Right Wing Nut House

I’ve read Obama’s speech 3 times and seen it twice while reading a good two dozen takes on it from right and left and frankly, I am at a loss.

I am OverObamad.

My views have whipsawed back and forth between Allah’s incredibly effective, screeching accusation that Obama is a monumental liar and hypocrite to the more staid but equally devastating take by Michael Gerson:

The problem with Obama’s argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of African Americans. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the “U.S. of KKK-A” and urges God to “damn” our country.

Obama’s excellent and important speech on race in America did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor.

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront yesterday. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an “occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy.” It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes what he said, he should urge the overthrow of the U.S. government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.

But Wright’s accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America. And his pastoral teaching may put lives at risk because the virus that causes AIDS spreads more readily in an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories.

Allah meanwhile, in the most brilliant harangue I’ve ever read from him, gets to the absolute nub of the matter; that this was a speech given out of pure political necessity and that no matter how soaring the rhetoric, the fact is Obama spent 20 years in the pews of a church where this bigoted extremist preached every Sunday:

“[R]ace is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” saith the prophet, politely eliding the fact that he was only too happy to ignore it for 20 years when it was being belched at him from the pulpit in its most wretched form and then for another 13 months as a candidate until ABC dropped it on his plate and rubbed his face in it. Now, with his ass in a sling, suddenly it’s time for the great conversation. If any other politician tried a move this transparently cynical, to nudge the conversation away from his own craven tolerance of racial hatred to some sort of redemption narrative by which to hold that against him is to be, in effect, objectively anti-progress, the media would vivisect him. Instead, expect a full-body orgasm on “Hardball” tonight as the thrill in Chris Matthews’s leg spreads accordingly.

Our commenters laughed at me the other day for calling him a spectacularly shrewd politician. How do you feel now?

Here’s a blank check to white racists to join the restrictive country club of their choice because, after all, they can no more disown white racism than they can the entire white community:

I feel Allah’s pain. As with the rest of Obama’s record, he is asking us to believe that the past simply doesn’t matter; that voters should accept him for who he is now, what he is saying now. It shouldn’t matter that he sat quietly in the pews of his church for 20 years with his wife and children being exposed to the bigoted wrath of a hate filled preacher without confronting the man about the racial divide he now tells us he can bridge. It shouldn’t matter that he sat on his hands and did nothing in the Senate about reaching across the aisle and participating in bi-partisan accords on issues like judges and immigration. Trust him, he asks, and he’ll do that sort of thing once he gets elected president.

Another aspect of the speech I found troubling after going through it a few times has been commented on by several people; the extraordinary number of false equivalences Obama used to dismiss or minimize Wright’s hate speech.

Mickey Kaus on the reference to Obama’s grandmother:

The most disastrous sentence in the speech. If Obama’s saying that those who fear young black men on the street are racists, the equivalents of Rev. Wright in offensiveness, then he’s just insulted a whole lof ot people. If he loses the votes of everyone who fears young black men, he loses the election. People fear black men on the street–as even Jesse Jackson once momentarily admitted–because they cause a wildly disproportionate share of street crime. Does Obama want to be the candidate who says that thought is verboten?

Later, he says:

So when [whites] are told … that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Who would tell them such a thing? Obama, a dozen paragraphs earlier, dissing his own grandmother.

I also found his use of language quite deft when talking about Reverend Wright’s remarks and comparing them to more mundane examples of “controversy.”

From the speech:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

This is flat out ridiculous. The remarks in question were not “controversial” which implies that there is room for disagreement contained in Wright’s arguments. Only a loon believes the US government created the AIDS virus to kill Black people. And while no one agrees 100% with their pastor or priest about the world, I daresay that not too many of us have been exposed to the level of venom spewing from the mouth of the Reverend Wright. That analogy is flawed as are many others in the speech.

And what about the idea that the speech was a healing salve on the open wound of American race relations? This post by Stanely Kurtz at The Corner shoud open our eyes to reality:

Intellectually, this Newsweek story doesn’t exactly surprise me. Yet part of me still finds it shocking. Here’s the key paragraph:

Last Friday, in an effort to gauge just how “out there” Wright’s sermons are in the context of the African-American church tradition, NEWSWEEK phoned at least two dozen of the country’s most prominent and thoughtful African-American scholars and pastors, representing a wide range of denominations and points of view. Not one person would say that Wright had crossed any kind of significant line.

Newsweek’s finding is totally consistent with Byron York’s story yesterday. The question is, in the wake of Obama’s speech, will the folks who don’t believe Jeremiah Wright “crossed any lines” feel as though they need to rethink — or will they in fact feel justified and affirmed by Obama. The answer is clear. As the Newsweek piece itself implies, the very people who never believed Wright was wrong to begin with feel “defended and explained” by Obama. Rather than pushing radicalism aside, Obama is lending it a sheen of acceptability.

It appears that it is important that Whites “rethink” our views on race and “understand” Reverend Wright’s and other Black people’s pain regarding past sins while Blacks can sit back and judge us on our progress. This, after all, is the view of Wright and Obama is telling us that this view is not mentioned in mixed race company but discussed in barber shops and elsewhere Blacks congregate.

This was, I thought, the major failing of the speech. Obama had an opportunity to speak truth to his race. He nearly got there a couple of times when talking about blacks not taking enough responsibility for their own lives. But he could have issued a clarion call for Blacks to abandon the religion of victimhood from which so many of their problems emanate and embrace the religion of progress and opportunity. I suppose he was constrained for political reasons which is understandable. But he was a lot clearer about what he expected whites to do in this new post racial world.

It’s funny what 24 hours will do to your perspective on something.

Join me from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time tonight for another edition of The Rick Moran Show.

Tonight, I’ll welcome Ed Lasky to the show. Ed is a frequent contributor to The American Thinker and a fierce Obama critic. We’ll look at “The Speech” Obama gave today on race as well as Obama’s frequently changing position on the state of Israel.

Coming in to join the discussion a little later will be AT Political Correspondent and my co-host during primary season Rich Baehr.

For the best in political analysis, click on the button below and listen in. A podcast will be available for streaming or download around 15 minutes after the show ends.

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My immediate reaction to the speech is up at PJ Media. Generally, I thought it was thoughtful, well delivered, and brutally honest in places.

But I think Obama revealed more than he wanted to about exactly what kind of a candidate he truly is. Having eschewed labels like “liberal” for the entire campaign, the speech left little doubt that Barack Obama is a dyed in the wool Democratic liberal who sees blacks and whites equally as victims of “conservatives” and sees big government, statist solutions to our problems:

More than at any other time in this campaign, Obama forcefully and without qualification endorsed across the board government intervention in every aspect of the lives of American citizens. This includes the prospect of joining whites and blacks together in a “victimhood coalition” to fight the enemy.

Obama spent a considerable amount of time trying to explain that the rage expressed by Wright publicly is echoed in private by most blacks, and that whites cannot therefore understand how important it is for Wright to be allowed to spew his hatred to give voice to that anger.

It should also be pointed out that Obama told an outright lie when he said several times on TV last weekend that he had no knowledge of Jeremiah Wright’s poisonous words until he began to run for President and that he was never in church when those words were spoken.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

The nuance here is breathtaking. Wright’s words were not “controversial.” They were a toxic waste of hatred of whites and hatred of America. I doubt whether too many ordinary Americans have heard their pastors or priests spew that kind of hate from the pulpit of a church.

In the end, as Ed Morrissey points out, the speech succeeded on a superficial level:

Did Obama succeed with this speech in containing the damage? It depends on the intended audience. This speech appears aimed at 795 specific individuals — Democratic superdelegates. Obama needed to show that he can address the racial issues in an inclusive manner, and walk the highwire with Wright by scolding him without alienating the black community. While the delivery was uncharacteristically lethargic, the content probably made the sale.

Unfortunately, he left himself still vulnerable by stubbornly refusing to ‘disown’ Wright; if anything else more incendiary comes up, he will have to address this all over again. He didn’t inoculate himself against future revelations, which is one of the main purposes of these kinds of speeches. We’ll see if that gamble pays off.

Will any reporter have the balls to ask him what “controversial” comments he heard while sitting in church?

In spite of my doubts, I found myself almost being swept away by the speech. But a closer examination of what he was actually saying shows that Obama believes that the burden of improving race relations is primarily on whites - that we must allow blacks to give vent to their resentments and even their hatreds and “understand” where they are coming from.

If you think about it for a minute, it’s almost insulting. Obama is telling whites that we dismiss slavery and Jim Crow and 300 years of discrimination and oppression by not granting Blacks the singular honor of telling us we’re a bunch of redneck racists everytime they get offended. Doesn’t matter if they use such anger for political gain. We’re supposed to just shut up and listen and feel guilty.

If Obama were really concerned about bridging the racial divide he would have critiqued government programs that have contributed mightily to Black poverty and hopelessness. If he were really concerned about bridging the racial divide, he would have come out against political correctness which stifles true debate:

Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Let’s just say that Obama didn’t build any bridges to me with that exaggerated and myopic statement.

To say that white Americans voted for Reagan because of welfare and affirmative action is so far beyond ridiculous as to reside in another sphere of reality. And given the opportunity, he embraced political correctness and defended it. Ironically, Obama sees PC as a way to start “legitimate discussions” of racial injustice when the entire point of political correctness is to close debate off with the liberal winning.

This speech will be chewed over for a few days. Polls will show he probably stopped the bleeding in his own party. But I will be looking closely at independents in coming surveys. I have a feeling Obama may have blown it with them by giving a speech that had some very positive elements but that ultimately may convince many people he is just too liberal to be president.

I hate economic news. Much of it is so dry I want to set a fire to it just to be entertained. Not understanding a lot of it also makes following it a bore.

But neither am a I a complete idiot. I can read and comprehend economic news if the subject is laid out and explained by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Enter Brad DeLong who I have taken to reading lately given that the end of the world as we know it might be upon us. I used to read Kudlow but the guy was so relentlessly upbeat I got an overdose of sugar and had to swear him off for a while.

DeLong is a happy medium between Paul “The Sky is Falling” Krugman and Larry “Don’t worry be happy” Kudlow. Krugman has been predicting catastrophe for so long they kicked him out of the Cassandra Club for being wrong so often. Kudlow has been seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for so long that he’s been declared legally blind.

And forget trying to make your way through MSM business reporting. Unless you want to feel like your brain has been dropped in a vat of molasses where everything is murky and hard to navigate, stay away. Stay far away.

Which brings us to Mr. DeLong who has a lot of kewl graphs to explain the few real stats that he uses to amplify what he’s talking about. If you are reasonably intelligent and don’t mind re-reading a post a couple of times, I highly recommend his commentary for those of us who have trouble understanding capitalism’s more arcane forms.

We all know about the sub-prime mortgage crisis which is pretty easy to grasp. Greedy lenders gave a lot of money to risky borrowers evidently believing that housing prices would continue to go up 7% a year forever. The debate over bailing out the industry has been interesting. Do we reward companies who took a flyer on bad risk loans? Or do we reward the borrowers who didn’t read the fine print and got themselves in over their heads?

Rewarding stupidity or ignorance is not the way of capitalism. In a perfect capitalistic society, those who make their own bed should lie in it - even if it means a company goes belly up or people have their houses foreclosed on.

But what kind of capitalistic society would allow a multi-gazillion dollar corporation who may have overextended itself because its risk assessors got it wrong, collapse and take the entire financial system with it?

Mr. DeLong explains the dilemma:

Yet we are still in significant trouble. Why? Especially “why” because nothing terribly bad has happened to the real economy: unemployment has not risen much, production and incomes have not fallen, wildfires have not annihilated all the houses of California’s Riverside County driving their inhabitants into Bushvilles in the arroyos of the California desert–normally we would require that something bad have happened to the real economy before the financial side is in such a state.

We are in such a state because:

* Quantitatively- and analytically-sophisticated Wall Street teams greatly overestimated their capability to assess and manage risk.

* Institutions greatly overestimated the extent to which the QaASWSTs (risk managers) were assessing risk as opposed to simply writing out-of-the-money puts they could not value and claiming they had lots of alpha.

* Investors greatly overestimated the extent to which institutions understood what their teams were doing.

And now we have something significantly worse than a financial-accelerator-deleveraging creating a credit crunch.

In short, if I may be so bold as to sum up Mr. DeLong’s analysis, the huge investment companies who manage the hundreds of funds that invest in securities were overconfident in their ability to manage everything from the risk of mortgage securities to the effect the bursting of the housing bubble had on the value of their portfolios.

They just got it wrong, that’s all.

So sorry. We’ll try harder next time, we promise. But in the meantime, would you please, Mr. Bernanke, pull our asses out of the fire?

The Federal Reserve took dramatic action on multiple fronts last night to avert a crisis of the global financial system, backing the acquisition of wounded investment firm Bear Stearns and increasing the flow of money to other banks squeezed for credit.

After a weekend of marathon negotiations in New York and Washington, the central bank undertook a broad effort to prevent key financial players from going under, including the unprecedented offer of short-term loans to investment banks and an unexpected cut in a special bank interest rate.

As part of the deal, J.P. Morgan Chase, a major Wall Street bank, will buy Bear Stearns for a bargain-basement price, paying $2 a share for an institution that still plays a central role in executing financial transactions. Bear Stearns stock closed at $57 on Thursday and $30 on Friday. J.P. Morgan was unwilling to assume the risk of many of Bear Stearns’s mortgage and other complicated assets, so the Federal Reserve agreed to take on the risk of about $30 billion worth of those investments.

The Fed “is working to promote liquid, well-functioning financial markets, which are essential for economic growth,” Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a conference call with reporters last night. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was deeply involved in the talks though not a formal party to them, indicated support for the actions.

We are bailing out lenders who made risky loans. We are bailing out some homeowners who should never have received the kind of loan so dependent on the rising value of their investment and a sellers market. We are bailing out Wall Street giants who failed in correctly assessing the risk in buying certain kinds of securities. And the Fed is pouring cash into the financial system to head off any problems in the near future.

Is this capitalism? Not the sort that conservatives are always talking about.

And DeLong thinks that eventually, we may have to bail out a lot more homeowners at the bottom in order to stabilize things at the top:

If the U.S. government has a vehicle to buy up (at a discount from face value) and then manage home loans that look shaky, and if it can set the price of such loans, it might be able to do so in a way that not only rescues the financial system but makes money for the taxpayer.

[snip]

If I were working for the Treasury right now, I would be saying: make this happen on Monday. There isn’t time to set up a new bureaucracy–a HOLC, which is what Alan Blinder wanted to do as of three weeks ago. So use an existing bureaucracy: Fannie Mae. If I were Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, I would spend the weekend building a legislative vehicle to introduce Monday morning on an emergency basis to give Fannie Mae the resources and the mission to undertake this mortgage rescue operation, and I think Fannie Mae is the right institution for the task: why does it have its government-sponsored status and guarantee if not to be used for purposes like these at times like these?

And if I were Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, I would be spending this weekend thinking about how to first thing Monday morning punish bear speculators on Bear Stearns, Lehman, and others by pushing their CDS spreads back to more normal levels. It seems to me that people on Wall Street need to be taught that betting that the Fed will not intervene to stabilize or that its interventions to stabilize will be unsuccessful is an unhealthy thing to do.

Basically, DeLong is arguing for Fannie Mae to come in and scoop up a lot of this bad paper and manage it on its own with the risk devolving to the government, rewarding both the little guy and the big guy for risky behavior.

Let’s remember what is at stake in a financial meltdown. We’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars - real money, not government fantasy money. Those billions come from the money taken out of your paycheck for a 401K or some other retirement vehicle. It’s that $500 you put into a mutual fund every quarter or the dividends you invest in a risky bond fund. It’s the retirement savings of little old ladies and little old men. A meltdown would mean catastrophe for a lot of people.

So, the government must intervene and reward everyone who screwed up by bailing them out of trouble.

Was it trouble that could have been foreseen? I don’t really know enough to say for sure but common sense tells me that if banks and most mortgage companies turn someone down for a home loan and then your company goes ahead and lends the money anyway, it would seem pretty certain that both lender and borrower are aware that this is something more than just an iffy proposition. We don’t want a financial system where there must be a dead certainty that the borrower will not default. But neither do we want a crapshoot like a lot of these mortgages apparently were. Isn’t there a happy medium somewhere?

As for the Wall Street investment companies who bought these mortgage securities one might want to inquire as to how we got into this mess given that risk analysis is a large part of what these people do. DeLong points out that the risk managers got it horribly wrong. What’s to stop these guys from doing something equally stupid in the future?

If we’re going to throw true capitalism out the window - and make no mistake, that is what we’re doing with these bail outs - then the conservative rationale for capitalism goes with it.

Low regulation, open and free markets, individual and corporate responsibility - this is the conservative mantra when defending and promoting capitalism. I subscribe to this view of economics because it works as any resident of a capitalist country could tell you.

But now we are faced with the largest bailout in history and must question those comfortable assumptions. Maybe we need new regulation to prevent this from happening again. Maybe we need better monitoring and thus less “free” markets by the government. And what good is “individual and corporate responsibility” if the economy would be prostrate if we followed that dictum and just allowed economic Darwinism to rule the day and watch as millions lost their savings and millions were thrown out of work?

This entire post is probably making some of you more knowledgeable readers chuckle at my ignorance but how capitalistic a country can we really afford to have? And if the conservative rationale for capitalism is undermined in this fashion, what can replace it?

Perhaps on the micro level, capitalism will survive. But in the great, big, globalized world out there where governments can intervene in markets at the drop of a hat it’s difficult to see how true capitalism can flourish.

There are hundreds of black preachers across America who, to one degree or another, sound off like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and rail against white America for oppressing Blacks. I have no doubt that, at times, the rhetoric takes on an American hating tinge given the history of African Americans in this country over the last 400 years.

The question isn’t whether Wright is in or out of the mainstream of black preachers but rather what exactly candidate Obama believes? John McCain, after all, is extremely friendly with Pastor John Hagee, a controversial preacher whose anti-homosexual statements and what some consider anti-Catholic rants have landed him in hot water more than once.

I can see some conservatives heads exploding - “There is no equivalence between Hagee and Wright!” This is true - except in the narrow sense that both Pastors are used by political opponents to make it appear that the other candidate shares their preacher’s hateful views. McCain and Obama have disavowed the hate speech coming from their pastors so we can safely assume that they, in fact, do not agree with the more problematic positions taken by their preacher friends.

And I think we can give Obama the benefit of the doubt and say with some certainty that he does not agree with his spiritual advisor’s view of white America nor does Obama’s view of America match that of Wright. Just looking at his political career could tell you this. Obama has never played “the angry black radical” in his decade in politics. He has never given any hint that he supports the idea that the government created the AIDS virus to kill black people or any of the other loony conspiracy theories spouted by Wright.

Therefore, what’s the big deal about Reverend Wright? Why should it matter what he believes? Isn’t it more important to find out what the candidate believes?

As for Wright, the founder of so-called Black Liberation Theology” says we white people just don’t get it.

From Newsmax:

Apologists for Wright have said that what he says is normal in black churches, and many blacks claim such preaching cannot be understood by whites.

“If you’re black, it’s hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people,” the New York Times quoted James Cone as saying. Cone is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and the father of what is known as black liberation theology.

(Note: I will not link the Newsmax story until independent verification of its thesis is forthcoming.)

I suppose for some African Americans, the above might be true. But is anyone seriously suggesting that Obama subscribes to those views?

I don’t see how. There is simply no evidence that Obama is a race mongering radical. So it is not what Wright believes that has Obama in trouble today. It is what the candidate himself has said by way of explanation that could be his downfall.

Obama has pleaded innocent. He says he was never in the church when Wright was making those horrible statements. He says he was unaware his pastor of 20 years even held those views:

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

This is a lie. And as we have seen with the Rezko caper, Obama is very good at it.

In fact, Obama knew full well what flights of rhetorical fancy Wright was capable. He canceled Wright’s scheduled invocation at his presidential announcement speech, explaining to his friend:

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

The idea that Obama didn’t know that Wright was a hate mongering, anti-American race baiting radical is absurd. And as more of Wright’s past utterings come to light and the probability that either through Wright’s writings or preaching Obama knew full well what kind of preacher he was grows, the candidate will find himself trying to parse his own statement of defense into smaller and smaller bits until he looks and sounds like Bill Clinton (”It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is.”)

Just 48 hours ago, I thought the Obama-Wright story had a good chance of blowing over. But Obama is going to find out, like all politicians before him, it’s not so much the transgression that gets you but lying about it will bring you down everytime.

In my 54 years of life on earth, I have come to see war in rather stark and uncompromising terms:

1. War is waste.

2. There is nothing moral about any war except working to end it in victory as soon as possible.

Spare me your attempts to praise or condemn the decision to go to war based on some moral framework. Standing on the mountaintop preaching to the rest of us about how “immoral” it was to go into Iraq or how “Just War” doctrine applies is supercilious at best and ultimately irrelevant. History will have her way with us, judging whether the decision to invade Iraq was correct or incorrect. In that respect, morality plays little or no role. And those who pretend to know how the future will unfold as a result of our actions can easily be dismissed as charlatans - and that includes everyone from internet pundits to so-called experts who endlessly expound on the dire future in the region because of our invasion.

The fact is no one knows what the Middle East will look like 10 years or 5 years or even 2 years from now. Other forces are at work that may make our efforts in Iraq a positive contribution to stability in the region or the catalyst for cataclysm. I have too much respect for history to hazard much of a guess on where we’ll be in Iraq in 5 years or what the region will look like. Who would have guessed that the end of the Viet Nam war would lead to a peace and stability in east Asia - the first in more than a hundred years - that would allow economic powerhouses like South Korea and Hong Kong to prosper as never before while creating conditions for huge growth in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Viet Nam itself.

That peace was purchased with the blood of 58,000 Americans and rests to this day on the opening to China by Nixon - an event that almost certainly would never have taken place if we were not in Viet Nam. By beginning to remove the basis for conflict between China and America, we eventually brought peace and growing prosperity to billions.

Who could have foreseen the emergence of the Asian economic dynamo? Certainly not the protesters in the street. And few if any hawks were in favor of Nixon’s historic trip to China. The future is always a puzzle and those who claim prescience must deal with the hard reality that they are more often extraordinarily wrong than right.

Seen in that context, was the Viet Nam war a moral or immoral conflict? Truth has many fathers at times and to ignore the effect of the war on the region in order to claim some imagined moral high ground is intellectually dishonest. We fought the war for the right reasons (according to our lights) but failed to take into account those other historical forces at work 40 years ago, including one even more powerful than Communism - anti-colonialism.

In our ignorance, we failed to see that rather than liberators, we were seen by most Vietnamese in both the north and the south the same way the French were viewed - colonial occupiers. This made any government we supported illegitimate in the eyes of almost everyone. In the end, we went from fighting Communism to bolstering a cruel dictatorship. Yes, we killed a lot of Communists (and civilians), winning every major engagement but were forced to leave when it became obvious that there would be no end to it. The South Vietnamese government was in control at the point of our bayonets and there was absolutely no prospect for them to ever claim legitimacy with the South Vietnamese people.

We are still in danger of making the same mistake in Iraq. Five years gone and the Iraqi central government is still a mess although there are recent signs that some understanding of what needs to be done is finally taking hold. The Iraqis are learning about compromise - something foreign to them since they have absolutely no experience in working with other sects, other tribes. To say they have no sense of nationhood would not be entirely accurate. They appear to love their country but place its well being farther down on their list of loyalties - well after what mosque they worship in and who their tribal benefactors might be.

The American army meanwhile is killing a lot of terrorists but we’re also bolstering a regime to which some Iraqis only give conditional support and obeisance. I asked Iraqi embed Bill Ardolino (whose “Inside Iraqi Politics” series is a must read) about the effective control of the central government over the rest of the country. He thought that they were doing a better job lately but that there were still pockets of resistance to their authority in the south and some Sunni provinces. That matches pretty much what other embeds have been reporting.

Is the Iraqi government a failure? Not yet but it’s balanced on a knife’s edge. At this point, as with the rest of Iraq, things could go either way.

But here we are again. Our bayonets are guaranteeing a regime that is not very popular and would dissolve into incoherence and confusion - or worse, be overthrown - if we weren’t there. Hence, 5 years later we are well and truly trapped in a brier patch of our own making. The rank incompetence commented on by both hawks and doves in today’s New York Times “Reflections on the Invasion of Iraq” is instructive only because it reveals an almost universal belief that the period from the time the statue fell until the new counterinsurgency strategy developed by General Petreaus was implemented turned out to be wasted due to incompetent leadership and poor planning.

There’s no other way to say it except Bush blew it. And his incomprehensible decision not to change strategy sooner while sticking with a secretary of defense whose lies about how well things were going in Iraq echoed the worst of what the government was telling the American people during the Viet Nam war was a monumental error in judgement.

The President’s mistakes will be paid for by the next Chief Executive. I have no doubt both Clinton and Obama are sincere about wanting to leave Iraq. But I would say to my liberal friends if you believe they will be able to just walk us out in the six months promised by both, you are radically mistaken. If you have listened to them, both have said as much - that all depends on what the military says and conditions on the ground. Given those caveats, I have no doubt we will have a sizable contingent of combat troops in Iraq until the Iraqi army is big enough and trained well enough that they can take over completely. That will almost certainly take longer than 6 months and may be years in the making.

The only certainty about the outcome of the war we have today is that it will end eventually. And years from now, when the veil of history is uncovered and we glimpse what effect the Iraq War had on us, on the region, and on the rest of the world, I suspect there will be some surprises. Clio is a mischievous mistress and works very hard to make those who try and predict her verdicts look like fools.

The “strike” at Daily Kos of pro-Hillary bloggers upset that Obama commenters are being meanies has brought out the rabbits feet and lucky coins of many conservatives as they are frantically rubbing those talismans while chanting “The Democrats are imploding. The Democrats are imploding.”

Would that it were so. Rather than the stresses of the campaign “tearing apart the Democratic Party,” I think what we’re really seeing is a reordering of the liberal blogosphere - an extremely small fringe of the Democratic party whose influence is growing but not decisive in any way. This reordering is being mirrored in the conservative blogosphere and constitutes a battle between realists and idealists.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain are an anathema to the idealists because of their perceived impurity on some cherished issues. They are suspected of being closet conservative/liberals because of their willingness to work with the other party on some issues or, in Hillary’s case, the major beef seems to be that she just isn’t quite liberal enough and takes positions on some issues apparently because she wants to (gasp!) get elected.

This would be an impossibility if she swallowed the progressive agenda whole - something that is lost on the netroots who believe that voters who disagree with them are either evil Republican Rovebots or stupid, ignorant, inbred, goober chewing, bible thumping, gun toting, yip-yips who are too dense to know what is good for them.

McCain is suspect because of his willingness to skewer Republicans and conservatives at the drop of a hat and a perceived coziness with the press. And yet many conservatives such as myself, plan on pulling the lever for the Senator from Arizona despite the fact that like Hillary, McCain does not hew to the idealist’s line 100% of the time.

The Kos “revolt” (I hardly call a couple of dozen writers leaving a website that gets 800,000 hits a day a “revolt”) is not indicative of any large scale civil war in the Democratic party. But it does reveal an interesting scramble among the netroots. My feeling is that there are a lot more realists in the conservative blogosphere than there are on the left. I don’t know whether that is a function of the polarization that Hillary Clinton seems to engender but it certainly shows that the relatively few supporters Hillary has on the lefty blogs are being more and more isolated as the race goes on.

Come November, I expect the Hillary supporters to be voting Democrat even if Obama is on the ticket - something that despite his recent troubles is looking pretty certain at this point. Clinton will not overtake Obama in the pledged count and Obama supporters are the ones more likely to stay at home if their candidate is not on the ballot. Ergo, talk of a Democratic party schism is just that - interesting fodder for the blogs but not very likely by the time November rolls around.

Realism will trump ideology almost every time in both parties.

UPDATE

The New York Times did extensive interviews with the Super Delegates and confirm that unless the Wright/Rezko scandals start to really hurt Obama, he will almost certainly be the nominee. The vast majority of them have rejected Hillary’s “electability” argument and are leaning strongly toward Obama’s “will of the people” meme.

Hillary supporters, being realists for the most part, will eventually - reluctantly - accept this bitter pill and will almost certainly pull together with the Obama camp to help the party win in November.

Does all this make an Obama-Clinton ticket more likely? A week ago I would have said “no chance.” But stranger things have happened when a party is as divided as the Democrats. It may come down to a situation where both sides would refuse the marriage but be forced into a partnership. This would only happen, I believe, if the delegate controversy goes all the way to the floor of the convention. At that point, the only solution that would satisfy would be the forced fusion of both camps.

How many lies must Obama tell before he falls off his perch as an “Agent of Change” and comes back down to earth and is recognized as a gifted but flawed politician, no better and no worse than McCain or Hillary Clinton for that matter?

Lying about one’s personal affairs in order to avoid taking a political hit is an art form that most politicians must eventually master if they are to survive. All of us have some kind of skeleton in the closet whether it’s our own or someone close to us. Beyond that, innocent situations can be twisted by opponents and unfriendly media into the appearance of wrongdoing. Eventually, just about everyone will come face to face with a situation where a choice will present itself; tell the truth and risk the wrath of the voters or lie and hope no one catches you.

In Obama’s case, he has lied about the extent of his relationship with Tony Rezko from the beginning. And yesterday, the chickens came home to roost.

Prior to yesterday, Obama described his relationship with Rezko in casual terms:

Mr. Obama says he never did any favors for Mr. Rezko, who raised about $150,000 for his campaigns over the years and was once one of the most powerful men in Illinois. There is no sign that Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, did anything improper.

Mr. Obama has portrayed Mr. Rezko as a one-time fund-raiser whom he had occasionally seen socially. But interviews with more than a dozen political and business associates suggest that the two men were closer than the senator has indicated.

[snip]

When Mr. Obama first fielded questions about Mr. Rezko last fall, he said they had had lunch once or twice a year and had socialized with their wives “two to four times.”

(6/14/07)

A “one time fundraiser?” Occasional socializing?

That was then. This is now:

Trying to put his past with Antoin “Tony” Rezko behind him, presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday said he never thought the nowindicted Chicago businessman would try to take advantage of him because his old friend had never asked for a political favor.

But in a 90-minute interview with Tribune reporters and editors, Obama disclosed that Rezko had raised more for Obama’s earlier political campaigns than previously known, gathering as much as $250,000 for the first three offices he sought.

[snip]

Rezko helped bankroll all of Obama’s subsequent campaigns except his presidential bid. Rezko was on Obama’s campaign committee in his failed run against U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and gathered between $50,000 and $75,000 of the estimated $600,000 raised in that race, Obama said.

Rezko also was on the finance committee for Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate run. “My best assessment is that he raised $160,000 during my U.S. Senate primary,” he said, adding that those funds had been given to charity.

At first, Obama claimed that Rezko raised no more than $50,000 for his campaigns - which was a lie. Any politician who doesn’t have a good idea how much an important fundraiser like Rezko raises for him wouldn’t be winning many elections. The figure rose to $150,000 and now stands at $250,000.

Any bets on how high that number will eventually go?

Beyond that is the extent of his friendship with Rezko - something both Obama and the campaign have sought to minimize since day one by simply telling outright lies about how well the two men knew each other.

Even Obama’s statements about the purchase of his house were full of falsehoods as far as the reason Rezko went in on the deal.

At first, Obama downplayed the entire matter:

“I don’t recall exactly what our conversations were or where I first learned, and I am not clear what the circumstnces were where he made a decision that he was interested in the property,” Obama reportedly said.

“I may have mentioned to him the name of [a developer and] he may at that point have contacted that person. I’m not clear about that,” he said.

(11/2/2006)

That was then. This is now:

But they talked about the upcoming sales. “He said, ‘I might be interested,’ ” Obama recalled. “My response was, ‘Well, that would be fine.’”

Obama added: “This is an area where I can see a lapse in judgment.” He said his motivation was “if this lot is going to be developed, here’s somebody I knew. So I didn?t object.”

[snip]

In his first accounts of the purchase, Obama did not divulge that tour. He said Friday that he simply didn’t feel the information was salient and insisted the tour didn’t mean he and Rezko coordinated their purchases.

Is this plausible? Your friend of 20 years is buying the lot next to your dream home (although the sellers insist they gave no “discount” to Obama they also said that they wished to sell both the lot and house at the same time which Obama confirms in the Trib interview) and you don’t “coordinate” the sale in any way? This after touring the property with your friend and discussing possible development of the lot next door?

Obama is asking us to take an awful lot on faith - faith in his truthfulness.

Finally, in the matter of Reverend Wright, we are asked to believe that in a 20 year relationship with the pastor, he never once uttered the kind of vicious racial and anti-American statements that were revealed yesterday:

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

Is that true? Rich Lowry did a little digging:

Before he ever thought he would have to deploy Clintonesque spin to try to get himself out of a campaign controversy, Barack Obama wrote (an achingly good) memoir. In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we’re getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement). Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama’s second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign:

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…

Is it possible Barack Obama forgot the things that Reverend Wright preached? Or, more frighteningly, is it possible that Obama can’t recognize hate speech and anti-American rants when he hears them?

And then there’s this curious comment from his Wright “Mea Culpa” quoted above:

When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments.

“At the time?” People are still digging but no one seems to be able to come up with any comments “condemning” anything Wright has ever said that occurred anywhere near the beginning of his campaign for president. He condemned s Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic statements (not the man) when it became known that Wright’s Church bestowed the “Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer” named after Wright’s church’s magazine that featured the racist demagogue on the cover:

“I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan,” Obama said in the statement. “I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”

(1/15/08)

This is certainly a long time after “the beginning” of his presidential run - almost a year.

And what do we make of this excerpt from his book Dreams of my Father where he specifically mentions Wright’s “radical” reputation:

In his 1993 memoir “Dreams from My Father,” Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church’s radical reputation.

What exactly did Obama think Wright’s “radical reputation” was all about?

Obama’s statement published at Huffingtonpost is at best a careful dissembling of the truth and at worst a tissue of lies as this piece at American Thinker makes clear:

We noticed on the videotaped sermons that when Rev. Wright fires up the crowd, they jump to their feet. A Harvard-trained lawyer like Obama inserting the phrase “sat in the pews” knows exactly what he is doing. If he was on his feet applauding and shouting approval like so many other Trinity congregants, then this statement becomes true, if utterly misleading.

It is time for the Obamamaniacs to wake up and come down from the mountaintop. Support him for president if you must but base it on his positions on the issues and his abilities not on his perceived messianic visions of a new kind of politics - “post racial” or “post partisan” or any other unique attribute that his leadership supposedly will bring out.

Barack Obama is just another politician - devious when he has to be, vague when it suits him, and a liar when necessity calls. May this incident involving Reverend Wright open the eyes of most of those who have lost themselves in Obama’s rhetorical fog so that they can see who and what they are supporting for President of the United States.

Every once and a while (usually on a Friday so fewer people will read it), I write a post that is so politically incorrect, so outrageously provocative that I cringe when re-reading it at a later date. Not because it’s badly written (an impossibility on this site my long time readers will attest) or because the arguments are poorly made. Rather, I blanch at the audacity with which I plunged willy nilly into an issue that had liberals rending their garments and wailing in anguish that anyone would be so presumptuous as to challenge some cherished orthodoxy.

I actually hate controversy, preferring vanilla to rocky road as a rule. But questioning orthodoxy will always get you in trouble - a consequence of offending people’s sense of the way the world is or should be.

Sometimes, I’m wrong to do so if only because there are some 800 LB gorillas in the room you just don’t poke with a stick. Other times, my heart is in the right place but I end up being completely (or deliberately) misunderstood.

No matter. The question that I would like to examine in a serious manner is whether we can really believe that the probable Democratic candidate for President of the United States loves the country of his birth.

Having tossed that bomb allow me to fling another; does it really matter one way or another?

The legitimate questions that can be raised about Obama’s true feelings regarding the United States are due entirely to statements made by those that the candidate himself has informed us have had the most impact on his life; his wife, his pastor, and his mother. Couple that with what appears to me to be a dalliance with radical politics in his youth where Obama stoked the anger and rage in the ghettos of Chicago by painting a picture of America as oppressor when he was a community organizer, and the picture that emerges is of a man with decidedly mixed feelings about this country.

Who can blame him? I think if I grew up a black man in this country - even in the same economic circumstances - I might very well have a conflicted view of America. Some of my conservative friends would disagree but there has been real, honest to God oppression visited upon African Americans - I mean third world, tinpot dictator, intolerable, cruel, manifestly evil oppression. I remember when I was a liberal back in the 1970’s thinking that if I were a black man, I’d probably be a commie.

You cannot read a social history of the United States and come away with any other notion except it is a remarkable testament to the power of ideas and the fact of American exceptionalism that African Americans have fought and died in our wars, built our infrastructure, contributed to the scientific and technical achievements that have made us the envy of the world, and vastly enriched the culture - all the while being denied the simplest, most common rights and privileges enjoyed by the majority white population.

This is the world into which Barack Obama was born, raised, matriculated, and set out to make a life for himself. Even while some things were changing as far as those rights were concerned, no government could peer into men’s hearts and change the insidious evil of racial hatred. The government can mitigate the effects of racism. But it cannot cure the illness itself.

I digress because it is so easy to forget, especially when looking at Obama, that every black American carries the burden of the past with them no matter what heights they achieve in life. And with that burden is the knowledge that America’s schizophrenia regarding race - a country boasting of its freedom and liberty while failing to grant equal rights to some - weighs most heavily on those who have yet to climb the ladder of success.

But Barack Obama the candidate has given no sign that he is conflicted or or that his love of America is any less passionate than you or I. In fact, I would say that Obama is the first liberal since Hubert Humphrey who can give a 5 Star, 4th of July, patriotic stemwinder of a speech and make you believe it. But that speaks more to Obama’s oratorical gifts. What can we deduce about what he truly thinks of America from those who have had the largest impact on his life - people he himself has said that he admires and trusts.

First, his mother. I don’t care what her politics were. I am more concerned with what she thought of America. This moving article in today’s New York Times profiling Obama’s mother reveals a woman that could easily be defined as an internationalist in the strictest definition of that term:

“She was a very, very big thinker,” said Nancy Barry, a former president of Women’s World Banking, an international network of microfinance providers, where Ms. Soetoro worked in New York City in the early 1990s. “I think she was not at all personally ambitious, I think she cared about the core issues, and I think she was not afraid to speak truth to power.”

[snip]

Those choices were not entirely surprising, said several high school friends of Ms. Soetoro, whom they remembered as unusually intelligent, curious and open. She never dated “the crew-cut white boys,” said one friend, Susan Blake: “She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the different, rather than that ethnocentric thing of shunning the different. That was where her mind took her.”

There is much more in the article that points to a strong willed woman who loved her son and wanted the best for him. But running through the narrative is this sense that she was a woman whose heart was far away from the United States - that she saved her love not for nations but for the ethereal notion of the brotherhood of man.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. But it raises questions about Obama’s own feelings about the United States. How were they developed? Did his stint at the exclusive prep school in Hawaii inculcate a sense of his “Americanism?” Evidently not:

“I doubted what Indonesia now had to offer and wearied of being new all over again,” he wrote in his memoir. “More than that, I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.” During those years, he was “engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

I can’t shake the notion that this statement about raising himself to be “a black man in America” is revealing of Obama’s conflicted feelings about the country. Having spent so much time out of the country, shouldn’t he have been concerned about “raising himself” to be an American rather than a black American? It may be a small point but I believe it is revealing nonetheless.

Obama’s struggles with his black identity will lead to his embrace of a pastor who can, at best, be called “conflicted” about America and a wife whose own feelings about America can be called into question.

And let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.

These words are not shocking coming from a black woman given history and circumstance. But they are troubling coming from the wife of a candidate for Presdent of the United States. What influence has she had on her husband’s thinking? Has she clarified or even reinforced his doubts about America or has he simply dismissed her misgivings?

Right about now those of my friends on the left whose heads have not exploded are probably doing a little seething. But I would say to those liberals who have come this far with me that these are perfectly legitimate questions to ask and seek answers. Obama has made it clear that his wife has helped him in his quest for a black identity. She has been the bridge to Obama’s self-acceptance into the African American community. Someone who has given Obama so much must have some influence on him.

Speculation? Or logical deduction? I suppose that depends on how open your mind might be.

One doesn’t need an open mind to glean what is in the heart of Obama’s long time preacher, friend, and confidante Jeremiah Wright:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America.

“No! No No!

“God damn America … for killing innocent people.

“God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans.

“God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”

Obama’s statement on these and other incendiary remarks is frankly unbelievable:

“Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy,” he said in the statement. “I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.”

Obama said he never personally heard Wright preach the statements at the center of the controversy, but that he first learned of them when he launched his presidential campaign.

Are we supposed to accept his statement that Obama was unaware of the Reverend’s beliefs until last year despite the fact he has known him as a friend and accepted him as a spiritual advisor for nearly two decades? Or are we to believe that Reverend Wright hid these views from his congregation since Obama attended services at the church on a regular basis?

Get beyond the repudiation of the words and sentiments of Wright and what is Obama saying? For more than a year, he has has been attending the church of a minister that he knew spouted outrageous anti-American sermons.

These are the things that make us question Obama’s true feelings about the United States. I am sure that he does not share the views of Wright nor perhaps of his wife either. But deep down, where only the candidate really knows and could tell us, what does he really feel about this country? Those who had the most impact on his life have made plain their conflicted feelings about America. Does Obama share this?

And ultimately, does it really matter?

I think that depends on the individual voter, doesn’t it? After all, I’m sure many of Obama’s African American supporters do not put as much stock in Obama’s relative depth of feeling about America than many others would. And spending 10 minutes perusing some liberal websites would be equally revealing with regard to the conflicted feelings about the United States felt by some on the left.

If Obama were, in fact, conflicted about America would that interfere with his ability to do the job of president? I don’t see how. It doesn’t make him any less loyal or patriotic - at least in the sense that he wouldn’t commit treason or sell out the country to foreigners. It certainly wouldn’t interfere with his ability to be a good executive.

So in the end, it really doesn’t matter to a lot of people what Obama really thinks about America. To some, like Mona Charen, it is nevertheless troubling:

Obama’s book is strewn with hints of his far left sympathies, as when he tells an African cousin who complains about the hardships of life in Kenya that things are no better in America. Or when he suggests that the lives of poor black young men in the inner city are blighted by white racism. He never says it explicitly, but it’s there.

He has been very friendly with Rashid Khaladi, the fierce anti-Israel professor who took Edward Said’s post at Columbia.

My own theory, FWIW, is that Obama acquired his far left views at least in part to make himself as authentically black as he could to compensate for having a white mother. His mother, of course, was very left herself. But looking the way he does, and having been raised among only white people (mother and maternal grandparents) he felt the need to better identify with his black heritage. That struggle is what the book is all about.

One can have sympathy for his psychological predicament . But that sympathy certainly does not extend to electing him president of a country that I sincerely believe he does not love.

Charen is unable to prove that Obama can’t do the job based solely on whether or not he loves America. I’d never vote for the guy in a million years. But whether he truly loves America as deeply as I do is far down the list of reasons why.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is starting to remind me of the orders General Grant gave to General Sheridan for the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign.

Angry that a confederate army led by Jubal Early had been able to use the Valley both as a granary for the southern armies and a sheltered invasion route of the north, Grant created the 40,000 man Army of the Shenandoah and put the bulldog Sheridan in command with two specific orders; kill Early’s army and “consume and destroy all forage and subsistence, burn all barns and mills and drive off all stock in the region.” Valley residents who complained about the wholesale destruction were told, per Sheridan’s instructions, “that they have furnished too many meals to guerrillas to expect much sympathy.”

Grant explained in a letter to Army Commander in Chief Henry Halleck that he wanted Sheridan to “eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.” Grant got down to more specific details in his further instructions to Sheridan, saying that he “should make all the Valley south of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a desert as high up as possible. I do not mean that houses should be burned, but all provisions and stock should be removed, and the people notified to get out.”

The Clinton campaign has declared total war - on Obama, on the party, on the media, on basically anyone who is in their way. It is a campaign quite unlike any the Democrats have seen since perhaps 1860 when Stephen Douglas refused to step aside for the good of the party and ended up driving the Dixiecrats out of the convention to put up their own candidate thus assuring the election of a Republican.

No one will walk out of this year’s Democratic convention (we think). But Hillary Clinton’s tactics from here on out are apparently designed to cleave the Democratic party in two and bulldoze her way to the nomination by any means necessary.

And just in case she falls short, she is going to damage Obama to the point that he will be “unelectable” in November.

Jonathon Chait:

As I said, Obama was running well ahead of Clinton in head-to-head matchups a few weeks ago, and now they’re tied. After several more weeks of Clinton reinforcing McCain’s message against Obama, Clinton will probably be performing better than Obama against McCain. This is the point I made in my TRB column. She needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton’s decision to continue her campaign. It’s actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he’s unelectable. It’s not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.

MyDD on Obama’s unelectability:

With this in mind, the most sensible conclusion I seem to be able to infer from Penn’s statements are that after the Clinton campaign gets done with Obama he won’t be able to win a national election — in other words a promise from the Clinton campaign to make Obama unelectable.

Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely room for the two campaigns to hit one another on legitimate bones of contention or to make the case that their candidate is relatively stronger. And both candidates should be and need to be scrutinized so that the Democrats can put their best foot forward in November. But when a campaign begins lashing out senselessly, as appears to be the case in this instance, it simply must be put to a stop — for the good of the party and for the good of the nation, which cannot afford to go through the third Bush term with a McCain presidency.

Would it be too much to read into this theme the unspoken reason for Obama’s unelectability? Is the Clinton campaign playing their final and most devastating race card by strongly hinting that America simply will not elect a black man president?

I don’t think it can be anything else. It goes hand in hand with the rest of the campaign’s tearing down of Obama, marginalizing him as being too inexperienced and not tough enough while Hillary’s surrogates do the dirty work. Was Geraldine Ferraro’s statement about Obama basically being an “affirmative action” presidential candidate so off the cuff or was it a deliberate, planned ploy using a liberal icon like Ferraro to raise perhaps the most devastating questions about Obama’s abilities? Can even the Clintons be that devious?

Logic would say no but the idea shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. Desperate people do desperate things and in order to stave off elimination, the Clintons are proving themselves as proficient as the Huns in laying waste to the political landscape.

Is this damaging what Andrew Sullivan calls Obama’s “post racial” appeal? In Mississippi, Obama received 90% of the black vote while Clinton got 75% of the white vote. That’s the white Democratic vote (with about 12% GOP crossovers). It remains to be seen what will happen in Pennsylvania on April 22 but with Governor “A black man can’t win in Pennsylvania” Rendel, you can bet that the Clinton campaign will bend every effort to portray Obama as a one trick pony - a candidate unable to win the white working class vote while gaining 90% majorities from a racial group the Democrats have in the bag already.

Obama’s dilemma is if he plays Hillary’s game by even acknowledging the charges of unelectability, he falls into the trap of joining the debate. For Obama, there can be no discussion of the matter. It is a ridiculous charge on its face and so far, his campaign is treating it as such.

But what happens if in the next three states - Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana - Obama fails to win a majority of white votes? In Virginia, Obama won 52% of the white vote. But in the southeastern part of the state in counties bordering North Carolina, Hillary Clinton rolled up huge majorities. And Indiana could also prove difficult for Obama given the economic downturn in that state which lately seems to have favored Clinton.

By exacerbating the racial divide in the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton may indeed make Obama unelectable. And there’s no guarantee that the strategy will sway the Super Delegates and make her the nominee especially since she will probably be trailing in the delegate count and popular vote. But none of this seems to matter. As far as the Clinton campaign can see, this is their only avenue to the White House and by hook or by crook, whether they bring the Democratic party down or not, they’re going to take it.