Some things that happened in the world today while I was flying down the side of a mountain...
+ It is now official: we are in a recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research is the group that officially designates these sorts of things, and today their president, Martin Feldstein, declared that we have entered a recession that will be "substantially more severe" than those in our recent past: "The situation is very bad, the situation is getting worse, and the risks are that it could get very bad."
+ I missed this one yesterday: Obama gave yet another big foreign policy speech. The whole speech is of course worth a read, but if you are pressed for time, this sound bite will do: "After years of being told that Democrats have to talk, act and vote like John McCain to pass some Commander-in-Chief test, how many times do we have to learn that tough talk is not a substitute for sound judgment?"
+ That NPR interview with Clinton that I mentioned yesterday? The one during which she lied repeatedly about her own past statements and actions? James Fallows, a supporter and admirer of Bill Clinton, listened to it too. And wow... he did not like what he heard!
+ Speaking of which, when Al Gore spoke about his role in creating the legislation that helped give birth to the Internet, everyone had a good laugh. Never mind that his claim was true. This time around, Clinton is claiming that she "helped start S-CHIP." The problem? It isn't true. Yet more proof that she is willing to do or say anything to get elected. Related... it amazes me how much I've turned on Hillary these past few months. I loved her husband, and I've always thought she got a bad rap. But truth be told I wasn't paying particularly careful attention in the 1990s, so...
+ Meanwhile, Obama is getting hammered for the views of his pastor. I've wrote at length about this before, but the short version is that I think this makes no sense. Most religions are filled with all kinds of nonsense, yet we don't hold that against most candidates. The key, as Ezra points out today, is for the extremism of your own religion to have been normalized. I know everyone think this will hurt Obama, but I'm not yet convinced. If close to 10% of the public thinks Obama is a Muslim, but then they hear he has a "crazy" Pastor at an "extremist" Christian church, how will they make sense of this? Sure thing, its likely to affect some small percentage of the public, but my guess is that group will be almost entirely made up of people who were already looking for a reason to oppose him. There's a solid 30% of the public that will never support Obama. Stories like this only matter if they reach beyond that 30%.
+ But let's back up a bit here. As Mark Schmitt points out today, Clinton has already lost, and it is only because of a lack of clarity that we haven't all accepted that fact. Riffing off Mark's post, Ezra nails it:
Clarity is the enemy of the Clinton campaign. Not because she isn't a good candidate, or because she doesn't "deserve" the nomination, or because she wouldn't be a good president. But because she's already lost the nomination contest on points. So the only way for her to win is if she's able to get Obama disqualified.
We know Clinton is behind in delegates. We know she's behind in the popular vote. We know that the superdelegates will, under any natural circumstance, follow the lead of the pledged delegates and the popular vote. And so we know that her only path to the nomination is to crush Obama's candidacy, to wound him so heavily that the superdelegates will abandon him and turn to Clinton as the savior of the party. It's not because she's a mean person, but because that's the only strategy left to her. She's in the weird position of being famous enough that the media is willing to grant her candidacy legitimacy long after other campaigns would have been written off. And that's convinced her to stay in the race. But it's left her in a race she can't win, and in a position where she has to go so brutally negative that she makes Obama lose, and the superdelegates pick her by default.But that outcome only looks viable from within the Clinton campaign. Sitting outside their tent, it's vanishingly unlikely. And I say that as someone who's long been sympathetic to her candidacy, and who's not particularly enamored with Obama. If her strategy succeeds, and she somehow does uncover the piece of opposition research or force the gaffe that destroys Obama's campaign, it seems likelier that Al Gore gets the nomination through a brokered convention than that Hillary Clinton gets it through the intervention of the superdelegates. There's just too much fear as to what the repercussions among African-American voters would be.
+ If Gen. Petraeus goes on record saying everything us war critics have been writing and saying for months, does that mean we can all agree that it is anything but clear that the Surge was a success? And maybe more importantly, if what he says directly contradicts what members of the Bush Administration have been saying for months, will anyone other than us critics notice?
+ Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent has been blogging all day from an event called Winter Soldier II. Sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War, it is a forum for returning soldiers to provide "eyewitness accounts of the occupations" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its gut wrenching stuff. Go. Read. Now.
+ But not for Bush. He thinks war is romantic. He wishes he was younger so that he could go himself. Never mind that when he had his chance he dodged and deferred. Never mind that he could send his own daughters right now. Never mind all that. War is much more romantic when its someone else's child being sent to die.
+ The EPA is ignoring its own science again. Usually its the fault of a political hack, but not this time. This time President Bush directly intervened. Never mind the science - he just somehow knows that ozone isn't a problem. Wonderful. And the media used to make fun of Al Gore by calling him Ozone Al. See what that got us?
+ And while we're on the subject of the new imperial presidency, Bush just signed an executive order to gut the espionage oversight protocols that were put in place after Watergate. Pres. Ford created an independent Intelligence Oversight Board to watch for abuses by intelligence agencies, but apparently its no longer needed. I mean, with a government this competent and nonpartisan, what could possibly go wrong?
+ Mark Penn is still a jackass. So too is Geraldine Ferraro.
+ Tom Schaller thinks Clinton dominated the "media week." But out here in Big Sky it sure doesn't seem that way. I mean sure, during the first part of the week everyone was talking about Clinton's idea that Obama should be her VP, but pretty quickly it shifted to a discussion about Ferraro. So in some sense Hillary dominated the weekly news cycle. But in politics not all publicity is good publicity, and the Ferraro related publicity was very definitely bad publicity.
There is of course plenty more, but that's all I have time for tonight!
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