Dear Friend,

I wanted to share with you my blog about the Pennsylvania primary
that was posted last night on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360.  As I
state in the entry, the presidential primary is "a race for
delegates, and Barack Obama has acquired a nearly insurmountable
lead."  So, while watching and hearing all the commentary and
analysis about the results from one state -- don't get lost in
the moment, remember the math!   

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/23/despite-pennsylvania-obamas-the-winner

Jesse Jackson, Jr. - Congressman Second District of Illinois
http://www.jessejacksonjr.org

This week David A. Love and Peter Gamble are Mark's guests

This report was originally published on Sunday, April 20, 2008. When a story warrants publication prior to our normal Thursday publication day, we send out a special publication email notice. If you don't want to miss a breaking story from BC, please click here to get on our free email list.

Note: In a year of political absurdities, where one candidate--Senator Obama--is being held accountable for his friends and acquaintances and everything that they have said and done during their life times, we have stumbled across a problem. Had Senator Clinton not been as self-righteous in her attacks on Senator Obama concerning his associates, including Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Chicago activist Bill Ayers, the following would probably be a footnote and blemish--albeit significant--on the Presidency of one William Jefferson Clinton. Yet, insofar as Senator Clinton has decided to hold her opponent responsible for the words and actions of others, we pose this question: should Senator Clinton be careful where she throws bricks?

Now Senator Hillary Clinton (D, NY) has some explaining to do.

BlackCommentator.com has learned that Bill Clinton, while president, repeatedly praised the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). This is an organization that many, including some whites and a former U.S. senator from Illinois, have called racist.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, the UDC is a neo-Confederate organization which is affiliated with such white supremacist groups as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South. Formed in 1894, the UDC limits its membership to women who are related to Confederate veterans of the “War Between the States.”

In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that "[a]lthough the UDC promotes an image of genteel Southern ladies…its publications” tell a different story, adding that recently the “UDC’s president, Mrs. William Wells, shared the podium with…white supremacist lawyer Kirk Lyons.”

In a 1989 UDC Magazine article, Walter W. Lee argued that “purchasers of the slaves” were actually victims of slavery, while “the worst suffering group among those engaged in the trade” were “the crews of slave ships.” Lee also made light of the horrific and deadly Middle Passage, claiming that "the sixteen inches of deck space allotted each slave is not all that much smaller that (sic) the eighteen inches that the Royal Navy allowed for each sailor's hammock and the slaves rapidly had more room due to the much higher death rate."

In her quest for the presidency, the U.S. Senator from New York has presented herself as a qualified expert on civil rights and a participant in the civil rights movement.

Senator Clinton has also put forth her belief that all candidates for the office should be thoroughly scrutinized, that no one should be immune, and all of the presidential candidates should be required to justify their stance on the issues before the voters and explain any contradictions that might arise.

Senator Clinton frequently speaks of her eight years experience “in the White House”. During that time Bill Clinton lavished praise on the United Daughters of the Confederacy. BlackCommentator.com has seen the following documents and presents copies of them here.

• June 21, 1994 Letter from President Bill Clinton to the United Daughters of the Confederacy printed in the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, September 1994, Vol. 57 No. 8, page 9.  This was a special centennial anniversary edition of the magazine and has an outer cover and a standard magazine cover.

In the letter to the UDC President Clinton wrote:

The White House

Washington

June 21, 1994

I am delighted to honor the United Daughters of the Confederacy as you celebrate your 100th anniversary.

One of the most rewarding of human experiences is the coming together of people to share common experiences and interests. For 100 years, the United Daughters of the Confederacy has maintained and built upon the wonderful legacy of your founders. The strength of your organization today is a testament of the vision of your founders and to your commitment to your shared goals.

I congratulate you on your achievement, and I extend best wishes for many years of continuing success.

Bill Clinton 

(Note: these are relatively large scanned images and may take a moment to load depending on your connection speed – please be patient)

Click on any of the links below to view the images.

June 21_1994 President Clinton UDC Praise Letter

UDC Magazine Contents Page

UDC Standard Magazine Cover

UDC Outer Cover

• A letter of September, 1994 from Bill Clinton with the same wording as the one above to the United Daughters of the Confederacy was printed on the inside of the front cover of the February 1995 issue of United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine. This letter praised the Georgia Division of the UDC.

  Sept 8 1994 President Clinton UDC Praise Letter

• A letter of August 9, 1995 from Bill Clinton to the United Daughters of the Confederacy was printed on the inside of the front cover of the Sept. 1995 issue of United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine. This letter read as follows:

  Greetings to everyone gathered in our nation's capital for the 1995 National Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Congratulations on beginning of the second century of your organization -- your long history is a tribute to your dedication to and respect for the ideals of your founders.This week marks a special time for the members of your organization to share memories, traditions, and goals. I hope that your visit to Washington is an enjoyable one and that you will take advantage of its unique beauty and many historical sites. Best wishes to all for an enjoyable convention. Bill Clinton

Aug 9 1995 President Clinton UDC Praise Letter

Lest anyone think this organization is nothing more than a group of women in fancy dress who gather for tea and cookies the facts show otherwise.

• Former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun condemned the UDC on the floor of the Senate in 1993. Adam Clymer in the July 23, 1993, New York Times wrote:

  The Senate’s only black member, Carol Moseley Braun, made the chamber listen today as freshmen seldom do. Her oratory of impassioned tears and shouts, stopped Jesse Helms in his tracks as he defended the Confederate flag.

  Senator Helms, the 20-year North Carolina Republican, had sought -- and seemed to be finding -- a roundabout way to preserve the design patent held by United Daughters of the Confederacy on a symbol that includes the flag.

  He proposed language to that effect as an amendment to the national service bill, which would provide educational grants in return for various forms of service. With many senators unaware of what they were voting on, he won a test vote, 52 to 48.

  Then Senator Moseley Braun, a freshman from Illinois, took the floor in outrage at the defense of a symbol of slavery. She told the Senate:

  "On this issue there can be no consensus. It is an outrage. It is an insult.

  "It is absolutely unacceptable to me and to millions of Americans, black or white, that we would put the imprimatur of the United States Senate on a symbol of this kind of idea."

Less than one year after this event, Bill Clinton wrote his first letter of praise to the UDC.

• As recently as Nov. 2007, the UDC Magazine printed an article titled, “Confederate Classics,” as part of a regular column, “Confederate Notes,” by Retta D. Tindal which made the following reading recommendations:

  “Some books are classics that never go out of style. As we approach the gift-giving season, there are four books that I treasure and use over and over, whether for research or reference or just to refresh my memory of the special heritage I have.”

  Tindall recommended the white supremacist racist text, “Southern By the Grace of God,” by Michael Andrew Grissom, a Ku Klux Klan praising book, not just the Klan of Reconstruction but the Klan of the 1920s, which in turn recommends “The Clansman” by Thomas Dixon, which later was made into the notorious movie “Birth of a Nation”.

  UDC Magazine Column of Nov 2007

• The United Daughters of the Confederacy have consistently defended the Ku Klux Klan. For example a postcard showing a Grand Cyclops of the KKK could at least at one time be found in the UDC Chapter Room at Florence, Alabama.

Grand Cyclops of the KKK Postcard

According to Time Magazine, Bill Clinton sent a wreath to the Confederate Monument in Arlington Cemetery while president each year.

If Senator Hillary Clinton is going to be viewed as ready on "day one" partially because of her eight years at 16-hundred Pennsylvania Avenue it would be reasonable to find out if elected President will she continue the tradition of support and praise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Click here to comment on this story and contact BlackCommentator.com, David Love and Peter Gamble.

BlackCommentator.com Publisher Peter Gamble is the recipient of a national Sigma Delta Chi award for public service in journalism and numerous other honors for excellence in reporting and investigative reporting. The "beats" he covered as a broadcast journalist ranged from activism in the streets to the State Department and White House.

                                                                                                           

Sick of the media’s puffery of Hillary Clinton and her new book in an obvious effort to help her presidential chances?

Now Newsmax.com has the perfect antidote to the liberal media’s Hillary love fest: the Deck of Hillary.

That’s right – the Deck of Hillary is a set of playing cards that will not only make you laugh out loud – it also blows the lid off her lies and her new book.

In the Deck of Hillary, Newsmax.com reveals the real Hillary – by using her own quotes. These quotations are even sourced to some of the most respected writers and media sources.

Newsmax was among the first to offer the Iraqi Most Wanted cards. Then we came out with the Deck of Weasels, which exposed the 54 worst celebrities and politicians who blame America first. Our Deck of Weasels became a national best seller.

Now the Deck of Hillary is set to rock America.

In fact, Newsmax has a goal – we want to sell more Decks of Hillary than Hillary sells of her own book. It’s a big goal – but with your help we can do it and tell the big media about our success.

Hillary thinks she can get away from her record by rewriting her history and that of her husband’s sordid administration.

We’re calling her bluff with the Deck of Hillary, which raises the ante by spilling everything that her highness doesn’t want you to know.

You’ll find out all about her:

• Outrageous rantings about Jews and Minorities.
• Hilariously half-hearted defenses of hubby Bill.
• Comical explanations for why men hate her so much.
• Bizarre claim that Christians can’t be Republicans.
• Hillary promises she wouldn’t run for the Senate and she won’t run for president.
• The unbelievable comments made to Secret Service agents, state troopers, presidential mistresses and other working stiffs.
• Deep-seated paranoid theories on why the Republicans are opposed to her.
• Knee-slapping comment about Bill’s relative in the KKK.
• Her angry orders about the White House American flag.
• Hillary's explanation as to why so many women are becoming lesbians

Don’t worry, the cards are suitable for all audiences, because we’ve bleeped out Hillary’s frequent use of profanity.

In four suits of the deck, we tell Hillary’s unvarnished story:

• The Spades reveal “The REAL Hillary” – including her phony claims she was a duck hunter and a Marine recruit.
• The Hearts tenderly and not so tenderly describe “Bill & Me” – her decades-long business and political partnership with her husband, the impeached former president.
• The Diamonds recount her diamond-hard reign as "The First Lady.” Learn what she really thought of the Secret Service – and about the special Secret Service Free Zone she created around herself!
• The Clubs, appropriately, offer Hillary “The Feminist.” And yes, girls like baseball, too. Hillary was a Yankees fan. How do we know? Because she said so.
• And as for the Jokers, they expose Hillary’s two biggest concoctions in recent memory – you’ll just have to see them for yourself.

The Deck of Weasels was the biggest seller in Newsmax’s history and the Deck of Hillary has become a runaway best seller.

You’ll die laughing at Hillary, from our “Statue of Hillary” design on the back of every card, modeled after the Statue of Liberty, to the great photos that capture the real Hillary – to her own shocking statements over several decades in public life.

Millions of Americans will use, play and read the Deck of Hillary – millions more than read her book!

And millions will agree, Hillary Clinton should never be president of the United States.

All quotes in the Deck of Hillary were excerpted from the book "I've Always Been a Yankees Fan: The Greatest Quotes of Hillary Rodham Clinton," edited by Thomas Kuiper, with an Introduction by Dick Morris.

Sports metaphors are trite and too male-oriented, but sometimes they are so apt they are unavoidable.

The Clinton-Obama contest is like a 15-round heavyweight title bout in boxing.

Hillary went for an early knockout. All previous Democratic races since 1960 have been decided that way, with one candidate winning decisive primaries, forcing his opponents to withdraw. But Obama beat her to the punch in Iowa, survived a loss in New Hampshire, and countered her sweep of New York, New Jersey and California on Super Tuesday by winning a large number of smaller states, largely by out-organizing Hillary in caucus states.

While most traditional candidates are forced out if they lose key states because their money dries up, Obama’s ingenious use of Internet funding provided him with an ample financial base even as he fell behind Hillary in the delegate count.

But Hillary, in spending all her resources on an early Super Tuesday knockout, was too depleted to do well in the middle rounds — the February caucus and primary states.

Her focus on an early knockout led her to neglect organizing in these states, and her insistence on spending every dime she had in pursuit of an early win left her financially incapable of competing in these February contests.

Obama won round after round on points, sweeping 11 states in a row and establishing a solid lead in elected delegates.

Obama piled up such a lead in points in the middle rounds that Hillary has been forced to go for a knockout in the final rounds. Knowing that Obama has more delegates, she has to win decisively in the late primaries to have a chance at persuading the superdelegates to flip and abandon the voters’ choice. But, so far, the proportional representation rules and Obama’s daunting financial advantage have denied her the elusive knockout. Obama can’t knock her out, but he doesn’t need to. Remember, he’s ahead on points.

Hillary won in Pennsylvania for two key reasons:

1. Pennsylvania only permits Democrats to vote in its primary. Hillary has always won among Democrats. It is among independents, the swing voters in November, that Obama has manifested his greatest strength.

2. Pennsylvania is the second oldest state in the nation after Florida. But while the elderly moved to Florida, Pennsylvania acquired its status by having its young people move out. The result is a demographically atypical electorate.

Both Indiana and North Carolina, the next two states, allow independents to vote in Democratic primaries, and North Carolina has a decidedly young population. (It is here that the Pennsylvanian youths moved!) Obama should win both of these states, North Carolina by a lot, Indiana by a little, and their combined effect should wipe out most of the gains Hillary got from her Pennsylvania win.

By the time the voting ends on June 3, Obama will still lead Hillary among elected delegates by 100 to 150 delegates.

At that point the gang of four — Gore, Edwards, Pelosi, and Dean — will probably call on the superdelegates to make commitments in the next 10 days so that the race can draw to a close and the party can have its nominee.

Shortly thereafter, Obama will be able to claim that he is above 2,025, the threshold for victory. And the ref will be raising his arm in triumph.

© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

In this week’s debate, Hillary Clinton said all of her “baggage” has been “rummaged through” for years. But important features of her close relationship with known terrorist sympathizers and Hamas supporters are still opaque to the public view.

Her relationship with terrorists began in the mid-1980s when she served on the board of the New World Foundation, which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a time when the PLO was officially recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.

In 1996, the first lady initiated an outreach program to bring Muslim leaders to the White House. But, as terrorism expert Steve Emerson noted in The Wall Street Journal “Curiously, nearly all of the leaders with whom Mrs. Clinton elected to meet came from Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

"A review of the statements, publications, and conferences of the groups Mrs. Clinton embraced shows unambiguously that they have long advocated or justified violence. By meeting with these groups, the first lady lent them legitimacy as ‘mainstream’ and ‘moderate.’”

Among these radical groups was the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, both groups that support Hamas, who attended a White House reception hosted by Hillary in February, 1996.

Emerson says that its leaders “have sanctioned terrorism, published anti-Semitic statements, and repeatedly hosted conferences that were forums for denunciations of Jews and exhortations to wage jihad.”

The American Muslim Alliance was headed in the '90s by Abdulrahman Alamoudi who met with Clinton and Gore in 1995. Emerson notes that “Mrs. Clinton [allowed] the American Muslim Alliance to draw up the Muslim guest list for the first lady’s . . . White House reception.”

Alamoudi, Emerson says was “the primary defender of Musa Abu Marzug, the Hamas political bureau chief responsible for creating the group’s death squads.” Marzug took “credit” when Hamas brigades sprayed machine gun fire into a crowded Jerusalem mall. But less than three days after Marzug was arrested by the FBI in July of 1995, Alamoudi said that Marzug “had never been involved in terrorism” and called his arrest “an insult to the Muslim community. Emerson reports that he “elicited contributions fro Marzug’s defense fund” and called him a “political prisoner.”

Then, Hillary ran for Senate on her own and suddenly it was payback time. On June 13, 2000, the American Muslim Alliance’s Massachusetts Chapter held a very successful fundraiser for her candidacy. Tahir Ali, the chairman of the chapter, said “we must support all who have [Muslim] interests at heart.”

Perhaps conscious of how controversial the contribution would be, Hillary or someone on her staff, tried to pull a fast one, recording the donation on federal filing forms as being from the “American Museum Alliance.” But alert observers weren’t fooled and Senate candidate Clinton was forced to acknowledge who the real donor was and, four months after getting the money, she returned it.

But by then, a few weeks before the election, she had abjured the use of soft money in her Senate campaign, so the donation was, in practical terms, useless, since it was well over the limits for hard money contributions.

The Palestinian terrorists know that Hillary hears their point of view. WorldNetDaily.com reported on Oct. 7, 2007, that leading terrorists have publicly called for her election. Aaron Klein, WorldNet Daily’s Jerusalem correspondent, wrote, in his wonderful book "Schmoozing with Terrorists," Ala Senakreh, West Bank chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group said “I hope Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq.”

Senakreh has high hopes for a Hillary presidency. He told Klein “I hope also that she will maintain her husband’s policies regarding Palestine and even develop that policy."

Abu Hamed, leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Gaza, noting that “the Iraqi resistance is succeeding,” said that “Hillary and the Democrats call for withdrawal.” Then he added, helpfully, “Her popularity shows that the resistance is winning and that the occupation is losing. We just hope that she will go until the end and change American policy.”

He explained that “President Clinton wanted to give the Palestinians 98 percent of the West Bank territories. I hope Hillary will move a step forward and give the Palestinians all their rights.”

Clearly Barack Obama should not have stayed in Rev Wright’s church and his campaign should not maintain a “friendly” relationship with William Ayers. But what about Hillary’s service on a board that gave money to a terrorist organization? And her hosting of a terror supporting group in the White House? And her acceptance of a $50,000 contribution from that group? And the statements of terrorists that they are hoping for her to win?

These are far more serious connections than have been established for Obama and either Wright or Ayers.

© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

"This is exactly what I was afraid was going to happen. They are going to just keep standing there and pounding each other and bloodying each other."

That pugilistic quote appeared in a NY Times' article whose headline -- "The Bruising Will Go On for the Party, Too" -- was inspired by the metaphor-invoking governor. This primary race is no longer reflective of any internal, Democratic values; it's merely a slugfest for the benefit of one.

Amid all the lopsided cheering and hallelujah hallucinations, the article's author, Adam Nagourney, pointed to the clearer light of day: "Mrs. Clinton’s margin was probably not sufficient to fundamentally alter the dynamics of the race, which continued to favor an eventual victory for Mr. Obama." There are, after all, and as Nagourney understated it, "significant hurdles" obstructing her nomination -- such as Obama's delegate count, lead in the popular vote, number of states won and, by now, the little time that's left.

None of this, of course, has fazed Hillary in the least. With each passing hour, it seems, and always out of whole cloth she conjures a new argument for the urgency of her democracy-toppling nomination. Her latest is that she actually leads in the popular vote, assuming one counts a couple of major states that don't, and in no way can, count.

Yes, yes, I know, it's laughable. On the other hand, Hillary knows her target audience -- those kings of vacillation and spinelessness, the uncommitted superdelegates. They could have secured the nomination for the party's still-presumptive nominee by now, so that he could get on with the more urgent contest of boxing McCain rather than shadows, but that would be too institutionally businesslike and politically sane for these grand poobahs of Democracy. Better to wait a while longer and test the political winds once again, and again ... and again. One never knows, is their motto.

But let's try to think like a superdelegate for a moment and join with Hillary in putting aside all those "significant hurdles." Just forget about them, as Hillary and her supporters are somehow able to do. Let us assume that Obama has no real lead in any of the above and customarily decisive categories. From this artificial balancing we start from scratch; the candidates are even-steven -- right?

Wrong. Because still trailing Hillary like toilet paper stuck to her shoe is that little matter of her negatives, something you and the superdelegates won't ever hear Mrs. Clinton advertising. They are grim, devastatingly grim, over-before-it-starts grim, and which the Washington Post deconstructed last week.

To quoth the black raven sitting atop her electoral burial marker: "While Clinton retains a big edge over Obama on experience, public impressions of her have taken a sharply negative turn. Today, more Americans have an unfavorable view of her than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992." Pucker up, Mrs. Clinton -- as well as all you uncommitted superdelegates -- because "54 percent said they have an unfavorable view" of you.

That, right there, is the game ender, as virtually any objective political adviser would agree. No presidential candidate with negatives in the high 40s, let alone in the mid 50s, is going anywhere after an election but home. That's just a fact of political life that's also going ignored amidst all the Clintonite hoopla.

And it gets even worse. An accompanying WaPo piece noted that "Clinton is viewed as 'honest and trustworthy' by just 39 percent of Americans ... compared with 52 percent in May 2006. Nearly six in 10 said in the new poll that she is not honest and trustworthy. And now, compared with Obama, Clinton has a deep trust deficit among Democrats, trailing him by 23 points as the more honest."

The real killer, of course, was her Bosnia fantasy, against which Obama's "bitter" comments or guilt by pastoral association pale. There's a huge and game-ending difference between recidivist lying to successive public audiences and dropping indiscreet remarks to a few privately huddled San Franciscans, and don't think Americans -- not to mention the salivating GOP machine -- don't know it.

Hillary's verbal contortions regarding her Iraq-war vote have been bad enough; her Bosnia-war whoppers are but 60-second visuals of the final touches, encased as they are within indiffusibly negative atmospherics.

So back to reality as we reassemble things: Obama leads in the delegate count, the popular vote and states won and nothing will change these dynamics, while Hillary leads only in historic negatives. And what conclusion do the uncommitted superdelegates derive from all this? Let us, they say, wait and see.

Please respond to the commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact P.M. at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

Truth Detector

The Pennsylvania Primary was Hillary Clinton's last chance to deliver a game changing blow to Obama's campaign for the nomination. She failed to deliver.

Pennsylvania provided her with her final real opportunity to knock the wheels off the Obama campaign. She needed a crushing victory of 18% to 25% to have any real chance of altering the math or the psychology. Demographically, Pennsylvania was made for Hillary: the second oldest state in the nation, heavily blue collar, Catholic and rural -- Hillary's voter profile. She started with a lead of almost 20 points. But her final margin -- which the Pennsylvania Secretary of State says was only 9.2% -- fell far short of what was needed to stop Obama's nomination. Here's why:

1). Pledged Delegates. By CNN's count, Clinton netted about 14 pledged delegates in Pennsylvania. That still leaves Obama up by 151 pledged delegates. It is likely that after Guam, Indiana and North Carolina, there will be no net change in pledged delegates, even if Clinton wins Indiana, since Obama will certainly pick up delegates in North Carolina. But at that point only 251 pledged delegates will remain to be chosen.

Even if she got 80% of all of the pledged delegates that remain after Indiana, she would still trail Obama at the end of the day.

The battle for the pledged delegate advantage is over.

2). Popular Vote. Pennsylvania was her best opportunity to really close in on Obama's popular vote lead. She picked up about 216,000 net votes. But that still leaves her over 600,000 votes behind, and Obama will likely increase his popular vote margin further after the contests on May 6th. Her failure to blow Obama out in Pennsylvania makes it almost impossible for her to close the popular vote gap.

3). Electability. Clinton's entire strategy rests on the premise that she can convince Super Delegates that Obama is unelectable. Only a massive win in Pennsylvania would have credibly made that case. Clinton's victory did little to enhance her argument.

Regardless of the passions of the moment, history shows us that just because voters prefer one candidate in the primary, it doesn't mean they won't vote for her Democratic opponent in a general election when the choice is a Republican. When all is said and done, primary voters almost always vote for the candidate of their party in a general election - regardless of what they might say (on either side) in the middle of a primary fight.

In fact, the people who decide general elections rarely set foot in primary voting booths. They are the independent voters who vote only in general elections and unengaged voters who are would vote Democratic, but have to be mobilized to go to the polls.

The fact is that to whatever degree Hillary might have more appeal among independent rural and blue collar voters, Obama more than makes up in additional appeal to independent suburban voters. Obama's ability to mobilize new young and African American voters in the general election is indisputably greater than Clinton's.

And of course, Obama will not go into the General Election burdened by the towering Clinton negatives that her own negative campaign strategy increases daily.

The polls, and even Pennsylvania Governor and Clinton supporter Ed Rendell, make it clear that Obama can win Pennsylvania in the general election. But Obama can also broaden the playing field with a shot at winning states like Colorado and Virginia.

4). Super Delegates. Finally is a fact that is generally overlooked by pundits. At the close of the primaries, Obama will not need a stampede of Super Delegates to clinch the nomination. In fact he will only need about 40% of those that remain today.

Let's make the most conservative assumptions about the outcome of the remaining races: Guam, even; North Carolina, 58%-42% Obama; Indiana, 54%-46% Clinton; Kentucky, 60%-40% Clinton; West Virginia, 60%-40% Clinton; Oregon, 56%-44% Obama, Montana 56%-44% Obama; Puerto Rico, 60%-40% Clinton. That would leave Obama at 1,846 delegates at the close of the Primaries.

He would need only 41% of the Super Delegates remaining today to clinch the nomination with 2,025. And let's remember, he has picked up almost one Super Delegate a day for the last month. There is no reason to believe he won't keep picking up Super Delegates as the contest continues. So by the end of the primaries he will need an even lower percentage of the Super Delegates that remain.

All that remains for Clinton are more opportunities have her own campaign to be shut down. If she loses Indiana and North Carolina it will be extremely hard for her to continue. But there is no longer any opportunity for her to defeat Obama.

Clinton's may have won last night, but she failed to do what she needed to do to derail Obama's march to the nomination. In retrospect, Pennsylvania will appear as Clinton's Waterloo.

    Wednesday 16 April 2008

    Having grown up in a small town, I'm always struck at how rarely movies and television shows and other art forms capture the quality of life there. The false notes are thumped as discordantly as the "Moonlight Sonata" on a badly tuned spinet; the citizens portrayed as homicidal mouth breathers, amusing rubes or country sages with an unsullied rustic wisdom that astonishes visiting city slickers.

    Some get it right. A weekend attending a conference in Columbus, Ohio, ended Sunday at the small, Victorian boyhood home of one of my literary heroes, James Thurber. In his short stories and reminiscences, it was his "sure grasp of confusion," as a magazine once put it, his understanding of small town, family dynamics and foibles that instantly won my heart, even at an early age.

    And though Thurber, like me and so many others, wound up in Manhattan, exploring the anguishes and delights of the big city, he himself wrote, "My books prove that I am never very far away from Ohio in my thoughts, and that the clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus."

    So, it was with a mixture of bemusement, bewilderment and vexation that I've been watching the furor around Barack Obama's remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser, the ones that have led to accusations of elitism and belittling folks from small towns.

    With the critical Pennsylvania primary a week away, this is the Obama sentence that, as Thurber would say, has torn up the peapatch: "It's not surprising then that they [small town people] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

    The response to this by the media and the attempts to exploit Obama's words by Senators Clinton and McCain have been mind shattering in their hypocrisy and cynicism. As political operative Bob Shrum wrote in The Huffington Post, "Ironically, Obama's the one raised by a single mother. He's the one who only recently finished paying off his student loans. He doesn't know what it's like to have $100 million. The opponents who are attacking him are the ones who inhabit that financial neighborhood."

    First, place Senator Obama's words in greater context. Here is more of what he ACTUALLY said, ending with the sentence in question: "Here's how it is. In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, they feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it.

    "... Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

    Different, huh? Especially, as Salon.com's Joan Walsh pointed out, when you consider what Obama added after the spittle hit the fan. "They're frustrated and for good reason," he said. "Because for the last 25 years they've seen jobs shipped overseas. They've seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.

    "And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we're going to make your community better. We're going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And, of course, they're bitter. Of course they're frustrated. You would be, too. In fact many of you are."

    Most of the punditocracy that analyzes the political scene with the avidity of a high school biology teacher dissecting a dead frog is as tin-eared and condescending as the movie and TV producers when it comes to the realities of small town life. Such places are in the "flyover zone" between the urban centers of the East and West Coasts and the media know little about what it's like to live there or how the residents think. A few weeks in primary and caucus states every four years doth not a Middle America expert make.

    Most small town people with whom I've spoken aren't as put off by Obama's words as they are by the depths to which this presidential campaign now has sunk (and it's only April!). Rather, as fellow small town boy John Baer wrote in his Philadelphia Daily News column on Monday, "Despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it's like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense.

    "What's offensive to me is suggesting that small-town, working-class, gun-toting and/or religious Pennsylvanians are somehow injured by a politician's words. Are you kidding me? They're injured all right, but the injury is long-term and from lots more than 'just words.' They've been injured from decades of neglect by political cultures in Washington and Harrisburg driven by special interests."

    The Campaign for America's Future reports 31 percent of those polled by the Gallup organization say they're worse off than they were five years ago - that's the highest since the mid-1960's. The Census Bureau reports the median household income, $48,201, is lower - adjusted for inflation - than it was in 1999. At the same time, the tax contribution of American corporations has dropped from 50 percent in 1940 to 14 percent today. The majority pays no taxes at all.

    Toward the end of his life, physical blindness and other afflictions frequently made James Thurber a bitter man, yet he still reveled in his dreams and memories of the clocks of Columbus. With time, we, too, can shake off a bitterness that is not just a small town malaise, but endemic to a country that has had enough. The clock is ticking toward November. With luck, hope takes the upper hand and bitter will yield to the ballot.

Sign the petition

If you missed the Democratic presidential debate on ABC last night, Editor & Publisher called it "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years."1 (Click below to see video excerpts.)

Moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson spent the first 50 minutes obsessed with distractions that only political insiders care about—verbal gaffes, polling numbers, the stale Rev. Wright story, and the old-news Bosnia story. And, channeling Karl Rove, they directed a video question to Barack Obama asking if he loves the American flag or not. Seriously.

Enough is enough. The public needs the media to stop hurting the national dialogue in this important election year. Can you sign the petition to ABC and other media outlets and pass it on to friends who are also fed up? Click here for our must-see video with excerpts from last night—and to sign the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/enoughdistractions/?id=12457-4770726-cu1tve&t=4

The petition says: "Debate moderators abuse the public trust every time they ask trivial questions about gaffes and 'gotchas' that only political insiders care about. Enough with the distractions—ABC and other networks must focus on issues that affect people's daily lives."

We'll deliver petition signatures to ABC and the networks hosting future debates. And if we reach 100,000 signatures, we'll reprint the petition in an ad campaign targeting the networks on this issue.

The reaction to last night's debate has been very consistent:

"A stinker, an absolute car crash—thanks to the host network ABC...[It] ran the gamut from banal to inane. At the end of the debate members of the crowd appeared to be booing moderator Charlie Gibson."—The Guardian's Richard Adams2

"For the first 52 minutes...Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with."—Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales.4

"We've revisited bitter. We've gone back to Bosnia. We've dragged Rev. Wright back up onto the podium. We've mis-spent this debate by allowing Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos to ask questions that skirt what in my mind is what we need to know now."—Philadelphia Inquirer's Daniel Rubin5

Shame on ABC for letting voters down with last night's abysmal debate. Bad debates aren't just painful to watch—they actually hurt the country by distracting voters and politicians away from big issues of the day.

Please send a message to ABC and other media outlets that we need our national dialogue to focus on the real issues facing Americans. Click here to sign the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/enoughdistractions/?id=12457-4770726-cu1tve&t=5

Thanks for all you do.

By  Mark Crispin Miller

Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

by Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher, April 9, 2008

Mark Penn, Not Gone and Not Forgotten

I recently detailed how Mark Penn’s visit with the Colombian ambassador to the U.S. about the proposed free trade agreement with that nation, where union leaders are regularly assassinated, was in all likelihood carried out as part of his dual roles as then top Clinton campaign strategist and on behalf of Burson-Marsteller, which he also represented since he never stepped down as CEO -- and that was fine with Senator Clinton.

The key evidence in this theory is that the President of Colombia, as I detailed, denounced Barack Obama for his opposition to the Colombia trade agreement -- opposition due primarily to union rights concerns (particularly the right not to be murdered) -- two days after the meeting with Penn, and then again two days later. So twice in one week the Colombian President lacerated Obama but didn’t utter a word about Hillary Clinton’s claimed opposition to the trade agreement.

It’s extremely unusual for a foreign country to become officially and vocally involved, at the presidential level, in taking sides in a presidential primary race in the United States, to say the least. But it is even more remarkable that the leader of Colombia would only launch an attack on one of the candidates, even though the other candidate is holding out to Pennsylvania union voters that she also opposes the pact.

Mark Penn, as we said, wasn’t "officially" demoted because he met with the Colombian ambassador. As we observed, his title was "officially" taken away because he got caught, allegedly by Republican dirty trickster, Roger Stone, about whom BuzzFlash also has written. (If true, then Stone leaked the story to The Wall Street Journal.)

In what is likely an election ruse by the Clinton campaign to pretend to be against the Colombia agreement, they even misled the press into posting headlines and stories that Penn was fired. But that was a lie. He is still, according to published reports, daily on press phone calls and also directly advising Hillary Clinton -- and he speaks regularly with Bill, who, in turn, advises Hillary. In short, nothing much has changed except that the Clinton campaign was panicking because union leaders were calling and asking for Penn’s head.

So Senator Clinton, who along with Bill, allegedly loves Penn’s loyalty since 1996 (Penn was brought into the Clinton inner circle by Dick Morris, by the way, in ’96, and Morris was brought into the White House by -- well -- Hillary Clinton, and she brags about it in her memoir) decided to simply change Penn’s nameplate, but keep him as a key adviser on her campaign. Penn was, and this is undisputed, not fired, not by a long shot.

The New Republic recently published an analysis about why the Clintons are so fond of Penn, and here is one of the reasons that The New Republic notes:

Others in the party object to, if not Penn's disdain for liberals, then his chronic inability to hide that disdain. "One of his favorite things is the 'double-push off,'" chuckles the colleague from a past race. "On the one hand, he's attacking Bush and pushing off of him. On the other hand, he's attacking and pushing off the excesses of the left." And while this tendency risks alienating many within the party's base, Penn's rough handling of liberals rarely upset the Clintons too severely, considering Bill's historical success with triangulation.

It’s not just Mark Penn. Howard Wolfson, who is now the new "co-key-strategist" of Clinton’s campaign has a large (perhaps million dollar) equity interest in a firm doing work on behalf of passing the pact.

The New York Times reported on just some of the Clinton team connections to passing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement:

To help make its case, Colombia had already hired at least three firms on Capitol Hill, in addition to the work by Mr. Penn’s firm, Burson-Marsteller, paying out from $15,000 to $40,000 a month. Collectively the Colombian government has paid more than $1 million to firms that have negotiated or lobbied on behalf of the deal.

They include the Glover Park Group, the fast-growing firm set up by former Clinton White House aides including Joe Lockhart, who was chief spokesman for the president. (Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign communications director, was a partner at the firm but has taken a leave of absence.)

The ties between the lobbying firms and the Clinton campaign illustrate the complexity of Washington’s political world, where players are often switching positions or playing multiple roles. While Mr. Wolfson has taken a leave from Glover Park, for example, he still has equity in the firm valued at $500,000 to $1 million, according to a disclosure form.

A long list of former Clinton administration aides, including Mack McLarty, the former counsel to the president; Donna E. Shalala, the health and human services secretary; and Leon E. Panetta, the onetime chief of staff, also have come out in support of the deal. It puts them in alliance with Mr. Bush and Republican leaders.

Either Senator Clinton has very poor judgment about how who you employ is perceived by foreign governments, or she is basically lying about her opposition to the Colombian Free Trade Agreement in order to placate the union vote in PA, which she desperately needs.

Either way, she is not a good match for a presidency that has to deal with both perception and action when dealing with sensitive issues like the proposed Colombian Free Trade Agreement and the challenge of the Colombian political mess in general. Senator Clinton hired all these people already knowing about their multiple conflicts of interest, not just on the Colombian trade proposal, but also on unions, big tobacco, big oil, and so on. In short, she was sending out a signal in her choice of key campaign staff that business would be conducted as usual in D.C. with the K Street lobbyists -- and against the public interest. Otherwise, she would have picked a different staff.

As for Bill, no one, especially Hillary, denies that they have a political partnership. She also benefits from his earnings, as in the case with Colombia. This is an inherent conflict of interest, given that Bill Clinton is her chief surrogate and is a former President of the United States. Lobbying is all about influence, and no one has more influence on Hillary Clinton than Bill Clinton, and vice versa, by their own accounts.

When Penn went to the Colombian embassy, a spokesperson claimed not to know whether Penn was representing the Clinton campaign or Burson-Marsteller:

A spokesman for Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe said the ambassador met with Mr. Penn to discuss the bilateral agenda. "There have also been meetings with the advisers to the campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain," he said. "It's the embassy's job to explain Colombia's reality."

"The spokesman said he didn't know if Mr. Penn was representing Sen. Clinton or Burson-Marsteller, which signed a $300,000, one-year contract with the Colombian Embassy in March 2007 to work on behalf of the trade deal and anti-drug-trafficking initiatives, according to the Justice Department filings."

That is an astonishing statement, but it reveals that either Senator Clinton is utterly naïve in terms of the game of perception and foreign policy, or knew all along what Penn was up to, her reported feigned outrage aside.

How can you hire as your key strategist a liberal hating guy who insists on not taking a leave of absence from a firm that represents the lead line-up of bad boy corporations, and then claim ignorance about what he is up to?

The very act of letting Penn remain CEO of Burson-Marsteller, while paying his own firm (another one, yes) more than $10 million (and currently owing him an estimated $2.5 to $3 million), sends a signal to the dark side of the corporate world. (Blackwater was one of Burson-Marsteller’s clients.)

It is quite worthy of note that when Senator Clinton finished questioning Crocker and Petraeus on April 8th, "… reporters spilled out to follow her down the hallway and stairwell … Shortly afterward, she was asked, twice, why she was keeping Mr. Penn on the campaign and whether his influence had waned. She had nothing to say, and walked out the door."

Nothing to say, indeed.