Sometimes I wonder why politicians choose to speak out when they do. Because if John McCain wanted his comments he made yesterday to fade from the minds of those in the media, then why respond to Barack Obama. The hole only gets deeper when you give the media something to blog, talk, and write about. This is what McCain said Thursday.
“I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet and it’s long and it’s hard and it’s tough and there will be setbacks.”
The problem with the statement is, according to the Obama campaign, troop level in Iraq is at about 155,000 right now, well above the 130,000 that would mark a return to pre-surge levels. [Read more →]
Tomorrow is the day. The Democratic Party rules and bylaws committee is holding a meeting to try and reach a decision on what to do with the Michigan and Florida delegates. Devon wrote a post about tomorrows meeting that you can read more about here.
If the meeting goes anything like the dialogue at some sites in the blogosphere, than it may get messy, and worse…remain unresolved. In this blog from the Huffington Post titled “Democratic Leaders Pushing Superdelegates to Commit” there are presently 2,265 comments about this debate. You may find the comments quite amusing and maybe even a little scary. But nonetheless, their continues to be a swirling debate about this issue. What do you think, how does this get resolved?
Tomorrow there will be a media firestorm, amid hundreds of protestors, and who knows how it will end. Both campaigns better pack some gatoraid and powerbars, because May 31 is gonna be a long day. Here are some of the best articles and blog posts I found about tomorrows Flor-igan meeting. [Read more →]
It’s often the media that shapes the landscape of an election, and their level of criticism can shift a candidate’s popularity from one pole to the other; often in a very short time. Howard Dean saw this firsthand in the 2004 election. And Hillary Clinton said the same thing happened to her, complaining that Barack Obama’s treatment was much gentler.
A recent Gallup polls proves she may be right.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are two of the most prominent people to suggest that the news media have been unfairly critical of her and her campaign. The overall sentiment of the American public seems to tilt in agreement, with significantly more Americans saying the media have been too hard on Clinton than say that about either Obama or McCain
The top complaints of the media’s overall performance were about bias, not being truthful or slanting the facts and covering shallow, rather than important issues.
Clinton has raised the soft-on-Obama issue several times, though that talk subsided some after the Rev. Write controversy and his “bitter remarks.” In Ohio, she once said, “”If anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.”
While more Americans disapprove of the coverage overall, Gallup reports that this isn’t necessarily bad.
Americans have not always been very charitable in their ratings of the media, so while not overly positive, the current ratings are not necessarily bad when put into that context. The media to some extent are saddled with the perception that they do not treat a person’s preferred candidate as well as they treat other candidates. This is apparent in the ratings of Clinton’s and Obama’s media treatment by their supporters, but also applies to ratings of McCain’s media coverage by Republicans.
Hillary Clinton may plan to take her fight to seat Florida and Michigan to the party’s August convention, but not if Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it.
She vowed, “I will step in.”
The Huffington Post is reporting this as new news, but her plans were originally announced in April, in the video below. Pelosi had a few contradictory moments, stating “The election has to run it’s course” and seconds later, “One of them will have to realize the numbers and step aside.”
In a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Pelosi said the Democratic superdelegates should not overturn the pledged delegate winner, saying there will be irreparable harm. Barack Obama officially won the majority of pledged delegates last week. CNN reports:
Pelosi also indicated she opposes the Clinton campaign’s desire that both Florida and Michigan’s delegations be fully seated at the convention. The party stripped both states of their entire delegations last year after they moved their presidential primaries ahead in the nominating calendar.
Pelosi said she agreed the two states should be seated in some way, but said only “in a way that is not destructive to any sense of order in the party.”
Pelosi formerly backed Sen. Hillary Clinton, but vowed to endorse the candidate who wins the most pledged delegates. She hasn’t hinted about how she will step in, but it’ll be interesting to see if her threat has any grounding with the Democrats.
John McCain gave a speech in Denver a couple days ago, laying out his views on nuclear weapons. He urged the Joint Chiefs of Staff to engage in a comprehensive review of our nuclear strategy and policy.
From reading the transcript on the Washington Post, he endorsed a variety of sound ideas but few apply to the immediate future.
Our highest priority must be to reduce the danger that nuclear weapons will ever be used. Such weapons, while still important to deter an attack with weapons of mass destruction against us and our allies, represent the most abhorrent and indiscriminate form of warfare known to man. We do, quite literally, possess the means to destroy all of mankind. We must seek to do all we can to ensure that nuclear weapons will never again be used.
William Hartung’s column on Talking Points Memo dissects the speech in more depth, saying that he spoke in limited terms before embracing Reagan’s vision.
McCain endorsed a new arms treaty with Russia, but failed to explain how his plans to exclude Moscow from attending meetings of the G-8 group of industrialized nations and to deploy missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic would set the groundwork for such discussions, rather than just antagonizing Russia to the point that its leadership won’t want to negotiate any major deals with Washington.
McCain seemed to soften his opposition to a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, a measure he voted against in the Senate in 1999; but he clung to the opponent’s rhetoric about its “shortcomings.”
The U.S. needs the international community to cooperate on economic and financial sanctions against nuclear proliferation. U.S. hesitancy to push for nuclear disarmament is likely seen as hypocrisy at this point. Should McCain win the presidency and if the U.S. pledges to disarm itself and if McCain’s proposals are met (such as the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty) his “dream” of a nuke-free world could be feasible; but not in today’s international political climate.
Over at Townhall.com, local conservative talk-show host Michael Medved makes a powerful case for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as McCain’s vice-presidential nominee:
You don’t even have to know what he’s saying to know what he’s after: the Puerto Rican vote.
Hillary Clinton may have the advantage in Puerto Rico due to her popularity with Latinos, but Barack Obama does have one thing on his side: a killer accent. Whether he’s taken Spanish classes in the past or just practiced really hard for this ad, I know enough about Spanish to know that the way he speaks in this ad is pretty darn good.
On Thursday, seemingly out of nowhere, a new contender emerged for the 2016 race: Chelsea Clinton.
First, People magazine ran its “15 Questions with Bill Clinton,” where the former president was asked, “Do you think Chelsea will ever run for office?” Clinton replied: “I don’t know. If you asked me this before Iowa, I would have said, ‘No way. She is too allergic to anything we do.’ But she is really good at it.”
In a take on NCAA March Madness for college basketball fans, MSNBC’s David Gregory and Chuck Todd are hosting an interactive “veepstakes” that lets readers vote on their favorite Republican VP candidates.
In addition to June 1 and June 3, when the remaining Democratic primaries will take place, here’s another date to mark on your calendar: May 31. That’s when the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet in Washington, D.C. to discuss whether or not (and how) to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates.
The DNC made hundreds of tickets to the meeting publicly available this morning, but they were quickly snapped up by citizens who knew that the event will be a big deal. Fear not - we should be able to watch all the delegate drama go down, as C-SPAN is expected to broadcast the meeting beginning at 9:30 am Eastern.
There will be even more drama outside of the meeting, as Hillary Clinton fans are busy organizing what could be a massive march outside the meeting in support of the underdog candidate.
“They’re coming up on buses, they’re taking the train, they’re Metro-ing, they’re coming up with friends,” said Allida Black, a professor at George Washington University and an event organizer. “We’re trying to flood it.”
…
Besides their goal of pressuring the committee into counting the votes from Florida and Michigan, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are hoping that an en masse gathering will demonstrate widespread support for her candidacy — and perhaps persuade a superdelegate or two.
I have to say this: protesting will do nothing to help Clinton. The members of the rules committee are clearly concerned with one thing - playing by the rules - and Michigan and Florida did not. Now Clinton is trying to change the rules.
