NERO FIDDLED

SISK PREDICTS: Obama will win. NOAH PREDICTS: Clinton wins Kentucky by 20
points or more; Obama wins Oregon by 20 points or more.

Less than two weeks ago, an unnamed senior advisor to the Obama campaign told Politico, "On May 20 we're going to declare victory."

When asked by Brian Williams whether he would declare victory on May 20, Obama said, "That will be an important day. If at that point we have the majority of pledged delegates, which is possible, then I think we can make a pretty strong claim that we've got the most runs and it's the ninth inning and we've won."

Today is that important day, and even if Obama is thumped by Clinton in Kentucky, and even if he wins Oregon by a smaller margin than expected, he is likely to emerge from this evening's contests with a pledged delegate majority. "This is nowhere near over," insists Hillary Clinton. It actually is near over, but not quite. After tonight, Obama will still be slightly short of the 2,025 delegates required to seal the nomination, and that's another thing, mister. "None of us is going to have the delegates we need to get to the nomination," says Clinton, and she doesn't think 2,025 is enough, either, because of the Florida and Michigan question.

Earlier this month, when the rumors of a May 20 victory declaration were floated, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said, in a memo to superdelegates, "[we] believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded. It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules -- your rules -- which we built this campaign and our strategy around."

Yesterday, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson issued a memo denouncing Obama's plan to declare victory as "a slap in the face to the millions of voters in the remaining primary states and to Senator Clinton’s 17 million supporters." The title of the memo -- "Mission Accomplished? Not So Fast" -- implicitly compared Obama's conduct of his campaign with George W. Bush's conduct on the war. Stumping in Mayfield this weekend, Clinton told supporters that those who foresee an Obama victory "don't want Kentucky to vote."

In recent days, Obama has refined the message, and it appears he will not declare tonight that he has won the nomination. "We will declare that we have the majority of pledged delegates," he told reporters in Kentucky last week. Two days ago, he added that "until those pledged delegates actually commit to us, we won't have achieved that number yet."

Despite Clinton's ongoing tenacity ("She has been relentless," Obama told supporters this weekend), the showdown does seem to be cooling. The Washington Post perceives a "ceasefire" between the two campaigns, and today we have learned of Al Gore's upcoming unity event.

At the end of this month, Gore will host what Talking Points Memo describes as "a major fundraising event uniting top Hillary and Obama donors on behalf of the Democratic National Committee." The event, which donors will pay $28,500 each for the privilege of attending, may be the most encouraging sign yet that the two sides of the Democratic Party's recent split will come together as they prepare for the general election. Last week, when John Edwards endorsed Obama, everyone wanted to know what was taking Al Gore so long. But now, because of his status in the party, Gore is in a unique position to act as a uniter, and it's a position he could not gracefully assume if he had endorsed one candidate or the other.

Noah

4:14 PM

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Is McCain Too Military to be President?

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Louisiana) recently suggested that John McCain is too military to be president.

This comes to us from the Des Moines Register:

"Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, 'and he has a hard time thinking beyond that,' Sen. Tom Harkin said Friday.

"'I think he's trapped in that,' Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. 'Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.'

"Harkin said that 'it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up.'

"...He said that 'I just want to be very clear there's nothing wrong with a career in the military' and that he has friends who are generals and admirals who have served the country well.

"'But now McCain is running for a higher office. He's running for commander in chief, and our Constitution says that should be a civilian,' Harkin said. 'And in some ways, I think it would be nice if that commander in chief had some military background, but I don't know if they need a whole lot.'"

Historically, there does not seem to be a correlation between military and presidential greatness. Some of our best presidents served in the military (Washington, Truman, Kennedy), and some of our best presidents did not (Jefferson, F.D.R., Clinton). Some of our worst presidents served in the military (Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Ford, Nixon), and some of our worst presidents did not (Hoover, Harding, Taft). There are also gray areas. One of our best presidents, Lincoln, served briefly in the Illinois State Militia; one of our worst, George W. Bush, momentarily pretended to serve in the Texas Air National Guard.

Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Linda Feldmann reminds us that "before McCain ever had a notion of going into politics, he was a military man." McCain was "born on a military base in Panama, the son and grandson of Navy admirals, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and a 23-year veteran of Navy service;" he is "steeped in military culture."

McCain's Senate career began ten years before he was elected to the Senate; in 1977, Feldmann writes, he "was assigned to be the Navy's liaison to the Senate, a position his father once held." Moreover, McCain's only executive experience to date has been in the military; after Vietnam, he briefly served as commander of Replacement Air Group 174 in Jacksonville.

I agree with Senator Harkin, and I share his wariness of career soldiers running the executive branch. The framers knew what they were doing when they decided that a civilian should be commander-in-chief.

The military, probably by necessity, is our least democratic institution. Politics, in a democracy, is the art of compromise, of debate, of the balanced distribution of power. The military is just the opposite -- it's a culture of following orders, of power at the top, of unquestioning obedience to leadership. A candidate's military service might speak to his devotion to his country, and that's not nothing. But it's hard to imagine what skills acquired on the battlefield would find useful application in the Oval Office, or even (as General Wesley Clark has suggested) the Situation Room.

We've always accepted the idea that there's a natural evolution from "war hero" to president. Perhaps we have not looked closely enough at the flawed logic behind this assumption. Our next president, we know, will not have had much executive experience in either government or business. Would you rather see America led by a man whose early career was spent dropping bombs on North Vietnam, or working as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago?

Noah

10:17 AM

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Obama and Choice

On Wednesday, NARAL endorsed Barack Obama for president, inducing the tremendous ire of Hillary Clinton's most vigorous supporters. Almost instantly, NARAL's blog on the subject was flooded with thousands of comments denouncing the endorsement. (As I write this, the NARAL blog has exceeded its bandwidth and is unavailable.)

Criticism poured in from elsewhere in the women's rights establishment, catalogued by Sam Stein of the Huffington Post. NARAL's own Washington branch issued a press release: "We strongly disagree with [the] decision to endorse at this time. To endorse Obama at this point in the race is an unconscionable slap in the face to Senator Hillary Clinton." Elizabeth Malcolm, the head of Emily's List, said in a statement that it was "disrespectful...to not give [Clinton] the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process." Martha Burke, former chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations: "It feels like they are abandoning a known ally for a less committed candidate because they want to jump on a bandwagon. I think the pro-choice community should stick by a woman who has stuck by them."

I can see their point, or at least part of it. If NARAL had endorsed Obama a while back, that would have been one thing. A certain part of Clinton's core following still would have been deeply upset, but that's okay. Endorsing Obama now, with the death knell of the Clinton campaign ringing in the air, does seem, to use NARAL D.C.'s phrase, a slap in the face. If they were going to wait this long, they could have waited a few more weeks and endorsed him after he became the official nominee.

But some among the outraged have taken their disappointment to an absurd and possibly harmful level.

Marcia Pappas, the head of NOW's New York chapter, "would not even commit to supporting the Illinois Democrat in the general election," Sam Stein writes. "We certainly know that John McCain is not good on women's rights and we hope that Barack Obama is better on it," Pappas said, "but it remains to be seen when we have a candidate who did not stand firm when he could have done so." And the Ohio-based group of Clinton supporters who call themselves Clinton Supporters Count Too (!) is actually launching an attack campaign against Obama in the general election. Led by Cynthia Ruccia, 55, and Jamie Dixey, 57, the group seeks to establish a coordinated effort to damage Obama among pro-choice voters in the swing states in November.

Declaring herself "thrilled" with what she perceives as society's rejection of racism, Cynthia Ruccia laments that "it's been open season on women, and we feel we need to stand up and make a statement about that, because it's wrong." She intends to make this statement by helping to elect a Republican president. When pundits call for Clinton to exit the race, Ruccia says, women are "being told to sit down, be quiet, get with the program, and take a back seat." Actually, what everyone is being told is that one candidate is about to win, and the other is about to lose; it is a mathematical certainty, and to simply assert its truth is not necessarily an act of gender bias.

Despite what the Clinton campaign is always saying, I don't think there is a deafening chorus of voices demanding that she exit the race, at least not publicly, in the mainstream media. Some have called for her to step aside -- George McGovern most prominently -- but it seems to me that the media and Washington establishments have mostly been respectful of Clinton's continued campaign for the nomination. The prevailing attitude on MSNBC, on CNN, on the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, is that "we know who the nominee is going to be" (Tim Russert, 5/6/08), but that "it would be inappropriate, awkward and wrong" to be anything but "appropriately deferential" to Clinton (Senator Claire McCaskill, 5/8/08).

But to Cynthia Ruggia, it is not possible that one strong candidate has narrowly defeated another. Rather, "our party has been witness to the most outrageous display of misogyny and sexism in modern campaign history," and "if Senator Barack Obama is our party's candidate, we will actively campaign against him." Another member of Clinton Supporters Count Too, Mary E. Davis, told the Columbus Dispatch, "One candidate is well-qualified. The other candidate is not well-qualified, but the qualified candidate happens to be a woman. I will take four years of John McCain rather than have a candidate not prepared."

Not well-qualified? Not prepared? Not preferable, from a women's rights perspective, to John McCain?

Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton, has never scored below a 100% rating from NARAL on reproductive rights issues. John McCain, on the other hand, has received a 0% rating every year since 1999. (10% in 1998; 5% in 1993; 10% in 1992; 0% every other year since 1987, when he was first elected to the Senate.)

Feminists who oppose Obama often attempt to paint him as spineless on the issue of choice by citing two things he said at the April 13 "Compassion Forum." On the subject of Roe v. Wade, Obama said, "We will continue to suggest that that's the right legal framework to deal with the issue." And on the question of whether life begins at conception, Obama said he wasn't sure, but that "there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life, and that that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we're having these debates."

Personally, I would have preferred for him to say, "I unequivocally support every woman's right to choose, under any circumstance, and although the mysteries of life remain mysterious, I believe that legal life begins when you are born." I'm sure NARAL, NOW, and Clinton Supporters Count Too would have preferred that as well. That's the way we feel about it. But we are not running for president. Obama's obvious desire to seek common ground with the opposition, or at least to have a dialogue and understand each other, manifests itself in more nuanced statements than activists like to hear. But what Obama said, and what is clearly true, is that he supports Roe v. Wade and choice.

Barack Obama has voted to teach the use of contraceptives in public schools, to provide free contraceptives to low-income women, to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. He has voted no to defining unborn fetuses as eligible for SCHIP, to prohibiting minors from seeking abortions across state lines, to parental notification laws, to banning late-term abortions. His 100% rating from NARAL is complemented by a 0% rating from the National Right to Life Committee.

Of course none of this diminishes the equally unimpeachable record of Hillary Clinton on these issues, and of course her roots in the fight for women's rights are deeper. Many champions of women's rights are understandably and rightfully loyal to Hillary Clinton, who is a hero; I would expect them to support her to the end and beyond. And that's great. And to be crushed at her defeat. And that's fine. But Obama will obviously be a pro-choice president, and those who suggest otherwise are engaging in exactly the kind of desperate, deceptive snarking that has helped to sink the Clinton campaign.

NARAL is a political action organization. NARAL's advocacy can affect policy far more effectively if the President of the United States is in its corner. NARAL endorsed Obama because Obama is going to win the nomination, and if he wins the presidency, that will be good news for everyone who cares about a woman's right to choose. The endorsement itself points to Obama's inevitability. "We are confident that Barack Obama is the candidate of the future," it says. "Americans have been fortunate to have two fully pro-choice candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination. But only one can go forward to the general election."

It's not as though NARAL's national leadership had been on the fence this whole time. Back in January, when the Clinton campaign accused Obama of being iffy on abortion rights, NARAL defended him, asserting its confidence in his pro-choice platform.

Still, they might have held their endorsement, until Obama becomes the official nominee, any minute now. If they had, though, I doubt that Cynthia Ruccia and Jamie Dixey, of Clinton Supporters Count Too, would feel any more counted. They are so enraged at Clinton's sad impending loss that they would put their very cause at stake; they would support a 0% pro-choice candidate over a 100% pro-choice candidate, to make a point about who they preferred in the primaries.

In the wake of their press release, yesterday they began to make the media rounds. Their first stop was The O'Reilly Factor.

Noah

2:29 AM

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Noah Reads "400 Years in Manhattan"

As you may know, I recently published my first book. Based on the show of the same name, 400 Years in Manhattan: A Tour Guide's History is the story of one remarkable island, and one remarkable tour guide. You can order the book now for a mere $14.99, and if nothing else has yet convinced you, I'm sure you'll want to buy a copy after watching this fascinating promotional clip.

Noah

3:24 PM

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Monday, May 12, 2008

But Don't Call It Racism

NOAH PREDICTS: Clinton wins West Virginia by more than 15 points, and fewer than 30.

Tuesday's West Virginia primary is going to be a bit of a drag. We know who the nominee is going to be; we know who will need 270 electoral votes in November. And we're going to have to watch him lose, probably by a considerable margin, to the loser.

And yet, it might be worse if Clinton dropped out of the race. The Los Angeles Times' Don Frederick and Andrew Malcolm suggest, intriguingly, that Obama is better off losing to a candidate who's still campaigning.

"...With [Clinton's] name still on the ballots, she'd be very likely to win in West Virginia anyway. And maybe Kentucky too, given the demographics in both places. And possibly Puerto Rico as well.

"How would that look if at the end of the Democratic race the winning candidate with clearly the most delegates and popular votes went down to defeat against a candidate who isn't in the contest anymore? Ouch! That would tend to overshadow his expected wins in Oregon and Montana."

All of this points to the question of why West Virginia and Kentucky are considered out of Obama's reach, and why most polls show Clinton leading in those states by around thirty points.

"No Democrat has been elected to the White House without carrying West Virginia since 1916," writes Andrew Ward of the Financial Times, "yet Mr. Obama appears to have little chance of winning there in November."

"West Virginia is hostile territory for Mr. Obama because it has few of the African-Americans and affluent, college-educated whites who provide his strongest support. The state has the lowest college graduation rate in the U.S., the second lowest median household income, and one of the highest proportions of white residents, at 96 per cent.

"...Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr. Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and 'values,' stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding 'anti-American' sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim -- an unfounded rumor that has circulated on the internet for months -- despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr. Wright's church in Chicago. Others mentioned his refusal to wear a Stars and Stripes badge and controversial remarks by his wife, Michelle..."

At the indispensible electoral-vote.com, Andrew S. Tanenbaum adds:

"West Virginia is a state tailor-made for Hillary Clinton. There are no rich people, no creative types, few blacks, and few liberals. There are a lot of relatively poor people and some blue-collar workers. The state ranks last in the nation in median household income and has the lowest percentage of the population with a college degree of any state in the country. Only two cities (Charleston and Huntington) have 50,000 people and only six cities have 20,000 people or more."

We have seen Obama do quite well in states with very small African-American populations (Iowa, Colorado, Utah), but not in the southeast. He's won southern states with large numbers of black voters (Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi) and/or liberal voters (North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland). But he is said to be doomed in West Virginia and Kentucky, which have neither.

"I'll be very blunt," says Research 2000 pollster Del Ali. "Even if there wasn't a Reverend Wright controversy, I think Obama would have a tough time in Kentucky, for obvious reasons."

Is it because he's tall?

Noah

6:23 PM

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Saturday, May 10, 2008

I Am Most Dreadfully Embarrassed

I am most dreadfully embarrassed.

Like a precious diamond, each of the first thirty copies of my book, 400 Years in Manhattan, contains a tiny flaw. This flaw is so tiny that I never noticed it, nor did Sisk, even after all our exhaustive scrutiny of successive drafts and proofs.

And yet the flaw is so immense, so glaring, so painfully conspicuous, that I cannot even look at it without questioning every decision I have ever made up to this point.

It is on the title page. It is, I am horrified to tell you, in the title itself.

Presumably, these flawed copies of my book will one day be valuable collectors' items, like that postage stamp with the upside-down airplane. So if you are the lucky owner of such a copy, I'm sure you'll want to put it in a mylar bag in a climate-controlled vault.

But if you forward the e-receipt to schmuck(at)noahdiamond(dot)com, I will send you a new copy, with the title page correctly spelled, absolutely free.

If you have inexplicably not yet purchased the book, you can order it here, without paying a penny over the $14.99 cover price (plus shipping) for the additional T.

All the best,
Nah

4:33 PM

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Friday, May 09, 2008

Did McCain Vote for Bush in 2000?

Well, folks, the transformation is complete. John McCain is now a Republican presidential candidate. It seems he has now told a lie which makes it appear as though he has worse judgment than he actually does.

On Monday, Arianna Huffington wrote:

"At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. 'I didn't vote for George Bush,' the man confessed. 'I didn't either,' his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband)."

A swift response came from McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds -- that's right, operator, Tucker Bounds -- who told the Washington Post, "It's not true, and I ask you to please consider the source." (Huffington: "My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.")

The Post solicited additional thoughts on the subject from McCain aide Mark Salter: "Why would she make something up? Because she's a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva." (Huffington: "I'm curious, at exactly what point did Mark Salter decide I was 'a flake, and a poser, and an attention seeking diva?' Was it before or after I hosted a book party at my home for the book he co-wrote with McCain, Faith of My Fathers?")

Yesterday, three major newspapers picked up the story. Actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, in what could have been a plotline from The West Wing (on which they both starred), told the New York Times and the Washington Post that they had attended the same dinner party, and heard McCain say he had not voted for Bush in 2000. Another guest at that party, who "did not want to be identified, so as not to alienate the McCains," told the Los Angeles Times "that Cindy McCain had told her she could not bring herself to vote for Bush."

Last night, McCain appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and denied the story, but his own story wasn't quite straight, and I think anyone who watches the video can see that McCain is giggling way too much for a guy who's talking straight.

O'REILLY: Did you vote for President Bush?

MCCAIN: Of course not. I campaigned all over this country for him.

O'REILLY: So you voted for President Bush.

MCCAIN: Of course. I mean, that's a ridiculous question.

O'REILLY: So she lied?

MCCAIN: Well, I don't -- frankly, I do not read Huffington Post. I spare myself from having that experience.

O'REILLY: You voted for Bush in 2000?

MCCAIN: I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.

O'REILLY: Okay.

MCCAIN: And not only that, far more important than a vote, I campaigned everywhere in America for him...I enjoyed it. I campaigned with him. I did everything I could to get him elected and reelected president.

Actually, McCain did everything he could to get himself elected president, one day, and that would never happen if he totally shunned Bush. As everyone knows, the 2000 Republican nomination was McCain's to lose, and he did lose it, when the barbarian Bush campaign destroyed him with blatant and ugly lies disseminated through push polls and direct mail. McCain hated Bush then, but unfortunately he came around to supporting him, for political advantage.

It's also unfortunate that McCain considers the act of one politician campaigning for another to be "far more important than a vote" cast by an American citizen in a presidential election.

Of course, we will never know the truth; it's impossible to prove. But it is entirely plausible that McCain did not vote for Bush in 2000, and it is entirely plausible that McCain made this clear to centrist friends at an L.A. soiree in early 2001.

And why would Arianna Huffington, who opposes McCain, fabricate the only recent news story that makes him sound good?

Noah

12:54 PM

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# posted by Larry B : 5/11/2008 2:17 AM

Hey Noah!

Let's, for the sake of argument, say that Patton is telling the truth...He did vote for W, he whole-heartedly campaigned for W, he was so excited about W that he felt a "tingle" in his loins whenever he thought of W and it would be "ridiculous" to think otherwise I.E. Huffington is flat out lying when she wrote her post. Let's assume all that. What I find shocking is that after almost eight years...EIGHT YEARS...of these guys in charge, Hannibal feels that doing those things were a cool thing!

I really feel like my head is going to explode!

After watching Obama's speech on the night of the last primary (S.C.?) I really feel that it would be a great thing for this country to get him out on the stump immediately. I want him to rail against the republicans in general and against Robert E Lee in particular because, again to my horror, I think that alot of people still buy into the distortions, labels and lies laid out by the republican party starting with Nixon's southern strategy in 1968 and culminating in the Randian/Richelieu madness of the new millennium. After listening to an Obama speech, these same people will finally hear what intelligent rhetoric sounds like and they might understand that it is not an "act of God" that keeps the status quo.

In the final analysis, by forcibly denying Huffington's claim isn't McCain simply saying, "I am proud to be an ignorant jerk."

And…Christ!…aren't there people out there who STILL dig it?

Glad to see you're still pumping it out! Keep up the good work!

# posted by

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

"That will be an important day."