Category: Politics & Elections

This story tells us a little bit about both candidates, don’t you think?

“I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that.'”

The Trail

Among all the other reasons why Rudy Giuliani would be a horrible president, his presidential campaign itself reveals a deeply flawed individual. Harp on one theme (9-11) to the point of caricature; spend most of your time in one state. It’s as if he was campaigning to be Homeland Security director for Florida.

Rudy’s expected to come in fourth today in the Florida Republican primary. If that holds, it will be interesting to see if he withdraws from the race or continues this self-immolation. If he continues, I would say it demonstrates even further his close dance with insanity.

Update: Giuliani came in third just ahead of Huckabee. Word is he’s withdrawing from the race tomorrow and endorsing John McCain.

Click image for larger version.

This from Glenn Greenwald:

As it turns out, the South Carolina polls were even more inaccurate than the New Hampshire polls were, though that fact hasn’t received much attention because predicting the wrong winner (as the New Hampshire polls did) is a far more dramatic error than under-predicting the winner’s ultimate margin of victory (as the South Carolina polls did). But, mathematically speaking, the magnitude of the polling error is actually greater in South Carolina.

The average of the pre-New Hampshire polls showed Obama with an 8 point lead, and Clinton won by almost 3 points — a difference of 11 points. By contrast, the average of the pre-South Carolina polls showed Obama with an 11 point lead, and he won by 28 points — a difference of 17 points.

Greenwald thinks it was the racial campaigning by Bill Clinton that gave Obama the last-minute surge, just as it was the negative treatment by the press that gave Hillary her come from behind victory in New Hampshire.

“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”

Caroline Kennedy makes an endorsement.

Pointer via Hullabaloo.

I know you people from foreign states probably don’t understand why we local folks are laughing ourselves silly this morning with the news about Dean Hrbacek.  Okay, so a politician photoshopped his chubby body out of the picture.  So what?

Well, for starters, Dean’s body shape is very distinctive.  Very.  A penguin comes to mind.  In Texas, we refer to that as Winkie-Do, as in, “his tummy sticks out more than his Wink….” well, you can fill in the rest and figure it out.  To think that people who see him every day wouldn’t notice is kinda nuts.

Kiss My Big Blue Butt

Follow the link and scroll up-and-down to read more about Dean Hrbacek’s photoshopping. It appears the shoes were photoshopped into another ad. Hilarious — as Susan DuQuesnay Bankston almost always is.

Not necessarily good for the country, but good entertainment.

You probably need to watch from the beginning, but it gets heated after four minutes.

I agree with Obama that this is a potentially game changing election like 1980. And I am open to the idea that he’s the guy to do it. He’s young, he’s brilliant, he’s a fresh face with immense political skills. What I don’t get is why he keeps using conservative phrases and adopting hot button conservative issues like social security when it’s so unnecessary. If the people are there, then why keep using this tired old crap to appeal to the middle? I understand that he doesn’t want to run as a traditional liberal and that’s fine. I don’t think he should. But people also don’t need that stale stuff about love-ins and “entrepreneurship” or “fixing social security” or dissing “trial lawyers” or they’d vote for Rudy McRomney. They want something new. Give it to them.

digby

Recommend you read her whole post.

What warms me to Obama in this instance isn’t just his messy desk. It’s that when he was asked a human question (”What’s your greatest weakness”), he answered like a human being. … As Obama pointed out today on NPR, Edwards and Clinton both gave almost freakishly political answers. (Edwards: my greatest weakness is that I care too much. Clinton: I get impatient with people who don’t care enough about the children!) Come on, if you were interviewing someone for a job, and you asked ye olden “greatest weakness” chestnut, what would you think of the kinds of answers that Clinton and Edwards gave? I’d immediately think I was talking with someone who was both phony and unimaginative.

Timothy Burke

NewMexiKen has always admired people with messy desks, being congenitally unable to live like that myself (e.g., God forbid the pen be placed with its clip facing left rather than right).

“The thing that makes me hot under the collar is that this is a typical unconscious assumption among analysts that anything but white, male votes are somehow illegitimate. They’ve done it for years about the black vote.”

The quotation is from digby, in a very good little essay on gender and racial politics. Some analysts are now doing for female voters as they have done for African-Americans — Blacks vote for Blacks, women vote for women, only white men take issues to heart.

Hullabaloo is the essential political blog.