Liberal blogosphere Alanis Morissettes satire

Read The Editors and Tom Tomorrow on the uproar in the liberal blogosphere over the recent New Yorker covering "The Politics of Fear".

Another What Clinton Should Do Post

I think Obama's campaign's most effective tactics have been despicable, and HRC has a pretty good case that she'd be the better candidate in the fall given Ohio and Florida and all the ammunition Obama has handed McCain lately, but I take it that the party (though not the Democratic voters) will chose Obama. So what should Clinton do now?

BTD has a good post on the subject here - basically saying that it would be reasonable for her to continue her campaign but run against McCain. He also suggests Wes Clark as Obama's VP, which makes sense, because Clark would be a good Clinton proxy, a good attack dog, and would add geographic/cultural balance while providing unquestionable experience.

I was wondering what Clinton could buy with a promise to effectively suspend her campaign for the nomination as above, and it occurs to me that in that case Obama could freely drop his strategy of disenfranchising MI/FL. This (presumably tacit) quid pro quo would help both of them save face and would go a long way towards healing the wounds in the party.

The End of the HRC Campaign

Quick reaction to the news that FL won't hold a revote: HRC would have had a good argument going into the convention that she won the popular vote (and did much better than Obama in the Democratic vote) but that depended on the large vote delta she would have gotten in FL. With no revote, and thus I assume the disenfranchisement of FL, the Obama supporters won't accept that argument on threat of bolting, so it's all over strategically (assuming that the Rev. Wright matter or something else doesn't explode). I nearly agree with BTD in comments here and elsewhere in that thread. Probably withdrawal would be too precipitous a reaction (and surely the HRC side isn't thinking this way given their failure to fight hard for a revote), but a winding down or downshifting of the campaign is probably the course I'd recommend on the facts as I understand them.

The Nagourney Number

The Nagourney number of this article in the NYT - that is, how many paragraphs one must read before reaching the anti-Republican truth - is finite: 15. Only after reading 15 paragraphs does Nagourney note why the R candidates for president are cautious about being associated with Bush - his 32% approval rating. He doesn't manage to refer to Bush as "unpopular" directly - only indirectly via a qualified quote. Perhaps by the time one of the fine Democrats in the race has won he'll get to that point. For now it's like reading one of those long Latin periods with the weight of thought at the end - but Cicero or whoever meant the end of the sentence to be heard and felt.

More of the same at Ezra Klein's blog

An excellent post from Ezra Klein on Obama and toughness, with a good discussion.

The state of the blog debate on Obama

An excellent post by Neil at Ezra Klein's blog about skepticism about Obama, with a lively discussion in comments.

It's interesting how, after years of life on liberal blogs being simple (because Bush-directed) and ultimately stultifying, there's a return to debate.

More on the Hillary bashing

It's not surprising that Greg Sargeant can find a hack at the NYT.

And it's not surprising to see faux-liberal Richard Cohen embarassing himself.

And it's not entirely surprising to find stuttering anti-HRC litmus-test politics on the front page of Daily Kos (why bother to link), though I believe the blog's mission statement is against that.

And, well, few liberal bloggers like HRC and it shows a bit too obviously. Ok, people like their favorite candidate and that often means being unfair to the others.

But it's especially sad to see one of the smartest bloggers out there, Matthew Yglesias, looking monomaniacal and unreality-based. A lot. Really really a lot [ack, can't even find the best example because of MY's annoying archive setup].

UPDATE: apparently MY's comment links don't work. Grep on my handle in those threads to see my argument.


Late update: black is white from Big Tent Democrat - grep on "strategic sense".

The Hillary-bashing at Daily Kos gets tiresome

but then one finds heartfelt praise for Wesley Clark.

Obama occupies the Lieberman niche on religion

Drops some context, but still infuriating. Atrios is succincter.