Author: Major Danby

I have been searching for a way to convey to Clinton supporters how offensive her attempts to change the topic from the Tuzla Fables to the Wright sermons ever since the former undercut her campaign.  If fanning the flames of white racial resentment against Blacks is her only path to victory, she has no path to victory.  It has struck me the old consciousness-raising technique of recasting acts based on race, gender, sexuality or religion as if they reflected one of the other dimensions of difference, may shed some new light here.  Being a Jew who originally wanted Russ Feingold to run for President (despite some misgivings about his electability), it occurred to me that we can examine the legitimacy her actions are by imagining how they might translate to a situation where religion, not race, was the concern.

Join me, then, in the parallel universe where it is Russ Feingold rather than Barack Obama who won Iowa, drove John Edwards out of the race, and now had an insurmountable pledged delegate lead over Hillary Clinton.

In this universe, controversial sermons from Feingold’s rabbi have recently come to light.  How might the Clinton campaign respond?

Exhibit 1: The Background.  From the Washington Post, March 18, 2008:

Videotapes have been widely broadcast on cable news for the past several days of excerpts of sermons by Jeremiah Roth, the recently retired Senior Rabbi of the synagogue long attended by her opponent, Senator Russell Feingold.  The brief excerpts show Rabbi Roth saying “As Jews, our loyalty is not to America” and that “We hear the echoes of Nazi speeches in the remarks of these Christian leaders here in the United States.”  Rabbi Roth’s defenders claim that the remarks are being intentionally taken out of context.  Senator Feingold plans to give what his campaign terms a major address on the issue of religion in politics tomorrow in Philadelphia.

Exhibit 2: “Context Matters.”  Post from “Feingoldilocks,” Daily Kos, March 19, 2008, 9:01 a.m. EST.

It should be obvious on reading the context of the sermons that Rabbi Roth was not saying anything anti-American.  The full context of the first quote was:

As Jews, our loyalty is not to America, in some abstract sense, nor is it to Israel or any other country or cause.  Our loyalty is to justice.  “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue!” the Torah tells us.  Our obligation is to see justice done, to influence America to use its power for the betterment of the world and all its people — not to serve the wealthy and poweful at home and abroad.

I don’t see why this should be controversial, but given its reception in the press I understand why Feingold had to distance himself.  As for the second quote, the full sentence was:

The policies promoted by these so-called “Christian leaders” in this country — who do not reflect the views I see among the Christian leaders with whom I’ve worked for the past 50 years — begin to approach the supposedly scientific racially based hatred of Nazi Germany.  So far, we have been able to hold off these people who would treat minorities — and inevitably someday Jews — as subhuman.  But I remember how things started in my youth in Europe.  We have our early warning.  We hear the echoes of Nazi speeches in the remarks of these Christian leaders here in the United States.  We must work with Christian leaders of good faith, of true faith, to stand against them.”

Hyperbolic, sure, as is some of the Rabbis other theorizing about the role of former Nazis in shaping current U.S. policy.  But he’s a Holocaust survivor, his bitter experiences give him this perspective, and I think people should cut him some slack.  Someone has to call out these so-called “Christian” leaders and I’m glad he did.  As a Christian, they certainly don’t represent me.

Exhibit 3: “Feingold’s failure.”  Post from “Hillary4sure,” Daily Kos, March 19, 2008, 12:50 p.m. EST.

It doesn’t matter why Rabbi Roth said what he did.  Feingold’s continuing to support him today has doomed his candidacy.  He can’t even fix the mistake now; he should get out of the race.  Look, people, I’m sorry that it’s so, but anti-Semitism is a fact.  Go to rural states and ask them what they think about New York and Hollywood.  It was always going to be hard to elect a Jew as President.  You have concerns about mixed loyalty, disloyalty, the reports that Feingold attended a religious school taught by communists, even if that doesn’t turn out to be true.  You have the resentment that Christians feel towards Jews, thinking that they have too much control over banking and the media.  And people didn’t need to be reminded that Judaism is a rejection of the central truth of Christianity, that Jesus is the prophesied savior.  How is that going to play in Middle America, or in the South?  Feingold has not shown that he’s up to facing these attacks, and the worse that will come from Republicans this fall.  We need to cut our losses and go with a tried-and-true candidate who won’t open up these wounds.  Plus, she’s a candidate with more direct experience in the White House, and she has a better record on opposing conservative appointments like John Roberts.  This election is too important to lose.

Exhibit 4: “Don’t Muss Russ!”  Post from “YiddisheKopf,” Daily Kos, March 19, 2008, 5:33 p.m. EST.

I can’t believe that I am reading this here, on this site.  I believe that the public will understand that you can’t pin Rabbi Roth’s comments on Feingold, and most of them will agree that the comments themselves are fair when you read them in context.  Yes, the RWNM is going to take them out of context and repeat them, but it won’t work.  Feingold’s speech showed that he can survive these attacks.  Besides, there is just something disgusting about saying that because some segment of the electorate is anti-Semitic, we can’t nominate a Jew.  I thought that Senator Obama’s comments on this today were dead on, although he may have an eye on his own political future if he ever runs.  As for their records, they’re both better in some areas, worse in others.  Overall, I still prefer Feingold, though of course I’d vote for Hillary if she wins.

Exhibit 5: Hillary’s first comments.  From the Washington Post, March 26, 2008:

Senator Hillary Clinton told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review yesterday that she would not have remained a member of a religious institution where sermons reflected the views expressed by Senator Feingold’s Rabbi, Jeremiah Roth.  The interview came as attention to Rabbi Roth’s comments appeared to be receding, as criticism has mounted of Sen. Clinton’s misstatement regarding coming under sniper fire in Tuzla, Bosnia.

Sen. Feingold gave a widely-praised speech one week ago about running for President as a Jew in which he rejected Rabbi Roth’s remarks but would not distance himself from the rabbi personally despite them, and stated that he understood both why the Rabbi made them, given his life experiences, and why others would find them offensive.  Polls taken since then indicate that Sen. Feingold has largely recovered from the ten-point drop in his national polling numbers versus Sen. Clinton since the initial airing of the Roth videotapes on March 13.

Exhibit 6: “It’s the truth.”  Post from “Hillary4sure,” Daily Kos, March 26, 2008, 10:57 a.m. EDT.

I don’t see what people are upset about.  Hillary is just saying what she, personally, would be doing in a situation where her religious leader was making anti-American and anti-Christian comments.  She never even mentioned Senator Feingold.  If he wants to defend those sorts of comments, that’s his right.  But the automatic delegates have to be aware of what the right-wing is going to do with him.  All you had to do was see Pat Buchanan on the Sunday talk shows to see that they are going to, quite literally, depict him as the Antichrist — and a secret communist to boot!  How can the automatic delegates let us go into an election led by someone that leaders of the religion to which 80% of the people of this country belong think is the Biblically foretold agent of Satan?  Don’t you think the chance to “reject the Antichrist” is going to get out the Christian vote in swing states?

Exhibit 7: Whither the Jews?  Post from “Feingoldilocks,” Daily Kos, March 26, 2008, 9:01 a.m. EST.

I’m not Jewish, but I have to say that if I were I don’t know why I’d vote at all given what you wrote.  Jews have been an important part of the Democratic coalition since FDR, and you’re saying that it turns out that they can’t run for President because of some prejudiced goobers whose votes we won’t win anyway?  If you want to argue the merits against Feingold, go ahead, but after last week the question of who’s going to have more pledged delegates is pretty much settled.  The only way he can lose is if Superdelegates take it away from him.  For them to do so on the grounds that people won’t vote for a Jew for President — that’s just repulsive.  If it’s a risk, it’s a risk that voters have decided to take, and superdelegates can’t take it away from them without deadly repurcussions for the party.  Shame on Hillary for playing with fire this way.  Her only chance to win was if she stayed away from this.

Exhibit 8: “Stop distorting her.”  Post from “Hillary4sure,” Daily Kos, March 26, 2008, 10:57 a.m. EDT.

Hillary isn’t saying that Feingold can’t win because he’s a Jew.  Of course she can’t say that.  But it’s true, and I’m not running for President, so I can say it.  Do you really want to lose because we decided to ignore 3000 years of hatred of Jews?  Do you want the automatic delegates to make the choice that will allow war to go on just because a bunch of far-left-wing patchouli-stinking idiots at caucuses want to believe that we’ve transcended anti-Semitism?  I sure don’t.  I don’t think most Jews do either.

Exhibit 9: Hillary to superdelegates: ‘Feingold can’t win’  From the Washington Post, April 2, 2008:

As superdelegates continue to break slowly towards Senator Russell Feingold, the strategy of the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton to win the nomination has become clear.  As has been reported in various venues, Senator Clinton and her surrogates, including former President William Clinton, have been making the forthright argument that Sen. Feingold cannot defeat Senator John McCain, and that the Democratic Party’s only chance for victory is for party leaders to reject Senator Feingold’s candidacy and nominate her instead.

Exhibit 10: “If I believed in hell”  Post from “YiddisheKopf,” Daily Kos, April 2, 2008, 9:28 a.m. EST.

I would damn her to it.  I cannot adequately express how completely alienating it is to have a Democratic candidate making this argument.  The only thing worse would be if superdelegates bought it.  Luckily, it doesn’t look like they will.  Essentially she’s saying “Feingold can’t win because he’s Jewish and people won’t vote for a Jew.”  Well, I’m sorry, but you know what?  If that is really true, then Democrats like Hillary Clinton are going to have to come together and change that between now and November.  If voters rejected Feingold because he was Jewish, that’s one thing.  But for superdelegates to override them and do it?  Sorry, there are some things I won’t accept.  I’ll vote for Nader if I have to, and I hate Nader.  I will not let my party tell me that I’m not qualified to be nominated for President because of my religion — even if the voters think otherwise.  I thought we were past this point in our society.

Exhibit 11: “You should know”  Post from “Hillary4sure,” Daily Kos, March 26, 2008, 9:47 a.m. EDT.

better than anyone how significant anti-Semitism remains in our society.  What do you think the hatred of Hollywood and bankers is really about?  People resent Jews — irrationally, but profoundly — and when the argument is made the way the GOP is capable of making it — where they talk about loyalty to the U.S., internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and the long history of Jewish socialists and communists, some of whom even support Feingold today — the public will just roll over for them.  It’s awful, but it’s how things are.  Do not ask the party to follow you to the bottom of the ocean just to preserve your pride.  In the end, you and other Jews will realize that the only vote you can cast in this election is for Hillary, because you’re certainly not going to support the party that will have prospered from anti-Semitic appeals.

Exhibit 12: Right there  Post from “Feingoldilocks,” Daily Kos, April 2, 2008, 11:11 a.m. EST.

at the end.  That’s what tears it for me.  You say we won’t “support the party that will have prospered from anti-Semitic appeals.”  Well, the same goes for supporting the candidate that does so.  I’m Catholic.  When my father worked in a factory in the 50s, no one would shake hands with the one Jew who worked there.  It wasn’t until Pope John XXIII said it was OK as part of what became Vatican II that things changed, and I remember him tearing up when he told me that 200 or so workers filed by in a single line to shake that man’s hand.  People have a latent goodness, they can change with the right enlightened leadership, and part of that leadership means not backing down in the face of prejudice.  Hillary is asking us to back down in the face of prejudice, and she’s doing it for her personal gain to boot.  Well, as my dad used to say, “nerts to that!”  Her trying to win based on this argument is part of what I think disqualifies her from being nominated.  We will have to win the right way, and if it means changing society a little, I think that Russ Feingold — and the other true leaders in the Democratic Party — are just the ones to do it.

Exhibit 13: “I’m just glad”  Post from “Hillary4sure,” Daily Kos, March 26, 2008, 11:22 a.m. EDT.

that our automatic delegates are more sophisticated about politics than you are.

Hard positions have been staked out regarding what the Democratic superdelegates should do if they are mathematically able to determine who wins the nomination for President.  Obama supporters argue that if the popular will — presumably such a will that supports Obama, and putting aside for now the question of how clearly it can be ascertained — is overturned by superdelegates, they will leave the party forever.  More credibly and more importantly, they argue that the large number of new voters who appear to be energized by the Obama candidacy — young Democrats, independents, etc. — will not come out for Hillary.  Clinton supporters argue — here, if not as regards Florida and Michigan — that rules is rules, and that the superdelegates’ untrammeled right to choose the President they prefer cannot be taken away at this late date.

Full disclosure: I’ve been an Obama supporter since shortly after Edwards was held to 5% in Nevada.  I try to be fair about it when it comes to superdelegate voting ethics, though, and I think that there is some room for agreement between these sides.  While many argue that it simply won’t come to this, that superdelegates will not overturn the popular will, it certainly seems possible to me that it might.  I expect Clinton to pull back ahead in the delegate count, with the help of Ohio even without the help of Texas, by the time Pennsylvania’s votes are counted on April 22.  While I believe that Obama should do well enough in the primaries in May and June to finish with a delegate lead, it’s possible that it won’t happen, or certainly possible that that lead will be slight.

By considering what the different possibilities are, I think that we can at least narrow the debate.  We won’t find completely common ground, but we should find more than one would expect after watching this week’s news.  More below.
First, if Obama doesn’t lead in pledged delegates going into the convention, it’s probably over.  Hillary would then have made enough of a comeback, well beyond just winning on March 4 and April 22, that most of Obama’s argument — that he has shown greater strength and organization and that the consequences if he is not chosen would be horrible for the party — would be gone.  It will then come down to arm-twisting and, given the audience of professional politicians at issue; the Clintons will most likely win by far enough of them to lead to an avalanche of undecideds in their direction, for appearance’s sake.  I don’t expect this scenario to come about — and if it did I as a superdelegate would still favor Obama until all was clearly lost — but it’s possible.  Enough said there; the rest of this discussion assumes an Obama lead.

What is left out of the discussion of the ethics of superdelegate voting is one big lesson from this campaign: size (of victory) matters.  Had Obama been ekeing out three-to-five point wins ever since Super Tuesday, he would not be in such a powerful position now.  His delegate lead and his momentum would be far less compelling.  What has mattered this month is the scope of his victories — winning states by 20 or 30 points gets people’s attention.  We should now apply that same lesson to the delegate lead.

Assuming that Clinton continues to campaign and to do well enough to contest the race, we can imagine that Obama’s lead might be anywhere from, say, one to 300 delegates.  A one delegate lead would mean that Hillary had scrambled back into the race and fought him largely to a draw in May and June.  A 300 delegate lead would mean that her campaign had all but collapsed.  And intermediate lead means an intermediate result.

My thesis is that the size of the lead determines the morality of superdelegates using their own best judgment, even if it means “reversing the popular will.”  We don’t hear that in many discussions right now, but it should be at the top of the page.  Note that I’m ignoring Edwards delegates for the purposes of this analysis.

The case of a big Obama lead

Consider, for example, what happens if Obama comes in with a 300 delegate lead among the roughly 3250 pledged delegates.  That means that he has about 1775 pledged delegates and Hillary about 1475.  It also means that he ran away with the race in May and June.  Under those circumstances, is it legitimate for Hillary to try to argue that the superdelgates should favor her by a margin of roughly 550 to 250, so that she could win the nomination?

No.  It’s legal for her to try, but it would be close to obscene, and it would validate all of the criticisms that the Clintons care more for their personal welfare than for the party.  For her to succeed in doing so would likely have all of the horrible effects that Obama supporters suggest: young people fleeing the party, etc.  What superdelegates themselves have noted, though, is that absent some astonishing scorching scandal on Obama’s part, this simply won’t happen.  If you call the superdelgate margin roughly 150 to 250 in Clinton’s favor today, those 400 remaining delegates may well move largely as a block, but in the above example they’d be moving to Obama’s side.  They are not stupid, and they would rightly see the trend in May and June as a repudiation of Clinton, one that they would not endorse.

The case of a virtual tie

Let’s say, by contrast, that Obama ends up with a lead of one or two delegates, for example if it’s 1626 for Obama to 1624 for Hillary.  Again, this will only happen if Hillary fights him to a draw or better in May and June.  Now, under those circumstances, does even Donna Brazile believe that superdelegates have no prerogative to exercise their independent judgment as to who to nominate?  Of course they do: Obama himself has pretty much said as much in arguing — rightly, in my opinion — that they should vote for the candidate who can win in November.  In other words, if the popular will is very weak, then the role of superdelegates is — and should be, given the rules — stronger.  Those of us who support the losing candidate under such a scenario (and unfortunately I think it would probably be Obama) will still grouse that the superdelegates are making a terrible mistake, that they’re choosing the worse candidate with the worse team, but you will not see the same feeling of betrayal that accompanied Bush v. Gore.  Obama would not have been robbed, but merely rejected by people who should have known better.  Young people still may not come out in November should this happen, etc., but while politically unwise the selection of Clinton by superdelegates would not be ethically illegitimate.

The intermediate cases

If we’ve established, then, that a 300 vote lead in pledged delegates means that the superdelegates are ethically (if not legally) constrained to support Obama, and a 2 vote lead means that they aren’t, then what we’re really arguing about is where the line between these two outcomes ought to be drawn.  A 200 pledged delegate lead, Obama by 1725 to 1525?  I still think it’s unethical for Clinton even to ask the superdelegates to split 500 to 300 in her direction so that she wins by one vote.  A 20 pledged delegate lead, Obama by 1685 to 1665?  I still think that it’s legitimate for Clinton to ask the superdelegates to split 405 to 395 in her direction, without our saying that Clinton is stealing the nomination.  And we can continue on in that vein.

Conclusion

If Clinton supporters will acknowledge that there is some large pledged delegate margin where Hillary ought to concede for the good of the party, and Obama supporters will concede that there is some small pledged delegate margin where she has no moral obligation to succeed, we can eliminate some of the worst disagreement we’ve seen in the past week.  Then it becomes a matter of where we draw the line, or at least where the Clintons’ argument that Hillary is not bound to concede begins rapidly to lose power.  Roughly, I’d say that if Obama has a margin of 50-60 pledged delegates or higher, superdelegates ought to vote for him regardless of their preferences, for the sake of party unity.  But I can understand people putting the line higher.  If Obama has a lead of 120-150 delegates, though, I think that Hillary is ethically constrained to concede.  If it falls somewhere in between — and I think it will — then we will have to have this argument, but at least we should be able to recognize that we’ve ended up in a gray area.

That is the sort of discussion Democrats should be having, rather than flinging around absolute principles for the ethics of superdelegate voting when no such absolute principles apply.

X-posted to Docudharma

I stand by my pessimism that Hillary Clinton can be driven out of the race prior to substantial losses in the likes of North Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky in May.  I stand by my pessimism that the Clintons would be better positioned to twist arms in a brokered convention, and that Hillary would win in part by offering Obama the poisoned apple of the Vice-Presidency, which he will turn down.  But it has occurred to me that there is one way that Obama would be able to win over a brokered convention, and it would coincidentally lead to the best ticket and the best government we could rightfully expect.

He can convince Al Gore to become his Vice-President.
I’ve suggested this before and have been shot down, but I can now imagine a plausible path to its happening.  Al Gore does not want to be Vice-President.  It would take something huge to change his mind.  But something huge appears to be on the way: a brokered convention that Hillary — of whom he does not appear to be fond — looks like she could win while dashing the hopes of a generation of newly activated Obama supporters.  And it may well be that there is only one way that Obama would be able to turn the tide of Superdelegates: giving the people what they crave.  That is, another chance to vote for Al Gore.

Gore would require a huge portfolio — such as the sort of control over policy related to global warming that Cheney has had over secrecy and oil policy — and Obama is sensible enough to give it to him.  If it means some power-sharing, that’s fine; it will blunt the criticism of Obama having to learn on the job.  Not even Hillary in her wildest dreams can match Al Gore’s level of experience.

This — not only the carrot of control over national policy as related to global warming, but the stick of suffering through a Hillary Presidency, or more likely a McCain Presidency, if he demurs — is probably just about the only way to get Al Gore back into politics.  And it may end up being the best, if not only, way for Obama to win a brokered convention.

Obama would be doing what Ronald Reagan did prior to the brokered convention in 1976, when he announced prior to the convention that his Vice-Presidential pick would be Richard Schweiker, the liberal-moderate GOP Senator from Pennsylvania.  This attempt at achieving ideological balance was not enough to convince the convention delegates to choose him over Ford, and there was a drive, similar to the “Hillary-Obama” one we see today, to convince Ford to choose Reagan as his VP.  (He chose Dole instead.)  But that is the difference between Gore and Schweiker – no one was aching to have Schweiker on the ticket.  A “Gore ex machina” ending to the campaign would raise excitement to a fever pitch, and even the superdelegates would have to rally behind it.

Unless Gore is willing to say yes to it now, which would clinch the primaries, Obama should allow this to be a tease.  Let people know in June that it’s a possibility.  Let Al Gore mull it over for a while through July, while they suck up the limelight and the oxygen.  And then, a couple weeks before the convention, let people know that the deal is done.  Or some better playwright than I can figure out the optimal timing.  It would be great theater in any case.

Al Gore is the one person with the political heft to push Hillary Clinton away from center stage at a brokered convention.  An endorsement alone won’t do it.  The prospect of his being an integral part of our government, from the Office of the Vice-President, will.  He’s our anti-Cheney, and he can decide this nomination contest.  If the nomination is still up in the air after Puerto Rico votes in June, he may be Obama’s best, or even only, chance.

x-post from Docudharma for the sake of convenience for readers, as I’m about to go argue with Booman in his diary.

Here are some observations on yesterday’s vote.  (There will be more in the days to come now that I have some time back after making around 1000 calls for the Obama campaign.)

Talking about Hillary is the main course in this diary, but would you like to start with an appetizer?  Let’s talk about Huckabee.  The venerable NYT announces that Huckabee has been revived with a solid showing in the South.  This is stupid.  Why?  Well, let’s take a look at the GOP primary map.  Huckabee is running out of South!

See, the problem with winning mostly just one section of the country is that after that section has voted in its primaries — it doesn’t vote again.  (Michigan and Florida will, I predict, be exceptions to this rule, as the Democrats let them vote again in late May or early June, or perhaps hold caucuses or choose delegates at state conventions.)

So if you look at that map and try to find “South,” you’ll see that Huckabee has Louisiana coming up on Saturday (I predict he’ll win), Virginia (only semi-South these days) next Tuesday, Texas (again not fully South) on March 4, and Mississippi on March 11.  Even if he lasts that long, he won’t last long enough to see North Carolina, Kentucky, or (counting the bottom part of the state) Indiana vote in May.  So, Huckabee is not “revived” — he has, instead, “shot his wad,” although I don’t think the NYT would include that in a headline.  But they need a storyline, so there they go.  Romney will still finish second when push comes to shove.  I don’t think either one of them will be on the ticket, though: look to Govs. Pawlenty or Crist or (my dark horse, if Rudy can swallow it) Pataki for that.

Is anyone else running out of a precious electoral resource?  Why, yes!  Pretend you didn’t already read the title and look below the fold.
The only reason Hillary Clinton is not now limping her way towards writing a concession speech is the massive support she got from the Hispanic (or as I was trained to call them, Latino, but the major newsfolk seem to have decided otherwise) community, especially in California and Arizona.  And guess what?  With California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and New York now past us, she has almost run out of Hispanics!  (Yes, there are other Hispanic population centers, but with exceptions to be discussed below they aren’t big enough to swing that much of an election.)

What are the exceptions?  Well, there’s Florida — which again I think will vote again one way or another, and which I think Clinton will win.  Obama’s just going to have to swallow that one and hope to win Michigan to counter it.

There’s also the last scheduled Democratic contest, Puerto Rico, with a not-too-shabby 63 delegates and a corrupt and vicious political system that should be just to Hillary’s liking.  (It’s amazing that Puerto Rico’s caucus could determine the nomination in June, but it could happen.)

And then there’s Texas, March 4.  This is Hillary’s last real big Hispanic Hurrah, and I think it will help her very much.  But aside from that, she’s in trouble.  She got skunked nationwide in the non-Hispanic primary vote, and her situation isn’t getting prettier.  Her best bet is that Ohio and Pennsylvania have the kind of older working class population and big-city machines that favor her.  The point is not that she won’t win — I still think she has to be favored, based on her winning Ohio, Texas, and then Pennsylvania, plus hammerlocking superdelegates — but that her Super Tuesday successes don’t predict the future all that well.

She does have another secret weapon, though, that so far as I can tell (although I’ve been too busy to read much) no one except me was mentioning in the lead-up to Super Tuesday: the Asian community.  Or, let me quote the diary I wrote on Monday:

I’ve learned some interesting things as a humble Precinct Captain in Brea.  East Asians seem pro-Clinton; South Asians more pro-Obama.  (I haven’t seen discussion beyond the white/Black/Latino breakdown in the media before the CA primary; ignoring the large Asian population is dumb.)

Now some journalists seem to have finally realized that the Asian community is about as pro-Hillary as the Hispanic community.  Both effects are fueled, I think, by two things: a respect for the Clintons’ previous political success and, I’m sad to say, a degree of anti-Black sentiment that is much more acceptable than in most polite Anglo society.  (I assume that they can be won over to voting for a Black man in the general election, although with Asians I’m even less sure than with Hispanics, due to their lower degree of affiliation with the Democratic Party.)  The importance of Asians means that one contest in the near future is one that has barely been getting any media play is actually critical, because it could be the stage for a Hillary upset before next Tuesday’s “Chesapeake primary” (MD/VA/DC): the Washington caucus.

Washington has one of the largest Asian populations of any state, and they have been politically active.  (Witness the election of Gov. Gary Locke in the 90s.)  People view Washington as a state tailor-made for Obama, and especially given that it’s a caucus it might be, but no one seems to be attending to the wild card that the Asian community might be, much as (though to a lesser degree than) Hispanics in California.  Because the expectations for Obama are so high, this is the place where I’d expect Hillary to go looking for a better-than-expected performance before next Tuesday.  I haven’t looked closely at either state, but Obama would seem likely to win the Nebraska caucus and Louisiana primary on the 9th, or Maine on the 10th; don’t be surprised if Hillary camps out in Seattle this week.  (No, I haven’t checked her schedule — hell, I’m blogging at 3 a.m., what do you want?)

What the hell, having come this far I might as well keep going and predict the rest of the race.  We have now learned a lot about how different parts of the country respond to these two candidates, so we can now start making predictions with at least some basis.

Markos and others have been writing about how February favors Obama so much.  While I agree, there’s a number I haven’t seen tossed around much: 596.  That is the total number of delegates at stake in the “Super Echo” contests from Feb. 9-19.  Yes, I agree that these states are quite good for Obama — but we’re in delegate counting mode now, right?  Let’s say that Obama takes 60% of these delegates to 40% for Hillary.  That gives him roughly a 120 delegate edge — 2/3 of which will probably be erased on March 4.  Grant Obama wins in Rhode Island, Vermont, Wyoming, and Mississippi, and you still have the two of them roughly tied going into the final quarter — the six week break before Pennsylvania, before which neither has any reason to drop out.  (After all, no one knows what news might break during that stretch.)

I think that Pennsylvania will go strong (and probably dirty) for Hillary, largely balanced out by Obama winning in Indiana, Oregon, and the upper plains.  Hillary will probably win West Virginia and Puerto Rico.  I give Hillary a slight net advantage in all these races combined.

I’ve left two May contests off the table: North Carolina and Kentucky.  If either Hillary or Obama dominates those two, I think that the superdelegates break their way.  If not, we can expect a brokered convention, with delegates fought over one-by-one in a way we haven’t seen since Ford versus Reagan, and Clinton has much more practice at twisting arms, especially when she promises to give Obama the Vice-Presidential slot that he does not want but may be forced by party bosses to take.  (Hillary as his VP doesn’t work.  I still think it should be Webb.)  Right now, I think that when people write the history of this race, they will decide that the 134 delegate North Carolina primary on May 6 was the critical one.  If that race is fought to a draw, they should come into Denver roughly even.

Obama’s best chance to win is that he wears well on people the more they see him.  He’ll have a lot more time to concentrate on each race starting Feb. 13, and that will be what gives him the edge, if anything does.  But tonight, in looking at the two states I’ve identified as the most critical, one primary result bothers me as an Obama supporter more than any other.  Both of these states border, and politically may be most similar to, Tennessee.  Clinton won that state by 13 points.  Obama has to figure out why — and how to stop that effect from spreading.

Of course, if they do let Florida and Michigan vote again, then the other critical contest is Michigan, which Obama needs to offset a Hillary win in Florida.  I don’t know enough about Michigan to have a sense of how it will go; ot seems pro-Obama, but less so than Florida is pro-Hillary.  Of course, Florida will be less pro-Hillary if Obama has a couple of high-profile endorsers campaigning for him there: like, say, Edwards and Gore.

First diary here!  Crossposted on dKos and MLW.

This post by Atrios, commenting on a post by the sheepishly repentent former pro-war liberal Belle Waring, has got me thinking about Iraq in a slightly different way.  (This may be plowing old ground for many of you, but it’s nice to plow again every once in a while to see if anything new pops up.)

I think that Belle is right that “once-hawks” are still often seen as righter than “never-hawks,” and among other things that is obviously harmful to the Democratic Party.  For my analysis as to why; follow me beneath the fold.
A few other things happened this past week to add to the stew of my thoughts about the issue: the former head of Mossad appeared on The Daily Show to promote his new book and hint darkly that we may yet find WMDs in Iraq buried in the sand (others posit that they were shipped to Syria.)  Rep. Lantos got arrested to protest U.S. inaction in Darfur despite still favoring our presence in Iraq, prompting one poster to write that this combination struck her as hypocritical, and me to respond that I was sure that some people (perhaps Lantos among them) had supported the Iraq war on respectable humanitarian grounds.

A few people agreed with me — but I’m not sure I agree with myself.  And so I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the decision to go to war against Iraq.  

As I wrote my comment, I felt like I was perhaps being a little soft on former war supporters.  After reading Atrios’s post, that feeling grew.  So my question now is, taking away hindsight, what was the proper view at the time towards a war with Iraq?  I’ll admit that I had had no idea that the Bush gang was this incompetent; I opposed the war primarily because I thought it was a neocolonial grab for oil and permanent bases and because I thought it would be a recruiting boon for Al Qaeda and would not lead to a stable country.  I’ll stand by this assessment, but I have to admit that it doesn’t match up with the developing conventional wisdom.  People seem to have come to identify two main considerations that with hindsight should have guided our policy regarding Iraq.  I’m not comfortable with what I see as this emerging conclusion.

So far as I can tell, Iraq is seen as a failure among the broader public for two reasons: (1) it was unjustified (in that there were no WMDs) and (2) it led to an insurgency that we can’t seem to stop.  If those are the lessons behind our failure in Iraq, it has implications for what we do in Iran, so I want to probe them a bit.

First, if one thinks that the war was unjustified because of the lack of WMDs, then the prevalent belief of conservatives such as the Mossad chief that there really were (or are!) WMDs there undoes the error of the war.  They, as they see it, were right — tragically right! — like the cop who shot the armed robber but then couldn’t find the gun and so is decried as a cold-blooded murderer.  Second, I think that these people believe that if WMDs had been found, there would have been no (or at most an easily defeated) insurgency, and the rest of the world would have rallied behind us and helped us quash it.

It’s this second connection that’s key in the minds of our opponents.  They think that the insurgency is, in effect, just a matter of bad luck.  Maybe Rummy was a bad strategist as well, maybe a few other things, but mostly bad luck that we didn’t find a smoking gun of Iraqi WMDs.  “Otherwise, everything would have been fine!”  They really do think this way.

My intuition is this: had we found biological or chemical weapons — and perhaps even nuclear weapons — there would still have been an insurgency and we would still have ended up about where we are now.  The reason that there is an insurgency, at base, is because our cause was not seen as just by the people whose hearts and minds we had to convince and whose cooperation we needed to prevent or combat it.  That means that, to me, the only way to have prevented an insurgency would have been to go in righteously, if at all:  only upon actual provocation (one that doesn’t depend on the notion that having the ability to attack the U.S. is the worst thing possible), with no designs on Iraqi oil or for permanent bases or for reshaping Iraq into a free-market paradise or for gaining all sorts of contracts for Halliburton and its ilk, and with the support of the world community generally.  If we had acted only under those conditions, I don’t think we would have found ourselves in the present situation.  But, we also would not have gone to war at all in that place at that time.

Our actions in Iraq were designed to project power and to collect spoils.  Even self-defense against biological or chemical WMDs — and probably even nuclear WMDs, at least absent a threat of first use against us — would not have changed that.  And I think that means that we would have still seen an insurgency, still been unable to defeat it, and still have ended up pretty much where we are right now.  

If that’s so, then we can tell the Mossad chief and our conservative opponents that it really didn’t matter whether Iraq had WMDs or not, so they should stop worrying about whether they’re buried in the sand.  What mattered is whether we had clean hands.  And we did not.

Now I think that most people at this point would disagree with my argument.  And that’s what prompts this diary: I think that this is the key to why people who were pro-war and have since switched are seen by many as “righter” than those of us who were anti-war all along.  They think that WMDs mattered and that they were bamboozled by Bush.  I think that righteousness mattered and that they were willfully blind.

I should admit:  I am not against intervention — I was thrilled when went into Haiti to remove Cedras, and thought that we should have been in the Balkans as soon as it was clear that Russia wasn’t willing to go to war over it — because both interventions seemed to me to be righteous ones.  That doesn’t mean that we stood nothing to gain, but only that what we stood to gain was the benefit that everyone gets from a stable international community rooted in human rights, as opposed to something self-serving.  (It is telling that these are interventions that conservatives opposed.)

Focusing on WMDs is useful because it points out how craven the Bush administration was.  But we shouldn’t let it be the whole story.  If it is, we have less chance of staying out of Iran.  The real story is:  We were wrong to go into Iraq because we were doing it for selfish reasons, and everyone there knew it, and people don’t like being taken advantage of, and so they were bound to resist, and they did, and they will win because they (unlike us) cannot up and leave.  We can only justify going to war when it is righteous, and “righteous” does not mean the same thing as “good for the parochial interests of the U.S.”

That’s what the pro-war liberals missed in 2002-2003.  The question was not whether Iraq had WMDs.  It was whether we had a moral basis for war.  We may sometimes be right in favoring intervention when the rest of the world doesn’t — Rwanda, for example (to the extent we did favor it.)  But when the rest of the world doesn’t want us to do something that is in our parochial interests, that should be an awfully big clue that we shouldn’t do it.