand in Iraq at the moment. Their militias, their “special groups,” and whatever hold they have on Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army will determine the level of violence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. If the Iranian government believes it can influence the American election by ratcheting up the violence - and is disposed to do so - then there isn’t a whole helluva lot McCain can do about it.

And that brings us to the wildcard in this campaign season - the one real unknown that no one can guess how it will play out if it comes to pass.

A pre-emptive attack by the Bush Administration on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure or on some other target relating to their interference in Iraq prior to the election will raise screams of protest from the left and no doubt force the Democratic candidate into a posture of firm opposition to such a military operation. And given McCain’s rhetoric in the past, it would conversely force him to be a strong supporter of such action.

This is a given. The question is, what would the American voter think of such an attack? Polls conducted late last year were mixed but a bare majority would support such a strike if diplomacy and sanctions failed to deter the Iranians from building a bomb. Of course, the American people will generally back the President if he decides to use force anywhere. But would that support translate into votes for McCain if Bush decides to bomb?

It is a huge unknown. Personally, I believe any threat to attack Iran before the election to be receding and is now not very likely. But circumstances may change - especially relating to Iran’s continued support for the perpetrators of violence in Iraq. If the situation becomes intolerable, a limited strike against specific targets in Iran like the Qods Force or factories manufacturing IED’s might be in the offing.

So McCain is not only beholden to news on the economic front and Iraq, he is also somewhat at the mercy of the Bush Administration and any action they may deem necessary to protect our troops from violence encouraged by the Iranian government.

This is a very weak position for a candidate to find himself despite McCain’s current robust numbers vis a vis the Democrats. We’re liable to see those poll numbers yo-yo between now and election day as the public’s perceptions whipsaw between hope and despair on the economic and war fronts.

In a rather mean-spirited article on McCain in The New Yorker, John Heilerman nevertheless correctly diagnoses some other problems for the candidate that begs the question “Is John McCain Bob Dole?”

Yet for all the hosannas being sung to him these days, and for all the waves of fear and trembling rippling through the Democratic masses, the truth is that McCain is a candidate of pronounced and glaring weaknesses. A candidate whose capacity to raise enough money to beat back the tidal wave of Democratic moola is seriously in doubt. A candidate unwilling or unable to animate the GOP base. A candidate whose operation has never recovered from the turmoil of last summer, still skeletal and ragtag and technologically antediluvian. (“Fund-raising on the Web? You don’t say. You can raise money through those tubes?”) Whose cadre of confidantes contains so many lobbyists that the Straight Talk Express often has the vibe of a rolling K Street clubhouse. Whose awkward positioning issues-wise was captured brilliantly by Pat Buchanan: “The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re going to have a lot more wars.” A candidate one senior moment—or one balky teleprompter—away from being transformed from a grizzled warrior into Grandpa Simpson. A candidate, that is, who poses an existential question for Democrats: If you can’t beat a guy like this in a year like this, with a vastly unpopular Republican war still ongoing and a Republican recession looming, what precisely is the point of you?

John McCain has many fine qualities both as a person and a candidate. There is no doubt he is as qualified to be president as either of the Democrats. He is the first Republican candidate in a long time who actually receives decent press coverage on occasion (New York Times and a few others excepted). And the Democrats are in the midst of the bloodiest primary campaign either party has seen since the Democratic contest of 1968.

But as Heilerman points out, McCain has some enormous disadvantages as well. And it doesn’t help that the Republican candidate for president is being held hostage by events over which he has no control and which may prove to be the undoing of his campaign.