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Fictional Blogger the Station Agent of Ice Station Tango posts from a fortified ice station in Antarctica.

Fear Not Obama Supporters, The Sky Is Not Falling

By Station Agent - Mar 20th, 2008 at 12:09 pm EDT

Andy Osteroy articulates the conventional wisdom of the day on the Democratic race. In short it goes like this: Obama's pastor of disaster scandal knocked Obama down in a number of polls, John McCain jumped into the role of clear front runner and the Democrats might have to reconsider nominating Obama because he's suddenly developed a major weakness that the mean old Republican spin machine is just salivating over.

Allow me to retort. Polls trail day to day events by days or even weeks. No one will know how well Obama's speech resonated with the voters for a while yet.

At TPM, one of their readers CB wrote this sharp analysis:

The conservative movement has laid into Obama hard on the Wright controversy, and the organized left (e.g., blogs, pundits, party leaders, activists) have not fought back in a collective sense. Obama and his partisans have fought back, of course, but those in the Hillary camp have not done so and the party leadership (probably in an effort not to appear biased one way or the other) has been relatively quiet as well. The effect is a pretty significant mismatch - it would be surprising if Obama did not lose ground under those circumstances.

The Republican spin machine is not what it used to be, but the entire snarling Voltron of evil aligned against just Obama and his supporters in a protracted battle that has gone on for weeks can hurt a campaign. But remember, Barack Obama built his own machine. If you're a supporter and all of this worries you, get your damn wallet out and give the man some more money.

Furthermore, I would like to reiterate that even if Obama limps across the finish line, he'll still finish well ahead of Hillary Clinton. When he does win the nomination, he'll get a bump from that, and then it's one on one. McCain and Obama. McCain is flying high now, but even if Obama only has two months to do it, he'll take McCain apart. Just because the media hasn't covered it doesn't mean that John McCain hasn't been laying the groundwork for a disastrous general election campaign. He's married to Bush on the war and the economy. Jeremiah Wright is supposed to negate that? Six months from now, Barack Obama is still going to have one of two tickets to the Oval Office and the other one is held by a doddering old clown who can't tell Shi'as from Sunnis, who thinks endless war is a good idea and who has admitted he doesn't know jack about the economy at a time when the American people think we're heading for a depression.

Anyone wanna make a bet?

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Tonight's Primaries Are Not Going to Change Anything

By Station Agent - Mar 4th, 2008 at 4:01 pm EST

I'm pretty psyched for tonight's primary results. I have a feeling that despite polling that shows a late turn for Clinton, Obama will hold his own and hopefully win Texas and keep Ohio reasonable while winning Vermont and probably losing Rhode Island.

But, even if Hillary Clinton pulls off substantial wins, there's still virtually no chance she can catch Obama's delegate totals.

Well, what if, you might be asking, Hillary Clinton went on an unholy tear and won 16 straight with generous margins?

Johnathan Alter breaks it down for ya:

[Assuming] she has enjoyed a string of 16 victories in a row over [the next] three months.

So at the end of regulation, Hillary's the nominee, right? Actually, this much-too-generous scenario (which doesn't even account for Texas's weird "pri-caucus" system, which favors Obama in delegate selection) still leaves the pledged-delegate score at 1,634 for Obama to 1,576 for Clinton. That's a 56-delegate lead.

Let's say the Democratic National Committee schedules do-overs in Florida and (heavily African-American) Michigan. Hillary wins big yet again. But the chances of her netting 56 delegates out of those two states would require two more huge margins. (Unfortunately the Slate calculator isn't helping me here.)

So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February.

It's just not going to work out for her. No matter what.

Crossposted at Ice Station Tango.

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So Much For Change

By Station Agent - Mar 4th, 2008 at 3:44 pm EST

I believe that Hillary Clinton's campaign left the high road for good with the 3am ad. When she co-opted Barack's message of change, I thought, well, at least now she's on record. If she became president and didn't initiate reform, she would have to answer for promising reform on the campaign trail.

The 3am ad, however, completely ended the charade.

How can Senator Clinton say she stands for real and substantial change while parroting Bush and McCain's politics of fear?

How can she claim superior electablility with an ad like this? She can't appeal to the worst in us better than John McCain can. She can't claim that McCain is playing the fear card when she blatantly played that card already herself.

Senator Clinton's campaign painted her into a corner with this move. She promised us change and instead she brings us fear tactics. Shame on her.

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