Northman's Fury

If you happen to be one the poor working stiffs who finds themselves unable to pay their mortgage or gets behind on their credit card payments, the message is that you're a lazy. slothful, ignorant moron who should be forced to pay for your bad decisions.

If, one the other hand, you happen to be one of those who were making billions off of making all of these bad loans and poor credit choices, the government will be happy to give you billions more in taxpayer dollars to keep you afloat.

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Friday agreed to provide emergency financing to Bear Stearns (BSC.N) after the investment bank said its cash position had deteriorated sharply, sending its shares into freefall.

. . .

The Fed, through its discount window, will provide non-recourse, back-to-back financing to JPMorgan Chase, the commercial bank said. JPMorgan said it does not believe this transaction exposes its shareholders to any material risk.

JPMorgan is at least right about that last part.

If you are wondering WTF a non-recourse, back-to-back financing is, pull up a chair:

JPM gets to go the the Discount Window and borrow all the greenbacks they want; Then they loan that to Bear. In the event that Bear defaults, the NY Fed cannot go back to recover from JPM -- hence, non-recourse.

So, JPMorgan shareholders are safe. The taxpayer on the other hand . . .

Corporate Welfare at its finest.

Apparently, we're to blame for Europeans not having enough babies to hold off the Muslim hordes.

With just a single exception, the non-Muslim population of every country in Europe now has a birth rate at below replacement levels. . . . Why, I ask Bruce Thornton today on Uncommon Knowledge, do Europeans so steadfastly refuse to reproduce?

Because, replies the author of Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow-Motion Suicide, “children are expensive. They require you to sacrifice your time and your interests and your own comfort. . . . That's sort of the spiritual dimension of the problem."

“The spiritual dimension of the problem.” There are so few children in Europe, in other words, because there are so few believers.

I guess the only solution to saving Europe is to go back to the days when people had to give all their stuff to the Church so they no longer think of material gain, and women were chattel whose only real purpose was to pump out droves of white, Christian babies.

After they get rid of the unbelievers, of course.

Since I've already slammed John McCain for his choices in spiritual leaders, I figured I should say something about Obama's pastor, who has said some less than unifying things over the years.

I don't find Obama's actions here as despicable as McCain's for at least three reasons.

One: It is more than possible to attend a church for several years without actually agreeing or conforming with the church leaders' beliefs. How many Catholics use birth control, as a for instance?

Two: Obama isn't out holding press conferences standing next to the guy saying how honoured he is to have his support and/or pandering the more extreme views held by his spiritual guide of choice.

And Three: Wright's views, while hardly the milk of brotherly love, are far, far less extreme than those espoused by Hagee or Parsley.

All that said, I agree with what Polimom says here:

I firmly believe that Barack Obama’s feelings and views about race are precisely as he’s presented them — both on the campaign trail and in his books. However, I also think Obama’s going to have to draw very strong, clear distinctions between himself and Jeremiah Wright for the citizens of this country — much more than he’s thus far done.

And he needs to do it soon.

Keep telling people that missile defense works, and eventually they're going to start noticing you're not doing too much about defending them from actual missiles.

Residents of a southern Israeli town want a real-life laser cannon to protect them against Palestinian rocket attacks. And they're suing the national government, for failing to provide the ray gun defense.

. . .

But Center director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner seems a little confused about some of the specifics of the laser system. She claims it "shot down Katyushas, Kassams and bombs with 100 percent success." Not quite. Yes, it did zap some 46 targets. But, overall, “its performance was not great,” Penrose C. Albright, a former Pentagon official who helped initiate the project, told The New York Times. “Under certain conditions you can make it work. But under salvo or cloudy conditions, you’ve got problems."

Darshan-Leitner also asserts that the old THEL is "just sitting there in New Mexico... There is a way to take it apart, bring it to Israel and rebuild it. A company [you gotta figure it's Northrop -- ed.] told me that it would take no longer than five or six months. It would cost around 50 million dollars to rebuild it, but there would be unlimited protection." The laser is, in fact, in storage in New Mexico. But that $50 million figure is about a third of what Northrop has said previously it would take to build a laser system. And, as Yiftah S. Shapir, a Tel Aviv University military analyst told The New York Times: "one guerrilla with a rocket launcher could fire 40 Katyushas in less than a minute, easily overwhelming most any defense."

The cost-benefit analysis of these fantastical missile defense systems is one none of their boosters want you to take a look at. The Palestinians are building Qassams out of household plumbing and chemicals and the residents of Israel want to spend (probably) hundreds of millions of dollars for a system that a single guerilla could overwhelm easily. And that's assuming he's kind enough to wait for a bright and sunny day to launch his attacks. Who wins that kind of arms race?

I mean, outside of the guys building the ridiculously expensive and ineffective missile defense system?

I think he strikes the right balance on this, disappointment as much or more than anger. Time will tell if it has an effect.

While the focus continues to be on the two Democratic candidates and their various tactics for beating each other over the head, and which one would be a better Commander-in-Chief . . . Let's all remember that either of them is the answer when compared to their real competition, John McCain.

In addition to the bigoted Reverend Hagee, whose support McCain is "honoured" to have, there is the delightful Pastor Rod Parsley.

Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

. . .

Parsley claims that Islam is an "anti-Christ religion" predicated on "deception." The Muslim prophet Muhammad, he writes, "received revelations from demons and not from the true God." And he emphasizes this point: "Allah was a demon spirit." Parsley does not differentiate between violent Islamic extremists and other followers of the religion:

There are some, of course, who will say that the violence I cite is the exception and not the rule. I beg to differ. I will counter, respectfully, that what some call "extremists" are instead mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam.

The spirit of Islam, he maintains, is one of hostility. He asserts that the religion "inspired" the 9/11 attacks. He bemoans the fact that in the years after 9/11, 34,000 Americans "have become Muslim" and that there are "some 1,209 mosques" in America. Islam, he declares, is a "faith that fully intends to conquer the world" through violence. The United States, he insists, "has historically understood herself as a bastion against Islam," but "history is crashing in upon us."

At the end of his chapter on Islam, Parsley asks, "Are we a Christian nation? I say yes." Without specifying what actions should be taken to eradicate the religion, he essentially calls for a new crusade.

And if you want someone to lead that crusade, McCain would be your choice.

Whatever my problems with the Clinton campaign or the questions about Obama, I'm far more willing to see either of them in the Oval Office. They at least, seem willing to try and prevent those 3 a.m. phone calls, not provoke them.

Message to Geraldine Ferraro: Stop Digging!

Honest! Shut the hell up, already!

You're really not helping things by trying to defend your tokenism remarks and nobody is buying the "white victim" remark beyond the KKK types.

But if you insist on continuing yapping, here's a question for you:

If you believe that Obama is a token black guy, like you thought Jesse Jackson was a token black guy, an you believe you were the token female when you ran for office, what do you think of Hillary's accomplishments?

Because once you go down the identity politics road, you've left both Democratic contenders open to assault.

Adm. William J. Fallon, the top American commander in the Middle East whose views on Iran and other issues have seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early, the Pentagon said Tuesday afternoon.

The retirement of Admiral Fallon, 63, who only a year ago became the first Navy man to be named the commander of the United States Central Command, was announced by his civilian boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who said that he accepted the admiral’s request to retire “with reluctance and regret.”

Coming as this does less than a week after Tom Barnett wrote that the Bush administration was looking to push him out because of his tendency to stand up to them and obstruct their path to war with Iran, it is very hard to see this as anything more than getting rid of someone unwilling to toe the neocon line.

Secretary Gates may say that it is "ridiculous" to suggest this portends a more aggressive US approach, but then it doesn't have to. The US has been plenty bellicose as it is. Fallon was a nuisance because he undermined the administration's rhetoric by throwing cold water on their blatherings. Without such a brake in place, the tensions can ramp up without interference until Junior gets his wish. All they need to do is find the proper yes-man for Fallon's position.

Amid Charges of Spitzer Tryst, Embattled Prostitute "Kristen" Expected to Resign

Not exactly a surprise to anyone who was actually paying attention, but further confirmation is always welcome.

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

. . .

President Bush and his aides used Saddam's alleged relationship with al Qaida, along with Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, as arguments for invading Iraq after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the United States had "bulletproof" evidence of cooperation between the radical Islamist terror group and Saddam's secular dictatorship.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam and al Qaida in a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on bogus or misinterpreted intelligence.

Using that bogus intelligence and harping on the non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida has already cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars and several thousand lives, but has yet to result in the dismissal or resignation of a single person responsible for pandering it.

No, the US only asks people to leave office for personal indiscretions. And with Eliot's Mess, (thank-you, Stephen Colbert), dominating the news cycle, this latest revelation of the Bush administration's lying the nation into war is likely to be buried and forgotten along with all the rest.

Now that Obama has called out the Clinton campaign on the paradox of their both calling him unprepared to take office, and yet a "dream ticket" to be their Vice-President, all while being well behind him in every measure, they've decided to downplay the talk. I don't think it would have made for a very good ticket anyway. While Clinton may have needed Obama to heal the wounds she's inflicting on the Democratic Party, the reverse isn't necessarily true. His support comes from new voters and independents that may be turned off if she wins, her supporters are the Democratic core who are likely to vote Democrat regardless of the candidate.

It does bring to mind some advice for how Obama should pick his second:

National Security is the one area where the public might feel justifiably nervous about Barack Obama’s lack of experience. Democrats should remember that the man Obama is most often compared-to, John F. Kennedy, served in wartime and experienced the grim pain of battle, first-hand. At an early age, JFK wrote a best-selling book about - of all topics - national security and the dangers of allowing a lapse in readiness. If (and only if) Obama were to choose a VP nominee with very credible credentials in this area, then Democrats could make a potent issue of the GOP’s systematic demolition of our readiness, our reserves, our armed forces, our alliances, our moral high-ground, our prestige and our position of leadership in the world.

Those rushing to compare Barack to JFK should remember that this issue was a winner for Kennedy. He wasn’t just all-about the Peace Corps and Civil Rights. He defeated Richard Nixon in large part by preventing the Republican from seizing National Security as his personal property.

. . .

Again, the democrats will be utter fools not to make a front-burner issue of the Republican War Against the U.S. Military... the utter demolition of our alliances, our world stature, our state of readiness, and the steady degradation of the brave men and women of the armed forces? It is a matter of paramount importance and incredible potency...

...though it can be best made if the Democratic presidential nominee has the brains to pick a VP candidate who’s credible. One who can make this attack in the face of John McCain’s war-hero image.

There are two prominent democrats who can do this! Jim Webb of Virginia and General Wesley Clark. One can hope.

Clark is currently a big supporter of the Clintons, but he has already proven himself willing to take on McCain's record.

In the national security business, the question is, do you have — when you have served in uniform, do you really have the relevant experience for making the decisions at the top that have to be made? Everybody admires John McCain's service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There's no issue there. He's a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot — and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam — that doesn’t prepare you to be commander-in-chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn't give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.

One can hope.

Offer to Cadman was to fund his re-election, Tories say

It's bad enough when you have to keep changing your story about what the offer was for, but you could at least try floating a line that makes some kind of sense. Cadman knew he wasn't going to live out the next election campaign even if the government fell immediately. Half of the story here is that Cadman was worried that if the government fell and a new election was called, his death would leave his family with less survivor benefits since he wouldn't be a sitting MP.

How stupid do the Conservatives think Canadians really are?

If ever I worry that my frequent criticisms of Hillary Clinton are taking me over the edge into CDS territory, there's always Sully to show us all what a true sufferer looks like:

The best book on the Clintons remains "Primary Colors," Joe Klein's masterpiece. The movie wasn't bad either. This clip shows the Clintons pondering whether to use some vile, underhand dirt on a political opponent. Except, of course, they don't ponder. For them there is never any moral pondering. They do and say what is in their best interests, period - and they have no idea how to behave otherwise.

Dude. It's a movie. Really, there are more than enough things to get peeved at the Clintons over, but digging up a fictionalized Hollywood movie to try and prove a point is way over the edge.

Wyoming didn't really change much, but then it appears that neither did Ohio and Texas. Prior to Hillary winning those contests, there was increasing pressure on her to bow out of the contest and let Obama be the candidate. And now, just about everywhere I look, the pressure telling Hillary to go away already is even more vocal than it was before. And the fault can be laid entirely at her own feet.

Gary Hart lambasted her for breaking the sacred rule of not giving ammunition to the other party's candidate. John Cole calls her McCain's new girlfriend. Seth Grahame-Smith is fed up and done defending and apologizing for her. Matt Yglesias talks about The Cost of Egotism:

Were Hillary Clinton not determined to drag out the Democratic primary despite considerable evidence that she stands no realistic chance of closing Barack Obama's delegate lead, John McCain would, right now, be groaning under the yoke of a massive advertising campaign designed to define him and Obama in the public eye for the first time. Instead, McCain has what the New York Times rightly deems " a valuable commodity: time he can use to unite a fractured Republican Party, ramp up his lackluster fund-raising and transform his shoestring primary operation into a general election machine." The landscape still strongly favors the Democrats, but it's much less favorable than it would have been were the Clintons willing to set their own interests aside in favor of those of the party and the progressive movement.

And in the meantime, we find out that Bill Clinton appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show the day of thee Texas primary.

Hart Williams calls it Clinton's Pyrrhic Victory.

Now, like Pyrrhus, she has lost “supporters” in all of this, but has no way of replenishing them (unless there is a large, untapped demographic of “evil-but-uncommitted” Democrats that I’m unaware of). On the other hand, Obama seems to be picking up supporters if ONLY by negation: those Democrats sickened by these Rovian tactics, these distortions, hypocrisies, and flagrant attempts at cheating, pretending themselves the victims, and holding others to a standard that they themselves will not be held to.

You see, the American people are NOT as dumb as politicians and comedians seem to think that they are. If you were to be a fly on the wall at a local diner in Pig’s Knuckle, Arkansas, I think you’d hear plenty of conversations focusing on the brazenness of the post-”victory” Clinton campaign, and the amazing forbearance of the Obama campaign in the face of astonishing provocation.

The only question is: Is it Pyrrhus or Samson we need to be referring to?

In a stunning upset Saturday that could be a sign of trouble for Republicans this fall, a little-known Democratic physicist won the special election for a far west suburban congressional seat long held by former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

. . .

"Back in the laboratory, this is what we'd say was a pretty successful experiment," Foster told about 200 supporters at an Aurora banquet hall. "I will be your voice in Congress to make change happen."

I'm not entirely certain what this will mean for November and if it was truly a proxy battle between McCain and Obama, but I am very happy to see the word "Physicist" being used to describe the winner.

Scientists have a certain way of looking at the world, an ability to look at the empirical data and make their decisions based upon that data, which is becoming ever more necessary. (The Inverse Square Blog, which has become one of my regular reads, covers this issue quite well, and far more eloquently than I can.) The viewpoint isn't entirely limited to scientists, and scientists are no more immune to ideological blinders than the rest of us at times. But through their training, it is less likely that their choices will be driven by bad science, or no science at all.

And so, to see more scientists in political office is a very good thing to my mind.

Oh, and it makes this article a timely one.

Remember back in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, when some dumbass said that they were, "dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction"? Well, a couple of Senators has decided that after five years, they should really look into why that hasn't happened.

Two senators are asking congressional investigators to look at Iraq's oil revenues and see if the war-ravaged nation can pay for its own reconstruction, an effort that has been bankrolled to this point mostly by U.S. taxpayers.

Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and John Warner, R-Virginia, said in their Friday letter to the Government Accountability Office that Iraq has "tremendous resources" in banks worldwide but is doing little to improve security and reconstruction efforts.

Iraqi officials did not immediately respond to the senators' allegations.

"We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks," wrote the senators, who are their party's top members on the Armed Services Committee.

I agree, they really need to look into why members of the Iraqi government are assiduously moving money into out-of-state bank accounts. It can't be because these mostly former exiles don't have much confidence in the continued stability of their US-backed regime and want to ensure they have a nice tidy nest-egg tucked safely away somewhere, can it?

Of course not! The surge is working! iraq is a success just waiting to happen, and these Iraqis need to start showing some confidence by investing those oil revenues into rebuilding all the stuff the US army has blown up. After all, when you invade a country under false, misleading, and continually shifting rationales, it is only right that the people you've conquered be forced to foot the bill for the damage you've caused.

Sure, with the Iraqis running their own reconstruction, Halliburton is unlikely to get as many no-bid contracts. But with their former CEO on the way out of the White House, that gravy train was probably about to dry up anyway.

And if that doesn't work, the folks over at The Astute Bloggers have a solution: (Note: No, this isn't a parody site.)

I think that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Qatar and the rest of the nations in the region - (including Iran!) - should help underwrite tHe costs of this heroic and noble effort.

They should give the USA $400 billion.

They have the money. Especially now with oil at/near/or over $100/barrel.

THEY ALL SEND PLENTY TO MILITANT MADRASSAS AROUND THE WORLD. WHY OT SEND THAT MONEY TO THE USA INSTEAD?

The money would help the USA continue to take the lead in the war - on all its fronts.

But more importantly it would be just: Those who benefit the most should share the costs.

If they won't send troops, then they must send money.

Or be seen as ungrateful dogs.

The choice is theirs.

ARABS: ARE YOU DOGS, OR ARE YOU HONORABLE MEN? ARE YOU EVEN CAPABLE OF HONOR? THEN SHOW US. Actions speak louder than words. If you don't send us the money, then you have really told us who you all really are: ungrateful dogs.

Now who could refuse a reasonable plea for aid like that?

Edited for clarity

Clinton campaign says the win is unimportant and the large margin is only because Obama is a blood relative of Cheney's. (/snark)

Really, this is basically as anticipated. No offense to the people in Wyoming, but the only way this would be BIG news is if Obama had lost.

There's not much more one can say about a story like this:

Federal Tories who threatened to force an election over the Senate's protracted study of a crime bill now want the upper chamber to play ball with them in killing an opposition bill that would provide tax relief for parents saving for their children's education.

The turn-about was suggested yesterday as a way for the Conservative government to block a bill that it says will cost the treasury upward of $1-billion a year.

“There's some reasonably minded senators that will look at this and say ‘this is not good news for taxpayers,' ” said MP Ted Menzies, the parliamentary secretary to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

“I'm hoping to talk to the senators and that they will use common sense, as they're quite capable of doing.”

. . .

“This really lays bare for all to see what kind of government we're dealing with,” he said. “Can you imagine if they had a majority?”

Mr. McTeague said that if the Conservatives want to turn against an issue of vital importance to middle-class Canadians, they do so at their own peril. “I believe they really ought to rethink this,” Mr. McTeague said. “It's a direct slap in the face to the middle class.”

Only weeks ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave the Senate an ultimatum of March 1 for the passage of a crime bill that he said had been undemocratically held up. The government forced a vote of confidence in the House of Commons on the matter, which, if it lost, would have meant an election. The government won the vote and the Senate passed the bill in time.

This is really quite an enjoyable piece of political theatre. Not only is it a complete flip-flop of their very recent position on the Senate's powers, but another in the long line of examples that they believe tax cuts are only good when they get to control who benefits from them.

And what's this I see in my mailbox?



Ah yes! The famous GST cut, which is costing the federal treasury 20 times what they say the proposed Education Savings Plan credit would. And how much has that helped the ordinary Canadian? Let's see:

One of the problems involves businesses not passing on the savings. A chain of movie theatres, for example, stands to make a profit of over $5 million: the price of a ticket is the same as before, with the fine print stating that the GST is included in the ticket price. Now that the GST is down to 5%, however, ticket prices are still the same, which means the chain is raking in a lot of extra money without lifting a finger or providing better service.

Marketplace has found identical practices among taxi companies, parking lot operators and even at the Toronto Star, which subsidizes itself, at taxpayers' expense, to the tune of over $300,000 a year by pocketing the GST savings.

And that's not the big way this flashy little tax cut is a bogus claim. Being that it's tax time, most Canadians are probably aware of that little box on their income tax forms that asks if you are applying for the GST/HST tax credit. That little credit was brought in to refund the GST for all of those households who don't have a lot of money. At its base rate, anyone making less than $30,000.00 a year is effectively getting all of their GST back for what they consume, and depending upon marital status and dependents, you can get at least some portion of it back as your annual income rises into the $40-50,000 range.

Based on the 2005 tax year, almost 40% of Canadians who file income tax returns make less than $30,000. Another 17% make between $30,000 and $40,000, and about 13% make between $40,000 and $50,000. Now, this doesn't work in a straight line because the GST credit is based on household income rather than personal income, but once you throw in the dependent's and spousal amounts, it is a fair bet that for roughly half of Canadians, the GST cut did, as my Dad would put it, "Sweet Fuck All!"

The Conservatives are all about helping themselves and their cronies. As for ordinary Canadians?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canadians feeling the effects of the global economic slowdown shouldn't expect government bailouts any time soon.

. . .

"I don't believe that's what Canada needs and I don't believe that's what Canadians want. They want lower taxes, less debt and carefully targeted assistance that helps workers, families, communities, businesses."

Just not anything that would help Canadians save money to send their kids to university, forgoing massive student loan debts, ensuring they get better paying, knowledge-industry jobs, that businesses can't find enough local talent for.

There's some long-term planning for you.

I had promised myself to lay off the US election race for a day or two, but whatever else it does, it continues to make for interesting stories.

Today, the Washington Post carries a story amplifying the Clinton campaign line that Obama's victories are in states that don't really matter.

Democrats in Wyoming will hold caucuses today and -- following what is now a familiar pattern -- are expected to give Sen. Barack Obama the majority of their 12 pledged delegates.

The Illinois Democrat's strength in a Republican state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 is the latest example of an ingenious strategy that neatly addresses the advantage Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) enjoys in Democratic strongholds where she and her husband have long-standing ties.

But Obama's losses Tuesday in Texas and Ohio -- coupled with his Feb. 5 defeats in California, New York and New Jersey -- have not only shown the strategy's downside. They have also given supporters of Clinton an opening for an argument that winning over affluent, educated white voters in small Democratic enclaves, such as Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, and running up the score with African Americans in the Republican South exaggerate his strengths in states that will not vote Democratic in the fall.

If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee but cannot win support from working-class whites and Hispanics, they argue, then Democrats will not retake the White House in November. "If you can't win in the Southwest, if you don't win Ohio, if you don't win Pennsylvania, you've got problems in November," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Clinton supporter.

There are a number of problems with this rather simplistic view of the primary results versus the general election chances of the candidates, and fester did a good job of laying the main ones out.

Al Gore won the 2000 New Hampshire Democratic Primary. George W. Bush lost the 2000 New Hampshire Republican Primary. One would assume that if primaries are good predictors of general election results that Al Gore would have won New Hampshire in the 2000 General Election. That is not the case.

. . .

. . . the goal of a general election is to achieve a plurality of all votes cast within an electoral college voting group. . . . In a primary between two popular figures, there is a decent chance of stealing significant elements of the other's base coalition . . . while there is a minimal chance of Clinton/Obama stealing significant support from McCain in the 'bomb everyone to the stone age' crowd. Two very different objectives with two very different sets of initial moves and therefore countering moves.

Now if you want to argue based on a combination of demographics, policy, persona and organization, generic issue trends etc... that Clinton has a higher probability of beating John McCain in Ohio than Barack Obama, then that is a legitimate and interesting argument. But a linear extrapolation from a primary to the general election is an extraordinarily weak argument.

Of course, if a weak argument is all you've got . . .

As it turns out, that really important measure, the one about how the two candidates stack up in an election versus John McCain, got a nice bit of juicy data for the gristmills yesterday, complete with colourful maps.

At the moment, Barack Obama is the better general election nominee. Period. Full stop. He will have to spend less time defending blue states. He's competitive in a larger number of red states. And he's more competitive in states that have Senate elections. Barack Obama: because this is the year to bust the map wide open.

But there is more going on in this debate than just the general election prospects of Obama or Clinton, though that is the current venue where the debate is taking place. This is about the strategy the Democrats will be using going forward. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story about the fund-raising efforts of the two party's leadership committees. A fair bit of the story focused on what the DNC has been doing under its new leadership:

Party officials maintain that the D.N.C. is cash poor partly by design, reflecting a strategy by Howard Dean, the party’s chairman, to invest in building a party infrastructure rather than amassing a huge war chest.

Since he became chairman after the 2004 election, Mr. Dean has begun what he called the 50-state strategy, opening offices and hiring staff members in every state, even ones that are traditional Republican strongholds. He has also invested in a huge voter database — one that is designed to rival the Republican Party’s sophisticated voter file — that he hopes will pay off this year and allow Democratic candidates to find likely voters and make specific pitches to them.

How the costly 50-state strategy — and the cash shortfall that it has created — play out over the coming election will be a referendum on the tenure of Mr. Dean, who has had a prickly relationship with many of the party’s top officials. Under Mr. Dean’s tenure, D.N.C. fund-raising has steadily climbed, along with its expenses. So far, Mr. Dean has spent $170 million since the last presidential election to turn his vision for the party into a reality, with nearly $60 million of that raised in the last year alone.

“He’s doing the job of the party chairman in a very different way,” said Elaine C. Kamarck, a D.N.C. member and lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

“And people don’t like that,” added Ms. Kamarck, who wrote a paper “Howard Dean’s Fifty-State Strategy and the 2006 Midterm Elections.”

. . .

By contrast to the R.N.C. and its fund-raising success, the D.N.C., by many accounts, needed to be shaken up when Mr. Dean took over. For years, it had tapped a small group of wealthy donors and poured money every two or four years into battleground states, while ignoring the rest of the nation as unwinnable. There was little infrastructure aside from the party’s office in Washington.

. . .

Leaders of the Democratic Party will be watching to see if Mr. Dean’s strategy pays off.

I touched on this a little bit yesterday. Obama's primary strategy and Dean's 50-state strategy are mirror images in some respects. Their goal is to fight for every vote in every state.

Clinton, on the other hand, mirrors the traditional Democratic approach of focusing on the "important" states while writing off the rest as unwinnable and irrelevant.

Which bodes better for the Democratic party's future chances, do you think?

If anyone is wondering why the Harper government is taking a lot of flack for their role in the "NAFTA-gate" kerfuffle, this story may offer an explanation. Obama is a hell of lot more popular in Canada than Harper is, (or any of our other political leaders).

Whether Tory or Grit, the results suggest an Obama-led Canadian party would bust open the current deadlock in public opinion.

As a Liberal, Obama would almost double that party's support relative to the Conservatives, 33-18.

As a Tory, Obama would more than double relative support compared to the Liberals, 32-15.

Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson says that when you combine the survey's findings with current voting intentions, either federal party would win a landslide victory with Obama as leader.

Apparently we're just as tired of our leadership as Americans are.

This is the question on a lot of people’s minds these days as the Democratic race drags on and looks to get nastier, and maybe far nastier, than it has so far, while the Republicans sit back and rally around their already-chosen candidate.

The answer depends on who you talk to, but the answer for now seems to be that it won’t completely destroy the party’s chances in November:

Concerns are starting to grow that this year's Clinton-Obama contest could fracture the Democratic Party. African-American turnout has exploded, and Obama usually rolls up 8 or 9 to 1 ratios among black voters. He also does well among upper-income voters of all races.

But if he loses the nomination_ particularly if the decision turns on some insider maneuver such as last-minute superdelegate switches or a convention credentials committee ruling on disputed Florida and Michigan delegates — will they back Clinton in the fall?

And would Clinton backers, notably the older women who've routinely given her 2 to 1 majorities in primaries, come out for Obama?

Most experts give a qualified yes to both those questions.

. . .

The consensus at the moment is that the Democratic Party is likely to heal fairly quickly. A lot of Democrats think that President Bush didn't really win the 2000 election and that a better campaign by nominee John Kerry in 2004 would have denied Bush a second term. This time they're hungry for victory above all.

"There just doesn't seem to be that fine a line between Clinton and Obama," said Si Sheppard, a professor of political science at Boston University.

Mulholland, an activist who's been to every Democratic convention since 1980, has witnessed a lot of intraparty strife, but he noted that it usually fades when things calm down and there's a common enemy.

I’d feel much better about that last part if Hillary would quit painting the common enemy as Obama against her and McCain.

Ultimately, I think it will be partly decided on how negative the campaign gets.  The more vicious the attacks, the more hardened the supporters of the attacks victim will get, and the less enthusiastic they will be to support the other candidate as nominee.

For now, most of the smears have come from the Clinton camp.  Many have pointed out that Obama has made a name for himself as being above these kinds of tactics, and can’t stoop to the same level as Clinton without losing some critical support.  But then, the most vicious attack his campaign has launched so far is to point out that Clinton is being hypocritical about releasing tax returns, and obstructive over releasing White House documents from her time there that she’s been referring to as proof of her “experience”.  Hardly the stuff of a full-blown smear machine.

And while the Democrats hash out their nomination process, the Republicans stand ready to play spoilers to their own advantage.

The Democratic National Committee ended 2007 nearly flat broke, with cash of $2.9 million and debts of $2.2 million. Since then it has raised some money, paid down debt and managed to put $3.7 million in its piggy bank. This compares, however, with $25 million that the Republican National Committee has in cash on hand, after having raised $97 million since the beginning of 2007.

And with Senator John McCain now the presumptive Republican nominee, party officials started plotting with his campaign this week on deploying those resources against the well-financed Democratic candidacies of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama

. . .

Such party money can play a vital role in presidential campaigns because candidates are barred from using money they raise for the general election until they are nominated at the conventions. So the party money is often used before then — as well as after — to finance advertisements, direct mail and, ultimately, get-out-the-vote efforts.

One thing to note about the rest of the NY Times piece is that Dean’s insistence on an expensive 50-state strategy meshes very well with Obama’s campaign tactics of fighting for every vote, everywhere, while the traditional DNC tactics of focusing on a few battleground states while writing off the rest as unwinnable more clearly parallels Clinton’s campaign strategy.

For now, the well-funded candidates can battle McCain and the Republicans along with each other, but the danger is one of diminishing returns. The RNC can act as a proxy for McCain and launch attacks at will, while the DNC has no money to effect a counter-assault. And the way things are going, particularly from the Clinton campaign recently, the Republicans can amplify the Democratic candidate's attacks to make their battle even nastier and more drawn out than it would be otherwise.

John McCain's Vice President:

In a Cabinet-style setting, surrounded by retired military leaders, Sen. Hillary Clinton said the public should ask whether Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama has met the criteria needed to become the nation’s commander in chief.

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

She's running up quite an impressive number of these comments for the Republicans to use in a continuous loop.



As John Cole puts it:

Is she running for the GOP nomination, or is she just trying to make sure that if Obama wins the nomination, he loses in 2008?

Best Democrat for the job?

Normally when one calls on Al Gore to save people from a meltdown, it's the planet they're talking about, but Charles Hurt apparently thinks his powers are required to save his party from the same.

IF AL GORE can pull himself away from saving the planet long enough, he might want to consider rescuing the Democratic Party from the clutches of utter self-destruction.

. . .

Hillary Rodham Clinton has made it clear she won't quit and no one expects Barack Obama to exit - and so on to the Denver party convention they go, viciously attacking one another all the way.

Forget the red phone for a national-security crisis. Where is the red phone for a political party trying to destroy itself?

There are a number of problems with this scenario, not the least of which is the fact that endorsements haven't carried that much weight either way this year. The biggest thing though, is that the Democratic race needs to continue until someone wins it. Whether or not the math looks bad for Hillary, her victories on Tuesday means she is still competitive, and it will do far more damage to the party if either candidate is forced out by the maneuverings of the big dogs of the party before the issue appears close to settled.

Yes, I don't think Hillary has much of a chance at catching Obama, and yes, I really don't like some of her campaign rhetoric, particularly that where she compares McCain favourably to her fellow Democrat. But she needs to be beaten in the race, not in the cloakrooms of the "old boy's club".

I have to point out this great post by shamanic:

. . . Obama had a terrible week leading up to yesterday's votes. And this is where we see the mettle of the man: if he's able to right the ship and regain his footing, then the odds favor him and the Democratic Party in November. If he goes into a tailspin, having finally been bitten by real, stinging politics, then he has no business being the nominee.

So this is where we find out whether he deserves it, kids. And this is where he's going to prove worthy or not of the faith that I and many others have put in him in our efforts to make him the party's standard bearer this year. And if he can't take this licking and keep on ticking, he's not the guy.

That echoes my feeling, and Obama is going to have lots of opportunities to prove himself now.

Clinton's campaign threw everything including the kitchen sink at Obama, joined in and amplified McCain's attacks, and had the help of a foreign government to hold on to her leads in Ohio and Texas. I rather expect things to get even nastier in the next two months, on all fronts.

The Republicans can do the math just as well as Democrats, and they still see Obama as their likely opponent. Michael Gerson provides some proof of that with his column yesterday:

In the seesaw Democratic primary race, Republicans generally are rooting for confusion, which means rooting for Hillary Clinton -- who now has some political momentum after last night's victories in Ohio and Texas but little realistic chance of taking a lead in delegates.

It is the Republican dream: a tenacious, buoyant, well-funded challenger to Barack Obama who is also politically doomed -- and incapable of admitting she is doomed.

So now Clinton herself is the most effective agent of the vast right-wing conspiracy -- proving just how devious and subtle that conspiracy really is.

He then sets up and knocks down a half dozen strawmen based on a purposeful misinterpretation of Obama's foreign policy statement about negotiating with enemies without even a passing mention of Hillary. Add to that the nutroots going giddy yesterday with another story they could use to smear Obama as the "terrorists' choice for president". Their target is clear.

My guess is that by the time Pennsylvania holds it primary, nobody will have to ask if Obama is tough enough to take on the Republicans.

A leaked Canadian memo that raised doubts about the sincerity of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's threat to renegotiate NAFTA was a big factor in Hillary Clinton's victory in the Ohio primary, her top campaign aide says.

That's not exactly news, but the probable source, and how the story got spun, are important tidbits.

Ian Brodie, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff, has been accused of being the source of the CTV News report. Brodie also allegedly told CTV reporters that people from the Clinton camp told Canadians to take her NAFTA concerns with a grain of salt.

CTV News went to air with the information on Feb. 27, focusing on the Obama side of the story, and it caused an uproar in the United States. Clinton accused Obama of double-talk, while the Republican front-runner and now nominee, John McCain, said Obama wasn't a straight-talker.

Basically, the Prime Minister's office leaked information to damage the Democrats, and the attacks were focused on Obama despite the same allegations being made about Clinton's rhetoric.

At least we know who the Conservatives are rooting for.

This story worries me. The quote is from an article due out in Esquire by Thomas P. M. Barnett.

[W]ell-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.

There is little question that the administration hasn't given up its hopes to take a swing at Iran, and very little hope that a McCain presidency would act differently.

Hopefully the Democrats can pull out of their circular firing squad in enough time to stop this.

Via Big Tent Democrat, this tidbit:

What if she instead starts attacking McCain and making the case that she is better able to run as a true Democrat against McCain’s strengths and weaknesses than Obama can? What if she draws the contrast with Obama not with personal or character attacks, but with direct arguments that she is a better advocate for progressive causes and concerns against McCain on issues such as the economy, health care, protecting Social Security, tax fairness, the Supreme Court, energy independence, and the environment? In other words, what if she runs more as a Democrat than he does?

Now this is the kind of thing I could get behind.  As BTD points out, the real goal here is to beat McCain in the general, and the two Democratic candidates could best prove who is capable of beating McCain by running their campaigns against him now, and contrasting their styles in such a contest.

Obama is, and to some extent already was, focusing his campaign this way:

Obama aides stressed that the campaign will not be drawn into a fight for Pennsylvania on Clinton's terms: an expensive, all-out battle focused on her. Instead, the campaign's main target will be McCain -- a point underscored by Obama when he declared himself "ready to start a great debate about the future of the country with a man who loves his country and served it bravely."

Of course, Obama’s decision is made somewhat easier by the fact that the McCain camp is already attacking him.

Hillary, on the other hand, appears far more focused on just attacking Obama. It may continue to work for her and draw out the campaign, but it says nothing about her capabilities against McCain and shows that she has little compunction about putting herself before the party.

And given that Hillary’s latest attacks against Obama would fit very well into the narrative that McCain is using in his attacks, Obama is already showing how he will respond to the Republican attack machine.  At least in the general, he should only have to face it on one front instead of two.

So let’s see if Hillary has anything that shows how she’ll campaign against McCain, rather than spots where she compares herself favourably to him. Because if the Democrats want to elect the person best qualified to beat McCain, they might want to consider why the Republicans are celebrating and assisting Clinton's wins. Somehow I doubt it is because they fear her as the more potent threat.

One of the other stories percolating around memeorandum this morning is the news that Obama has lined up a bunch of Clinton superdelegates who may defect en masse to blunt any momentum Hillary might gain out of last night's victories.

Democratic officials involved in the conversations said Obama was lining up a package of superdelegates — the party insiders whose votes help select the Democratic nominee — with plans to announce their support as a bloc.

Obama also plans to announce he raised more than $50 million in February, considerably more than Clinton’s $35 million.

The Obama theory was that the separate announcements would convey juggernaut-like momentum if Obama had big wins on Tuesday, and would help turn the page if he had a disappointing showing in the Texas or Ohio primaries.

If the information is true, Obama would be smart to hold off on pulling the trigger on this.  The fund-raising numbers are fine, but for a bunch of superdelegates to suddenly switch allegiance right after Obama lost three contests to Clinton smacks of the same kind of “screw the electorate, we’ll just buy off the important people” type tactics that I and others have been lambasting the Clinton campaign over for the last few weeks, including Obama's campaign.

It isn't the same, of course. The fact that Obama pulled up from double-digit deficits in both Ohio and Texas shows that the momentum is still on his side, and it is highly unlikely Clinton can catch up to him delegate-wise, so the superdelegates should be rallying around him. But the media has the "Clinton Comeback" storyline in its teeth, and that storyline, the superdelegate defection to Obama at this stage will look bad.

Were I Obama, I’d wait until after the Wyoming and Mississippi votes, where he is expected to win, and in doing so, get the media momentum storyline pendulum swinging back in his favour.  At that point the superdelegate shift becomes a hammer blow to the Clinton campaign rather than a mixed message from the Obama camp.

Now that the numbers are pretty much firmed up, here's what we have so far:

Ohio - Clinton 54%, Obama 44%
RI - Clinton 58%, Obama 40%
Texas Primary - Clinton 51%, Obama 48%
Texas Causcus - Obama 52%, Clinton 48%
Vermont - Obama 60%, Clinton 38%

A few days ago, I linked to this story by Marc Ambinder where he ran down the possible delegates splits, here's a copy of the chart he used:

(click for larger)

He wound up being pretty damn close on last night's results. The delegate count will likely fall almost exactly as it is in the chart, though it will be a while before Texas is hashed out. Moving down the rest of the chart sees Clinton and Obama trading more states, with Hillary picking up key states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia. All of this still leaves her 100 pledged delegates short of Obama. Play with the numbers a bit, and for Hillary to break even with Obama requires a minimum of 60-40 victories in every single contest from here on.

This is now looking like it will go to the convention, or at least to the DLC to try and broker something before the convention, since there is no way for either candidate to completely knock the other out of the race. It will certainly go on until Pennsylvania on April 22nd. My best guess is that the Clinton campaign will decide their mud-slinging in the past week was what helped them hold on to Ohio and squeak by in Texas, and we'll be seeing a whole hell of a lot more of it in the near future, (and Obama's supporters aren't looking to hold back much either, it seems)

As I said yesterday, the biggest beneficiary of all this right now is McCain, particularly given Clinton seems to be running his campaign against Obama.

I'm getting tired just watching it.

Before Pennsylvania becomes the next firewall state, and that may not end things either. November is looking awfully far away right now.

Slate posted a neat little article today positing that a political candidate's success is predicted by which one more closely resembles Bugs Bunny rather than Daffy Duck. Using such comparisons, Obama's Bugs quality should triumph over the Daffy's of Clinton and McCain.

It did bring to mind another simplistic looking political measurement theory, this one targeted at Canadian Prime Ministers. called Bastards and Boneheads, by Will Ferguson. In the Introduction, he defines the two thusly:

Bastards succeed. They are ruthless. They are active. Their cause may be noble or it may be amoral, but the Bastard is always the active principle. Boneheads fail, often by stumbling over their own two feet. They are reactive. Inept. Indignant. They are usually truly amazed by their failures.

He does, however, note a difference between Canada and the US:

. . . although we are basically a Nation of Well-Intentioned Boneheads, we yearn for a Bastard Redeemer to save us. This is why Canadians generally tend to elect Bastards. (The United States, in contrast, is a Nation of Complete Bastards that tends to elect and reward Boneheads.)

Looking at the elected PM's since I was born, we have Pierre Trudeau - Archetypical Bastard, Joe Clark - Bonehead who lasted less than a year, Brian Mulroney - Both a Bastard and a Bonehead, widely succesful electorally, with a popularity ranking when he left office that makes Bush look good, Jean Chretien - Bastard, Paul Martin - Clearly a Bonehead, Stephen Harper - True Bastard.

US Presidents - Jimmy Carter - Bonehead, Ronald Reagan - Bonehead, Bush the Elder - Bonehead, Clinton - Bastard who posed as an "Aw Shucks" Bonehead to get elected, Bush the W - Bonehead surrounded by a bunch of amoral Bastards.

Basically, I have to say it seems like a pretty good system, and it does explain at least one of the issues raised in the primaries, why Hillary Clinton has had such trouble with her campaign. She is clearly a Bastard, (or Bitch if you prefer), and the US rarely rewards such.

So then, since Obama is less of a Bastard on the surface, more people are gravitating to him. The real question is, does McCain come off as more of a Bastard or a Bonehead in the general?

Democrats by more than a 2-1 margin say Hillary Clinton should stay in the presidential race even if she loses either the Texas or Ohio primary on Tuesday.

If Hillary doesn’t win both contests, and by significant margins, the chances of her catching up to Obama in delegates are very slim indeed.  At that point, the only thing her staying in the race does is diminish the chances of a Democrat winning in November.

It is unfortunate in a way.  After totally blowing her campaign post-Super Tuesday, She finally seems to have found her legs again.  With the assistance of SNL, she has managed to portray herself as a victim of the press who have been giving Obama a free pass, and the press, who collectively seem to have the intelligence of amoeba, have decided in their infinitesimal wisdom that they should therefore level the playing field by going overboard on their attacks on Obama, just so they don’t appear to be “unfair”.

How much this will help Hillary we’ll find out tonight, but McCain is certainly benefitting.  Rush Limbaugh may be a blowhard, but he knows who benefits most from Hillary’s continued campaigning, which is why he, and a lot of other Republican supporters, (like our Conservative government, for instance), are doing everything they can to help tear Obama down.

Hell, even Hillary herself now appears like she might be campaigning as much for McCain as for herself.

“I have a lifetime of experience I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he made in 2002″

I guess that's her form of "reaching across the aisle". Throw your fellow Democrat under the bus while boosting your Republican opponent. Maybe the VP slot she should be vying for if she loses today is the one on McCain's ticket.

Whatever else, I don’t want to see the Democrats wasting their resources beating each other down for the next several months, because I really, really don’t want to listen to failed Beach Boy President McCain tell us all how great his “bomb, bomb Iran” strategy really is.

Update:

Video from Keith Obermann's show from last night. Nice to see Rachel Maddow agrees with my point above about which VP slot Hillary is angling for.

I'm hoping that tomorrow turns out to be decisive enough for Clinton to decide to bow out and avoid the possibility of the Samson Option, but I haven't quite gone so far as Matt Yglesias:

Now under the circumstances, I see no real way for Clinton to make up the lost delegate lead, but at this point it does seem to me that she and her campaign staff are probably egomaniacal enough that if they pull out a narrow "win" they'll keep running anyway hoping for lightning to strike and seeing the damage it'll do to the party as a feature, rather than a bug, since a crippled Obama who loses to John McCain could set them up for another run in 2012.

Ouch!

The US has launched an attack against a "known al-Qaeda terrorist" in southern Somalia, the Pentagon says.

Three missiles hit Dhoble town early on Monday, reportedly killing four people and wounding 20.

People are fleeing the town, fearing more strikes. Residents say planes could still be seen flying overhead on Monday morning.

Another group of people who should remember the US fondly for another generation or two. I so can't wait for the US to elect somebody with at least a lick of sense regarding foreign policy.

The New York Times ran a neat little feature today asking the former presidential candidates what they would be talking about today if they were still in the race. There are eight responses from 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans. The contrast in their responses is striking:

On the Democrat side:

Joe Biden focuses on the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, hunting al Qaeda and doing a far better job on reconstruction.

Chris Dodd looks at the crumbling infrastructure of America's cities and calls for greater effort to keep it intact.

Bill Richardson focuses on the mortgage crisis and calls for proper lending standards.

Dennis Kucinich does much the same, while also calling for the people who made a killing out of making the bad loans to be the ones forced to the price for their error.

On the Republican side:

Sam Brownback wants us to strengthen the family and renew the culture by restricting abortion and censoring broadcasts for decency.

Tom Thompson wants to talk about health care! Sort of, anyway. Actually, outside of his little flat tax request at the bottom, I found his column vacuous even for political speech. Asking the question about how Republicans would make Medicare, Medicaid and the FDA more efficient without providing any answer.

Tom Tancredo? Illegal immigrants and border security, with the fear of terrorism thrown in for spice. His last line is a classic.

Duncan Hunter takes a break from the Republicans favourite hot-buton issues and points out that the trade policies enacted over the last few decades have resulted in the deterioration of America's industrial base and the rise of a massive trade deficit.

Compare and Contrast. Which sounds like the party more ready to meet the real challenges facing America?

A couple of weeks ago, I asked if Hillary Clinton was trying to destroy the Democratic Party with her campaign's insistence that superdelegates should override an Obama pledged delegate lead, the sudden push for Florida and Michigan delegates to be seated despite originally agreeing not to campaign for them, and the news that they were even pushing for Obama's pledged delegates to flip their votes over to Hillary.

Fester figured I was worrying about the "Samson Option" far too early, given there was still a plausible path for Clinton to win the nomination fight, though one with a fair number of IF's attached to it.

Two weeks later, and the first of those IF's, Clinton victories in Ohio and Texas, are only slightly less iffy. With only two days to go, both races are virtual dead heats in most polling. As such, Clinton could very well win both states, but is unlikely to win by big margins. Given the ever shrinking number of delegates still available post-Tuesday, the math looks bad for Clinton catching Obama on the pledged delegate front.

Despite that, the Clinton campaign is trying to spin anything other than a huge sweep by Obama as a loss for him and a victory for her. If they believe their own spin, then it would appear that even a narrow victory in either state will be used by their campaign as reason to continue.

My original post required the Democratic Party itself doing some pretty stupid things to assist Clinton in bringing the party down, but the last couple of weeks have shown that that may not be required. The Clinton campaign released an ad that may as well been written for the McCain campaign, against either Democrat, something shown in sharp relief when Clinton's campaign couldn't come up with a decent answer to the very question they raised in the ad. As a result, it is little wonder that McCain is cruising past both of the Democrats in national polls.

Even there, it still shows that Obama has a better shot against McCain. The race has now entered a stage where the longer the two Democrats fight over the nomination, the better the chances that the US elects McCain as president, which, among other things, probably explains Rush Limbaugh encouraging Republicans to vote for Hillary in the Texas primary.

In this case, the "Samson Option" no longer requires anything more than a long drawn-out battle between Clinton and Obama. Reading the blogs and comments show that the two camps are hardening in their dislike of each other, and some polls show the same. This needs to end before the divisiveness takes too much of a toll.

It should be an interesting week.

Gail Collins answers some important questions regarding the Democratic contests on March 4th.