If memory serves, Edwards spent a good chunk of time before the primaries started attacking Hillary Clinton.  To the best of my knowledge, he has not attacked Obama at all. 

My bet is that he ends up backing Obama, although I'm sure both campaigns are now promising him the moon.

Posted at January 30, 2008 7:36 AM in response to Edwards Dropping Out Discussion

Slime ads tend to be effective when there is at least a small kernel of truth to them, even if they are totally outlandish.  Harold Ford was known as a womanizer, so slime associated with that was likely to find more of an audience that something totally off the wall, like accusing Bill Clinton of murdering Vince Foster.  The best example of this is the Swiftboat ads themselves.  John Kerry may have legitimately won three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star, but he also testified to the Senate in 1971 and basically accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes.  The most effective Swiftboat attacks were not about Kerry's war record and whether he deserved his medals.  It was the ones that talked about the effect of Kerry's Senate testimony on other soldiers.  Now leaving aside the issue of whether Kerry's 1971 testimony was a good thing or not, the fact is that it happened and no doubt some veterans actually did feel betrayed by him.

Posted at January 29, 2008 8:31 AM in response to Teddy Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, Toni Morrison -- and me!

I agree.  But here are two interesting questions:

1. Which candidate is more vulnerable to the slime machine?  The GOP will slime Hillary Clinton, but unless something new comes out (always a possibility) much of it will be rehashing old issues that most voters already know about.  So it is an open question how much extra damage the slime will do.  Obama is still an unknown to much of the country and the slime machine will seek to "define" him for the public.  On the other hand, the country has never had a candidate like Obama, so it is unclear how they will react to the slime.  Will there be a backlash against sliming a black candidate?  Will Obama's message make any difference?
2. Will the candidate on the GOP side make any difference?  Will McCain be more reluctant than Romney to start the mudslinging?  How much control over the slime does the campaign ultimately have anyway?

There are those who say that an Obama/McCain contest would be inspiring and uplifting.  I'm not sure I buy it.

Posted at January 29, 2008 7:23 AM in response to Teddy Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, Toni Morrison -- and me!

I can't remember what tribe they belong to and I have no idea what, if any, might be their participation in today's situation, but you can be sure that Karl and the Boaters are already on the case.

I doubt the Republican slime machine will spend too much time on Kenya.  Most Americans would recognize that for what it is - a pretty desperate move. Has Obama even been to Kenya?  If he has, he probably hasn't spent much time there.

No, I think the most likely targets of the slime machine will be (a) his Muslim heritage, which we're already seeing, (b) his church, which, if not quite the haven for radicalism it's sometimes portrayed as, is still pretty outlandish by the standards of white America; and (c) his days as a community organizer, where he was a follower of the ideas of Saul Alinsky.  Alinsky is pretty easily characterized as a leftist radical.  Someone somewhere will dig up a video of Obama giving a speech to a neighborhood group in Chicago in like, 1986 saying radical things.

I would not put it past the GOP to try to associate Obama with machete-wielding Kenyans.  But I expect these other issues to be more prominent.

Posted at January 29, 2008 5:11 AM in response to Teddy Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, Toni Morrison -- and me!

After watching the Palestinians break through the border with Egypt I have a question that perhaps someone can answer.  Why is the "blockade" of Gaza only an Israeli blockade when Gaza shares a border with Egypt?  Why, if Palestinians were supposedly freezing from lack of fuel, didn't Egypt give them fuel?  Why, if medical supplies and equipment were lacking, didn't Egypt supply that to them as well?  Why is it Israel's responsibility to supply a people who are sworn to destroy it while their Arab "brothers" sit and tut-tut from the sidelines?

Leaving aside the question of whether the Israeli closure of all trade with Gaza is a good idea or not, the question I keep coming back to is that Israel could not enforce a total blockade of Gaza without Egypt's assistance since Egypt controls one of the borders.  Yet the blame for any hardship that Gazans face is exclusively placed on Israel.  What's more, it is clear that the Egyptians turn a blind eye to the rampant weapons smuggling that goes on through the tunnels under the border.  How else could the Palestinians manage it?  So for Egypt it is the best of all worlds.  They get to bleed their enemy (yes, despite the nominal "peace", it is clear much of Egypt regards Israel as an enemy) and any blame for Israel's understandable reaction to this intolerable state of affairs falls exclusively on Israel.  From their point of view, what's not to like?

But can someone explain to me why Israel lets them get away with it?

Posted at January 26, 2008 11:57 AM in response to Hamas Defeats Israeli Blockade. What Next?

incurious about the candidates' records, and the weight or weightlessness of their arguments, the truth and untruth of their claims,

Gimme a friggin' break.  Who, outside a tiny number of nerds, wants to listen to nothing but policy?  The dirty not-so-secret  fact is that the networks cover the horserace and focus on trivialities because that's what their audience wants.  Do you think most people, even political junkies, would rather discuss the finer points of Obama's economic stimulus plan vs. Hillary's or would they rather read about who's pulling ahead in the next big contest?  It isn't even close.

Plus the fact is that there are plenty of resources available for people who are interested in policy or other more "substantive" part of the campaign.  The New York Times has run dozens of in-depth profiles of the candidates.  Various worthies debate the differences between the candidates on shows like the NewsHour on PBS.  C-SPAN has tons of programming that is useful for people looking for substance.  There are blogs galore that dissect every nuance of every position every candidate has.  But don't expect the networks to cover this stuff in too much depth because it isn't how most people make up their minds about the candidates.  It isn't what most people WANT to listen to.

Presumably you know this.  Are you suggesting that the mainstream media should force a more "substantive" coverage down the throats of the public?

The only thing more tiresome than some of the coverage of the campaign is the constant whining about said coverage by people who can't accept that most of the public isn't as "substantive" as they are.

Posted at January 20, 2008 7:05 PM in response to A Pause for a Meta Moment

Huh? What is "supply-side" about this comment? Isn't it possible this idea is something both the City and consumers wanted?

Posted at January 18, 2008 1:45 AM in response to Financial Life and Death--and Something in Between

The point you are making, and have made repeatedly, is that conservatives are failures at governing.  Furthermore, you note that the government is quite unpopular now, and you ascribe that to the failures of conservative governance. 

My only point is that while the government is perhaps especially unpopular now, the government is never actually popular.  There are simply degrees of unpopularity, even when Democrats have been in charge.  So while conservatives are perhaps responsible for the marginal increase in unpopularity, they are not responsible for the overall unpopularity.  There seems to be a high level of dissatisfaction with government that is endemic to American political culture.

Posted at January 15, 2008 7:34 AM in response to Thinking Like an Elephant

Actually, the public’s hostility toward government today is just as sane as it was during the Watergate era. When government fails abysmally, especially in ways that are patently antithetical to the Constitution, Americans become unhappy toward those responsible. It’s pretty obvious to much of the public that government under the control of conservative Republicans has failed in myriad manifestations.

This gives the impression that you think it is only the string of failures under the Republicans that is responsible for the low opinion the public has of the government.  To make that case, you would have to show that when the government was not controlled by Republicans, the people thought it was great.

Alas, I think it would be pretty hard to show that was the case.  Americans have always had a low opinion of the government, especially Congress, for certainly aa long as I can remember.  Certainly the current period is probably at the low end of the scale, but i don't think opinions of Congress have ever been majority favorable.  If anyone can show me differently I'd be interested, but I don't think it's the case.

There's something about American political culture that encourages distrust and disapproval of the government, especially the federal government.  This long predates "movement conservatism" and so to ascribe it to them is a bit misleading.

At the same time, it is surely incorrect to say that because Americans are dissatisfied with the performance of the government, that means they want less of it.  There is not a shred of evidence that is true outside the loony world of conservatism.

Americans don’t want more government, they want better government.

I think this is largely true in the abstract but I find in interesting that there isn't a lot of evidence that people are willing to weight "good government" that highly in their list of criteria for deciding who to vote for.  Candidates who run as competent technocrats tend to lose to others who connect with voters on an emotional level.  All you need to do is look at Mitt Romney.  Probably one of the ablest managers around, he chose to run as an ideologue because he knew that managers don't win elections, at least at the federal level.

As is the case in so many other areas, what people say they want and what they do in terms of action are contradictory.  As much as we might assume otherwise, voting preference is very often totally irrational.

Posted at January 14, 2008 9:16 PM in response to Thinking Like an Elephant

This is an interesting issue, because it is like a lesson on how differently whites and blacks see things, or especially how they use language.  It seems clear that Cuomo, whether or not he was authorized by the Clintons, and whether or not he didn't specifically refer to Obama, chose language that was meant to provoke a certain association in the minds of white voters.  It was definitely deliberate. How could it not be? How many times have you heard someone outside of a racial context refer to "shuck and jive."

But I am getting the sense that a lot of other things that people have said or written are being perceived as racial politics when they may not have been.  At the very least, I think Obama supporters are often inferring racism a bit too quickly.  For example, several articles have noted Obama's fondness for basketball.  Others have said he can be "lazy" on the campaign trail.  Are these deliberate provocations the way Cuomo's comment appears to be?  Maybe or maybe not.  For me, the story that takes the cake is the one about James Clyburn, the South Carolina politician who is now supporting Obama because Hillary Clinton supposedly dissed the civil rights movement (which she didn't actually do, if you listened to what she said).  Is Hillary Clinton appealing to racial bias because she noted the important role of Lyndon Johnson in achieving black equality? 

The episode that was certainly an education for me was the Biden comment a few months ago where he referred to Obama as "articulate".  Apparently, blacks consider it patronizing and condescending whenever a white person refers to a black person as articulate, the feeling being that to make special note of a black person's verbal abilities is to note also how unusual they are.  I am sure that most whites who have said Obama is articulate are genuinely expressing an opinion as Obama is articulate by any standard.  But there's no getting around the fact that black objections to the use of that word are rooted in real feelings.

Like the OJ trial, its an interesting moment in racial history.

Posted at January 12, 2008 6:25 AM in response to Imus the Attorney General