Distinctions!

Clinton still, yet again, refuses to admit that her vote was a mistake.  She also acts like an abused spouse when she says that Bush “abused” the authority she supported.  She supported the war, thought it was a good idea, and when it was launched, she was on board.  The fact that she just can’t say this and explain why she was wrong (like John Edwards did) is a great indication that if you care at all about foreign policy, Obama is clearly the best candidate.

How exactly are we supposed to run against arch-war critic/superhawk when our candidate supported the war too? It’s also depressing that she implies that because of her GOP-life foreign policy past, she’s the best national security candidate.

I hate to say this, but Wolf is right.  When she explains why she voted for the war resolution, she literally just said that the White House told her that the authorization would be used to place weapons inspectors.  Clinton, if she really thought that Bush was so incompetent and dishonest, should have never given him authorization in the first place!  Sounds pretty naive to me…

Electing a Woman…Change for the World?

Clinton just said that electing a woman would be a change “for the world.”  I’m sorry, it may be a slight change, but plenty of industrialized nations comparable to the US have had women in the highest governmental position.   For example, Germany and the UK both have had women in power, and it wasn’t much of a “change.”  But more importantly, a bunch of countries of had women take power in circumstances similar to Clinton.  By that I mean that their first woman leader was part of a prominent, powerful political family.   Countries to have female leadership under these circumstances include Argentina ,Pakistan, India, Philippines and Indonesia.  These are countries, to put it bluntly, don’t have the strongest political institutions, and their dynastic elections were not signs of gender egalitarianism, but instead were just symptoms of poorly functioning institutions.  Another good list to look at is the one of countries that have elected ethnic minorities upon whose enslavement the country was founded to the top political job.  This list has zero countries in it.

Who’s the historical candidate?

Experience

6:04 - My constitutional law teacher was berating me for belittling Clinton’s experience, and he was right, her early work in children’s law and the Legal Services Corporation is impressive.  But, it’s nothing to use as a bludgeon against Obama.  It seems roughly equivalent to Obama’s work as a community organizer and in the Senate.  Her work in the White House is nothing to write home about.  She rarely negotiated with public leaders, she never had a security clearance and her one major legislative project was a failure.  Her recounting of her record, I think, undermines her experience claims.  Sure, it’s impressive, but considering Clinton’s head start, it’s not like she’s unambiguously the candidate of experience.

Obama Being Brave

I’ll say it again, but Obama refusing to blame issues in the labor market on illegal immigrants is really a brave, and correct, stand.  Clinton, though she doesn’t  advocate an awful plan, is really playing into fear of immigration by making it seem like illegals stealing our jobs are responsible for economic ills for those at the bottom of the labor market.  I think Obama should be able to win some Latino votes by emphasizing his refusal to scapegoat.  It would be nice if a politician got rewarded for using this type of positive rhetoric.

5:50 It’s a tad rich to see Clinton denounce “scapegoating” minutes after talking about immigrants taking low wage jobs…

PS - Drezner is also on board.

Immigration Debates Make Me Sad

5:39 - This is just an awful question.  It’s no settled matter that the “flood of immigrant labor” is pushing down black wages.  The media, this entire campaign, has been trying to push immigration as the ultimate web issue.  But John McAmnesty is the prohibitive GOP nominee and all the Democrats, despite Mickey Kaus’ best efforts, are all soft on immigration.  Specifically, the trying to use black wages as a wedge with which to discuss immigration is the worse type of scapegoating and Obama is good to call out this e-mailer.  To say that immigration is responsible for stagnate wages and economic insecurity is a horrible distortion.

It’s really unfortunate, however, that no one talks about the gains to immigrants.  I understand that they don’t vote, but Mexican immigrants are people to…

5:43 - And, just in time, Hillary blames illegal immigrants for stealing American jobs.  This is some canny, yet depressing, positioning.

Boring

Clinton: hearing voices, real life struggles, spouses advocate for candidates, president that hears them, blah blah blah.  I have too much homework to do to keep this liveblog up. War and Peace won’t read itself…

One final note, Obama is the only candidate who talks about building a new majority, a working majority, a progressive majority.  Taking advantage of how crappy the GOP is right now, so we can “expand the scope of the electorate.”  Last time I checked, this was the central netroots goal, but he’s crypto-Reagan, or something like that.

Edwards: “We can’t concede North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia.”  Umm, yeah we can.  And the rural areas, we can concede those too, because no one lives there.

Do You Think This Question Is F***ing Stupid?

“Barack Obama, did you think that Bill Clinton was our first black president?”

Let’s look at what Morrison actually said when she called Clinton our first black president:

African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President’s body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and bodysearched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear “No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and–who knows?–maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us.”

“I’d have to investigate Bill’s dancing abilities before I could make the judgment whether or not he was a brother”  Funny stuff.

Who Was That?

Who was that in the audience, thoughtfully mulling over the issues?  Why, yes, that was none other from Dave Chappelle.  Has anyone made the transition from producing skits playing tiger-penis-eating crack addicts to thoughtful member of the community faster than Chappelle?

America’s Power

This is all bad.  “AmericasPower.org” is sponsoring the debate.  The website promotes “clean coal” and is full of all sorts of ill-informed propaganda on behalf of the filthiest energy source.  Here’s the list of sponsors for America’s Power. Some prominent ones are Buckeye Industrial Mining, Duke Energy, CSX and Arch Coal.

“New Military and Political Progress”

“If you put enough of our men, women and equipment in, of course you’ll get tactical success”  This is clearly true, and good for Clinton for saying it. But it doesn’t really make sense that the de-Baathification bill came about because of the “political debate.”  Does anyone really think that is true?  If you listen to Clinton and Obama - the two most likely future presidents - there isn’t anything that the Iraqi government can feasibly accomplish that will make Clinton or Obama reverse their commitment to withdrawal.

Does Your Plan Cover 12 Million Illegal Immigrants?

Now, I don’t think there should even be something called “illegal immigrant”, but seriously, why does this need to be asked? One could simply just look at the plan.  Edwards was right to just say that none of them will cover illegal immigrations.

But  Blitzer is right to point out that there’s a problem when illegal immigrants go to emergency room, but that’s an immigration question, not a health care one.

Mandate Time: Obama: “everyone will be forced to buy health insurance”…I think Paul Krugman’s head just exploded. Obama’s emphasis on “people can’t afford health care” is a smart one, because that resonates a lot more with people that arguments about adverse selection and increasing the insurance pool.

“You Never Take Responsibility For Any Vote”

HOLY CRAP - 140 votes on “present.”  Out of roughly 4,000 votes, yes, people with legislative records vote “present” sometimes.

Senator Clinton, people “explain” their votes, it’s pretty frustrating, I know.

Oh yeah, Iraq War Authorization…interesting that we don’t talk about taking responsibility for that vote.

John Edwards, the forgotten man.

HOLY CRAP!

“I was fighting these ideas while you representing your contributor in his slum landlord business in Chicago”

Damn, Hillary, damn.  This is some intense ish.

Edwards “this kind of squabbling, how many Americans are going to get health care because of this.”  The cynic in me says that Clinton is trying to draw Obama into these types of squabbles because it tarnishes his “new politics”  image, while Clinton’s reputation for harsh campaigning is well established.  And it may be working, this “you were a corporate lawyer”…”but you were representing a slumlord” shoutfests demean both participants.

5:33 - “African Americans are 33% more likely to be offered subprime loans than whites…do you believe that lenders have specifically targeted African Americans.”  This is freaking absurd.  A while ago, people were complaining that banks didn’t offer mortgages to African Americans who, as Edwards just said, have net worths that are 10% of white Americans.  And now that they do offer loans, they’re racist for doing that.  I’m all for teaching financial literacy and building up black net worth, but talking about “predators moving from state to state” is ridiculous.

Lies, Lies, Lies

5:21 Wow, Obama just went to the “Hillary Clinton and her husband lie all the time” only a few minutes into the debate.

5:23 “He really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years.”  Oh wow, this isn’t even a fudge of what Obama said, this is just a lie.  If you want to misconstrue Obama’s remarks, this isn’t the way to do it.  Obama talked about how in the 80s, it was Republicans who were challenging conventional political assumptions.  Say what you will about those remarks, but Obama didn’t say anything about the 1990s and the GOP ideas then.

5:25 “Voting to fund the war, time after time after time.  Words and actions.”  Isn’t it bizarre for Clinton to criticize Obama for not backing his words against the war for action.  They both were lame on the war in the Senate, except OBama always opposed the war…Clinton was a pretty strong backer of it.  Attacaking his strength

5:27 Holy crap, Obama and Clinton are going at it.  I kinda feel bad for John Edwards…”there’s a third person in this debate.”  Sorry John.

Some Liveblogging - Economic Stimuli and Opening Remarks

Ouch, Obama, Ouch.  On a question about stimulating the economy, Clinton is confident, laying out every detail of her stimulus plan and effortlessly tying it in to King holiday.  Obama, is nothing but “um’s” and “uhhs” and some muttering about Dr. King’s March on Washington and economic justice.  He gets around to criticizing Clinton’s plan and talking about his stimulus plan, which is actually similar to Clinton’s.

John Edwards talked about including everyone in the stimulus, and doesn’t want to give rebates.  And then he says that what we need to really to do is…not have signed the Peru FTA.  He is weak on providing any sort of immediate solution, instead he talks about green jobs and more unemployment insurance.

Ah Crap…”NAFTA was a mistake!” cmon Obama.  I guess it’s South Carolina and what not, so this is OK.  He does hammer John on Peru, an economy the size of New Hampshire.  P-FTA also had some of the most progressive labor and environmental standards.  But then Obama talks about Chinese currency manipulation.  I guess part of the deal of being a DeLong-Sperling-Goolsbee type on economic matters is that I just ignore this stuff.

Green jobs? Isn’t Clinton just proposing that the government hand out jobs?  Why do they necessarily have to be green? If you want environmental policy, do environmental policy.  If you want job policy, do job policy.

Edwards sounded dumb when he attack PFTA for leaving enforcement up to Bush.  Obama points out that in one year, he’ll be enforcing the regulations.  Yee Ha!

Huge Turn Around Time

Now that the AP and NBC have called it for Clinton, the press will probably try to tell us that Clinton has all the momentum going into Nevada, South Carolina and Florida. And they’re partially right, this is certainly a huge turn around from the ten or so percent that she was down going into today. Surely the CW on why this turn around happened is that women turned out in huge numbers for Clinton because her debate performance, her getting angry, taking questions, changing the stump speech and the crying moment. Remember that just earlier today, plenty were saying that Obama was inevitable. Political campaigns are weird

Olbermann just said that 38% of Democratic voters made up their mind today, which will just give more credence to Hillary hugely turning it around in the last few days. And Matthew just suggested that some people “weren’t being truthful” when talking to pollsters — perhaps he’s suggesting that, even for Obama, people are willing to tell pollsters they’ll vote for a black candidate, but then get cold feet in the voting booth. I’m not saying this happened, only that it’s interesting Matthew suggested it.

UPDATE Silly me, black candidates doing significantly worse in the election than they do in polls is called the Bradley Effect. I don’t think it happened, and I’d rather not think so, but this does look like a textbook Bradley moment.

UPDATE II Of course, I hadn’t actually looked at the exit polling data, and Yglesias is probably on to something when he says that because the bounce was largely among white women, instead of white women and white men, a Bradley/Wilder Effect seems unlikely

Damn It Obama!

Obama just talked about gas prices being too high. Democrats have to stop talking about that. If you want to confront global warming, gas prices have to be higher. Obama knows this, and while I think that his policies would decrease carbon emissions, he shouldn’t be keeping up this line.

Update: Hey Embeds readers, thanks for stopping by and for all the comments. Here’s a little update I wrote for yall. Stay around, check out the site, comment on other stuff!

Richardson Makes a Funny

6:37 “I’ve been in hostage negotiations more civil than this.”  Clearly the line of the debate.

Clinton claims that she has been making change for 35 years.  I’m confused here.  She was a corporate lawyer in Arkansas, first lady of Arkansas, first lady for eight years — during which she failed to get her health care proposal passed and didn’t really contribute much to other policy debates.  Starting in 2000, she has been a fine Democratic senator, but this 35 years number is basically a fib that makes no sense.   Does anyone really believe her when she says this?

Obama Flounders on Health Care and Social Security

His overall point that people aren’t getting health care because they can’t get is true, but he doesn’t talk about how he avoids freeriders signing up for his plan when they get sick.  He doesn’t mention his proposal for some sort of financial sanction for those that sign up late.  He also mentions Social Security and getting rid of the payroll cap.  I think this is an awful idea that won’t ever get implemented.

Is it really so wise for Hillary to get into voting record minutiae? After all, between Edwards, Clinton and Obama, only one of them was publicly against the war…

6:34 Edwards is clearly trying to paint him and Obama as anti-Clinton forces.  Which is probably true.

Richardson Sounds Good and More

6:15 While I disagree with Richardson’s explicit push to remove Musharraf, he is definitely right to point out that our Pakistan policy has been a total failure, especially our military assistance which has largely been squandered and/our spent on arming against India.

6:20 Edwards is talking about “calming” response to a terrorist attack.  This is the type of mindset change I want to see.  Bush’s biggest problem post 9/11 was how he squandered a chance at national unity and instead amped up the chance of blowback by invading Iraq and what not.

6:21 Obama is getting “in the weeds” on proliferation, emphasizing Nunn-Lugar and loose nukes.  He’s also talking about prioritizing “long term threats” which is more evidence and Edwards and Obama are in a good place as far as foreign policy goes.

6:22 Clinton sounds good talking wonky about port security and proliferation, but she hasn’t done the same reframing of the nuclear threat that Obama and Edwards have.  But now she’s sounding not so good, especially when she talks about “suitcase nukes” — which aren’t really much of a threat, even if they really exist at all.

6 :25 Richardson “realism, human rights and principles” WTF does that mean?