Obama Understands

From Jonathan Chait:

John McCain’s mantra tonight was simple: Barack Obama 'doesn’t understand.' He repeated this line over and over, and at one point directly said that Obama 'lacks the knowledge' to be president. But Obama demonstrated over and over that he does understand foreign policy. He has a better command of foreign policy issues than most presidential candidates (as does McCain.) McCain tried – and, I think, needed – to disqualify Obama as a foreign policy president, and I think he failed. McCain did land some blows, but Obama easily cleared the bar.

Dem Debate Reaction - Hillary, We Denounce and Reject You

Hillary, we denounce and reject you.

-- American people, Jan.-Feb. 2008, Democratic presidential primary

"... Obama is quick on his feet and good humored. He also conveys a certain bemused remove from the bizarre conventions of traditional insider politics, which is exactly why people love him."
--Michael Crowley

One million contributors to Obama! Not even the most dense network commentator can talk this away.

"Hillary Clinton should probably spend a little more time boning up on her husband's trade record than watching NBC's 'Saturday Night Live.' That might have helped her to figure out that no good was going to come from trying to be funny, biting and substantive at the same time."
- John Nichols

- MSNBC debate

Debate Take-away: GOP Nominee Is a Sheep Being Led ...

Update II: Salon: No Hail Mary for Hillary

Update: Obama either won or nothing in race is changed.

One final note on the debate, Hillary or Obama would mop the floor with McCain in the general election.

As written below, judged in terms of knowledge, intelligence and depth of policy deliberation, Obama and Hillary run circles around the talking-point-programmed GOP lightweights like George W. Bush and John McCain who seem like eight graders in comparison to these two seemingly post-doc advocates at the top of their game.

So, are folks assuaged that Hillary would not have too difficult a problem with McCain in the general election? I should think so, but this late in the primary game, Hillary's clear superiority over McCain won't mean much, as it is so obviously shared by Obama.

Clinton's Hail Mary Intercepted and Returned for a Touchdown

Debate Update III: For all of Hillary's erudition, she came off sporadically as too over-ripe versus Obama's equally erudite, calming, let's-be-reasonable demeanor. As for the football analogy, Hillary entering the debate down by 13 points: She lost the game by 20.

Debate Update II: The MSNBC commentators all refuse to state the obvious take-way from tonight: Judged in terms of knowledge, intelligence and depth of policy deliberation, Obama and Hillary run circles around the talking-point-programmed GOP lightweights like George W. Bush and John McCain who seem like eight graders in comparison to these two seemingly hard-working, post-doc advocates at the top of their game.

Debate Update: Can you imagine George W. Bush discussing health care policy with the precision and intelligence of HRC and Obama are?

That said, Hillary puts on display the reason Americans (48 percent disapproval rating) simply do not like her. Hillary is sanctimonious, overbearing, and possessing of an apparent sense of entitlement to get the last word in, as though she owns the health care issues and cares about health care more that Obama.

Obama, contra Hillary, is measured and agreeable.

Game over.

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Let's put tonight’s democratic presidential debate in football terms.

Hillary is down by 13 points, her team has the ball on her own 30-year-line with four minutes to go in the fourth, having displayed no ground game and an inconsistent passing attack.

Her opponents’ defensive cornerbacks are Lester Hayes and Mark Haynes (of Raiders fame), the pass rush is the 1985 Bears, and the linebackers are a bunch of LTs.

MSNBC bills the debate as Hillary’s Last Stand. The debate’s headline ought to read: Abandon hope, Hillary, if ye enters here.

It would take a hail Mary pass, an immaculate reception, a drive to end all drives, and Barack Obama's invoking the name of Satan for Hillary (the let's-trust-George W. Bush-to-do-the-right-thing-on-Iraq Hillary (Vote: Oct. 11, 2002)) to win this game.

A Desperate Clinton Enters Debate Tonight

Coming off the 17-point Obama rout in Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama face off tonight in a high-stakes Democratic presidential debate in Austin at the University of Texas, broadcast live on CNN at 7:00 pm central time.

A guy, seeing my Obama button yesterday, asked me at an elevator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hospital if the race were "over now".

Yeah, I think so, I said.

The reason is that Wisconsin showed that Hillary's appeal is broken. And Hillary's only option now, going negative on Obama (even more than she did in Wisconsin), fits perfectly into the existing matrix (justified or not) that Hillary is a humorless, self-important, mean-spirited woman more interested in her own welfare than the peoples'.

All Obama has to do tonight is:

- Remain poised

- Focus on the future and security of the American people

- Hit the trade issue, over and over

- Keep to his change and hope message

- And as Hillary attempts to sow doubts about Obama by saying (implausibly) that Obama is confused and inexperienced; Obama should say:

Hillary, I’ve been a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a state senator, and a US senator, and what I know is: Insider-DC politics and divisiveness does not and never has worked. The American people know fully well what the last seven years have wrought. If I wanted more of the same DC-dominated exploits that are threatening our families and our children’s future, I’d support my cousin, Dick Cheney. Its time for unity, coming together for America now! And I’ll take Main Street over K-Street and Wall Street any day, and twice on Sundays.

As for those Hillary allies who believe Hillary the policy wonk will put Obama to shame in a one-on-one debate: Watch how Obama, the former president of the Harvard Law Review, handles policy questions and his past accomplishments' questions better than his surrogates.

If Hillary seems at all desperate or committed to negative remarks about Obama, it’s Miller time for Obama, or whatever people in Chicago drink.

I predicted a nine point win in Wisconsin. I predict a solid Obama win tonight.

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation has the candidates in a statistical dead heat in Texas; after tonight, watch Hillary fade fast.

Oh, and Hillary: Don’t laugh, ‘cause you really do sound like Vincent Price when you do.

TNR Embarrasses Itself Again on Mike Gravel

Weird and skin-raising-yucky receiving the The New Republic Online's "This Week in Politics” e-mail June 14.

The New Republic’s e-mail includes an item entitled “Debatable” by the editors subtitled that “America doesn't need to hear from Mike Gravel.”
Mike Gravel, of-course, is the former Senator from Alaska who famously read into the congressional record the Pentagon Papers, that laid out the lies before and during the Vietnam War that ultimately cost some three million lives, and wreaks havoc today on untold millions more, including 100,000s of Vietnam-era veterans whom the Veterans Administration is trying to shaft on VA beneits. That’s a bad thing, TNR.

In TNR’s unenthusiastic reporting of the early debates by the presidential candidates, the editors (ignoring the inordinately inane) single out the substancial former Senator Mike Gravel:

These days, the debates often resemble the audition round of 'American Idol' where the talented and crazy alike vie for their 15 minutes of fame and maybe a little profit afterward. And, thus, debate time must be found for a specimen like Mike Gravel ("Who the hell are we going to nuke? Tell me, Barack. Barack, who do you want to nuke?").

Golly gee, I found the former Senator Gravel’s reluctance to nuke human beings insightful and worthy; no, basic towards establishing a sane and humanistic US foreign policy.

But TNR, who endorsed invade-Iraq and we-need-the-Patriot-Act Senator Joe Lieberman for president (nice call there), complain of the debates, rightly, that “Moronic episodes like this one are what make a joke of the concept of real debate--which entails people thinking aloud and challenging one another's ideas. What we get instead are mongrel hybrids combining the worst of press conferences (evasive answers without the tough follow-ups) and campaign speeches (platitudes with no pretense at substance).”

But when Senator Gravel (and Congressman Dennis Kucinich) actually injects some intelligence and challenging of neocon assumptions into the debate, TNR folds like so much joking Joe Momentum.

TNR ought to consider listening to Gravel and Kucinich who were spot-on accurate on the Iraq war and Patriot Act, among other Bush idiocies, and think, and to borrow from TNR:

Raise your hand if you find TNR idiotic for ridiculing the presidential candidates who have been proven correct time and time again as 100,000s of more lives are destroyed by the very imbecilic Bushian idiocies supported by The New Republic.

Just a thought.

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