Obama '08?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Yes - it shows that the straight talk express really is a bunch of BS. And it's hard to tie someone closer to Bush then a picture like that.

Cycloptichorn

Yes ... if he embraces the man, they obviously share the same views on all of the issues.

Similarly, because Obama doesn't place his hand over his heart, it's clear he does not love his country.

It's true .... pictures are worth a thousand words.

THE RACE CARD IN L.A., PART 2.

Earlier Friday, I wrote a blog post in some haste, as I was and scurrying to catch a cross-country flight at LAX. The post talked about a phone call a friend of mine received while the two of were talking in his kitchen a little before noon on Friday, in which a gentlemen with a highly exaggerated black accent very loudly talked up Barack Obama. My post occasioned some indignation when I surmised the call came from operatives working for some organization that supported Hillary Clinton. I'm sure it didn't come from the Clinton campaign itself, and I have no reason to think the campaign knew about it. But I'm equally sure that the reason for these calls was to upset credulous listeners about Barack Obama, and it is highly reasonable to conclude that the only groups making such calls at this moment would be groups that wished to prevent Obama from winning the California primary next Tuesday -- that is, groups that favor Clinton.

Let me take a little more time, of which I had none when I wrote the original post, to describe why I think that. First, this is a tactic that occasionally is used in Los Angeles elections -- specifically, calling into areas with phone messages designed to upset residents of that area. (And this call was coming mid-day to a high-income neighborhood with many seniors who'd be at home.) As events would have it, my friend (and he's a friend of 30-years standing) was hardly a credulous listener. He is a former elected official who served in Sacramento. He is effusively and publicly pro-Hillary. And he had absolutely no doubt, from about ten seconds into the call, that it was a fraud coming, at multiple removes, from the non-Obama side of the Democratic field.

So please, this is not the assessment of the MSM out to trash Hillary. My friend is one of Hillary's more prominent Los Angeles-area backers.

And my friend is very savvy about the kinds of things that go on in Los Angeles-area elections. As am I. I was the political editor of the L.A. Weekly for 14 years. I am still the L.A. Times' go-to guest writer when they want pieces on L.A. politics for the Sunday Opinion section. Both my friend and I know this is something that happens in L.A. politics, that the political organizations of some of the people and groups who endorse major candidates have been known to engage in these things. (And that campaigns themselves have engaged in these things, since they're hard to trace -- but not, I'm sure, presidential campaigns.)

This is the third time I've experienced this personally (I received such calls at home twice when I lived in L.A. -- both in the days preceding mayoral elections). On each of these occasions, the caller purported to represent Candidate A and then said something calculated to offend what the caller presumed was the race or religion of the person who picked up the phone. And if we do not call this tactic playing the race card, then the term itself has no meaning.

As I said, I have no reason to think the Clinton campaign itself sanctioned or had any knowledge of these calls. I cannot empirically verify that the call came from some group backing Hillary Clinton. But based on my knowledge of L.A. elections, I certainly believe it came from such a group, and the odds that it didn't are roughly the odds that O.J. was innocent.

--Harold Meyerson

The Compressed Primary Schedule and Electability

Alec MacGillis and Anne Kornblut have a nice front page summary on where the Democratic race stands in this morning's Washington Post. Their conclusion, in short: Obama has momentum, but does he have enough time between now and Super Tuesday to reach parity with Senator Clinton? These grafs caught my eye, however:

Polling and election results so far suggest that the more time Obama has to present himself to voters, the better he fares. In each of the first four states where voting was sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, Clinton maintained essentially level support in polls in the months leading up to the contests, while Obama saw a steady upward trajectory the more he campaigned. In Florida, by contrast, where the candidates did not campaign after the DNC punished the state for moving its primary to January, Clinton soundly defeated Obama, offering a rough gauge on how much the senator from Illinois relies on voter contact. Now, with far less time and broader territory to cover, he must make do with a radically truncated version of that outreach, relying on a single final visit to big cities to win over voters to whom he remains little more than a first-term senator with an exotic name and a reputation for oratory. His efforts appear to be paying off, as his standing in polls inches closer and closer to Clinton's. The question is whether he has enough time to make up the gap.

Nothing particularly earth-shattering here, but then there's this from the Clinton camp:

If a few extra weeks would help Obama, the opposite is true for Clinton, whose advisers would be happy with just a few extra days, they said in interviews Friday.

If you want the best case for Obama's electability in November, here it is. The Clinton people are conceding that the more time spent with both senators airing their messages, the worse it is for their candidate. The general election race might go on for eight months; wouldn't it be best to have a nominee who wears well?

--Isaac Chotiner

Nah - it's because Bush slimed him in 2000 with the black child rumors in order to win the nod. McCain almost quit the party. And now McCain's hugging him. But he'll be back to hating him by election time. And then probably back to loving him.

The straight talk express is on a circular track, with multiple different stops along the way.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Nah - it's because Bush slimed him in 2000 with the black child rumors in order to win the nod. McCain almost quit the party. And now McCain's hugging him. But he'll be back to hating him by election time. And then probably back to loving him.

The straight talk express is on a circular track, with multiple different stops along the way.

Cycloptichorn

If Bush "slimed him" in 2000," do you believe McCain should hold that grudge forever?

Nah, only until it becomes convenient for him to do so. And then he should forget it. And pick the grudge up again before November. I'm sure we'll see lots of the two of them campaigning together now that they are such good buds, eh?

Paul Krugman addresses one of the points I discussed with Cycloptichorn yesterday. What is preferable? The automatic sign-ups and back-payments that Barack Obama is beginning to graft onto his healthcare plan now, or plain mandates as Hillary Clinton proposes them? As usual, Krugman expresses my thoughts exactly, just better than I did yesterday. Let's turn the mike over to him.

Paul Krugman wrote:

Source

But don't all of those arguments also apply to enforcing mandates?

Second, the odds are good that many people still won't sign up while healthy, because they won't think that far ahead.

Third, some of those who don't sign up when healthy won't show up for insurance for years, so that a number of people who should be paying into the pool won't.

I love Krugman, but you know that economists love counting the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin!

krugman wrote:

Second, the odds are good that many people still won't sign up while healthy, because they won't think that far ahead.

If you have a mandate and enforce it, people will sign up whether they think far ahead or not. That's what enforcing the mandate means by definition.

krugman wrote:

Third, some of those who don't sign up when healthy won't show up for insurance for years, so that a number of people who should be paying into the pool won't.

If you enforce the mandate, everybody pays into the pool. Again, that's what enforcing the mandate means by definition.

krugman wrote:

If you penalize people who are already in distress, that's an outrage. By contrast, penalizing people who are not in distress, but haven't signed up for health insurance yet, is a mere nuisance. I agree that outrages aren't workable but nuisances are. But admittedly that's just my opinion.

krugman wrote:

Once you're part of a healthcare plan, the rates you pay are a sunk cost, and needed medical care comes at no extra cost. There no longer is an economic incentive for foregoing it.

So that's the long answer to your question. The long answer is: no, they don't.

Did anybody else hear Hillary Clinton tell George Stephanopolous, I think in an interview on Sunday, that she would garnishee anybody's wages who didn't pay their fair share for universal healthcare? I didn't hear it, but I've been hearing about it on our local radio station since 3 p.m. today. If she actually said that, I sure haven't heard anything that extreme from Obama.