P.M. Carpenter

For McCain, From Bad Dreams to Nightmares -- Courtesy Barack Obama

A 1948 Kentucky newspaper editorial remarked that Tom Dewey's second try for the White House -- his confident but plodding, uninspiring campaign -- could be "boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. The future lies ahead."

Although Mr. Dewey's banalities failed him personally once again, in what was probably the most dramatic upset in American political history, for the next 60 years his party largely stayed the course, cluttering the electoral mind with patriotic clichés and hackneyed nothings designed to numb rather than enlighten -- from "Who lost China?" to "Morning in America" to "Never Surrender." The GOP kept the message -- the basics -- but went on to add considerable verve to its delivery, and to much greater effect.

Theirs has been quite a ride they've taken us on -- burying the devilish details of an empire's cost in all the uplifting, inspirational rhetoric of nationalistic pride. But while the GOP has been almost miraculously successful by virtue of sticking with inspirational generalities, they have now met their match. In Barack Obama. And the GOP doesn't like it. It doesn't like it one bit.

To give you some idea of just how unhappy, frustrated and utterly disoriented in unfamiliar territory the party is, John McCain chose his victory rally last Tuesday night to deliver, Dewey-style, these plodding words: "Hope, my friends, is a powerful thing." But "to encourage a country with only rhetoric, rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people, is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude."

Reword those lines in the vernacular and here's what you get: Obama has stolen the GOP's thunder. He's on to its game. He's using its tactics. And boy, is it pissed. So pissed, it's reduced to characterizing his soaring rhetoric -- its own, traditionally soaring rhetoric -- as platitudinous.

To make matters even worse for the GOP, it's stuck with a delivery boy as plodding and uninspiring as Tom Dewey. This likely accounts for a good deal of conservatives' unhappiness with their candidate. They didn't so much care about his past apostasies as they merely hankered after another actor who could puff the party line with some real pizazz.

Sorry, fellas. You're saddled with John, whose flat-lining monologues are sure to lull millions into a sound, eight-month slumber.

Obama has also anticipated the GOP's desperate maneuvering. On the same day -- yesterday -- that McCain was charging Obama with being "singularly lacking in specifics," the Illinois senator was on the stump, talking of "creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to invest $60 billion over 10 years and create nearly 2 million new jobs in the construction field," and "renew[ing] his call to create an energy plan to invest $150 billion over 10 years to establish a 'green energy sector' to add up to 5 million jobs in the next two decades."

He would pay for these necessities, he said, by dumping the unnecessary albatross of John's favorite war from our fiscal shoulders.

McCain flanked. Obama pivoted. And all without sacrificing those "powerful things" of rhetorical "hope" and "promise." It was a thing of beauty.

And what "specifics" is John left to tout? Well, let's see. There's his unpopular war. That should be a national crowd pleaser. There's his determination to do virtually nothing about this nation's unconscionable lack of health care. There went 47 million votes. And of course he can always get specific about why it was he rightfully opposed all those tax cuts for plutocrats way back when, but now sees them as something more than the costly stuff that dreams are made of.

So McCain is left in an almost entirely defensive position. And, as Karl Rove taught him back in 2000, "Explaining is losing."

The Republican candidate has only one offensive thrust to play -- that old, tired, worn-out GOP saw: Its opponent is a liberal.

"It’s not an accident that he has, I think, according to the National Journal, the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate. I have one of the most conservative," said McCain. That worked when the vast center was tilting center-right. But the vast center has had enough of that. It has seen what it gets them.

Smartly, Obama is now -- finally, liberally and with emphasis -- connecting the foreign dots to the domestic: "Politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton voted for a war in Iraq that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged -- a war that is costing us thousands of precious lives and billions of dollars a week. It’s time to stop spending billions of dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the money on putting America back together instead."

That's the one decisive argument to be made in this campaign -- the one that only Obama can make. It cripples McCain and leaves him with no rational comeback. He'll be stuttering defensively from now till November.

On the other hand, McCain could always just concentrate on reminding us that agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. And the future lies ahead. That should give him roughly the same 3-to-2 electoral-count loss that it gave Tom Dewey.

What next? -- Nasty and Nowhere

Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's communications director, was just doing his job yesterday when he said, "I don't buy the momentum argument."

Now everyone knows, of course, that if the situation were reversed -- had it been Hillary who just racked up a half-dozen unbroken and gargantuan victories -- Howard's contemporary declarations would contain, to borrow from Joe Biden, nothing but a noun, a verb and "momentum."

But the actual quote reflects the woes of a communications director when there's nothing to communicate but the silliest of spin. And at this, Howard is an unabashed master. He is, after all, that selfsame gentleman who recently offered in a morning MSNBC telephone interview that his team's campaign manager "just decided," all on her own, to take a little holiday about now, and that the only reason Hillary's coffers had run dry was because people "didn't realize she needed money." Yep, that's what he said -- and his laughter wasn't even audible.

But Howard may become an unwilling buyer of the "momentum argument" sooner than he thinks.

To back up just a bit, last Sunday I wrote a couple lines that drew more heat from select readers than anything I've written before, hands down. And they were these: "Should Hillary fail to rack up 68-percent victories in Ohio and Texas early next month, as Obama just did in Nebraska and Washington, she should gracefully withdraw from the race."

I then laid out a miscellany of arguments about the why, concluding that "Those arguments are coming, they're coming in droves, and they're coming around the corner."

It wasn't spin. Unlike Howard, I believed it, although my belief was grounded in little more than educated guesswork. What I didn't know -- what I could not have known -- however, was that the arguments would come even sooner than I anticipated, and that they would come from none other than Hillary's own superdelegates.

Said one on Monday, the day before the latest electoral slaughter: "She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out." Moreover, "The campaign is starting to come to terms with that." Noted the Washington Post: "Campaign advisers ... speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view."

Said another, same day: The Clinton campaign is "looking way too much at Florida, Michigan and McCain, because all three won’t matter if she doesn’t blow Obama away in Texas and Ohio. Obama has momentum that has to be stopped by March 4."

Those remarks were almost hysterically exclamatory; and not the mild stuff of idle musings. Hillary has to win comfortably, or she's out; she must blow Obama away; his momentum -- in which Howard Wolfson professes no faith -- has to be stopped by March 4.

How? Now there's the "Quiz Show" question of the week, but even underhandedness isn't likely to provide the winning answer to this one. For that nonexistent momentum positively thundered throughout the Chesapeake and Potomac yesterday.

Obama dominated, as usual, the youth vote, but for the first time "he also led among those ages 45 to 60," while "he and Clinton split voters age 65 and older." That's big.

What's more, as well as dominating the liberal vote -- again, as usual -- he made predatory inroads into Clinton's moderates. In addition he won the working-class vote, the less-educated vote and the traditional-Democrat vote, all previously held territories by the Clinton camp. Other demographics have blood all over them as well, from Clinton's point of view.

And just to top things off, "polls show Mr. Obama gaining strength in Wisconsin and his native state, Hawaii, which vote next Tuesday." By now, Hillary has got to believe that the scheduling gods are cruel indeed -- and somewhere, a bit of pixie dust is being tossed on Howard. Maybe he does believe now, at least a little.

So what is Hillary to do? How can she flank the thundering juggernaut?

She's tried the "experience" argument, to no avail. Voters want freshness, the whole JFK New Frontier and heretofore-unvisited territory thing. She's tried itemizing laundry lists of grab-bag goodies for each traditional constituency, to no avail. And she's tried her hand at animal(istic) husbandry, to actual self-defeating avail.

She's also tried going negative herself, with similar South Carolina results; nevertheless it's still the only realistic possibility left. It may be that in that way lies madness, but the only other route at this fork is inescapable defeat. She might as well go down swinging -- and blasting.

Fasten your seat belts. My guess is that we're in for a Bette Davis kind of very bumpy ride, right up to March 4.

After that, she should gracefully withdraw. Because while those bumps won't upset Obama's momentum, Mr. McCain meanwhile will be roaming the land virtually unopposed. And he could sure use some exclusively focused company.

This Hurts Me More Than It Will You, Mr. Krugman

OK, Paul, gloves off. That's right, Krugman, I'm talkin' to you. So sorry it's come to this, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and I've just got to smack you down a bit.

You warned yesterday, in "Hate Springs Eternal," that the Democratic Party is becoming a "Nixonland" -- "a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo [and] the poison pen," as Adlai Stevenson described both the territory and its chief freeholder back in 1956. You then asked and answered: "Why ... is there so much venom out there? I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody."

Venom is often in the eye of the accuser, Paul, although you did admit that you weren't striving for "fake evenhandedness." The admission was perhaps a trifle unnecessary, however, as demonstrated by your subsequent and glaring lopsidedness.

You wrote: "What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with ... the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent." OK, lay it on us -- the evidence, that is. So you did. Or at least you tried.

Prosecutor Krugman's Exhibit A

The prime example [was] ... the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons' part, yet the "scandal" became a symbol of the Clinton administration's alleged corruption.

I see. Your lead evidence of today's venom comes from the last decade. I'll pass on commenting here and simply request a summary judgment to dismiss, if this is the best you've got.

Exhibit B

During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.'s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.

I noted the passive use there -- "was cast." No names were named, but I, for one, can tell you, Paul, that I dismissed that charge, in writing, as so much hogwash at the time. Some Obama supporters did indeed garishly revel in it as a political weapon, but I would add that that instance paled in comparison to the Clinton camp's far more "outrageous denigration" of Obama himself as some kind of Ronald Reagan lover, arising from comments every bit as innocent. So Exhibit B, at best, is a wash.

Exhibit C

And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign -- as adult children of presidential aspirants often do -- asked, "doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.

Oh my. So now the Clintonites are visiting not Nixonland, but O'Reillyland, where NBC/MSNBC is the root of all political evil and intolerable bias. The Clintons as victims, again, with no mention that they've despised the Fifth Estate for years, have never cultivated it, and are reaping their short-sided rewards.

With that, you concluded your "venom" case -- and again, I'll just ask for a summary judgment, because you haven't one.

You then moved on to the more exhortative.

Progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.

I couldn't agree more. I confidently doubt that more than one Obama supporter out of a million disagrees, either. I note, however, your use of the word "hatred" here, as well as "hate" in the title -- a subtle resurrection of the automatic defense mechanism fabricated and hustled by the Clinton camp for years: being thoughtfully anti-Clinton on anything is the same as being moronically "Clinton-hating" about everything. This verbal game was once merely specious; it is now downright tedious.

Toward the end of your piece, Paul, you noted this:

One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. [For comity's sake, I'll overlook mentioning the name of at least one Clinton-affiliated gentleman I personally witnessed slyly reinforcing the rumors in a television interview.] It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage. I’d like to see more moments like that. [Emphasis added]

There was a rather important word buried in that concluding passage, Paul, which I'll come back to shortly, although you probably already suspect what it is, and what I have to say about it.

And it relates to an earlier line of yours: "Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod."

No trouble? Just like that? What about those "moments" of "principle" -- and that was the buried word -- you wanted to see more of?

The progressive divide all comes down to the war, Paul, which you smartly neglected to mention. It has nothing to do with race, gender, ethnicity, venom, the press, Reagan, Shuster, Whitewater or Nixonland.

In my case, I hardly "worship" Obama as a "hero," as you characterize -- even belittle -- so many of his advocates. No, it just so happened that Obama was the only electable candidate standing who didn't support this war. You remember the war, Paul, the one you've so thoroughly denounced over the years -- on principle -- as well as those who once did the supporting.

But now, for "short-term political advantage" you're willing to disregard all that principled stuff, just as you say you'd "like to see more moments" pass in the opposite direction.

I'm afraid you lost me, Paul. Which is it? Which do you want? An adherence to progressive principles? Or expedient forgiveness on those principles and non-accountability?

It's the war, Paul. And for good reasons of principled hearts, a whole lot of Obama supporters would have a whole lot of trouble rallying behind a candidate who once so fervently traveled in Bushland.

To paraphrase the Corleones: It's not personal, Paul. It's business. Progressive business, of the purest sort.

Damn, I really hated doing that, Paul. You've been a good friend of the movement for years. And I hope you see the light and come back into the progressive fold soon.

Could It Be True? The Whole GOP Death-Wish Thing?

There were two items juxtaposed on the New York Times' front page yesterday, with the first -- "From Bush, Foe of Earmarks, Similar Items" -- seeming to stand in answer to the second -- "Republicans Weighing the Benefits of Bush's Embrace."

It's hard to imagine any party as suicidal as the Democratic, but this year we may have a real contender. For there they are, those ideologically disheveled and disoriented Republicans, still "weighing the benefits" of staying in bed with the one who so dramatically disheveled and disoriented them.

Perhaps they're merely victims of the Stockholm syndrome. But whatever it is, there's something deeply self-destructive about a party wanting to -- needing to -- recertify itself as the party of fiscal responsibility, and then even think about being seen anywhere in public with likes of George W. Bush, Friend of Earmarks.

Because a friend he is, indeed. To budget-busting earmarks, that is. Not his fellow Republicans.

As our story unfolds, we find the president deep in the muck of his familiar hypocrisy: "President Bush often denounces the propensity of Congress to earmark money for pet projects. But in his new budget, Mr. Bush has requested money for thousands of similar projects."

Some of the projects are even among those the president has already denounced as typical waste, Congressional-style, such as millions "to deal with plant pests like the emerald ash borer." But he now wants to attack as well "the light brown apple moth and the sirex woodwasp," as well as lavish nearly a million on (swing-state) Missouri for a fish hatchery, a million and a half for a waterway in (swing-state) Louisiana, and "$6.5 million for research in Wyoming" -- I know not how reliable Wyoming got in there -- to address those burning and age-old questions regarding the "fundamental properties of asphalt."

Now, you're likely to say: Those are the same as earmarks, right? Well, you would be wrong. And you'll just have to take the White House's word for it. "Earmarks," it says, "are funds provided by Congress for projects or programs where the Congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the executive branch to properly manage funds."

Got it? When the sirex woodwasp dies at the hands of a Congressionally appropriated dollar, the poor thing is the unconscionable victim of taxpayer abuse. Its more noble and "merit-based" demise, however, lies in the crosshairs of the executive branch's earma... ah, "properly managed funds."

Which is short for "spreading the loot where it will do the most political good." Which is also, I thought, precisely the pillaging mindset that Republicans had been running from, now that their historic looting of epic dimensions has finally caught up with them.

But I was wrong. For there they sit, according to the second story, favorably pondering the benefits of Mr. Bush's political warmth -- he of "properly managed funds" and an approval rating hovering at the sea level of Death Valley, and largely because of the notable ideological apostasy noted above.

There really is, it appears, a provable psychological foundation for the whole "death-wish" thing. I quote the proof: "As Republicans coalesce around Senator John McCain of Arizona as their party’s 2008 presidential nominee, top advisers to Mr. McCain said they were eager for Mr. Bush’s embrace."

That has simply got to be one of those miracles that Mr. Huckabee, with tin foil on top, has been gibbering about.

And it gets better. "Terry Nelson, who was political director of Mr. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, said that despite Mr. Bush’s unpopularity and what many assume to be a desire among voters to see a change, Republicans remained largely unified on major efforts."

And better yet. Said Mr. Nelson: "There’s no significant effort to repudiate the last eight years." By that he meant there would be no party-wide effort to repudiate Bush.

For now, anyway, they're intent on campaigning on the status quo -- you know, the one that has led us to the carefree, happy-go-lucky Republic in which we live today.

Here's to hoping their intention stays intact. Yet just as Huckabee's "miracle" is about to expire, so too, I suspect, will the GOP's enthusiasm for Bush's embrace. For it's just too hard to imagine that any organized pack of pols could be that suicidal -- even the clinically depressed Republicans.

The Coming Demand for a Clinton Withdrawal

This morning the New York Times bellowed a headline on Obama's "Convincing Wins" yesterday. The Washington Post bannered the modifier, "Handily." The Chicago Tribune scribbled that he "Score[d] a Sweep" and the Politico, thinking ahead, remarked on Obama's "Landslides" -- which "Could Break Deadlock."

At the Virginia Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson dinner, Obama surveyed his decisive victory: "We won in Louisiana, we won in Nebraska, we won in Washington state"; to put it another way, as he did, "We won North, we won South, we won in between."

Obama's campaign did it with strategic forethought (it anticipated the criticality of post-Super Tuesday caucuses), a powerful coalition, almost unprecedented political momentum, plenty of funds and a ready organization -- all of which will be needed in November, and all of which the Clinton campaign lacks -- as well as graciousness, it would seem, considering that Mrs. Clinton failed to even congratulate Obama in her own J-J speech. As my dear old mama would say: Tacky, tacky, tacky.

But the Clinton camp had a powerful piece of logic at the ready to explain away, to dismiss, Obama's geographically rolling victories: It expected him to win, you see, so the landslides don't really count. That was the feverish word transmitted from Clinton staff to television networks last night, and crack logicians everywhere will be working on that one for some time.

Besides, the Clinton camp argued, Obama outspent its candidate. So there. Double-doesn't count.

If that's the sort of cerebral shiftiness we're to expect in the general, should it come to that, please just wake me when it's over.

As everyone knows by now, however, what it may come to instead is a battle for superdelegates -- and not any fussy democratic vote within the Democratic Party. Again, Obama's logic is the stronger: "If we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates from the most voters in the country ... it would be problematic" -- now there's a world-class understatement -- "for the political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters."

Yet it would not be unthinkable, for Clinton has already thunk the thought, as she did again yesterday aloud, that "superdelegates ... should make an independent decision based on who they thought would be the strongest candidate and president."

In other words, superdelegates -- party hacks and bosses -- should decide for you. After which, presumably, they'll change the Democratic Party's name to that of the Oligarchic.

There is, of course, a much better idea, one that averts all that hand-wringing angst stemming from democracy-denial and name-changing. Though it's far from unthinkable, it has nonetheless remained unspoken. But no longer: Should Hillary fail to rack up 68-percent victories in Ohio and Texas early next month, as Obama just did in Nebraska and Washington, she should gracefully withdraw from the race.

You will, I think, be hearing a lot more of that sentiment in the near future, and not only from self-interested Obama supporters. You will begin to hear it, rather, from the party's vast mainstream, which, already being happy with either candidate, will conclude, simply: Let's get on with it -- we can afford a party-splitting contest no longer; certainly not through spring and summer, and certainly not one decided by a superdelegate T.K.O.

The demanded justifications behind a Clinton withdrawal would be nearly overwhelming. In the general Obama will at any rate win the Democratic states of New York, California, etc., that Clinton has bragged about; Obama decisively outpaces Clinton in a head-to-head matchup with McCain; Obama does, in fact, do well among women, having beaten Clinton on that score 35 to 30 percent in Iowa, and 49 to 48 in Missouri; Obama has none of Clinton's scandal baggage to carry into the general; Obama has consistently proven himself a better fundraiser than Clinton; Obama can far more easily carry swing states than Clinton can; Obama would be more than competitive with McCain in the independent vote, unlike Clinton; Obama undeniably has the Big Mo; and above all, Obama did not support George W. Bush's idiotic war, while Clinton will be forced to defend her idiotic counter-decision every bloody minute on the general campaign trail, and which, undoubtedly, will cost her more than a few progressive votes.

Feel free to to add to this list, which could extend for miles. In fact, it extends all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Those arguments are coming, they're coming in droves, and they're coming around the corner. So pucker up, Mrs. Clinton -- and then you had best come up with better counterarguments than ones like, Well, his landslides don't count when they're expected.

An Electorate in the Wilderness?

Woodrow Wilson won reelection in 1916 by hawking the dovish campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war." He ultimately did not, of course, and the public's subsequent disillusionment with America's interventionism led it to profoundly re-endorse FDR's 1940 promise that he would "not send American boys into any foreign wars."

Roosevelt's was little more than a rephrasing of Wilson's: He has kept us out of war, he is keeping us out of war, and he will continue to keep us out of war. That didn't quite work out, but the point is, America's sentiment for war throughout most of the 20th century was decidedly negative. And its politicians played to that sentiment. We fancied ourselves a peaceful breed, happy to go our own way and let the world do the same. "No more war" was the one promise from political leaders sure to grab our hearts and minds.

Contrast that history with today. Or, to be a bit more pointed, contrast that history with what the Republican Party is hawking today. Keeping us in war -- a vague, perpetual, virtually endless world war against the vague enemy of a tactic -- is the once-isolationist GOP's promise to America. It's on its masthead, it's in its blood, it litters its rhetoric.

For the GOP, gone is the bottom-up politics of the 20th century. Or, at least, the GOP wants it gone -- banished in perpetuity. What it has to sell is top-down fear, complete with Orwellian broadcasts on the big screen, full of dire warnings that unseen enemies threaten us everywhere. We must stay engaged, stay the course, stay unremittingly embroiled hither and yon.

What drives the party of perpetual war is merely, of course, a perpetual propaganda machine, every bit as ugly and pointless as Orwell's. We must win the war, although the war is amorphous. We must defeat the enemy, although he is just as amorphous. We must persevere, although the object of our perseverance is unattainable -- the eradication of a centuries-old political tactic.

Victory is at hand, so we cannot surrender, although the conflict will last for generations. Such is the GOP's "message." And just try squaring that circle.

Nevertheless that is today's Word from the top-down boys, and in this election they mean to make a fight for the eternal soul of America. They can't run on the economy, since they botched that up -- but good, so they mean to frame the contest as one in which one side defines America's character as endlessly triumphalist.

There is, however, nothing bottom-up about the effort, as politics was once played. The public has since forgotten why it is we have tens of thousands of troops slowly bleeding in the Middle East, so the GOP is launching a preemptive, frontal assault on the public's memory. Its top-down, coordinated attack is a propagandistic wonder to behold. Oceania's Big Brotherhood would drool with envy.

The warmonger in chief is already in the game, re-hammering the prefabricated message that this election will "present the country with a stark ideological choice at a time of war." The co-chief of warmongering has also hit the stumps, casting about what you might call a kind of hopeful doom: "The important thing for all of us to remember is that six and a half years after 9/11, the war on terror is still very real, that it will not be won on the defensive, and that we have to proceed on many fronts at the same time."

The presumptive propagandist is at it already, as well, mapping a course of nine solid months of framing not America, but his party, as determined victor: "If we had announced a date for withdrawal from Iraq and withdrawn troops the way that Senator Obama and Senator Clinton want to do, al Qaeda would be celebrating that they had defeated the United States of America and that we surrendered ... I will never surrender." Not "we," but I, the political equivalent of a warring godhead.

And naturally all the might-have-been presumptive propagandists are falling in line, joining the GOP orchestra's tune that they, too, will never "surrender to terror."

From here on out, from now till Election Day, the GOP will strive to make every day seem like September 12, 2001. It is already propagandistically strident almost beyond belief. Said the presumptive one just yesterday: "We all know what will happen to the United States of America if the wrong party wins in November."

Sorry, I'm afraid I don't. But thanks for the warning.

The message contained another warning, however -- one not quite as helpfully intended, and for the other side. If the opposition nominates a candidate who was somewhat unclear on the need for top-down direction from the beginning, that "stark ideological choice" that the chief warmonger spoke about will, in fact, be something dramatically less than stark. And the top-down boys won't let the electorate forget it.

Of Mitt, John and Hillary

First, let me just say I'm going to miss Mitt. Who else will deliver unto us such overflowing vats of preposterous swill, such as that which he dispensed yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Conference:

"I must now stand aside, for our party and our country." Note the pathos.

"If I fight on in my campaign ... I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win." Note the selflessness.

"And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror." Note the absolute crap.

All of which in his final sendoff he rebundled in one pathos-laden, utterly selfless chunk of the purest crappola: "If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America."

The man is an embarrassment to professional demagoguery. He's always trying too hard. But it's that very quality that I'll miss. For rare is the plutocrat who will spend $35 million of his own money to make an over-eager fool of himself -- which Mrs. Mitt and all the little Mitts must have finally, desperately pointed out to him -- or, as reported by the New York Times, will lay out more than $650,000 on each and every delegate acquired.

By way of comparison, Huckabee spent only around $45,000 on each delegate, and McCain, $57,000. The record-holder, though? You may think it is, or should be, Ron Paul, coming in at about $4 million a delegate. But no, it was Rudy, coughing up $48 million -- for one. Fiscal conservatives, all.

And speaking of conservatives, that's a word that Mr. McCain used 17 times yesterday in his own CPAC address (transcript). Dwight Eisenhower may have thought he had problems in 1952, battling all those GOP neanderthals to his right, but his was a cakewalk compared to the contemporary spectacle.

But I'll give McCain credit. He didn't pander, despite the "conservative" repetition. And if anything, he used the word more as an outsider looking in, acknowledging that the conservative sandbox isn't really his, in sentiment or organization.

In his opening remarks he even seemed to revel in highlighting the alienation: "Many of you have disagreed strongly with some positions I have taken in recent years. I understand that. I might not agree with it, but I respect it for the principled position it is." The principled position it is, with the "it" just hanging there, seemingly divorced from McCain's philosophical core.

That's striking, actually, when you stop to consider that McCain's American Conservative Union rating is 82 percent. But the alienation is also a comment on the prehensile vagaries of ideological purity and extremism. To hear it from the fringe -- on both the right and the left -- its leaders are never pure enough, never extreme enough, never -- like itself -- saintly enough.

As was reflected in the words of St. Rush this week: "There is a greater desire on the part of members of our party to destroy certain elements of our party, than there is a unified party desire to defeat Democrats." Go for it.

McCain, however, is already in the happy position of not really wanting identification with the Limbaugh-CPAC crowd. There are far too many fish in the middle of the sea -- self-identified moderate Republicans, screaming independents and conservative Democrats -- to warrant the risk of a Goldwater-like flameout. McCain's minuscule worry over Limbaugh's contentment couldn't be located with an electron microscope. In fact, Limbaugh's discontent is a possible plus for the Arizona senator, who's intent on not repeating the extremist mistakes of his forerunner.

Yet party unity is always a plus, too. About that, there is no doubt. And there remains one way for McCain to have it all -- the purists, the independents, the RINOs, the whole middle-to-center-right-to-far-right thing -- without breaking an ideological sweat.

And that, of course, is for the Democrats to nominate Hillary -- the most offensive bugaboo known to Reactionary Man.

The independents would hold for McCain, as they always have, while the right-wing Robespierres would come home. They'd coalesce around their once-dubious guy as if they were battling the AntiChrist herself in the final Armageddon. And it's a battle they're eager for -- foretold, as they'd like to believe, in stone.

Mr. McCain is probably sending Hillary checks in this, her time of financial woe. For no one wants to see her succeed, for now, like John and his would-be friends.

Progressives Are Buying the Well-Circulated Nonsense

Being curious about how the GOP Establishment is coping with its bloody Rotarian divide -- and in the hope that wallowing in others' misery would yield a brief respite from the progressive camp's troubles -- I recently visited that most rarefied radiance of editorial GroupThink, the Wall Street Journal. For one of its columnists had a piece intriguingly titled: "When Will the Wounds Heal?"

I scurried to find out, only, in the end, to meet disappointment. It seems the Journal has no better grasp on its problems than we do ours.

The piece began hopefully, I thought, because in what we men admire as gritty determination to get at the bottom of things, it first tackled the fundamentals. OK, boys, gather 'round and listen up: "A basic law of primary seasons is that the longer they go on, the nastier they get."

It occurred to me that the same is true of Republican administrations, and that it might be illuminating for the paper's editorial board to delve into that, someday soon. But hell, cut 'em some slack. This is the WSJ talking. It can only go so far.

But let's also cut right to the chase: The inquiring columnist had not a clue as to the timing of the healing wounds. After surveying the familiar carnage on the GOP side -- "these divides are natural and predictable"; the "party's core conservatives" are "often ... distrustful, if not disdainful" of Mr. McCain; the "split ... is becoming both more obvious and more nasty" -- he was left groping and staggering for some answer to it all.

Alas, he came up sadly short. The Huck's selection as a running mate might mollify social conservatives to some extent, "but the task for Sen. McCain still would be considerable. His strength as a candidate is his ability to reach beyond the party's base to independents and conservative Democrats. But before he can do that, his first task will be to try to reunite and ultimately claim a conservative base that is somewhere between suspicious and hostile."

And with that, the columnist left the field -- leaving us as befuddled as himself and Mr. McCain.

Before doing so, however -- and this turned out to be the actual intriguing part of the piece -- the columnist treated his WSJ readers to a survey of Democrats' problems, as well. He struck back, that is, with the very Schadenfreude I had gone in search of, the little creep. And his gleeful assessment was this:

"The Democratic fight between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seems certain to continue, and it is showing a clear divide between whites and blacks, between Hispanics and non-Hispanics, between women and men, and between older and younger voters.... The problem for Democrats is that the race is opening up the kind of sensitive divides that go to the party's very identity as an institution that unites races and genders."

Well, I must say, that's a pretty nifty assessment. And it would be even niftier if, at the heart of things, it were true. But it's not.

There's a "clear divide" among progressive Democrats, all right. But the actual fault line runs not between whites and blacks, or men and women, or the old and young, or any other demographic groupings. And don't let the right convince you that it does. Rather our fault line, dear Brutus, runs along the contours of the philosophical.

Which is to say, our whole bloody and internal mess is rooted in questions of war and dicey forgiveness. Some are willing to give Mrs. Clinton a pass on her tortured explanations of why she supported Bush's preemptive, imperialistic adventurism back in 2002 -- when the largely bipartisan slaughter was conceived -- and others are not. It's as simple and fundamental as that. Had Mrs. Clinton not done so, Mr. Obama's raison d'etre in this race and subsequent party divisions would have never been.

Yet at no time do the words "Iraq," "preemption," or "neoconservative madness" appear in the WSJ column as the internal casus belli among progressives. For obvious reasons the paper prefers to validate rumors of deep and far more lasting social divides among them. And the hell of it is, more than a few of the latter are buying into it. They're letting slip that sense of what fundamentally caused the rift to begin with; splitting off into disputatious groupings of gender, race, and so on, to their politically suicidal detriment and the GOP's glee.

Progressives now need to show their own gritty determination to get at the bottom of things -- to get back at the bottom of things, that is, and re-tackle the one and the only true dividing line of this race. It's not demographics. And don't let the right-wing pundits tell you otherwise. You'd just be playing their game.

The One Indicator of Yesterday's Rampaging Hodgepodge

So here we sit, once again faced with the post-primary hangover question of: What did it all mean?

I dunno. No one really knows -- not on the Democratic side of things, anyway. But three conclusions that transcend the present do occur, in increasing order of human interest:

* Republicans still know how to get behind their one electable candidate the earliest, notwithstanding the bloody trail they traveled to get there this time around.

* Democrats still do not.

* Chris Matthews is, in clinical fact, physically, intellectually and emotionally incapable of keeping his mouth shut for longer than five seconds.

Good lord, his is the most severe case of logorrhea ever known to medical science. I marvel at his guests' supreme self-control, though I suspect the day is coming when, in a mad and desperate attempt to finish just one declarative sentence, one of them reaches over and throttles him.

Permit me, however, to backtrack just a bit on my otherwise relevant, opening agnosticism. For there was, perhaps, one reasonably reliable indicator last night of what lies ahead for the Dems. It was the thinnest of squeakers -- 49 to 48 percent -- but it was one that favored Obama and the state's traditional role as signpost may well have signaled the remaining squeaks to the finish line.

And that signpost was? Missouri.

Most of the states in the Democratic contest yesterday were predicted and predictable, from Georgia to California. Missouri, however, was not. It was the one to watch. Sure enough, it remained in play and indeed went right down to the wire, even to the point of the Associated Press at first calling it for Clinton. But that wasn't to be. Obama pulled it out.

The state's major metropolitan areas saved him, according to the sketchy data yet available from exit polling. And in those areas Obama did more than just win -- he crushed Clinton, and I mean crushed, such as by nearly 70 percent.

Missouri has an intriguing knack for picking winners, and I say that out of more than just fondness for my native land. It's a historical fact.

With the exception of opting for Adlai over Ike in 1956 -- I was, then, but a babe in arms and therefore immaturely unable to help save the state from its electoral embarrassment -- Missouri has somehow sided with the victor in every presidential contest since James Buchanan. If one can extrapolate from its primary as well, it's not that audacious to conclude more than just hope for Obama and his remaining road.

Furthermore, Obama's dominance in Missouri's metro areas (which lie in the north) would rather obviously indicate that Clinton dominated downstate, which, I can tell you from firsthand familiarity, is as red as Ozark clay. Any downstate denizen who knows anything of the universe outside of what Fox News broadcasts is instantly labeled an unnaturally inhuman Limbaugh-hater of communistic proportions, and presumed to be in cahoots with al Qaeda as well.

In other words, and extrapolating further, it would seem that Clinton did exceptionally well mostly among the most conservative of Democrats -- that peculiar breed of muscular foreign-policy fixations that resides largely in red states, which is to say, states that won't vote Democratic in November. Hence in further, other words, her 48-percent Missouri showing was largely a throwaway, as were her victories in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Broader demographic data from around the country offered even more hope for Obama. According to CBS News exit polling, "Clinton had only a slight edge among women and white voters, both groups that she has won handily in earlier contests."

Such is the stuff of indisputable momentum. Whether it lasts or not is, of course, the unanswerable question for now. But for my money, Missouri was the one solid and leading indicator.

Hence by next Wednesday morning -- after the primaries in D.C., Maryland and Virginia in which Obama is already favored -- he may be justified in parroting McCain from last night: "I think we must get used to the idea that we are the ... party front-runner."

****

Personal note: My deepest, sincerest thanks to all of you who so generously helped me out over the last few days. I simply cannot thank you enough. If you meant to contribute but just didn't get around to it, there remains an eager "Make a Donation" button near the top of the sidebar. Again, thank you so much.
-- P.M.

They're Not Talking Points: It's Simple Reality

It's not too much of a logical stretch to say that today could be as good as general-election day; that today will decide November; that although there's a long, long way to go, a somewhat-strained but still-reasonable aura of inevitability in the general could kick in, starting tomorrow.

I stress, however, the conditionals: today could be tantamount to the big one, and inevitability could start rolling, with both of these sandwiching the "will" of Decision 2008.

It all depends on today's Democratic victor, or, at least, which of these two survivors can convincingly spin today's results into a definitive victory. If it's Barack Obama, the conditionals will rapidly morph into greater certainties. It it's Hillary Clinton, we've a difficult, winding and exceedingly bumpy road to travel, with fewer guarantees of a November victory than nine months of monumental headaches.

The chief and most complicating problem with Hillary as the chosen one carries its own inevitability as well: Progressives who still count themselves among the party's faithful will inevitably split -- and remain split -- over the war issue. The division and disaffection will be deep and largely irreparable. Some will only nominally support the party's candidate, some will wander to a third-party candidate, and many will simply stay home come November.

This is one of those rare elections in which a clear choice on principle offers itself. And for progressives who see this war -- while reflecting on those who supported it, and those who did not -- as the sole decider in 2008, only the murder of their own principles could permit hypocritical apostasy.

Some would manage to choke it down and sell their progressive souls in the process. Some would not. And the latter could be among the necessary margin of victory in November.

Another complication with Hillary as candidate arises from the probable migration patterns of those non-progressive-aligned independents -- the all-important swing vote in every purple state.

The presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, may have his problems with his own base, but already those problems seem to be passing from contemporaneity to history. From taxes to immigration he's taken the mandatory oaths of ideological purity, hence he and his are now in the throes of all-is-forgiven make-up sex. And the issue of war as principle is never a divisive issue for the GOP base, of course, unless its candidate advocates prudence, humanity and global responsibility. Of this, there is absolutely no threat. So everything is looking just peachy over on the solidly dark side.

That puts the swing-voting independents at the forefront. And the prospects of Mrs. Clinton dominating this bloc are less than sanguine. She's seen as the mover of a party machine -- a machine that operates for the benefit of that party alone -- and all of the neatly defined, nicely delineated constituencies within it. McCain, on the other hand, enters the general contest with the presumption of independent appeal. In short, one would have to work for the independent vote with extra effort and one would not -- would, that is, have to make a historical case for its allegiance. One can, and one can't.

Meanwhile, one would have the base behind him, and one would not. So for the latter, it would be a two-front war from the get-go.

There are other considerations complicating a Clinton-McCain contest, and those considerations invariably reflect harm for the oldest party in the world.

There's the "co-presidency" question, which hordes will answer with a resounding "no"; there's the husband-as-corrupt-baggage question, which is certain to become an even graver one as time passes and the campaign proceeds and reporters inquire; there's the greater and real threat of a Bloomberg candidacy, almost certainly drawing votes from the left-center; and there is, at best, but a fuzzy distinction between the two on the supreme question of war, and how it was that we got ourselves into such an idiotic one.

From the start -- from February or March on -- an Obama candidacy clears those obstacles from the problematic road.

The strategic voter is far different from some starry-eyed simpleton who buys into all the hype of hope. This is war -- a ground war, and for now, a progressive civil war -- as well as a war in which today's strategic vote will very well decide November's outcome.

****

to P.M. Carpenter's Commentary -- because, to be blunt about it, things are rather desperate here. This is also the final day I'm asking for your help. Really. I promise.

I am not, as some readers have assumed, of the professorial class who lives off the fat of the ivory tower, though I do hold a doctorate in American political history. Rather, I am but a typically impoverished public scribe who relies on a substitute-teaching income as a too-meager base for this daily column. I therefore must also rely on you, the regular reader, to supplement the production of what you regularly enjoy, or, on occasion, become enraged at. The purpose is merely to stimulate thought and challenge the conventional. So, if at all possible, please click the button above and make a contribution. I beg your indulgence, but with a good and final -- really, final -- push today we can wrap up this deplorable but quite necessary begging. Thank you so much -- P.M.

"Your Brain on Obama Will Kill (the GOP)"

In my political memory I don't recall having ever seen the mighty Republican Establishment so imposingly unnerved by one, rather scrawny potential opponent. It's like a run-up to the David-and-Goliath smackdown, only this time the dumb giant knows of the pebble's fatal sting.

The Establishment's, shall we say, "premortem" effort in defusing Barack Obama's crossover lethality has been endlessly amusing. For this is also the first time in memory it's been forced to play nice -- a most unnatural and disagreeable role for these chaps. Hence they're not very good at it. And it shows.

The latest installment of "What in God's name do we do?" comes from Peter Wehner, a former assistant to the White House's current and seemingly anonymous Republican occupant. Yesterday he wrote in the Washington Post what you might call a kind of stern, parental preview of the Establishment's coming tough-love strategy: "He may be enticing, dear laddies and lassies, but your brain on Obama will kill."

Wehner first went out of his way to identify with the potentially and haplessly wayward, a bit like the cops do in those classroom D.A.R.E. programs. He asks: "What is at the core of Obama's appeal?"

Well, the Illinois senator is a shiny bauble indeed, answers Wehner. He comes packed with "personal grace and dignity," not to mention he's "pitted against a couple, the Clintons, whom many Republicans hold in contempt" -- a not inconsiderable club that's becoming less exclusive by the day.

Third, says Wehner, "Obama has a message that, at its core, is about unity and hope rather than division and resentment." And that, of course, is both the problem and challenge for the GOP Establishment: How to foment disunity and despair, the twin pillars of Republican victories since the postwar era.

So, having played nice, having conceded the allure of a genuinely brighter morning in America, Wehner then reaches for his Taser, to stun the brotherly errant back into dismal reality and reassure the still-faithful. "The one thing that will keep Obama's appeal from translating into widespread support among Republicans is that he is, on almost every issue, a conventional liberal" ...

... Blah, blah, blah. You can fill in the predictable blanks from there, or keep reading Wehner, since he does it for you: "Whether we're talking about the Iraq war, monitoring terrorist communications, health care, taxes, education, abortion and the courts, the size of government, or almost anything else, Obama embodies the views of the special-interest groups on the left."

Coming to Wehner's aid, among others, is that Establishment factory of disunity, despair, division and resentment, the Republican National Committee, which "has emphasized a recent analysis suggesting that Obama had the most liberal voting record in the Senate last year." As I said, blah, blah, blah. It's merely punching the air.

For what Wehner & Co.'s analyses and feeble counterattacks utterly miss is that after seven indecent years of their ideological Goliath -- ruling like a Stalinist dogmatist on everything from the economy to foreign policy to science -- the American people are just plain sick of the whole left-right, Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative thing. Personally I'm not. I happen to thrive on it and enjoy counting ideological angels on pinheads with the best of them.

But Mr. Wehner and I aren't the broad electorate -- and it, quite frankly, simply no longer gives a damn. It just wants some reassurance that things will be all right, and that there's someone at the top who does give a damn, non-ideologically speaking.

Which means, by definition, inclusion. And inclusion Obama is delivering with powerful effect. As even the conservative Joe Scarborough of MSNBC fawns: "He doesn't attack Republicans, he doesn't attack whites and he never seems to draw these dividing lines that Bill Clinton [does]."

Neither did Bill Clinton in 1992. It was smart politics then, and it's smart politics now.

It's also winning politics, if that's your bag, and even much of the foreign press sees its wisdom. As Andrew Rawnsley of the British paper, The Observor, wrote yesterday: "Of all the candidates this Tuesday, he is potentially the most transformative president for a country thirsting for a change from political failure, poison and gridlock."

For progressives, the most satisfying outcome? Should Obama go all the way, he'd prove the RNC right -- and with an unstoppable mandate.

****

to P.M. Carpenter's Commentary -- because, to be blunt about it, things are rather desperate here. I am not, as some readers have assumed, of the professorial class who lives off the fat of the ivory tower, though I do hold a doctorate in American political history. Rather, I am but a typically impoverished public scribe who relies on a substitute-teaching income as a too-meager base for this daily column. I therefore must also rely on you, the regular reader, to supplement the production of what you regularly enjoy, or, on occasion, become enraged at. The purpose is merely to stimulate thought and challenge the conventional. So, if at all possible, please click the button above and make a contribution. I beg your indulgence, but with a good and final push today we can wrap up this deplorable but quite necessary begging. Thank you so much -- P.M.

Whoops, A Rather Glaring Contradiction, Going Unnoticed

Well, we haven't even made it to the first multi-state primaries and already we're seeing the "New Hillary."

Reports the NYT's Caucus, gone is the "wonk-filled town hall meeting" doubling as a "university lecture," which she was delivering to the snores of thousands everywhere as recently as Friday night. Arriving is "an almost entirely new stump speech ... with a new overarching message -- 'the America I see,'" accompanied by "new hits" on both Barack Obama and John McCain.

Tactical shifts generally indicate slipping numbers, and there is growing statistical evidence, times two, in confirmation of this axiom. The latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby tracking poll, for example, finds -- rather astonishingly -- that in California Obama now leads "Clinton by 45 percent to 41 percent, with a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points." Elsewhere, namely Missouri and New Jersey, Clinton has slipped to "statistically insignificant 1-point leads on Obama."

The California and Missouri numbers were eye-popping enough, yet I found New Jersey's deadlock even more astonishing, since it was only a few days ago that Clinton's lead was something along the numerical lines of a zillion to nothing. Tuesday won't lock anything up, of course, and there remains oodles of time for a Segretti-Nixonian "New, New Hillary," but for now it appears that Obama's train is decidedly leaving the station.

But enough of this ticker-tape reporting. Back to the merely and singularly "New" -- for now -- Hillary and her newly riveting, Robert F. Kennedy-invoking stump speech, with pointed attention to one of those "hits."

Again, the Caucus: "Referring to Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton said at one point, 'My opponent will not commit to universal health care,' triggering a round of boos. 'I do not believe we should nominate any Democrat who will not stand here today, tomorrow, or any day, who will not explicitly support universal health insurance."

Hear, hear. I happen to favor Hillary on this one, however in all fairness Obama would say his mandate-less healthcare plan nevertheless provides for virtually free access to healthcare for the needily uninsured, thereby constituting virtual universality. In short, both Clinton and Obama's plans effectively arrive at the same point: covered healthcare for all, even if one resorts to signing up while slowly bleeding in the emergency room.

This morning's Caucus story reminded me, however, of something that came up in Thursday night's debate that I didn't have time to note Friday morning.

In one of the rare moments of disagreement, Mrs. Clinton once again tried demonstrating her steely resolve and superior political skills in commenting that "it's not that [Obama] is against mandatory provisions [because he mandates children's coverage], it's that he doesn't think it would be politically acceptable to require that for everyone."

So far, so good. But she then made the mistake of continuing while ahead, saying, "I think we as Democrats have to be willing to fight for universal health care. And what I've concluded, when I was looking at this -- because I got the same kind of advice, which was, it's controversial, you'll run into all of this buzz saw -- and I said, been there, done that. But if you don't start by saying, you're going to achieve universal health care, you will be nibbled to death."

In other, more strategically stated words, if you don't go into healthcare negotiations with Congress demanding the absolute gold standard, the opposition will whack away anyway, only now it will be whacking away at something less to begin with. You've already put yourself behind the eight ball.

But what is the universally agreed gold standard? -- the one every other advanced, caring, industrialized nation possesses?

The single-payer standard, of course -- the one that eliminates the hordes of profit-skimming, corporate-insurance middlemen who've been bleeding the public for decades and have every legitimate intention of continuing to do so under either Clinton or Obama's plan. Both will be "nibbled" at, for sure, but both will start negotiations with something less than the demanded gold. And if anything, Obama's nearly identical plan is the more politically realistic, since it doesn't contain that most wretched of all Republican horrors: the simple word, "mandate."

At any rate, I found Clinton's self-negating logic to be an extravagant indicator of something less, as well, than the steely political resolve she's selling to the multitudes. For she was, in effect, confessing to selling out before starting. Yet, to my knowledge, not one network commentator or print pundit has pointed out the contradiction.

So to her husband I would ask: Is that sloppy omission part of the grilling process you say she's been subjected to and Obama has not?

****

to P.M. Carpenter's Commentary -- because, to be blunt about it, things are rather desperate here. I am not, as some readers have assumed, of the professorial class who lives off the fat of the ivory tower, though I do hold a doctorate in American political history. Rather, I am but a typically impoverished public scribe who relies on a substitute-teaching income as a too-meager base for this daily column. I therefore must also rely on you, the regular reader, to supplement the production of what you regularly enjoy, or, on occasion, become enraged at. The purpose is merely to stimulate thought and challenge the conventional. So, if at all possible, please click the button above and make a contribution. I beg your indulgence, but with a good push today we can wrap up this deplorable but quite necessary begging. Thank you so much -- P.M.

Unearthing the real difference -- because there is one, and it is profound

Barack Obama's underlying, fundamental vision of a post-reactionary nation is being buried amidst the rubble of all the tactical warfare. The two surviving campaigns have devolved into a "he said, she said" silliness designed by one to stun the base into a near-apathetic state of resignation -- when in doubt, whenever baffled, in the event of any fence-sitting, just go with the old and familiar. It's a safe and known quantity.

To date, this unprogressive pushback of divide and conquer -- especially through the tedious recourse to balkanizing identity politics -- has taken a toll on the progressive alternative -- inclusion -- although there are welcome signs that the alternative itself is now pushing back and may, in fact, score something of a cumulative victory by Tuesday. That, of course, remains to be seen. But whichever the outcome, it will command the soul of progressivism for years to come.

Meanwhile, the fundamental governing visions that underlie the two campaigns are, as mentioned, getting buried. For all the punditocracy's observations on the two candidate's striking similarities on various and specific policies, there is a profound difference going largely unnoticed. And at the risk of sounding clicheish, that difference is indeed between the unlimited possibilities of the future and the accepted constraints of the past.

The difference in its fuller presentation, however, is soundbite unworthy. It's unsexy, and far less fodder for the Battling Bickersons of network political talk shows than C-span.

Or, perhaps, the New York Times, which this morning has made at least a decent attempt, in an interview with Obama, to sketch the difference.

To appreciate it, one must first remove one's partisan hat. In the long run, and at its core, it's not about one candidate over another, or one ideology over another, or one party over another. It is, rather, about the broadest possibilities of a broad, philosophical pragmatism mixed judiciously with the idealistic; much along the lines of the pragmatic progressivism of FDR (who, by the way, issued repeated appeals to rank-and-file conservatives during the economically troubled '32 campaign).

Three lines from the Times' interview with Obama encapsulate well what has been so clinically entombed by all the campaign raucousness: "Although Mr. Obama’s economic approach comes wrapped in his conciliatory rhetoric, it is in some ways more aggressive than that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton"; furthermore, "Mr. Obama praised the Clinton administration for reducing the deficit and setting the stage for the ’90s boom. But he said Mr. Clinton had failed to halt a long-term increase in income inequality" -- which, down the road, threatens America's democratic viability as much as its globally idiotic adventurism.

Overcoming that failure is what lies at the heart of Obama's philosophical approach. But we can't get there from here. The "here" of divisiveness in which we've been stalled for so long will only act as a continuing and sturdy obstacle to fundamental change.

Forget who said it and concentrate instead on these words themselves recently spoken by another: "We’ve got to be really clear that this is a struggle, and this is just not a moment where everybody will see the world the way it should be seen and come together to solve these problems." I'm not entirely sure what those words were meant to convey, but they drip with the mindset of constraint -- of limited possibilities, of more and deeper divisions, of endless and compromising battle.

Obama, on the other hand, "also talks about overcoming special interests, but he proposes to do so by changing the terms of the debate, energizing disaffected voters and forging a new majority in favor of his programs." (Again, see FDR).

What a difference attitude makes. "Changing the terms of the debate" -- reframing, that is, the whole bloody mess of it.

"He would start, he said, by trying to turn the discussion about taxes into an advantage for the Democrats during the general election campaign this year." In his words: "We have to disaggregate tax policy between the wealthy and the working class or middle class. We have to be able to say that we are going to at once raise taxes on some people and lower taxes on others. This has been one of the greatest rhetorical sleights of hand of the Republican Party, and it has been a great weakness of the Democratic Party."

One piece of advice, Barack: Start by banning words like "disaggregate" from your vocabulary when speaking to the press, hence the public. Other than that, you have landed on a profound, possibilities-changing approach that is light years ahead of the "here."

Yet it's getting buried in the rubble. And that's a damn shame, because it represents a fundamental restructuring of progressivism's promise.

Add to these domestic musings Obama's philosophical preference of "soft power" over hard -- which is to say, the profitable international politics of inducement and persuasion over the costly, neocon ham-handedness of others; of "attraction rather than force" -- and you begin to see an agent of "change" with profound, global implications as well.

For the genuine progressive, is this really a dicey contest of ideas?

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to P.M. Carpenter's Commentary -- because, to be blunt about it, things are rather desperate here. I am not, as some readers have assumed, of the professorial class who lives off the fat of the ivory tower, though I do hold a doctorate in American political history. Rather, I am but a typically impoverished public scribe who relies on a substitute-teaching income as a too-meager base for this daily column. I therefore must also rely on you, the regular reader, to supplement the production of what you regularly enjoy, or, on occasion, become enraged at. The purpose is merely to stimulate thought and challenge the conventional. So, if at all possible, please click the button above and make a contribution. And then enjoy. Thank you -- P.M.

It's Not About Hillary's Judgment, Or Even About Hillary

If an alien somewhere out there is tuning in just to the presidential debates, and paying no attention to the tactical reasons behind the candidates' shifting demeanors, he might suspect the poor devils are suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, or, at the very least, a serious case of bipolar disorder.

One week they're all smiles, the next they're pulling knives, then they're back to honoring National Brotherhood Week. Should the alien ever decide to visit and stay a while, he will no doubt come loaded with otherworldly Thorazine and Lithium. These Earthlings are a strange and moody breed.

But, as we know, there's a calculated method behind the candidates' madcap moodiness. And last night, both had calculated -- or gambled -- that for now they're sitting pretty. Mrs. Clinton feels assured of widely scattered leads in the run-up to next week, and Mr. Obama is banking on a timely Big Mo. Best not stir the seemingly favorable waters.

But last night still leaves the question: Who won?

Answer: Wolf Blitzer.

I'd love to see his email inbox this morning, although Wolf will need to approach it wearing asbestos. For I have no doubt it's overflowing with Molotov-cocktail constructions from the Clinton crowd, burning with rage over what they'll claim was Wolf's singularly rude, mean-spirited, subjective interjection last night in the form of a rude, mean-spirited and subjective interrogatory.

But it was none of those descriptions. It was, rather, a simple, straightforward and immensely fair question.

Following another tortured, evasive exegesis from Mrs. Clinton about her 2002 war vote -- it was all an innocent misunderstanding, you see; she passionately favored diplomacy and inspection, but gosh darn it, "no one could have fully appreciated ... how obsessed this president was with this particular mission" -- Wolf came back with the granddaddy of all logically permissible, wholesale-humbug-stopping body slams: "So, what I hear you saying -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- is that you were naive in trusting President Bush?"

Riddle me this: Is that not what she just said? -- that she got snowed while 300 million other Americans understood perfectly well what the 2002 vote was about and where it would lead?

Her follow-up response merely compounded the humbuggery: "I believe that it is abundantly clear that the case that was outlined on behalf of going to the resolution -- not going to war, but going to the resolution -- was a credible case." Why of course. How ever could a United States senator have known that military force might proceed from a joint resolution explicitly authorizing "military force"?

Having breached her flank, Wolf's question then opened Obama's well-worn path to raising the issue of judgment: "The question is, can we make an argument that this was a conceptually flawed mission from the start, and that we need better judgment when we decide to send our young men and women into war?"

Yet I take exception to the matter's transmogrification into one of mere judgment. I understand that Mr. Obama cannot say for political reasons what progressive concerns are really about, but I can. And they are twofold.

One, it's about lying. There's not a man or woman alive who believes the real "fairy tale" in this campaign; that Mrs. Clinton, that is, somehow got snowed. She knew exactly what she was doing -- bolstering her national-security credentials with others' lives -- and now brusquely refuses to come clean. I can take a little lying here and there from any politician. It's what they do. But not on a matter of these life-and-death proportions.

Second, it's about Mrs. Clinton's less than subtle request to progressives that they momentarily cancel their long-stated -- and what I and many others thought were their deeply heartfelt -- convictions. Which are fundamentally reasoned, pacific ones -- you don't go to war except as a last resort, you don't go to war in the utter absence of provocation, and you sure as hell don't go to war as a neoconning, "preventive" measure.

No, at it's core it is not about judgment. It's not even about Hillary Clinton, really. It is, rather, about progressives and their self-averred values.

Should they reward any progressive politician in open and brazen violation of a chief and organic tenet within those values, they will have sold their souls. They will have foolishly dispossessed themselves of political nobility -- of any right to tutor anyone, about anything, ever again.

****

to P.M. Carpenter's Commentary -- because, to be blunt about it, things are rather desperate here. I am not, as some readers have assumed, of the professorial class who lives off the fat of the ivory tower, though I do hold a doctorate in American political history. Rather, I am but a typically impoverished public scribe who relies on a substitute-teaching income as a too-meager base for this daily column. I therefore must also rely on you, the regular reader, to supplement the production of what you regularly enjoy, or, on occasion, become enraged at. The purpose is merely to stimulate thought and challenge the conventional. So, if at all possible, please click the button above and make a contribution. And then enjoy. Thank you -- P.M.