One Year From Today

Imagine there's no Bush. It's easy if you try.

One year from today, on January 20, 2009, that dream will be a reality. George W. Bush will no longer be in the White House, and we will have a new president.

Conventional wisdom has it that this is a Democratic year, which stands to reason: an unpopular war, an economy that certainly seems to be sliding into recession, a party in power that's been thoroughly discredited, it would seem to be a slam dunk for the Democrats.

Not so fast, Von Ryan.

Could John McCain, who won the South Carolina primary yesterday, win the general election if he's the nonimee? Against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? I think it's entirely possible. There are some Republicans (like Rush Limbaugh) who are not enthused about McCain because they don't think he's a real Republican. Tom DeLay dissed him in Washington recently for having "betrayed" the Republican cause, which is pretty fucking funny when you consider the source.

Obama appeals to upper-income, college educated whites and blacks; Clinton appeals to women, especially older women. But McCain appeals to blue collar whites and independents, and I'm not sure that he couldn't win enough in a general election to take it away from the Democrats. Could Robert Novak be right? Could nominating a black man or a white woman for president just hand the White House back over to the Republicans?

Not a pleasant thought. But then I console myself with the thought that, no matter who is taking the oath of office one year from today, it won't be George W. Bush.

Tom Moran

Bobby Fischer 1943-2008

It would be hard to find anything more idiotic than the editorial in today's New York Daily News on the death of chess legend Bobby Fischer.

It's a decided chore to come up with charitable things to say about Bobby Fischer, formerly of Brooklyn. He was impossible. He was unpleasant. He was anti-Semitic and anti-American. But he did clean the Russian clock in a 1972 chess showdown that was as politically potent as the Louis-Schmeling fight of '35.

There are those who would argue that the entire Soviet collapse traces directly back to Fischer's dethroning of Boris Spassky in Reykjavik. Which perhaps overstates things, but it's certainly true that, for a while there, Bobby Fischer was one top-gun American.

Sad to say, he went on to reveal himself as increasingly despicable. A man who renounced his U.S. citizenship. A man who spat upon his mother's Jewishness. A man who cheered the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center. And he leaves this life unloved and mourned by few.

He sure could play chess, though.

Personally, I find it a chore to find anything charitable about the idiot who wrote this editorial, because this is hackwork at its worst -- they know nothing about chess, Bobby Fischer or anything else, but that didn't keep them from making their deadline.

Let's be a little more charitable, as well as more accurate.

Bobby Fischer was a genius. He was also mentally ill. I never took umbrage at his nonsensical ravings about the Jews or the United States because I understood them to be what they were -- the outbursts of a man suffering from mental illness, no more to be taken seriously than the barkings of someone suffering from Tourette's Syndrome.

Fischer was what the Germans call a fachidiot -- a genius about chess, an imbecile about virtually everything else. Chess was all he knew, and in the end it consumed him. The sport has a way of destroying its greatest players (or perhaps it has a habit of attracting those with incipient mental illness -- it's hard to tell). Paul Morphy isn't the only other example of a chess player in whom genius and madness went hand in hand.

Fischer's decline into madness was painful to watch for those of us who remember him in his prime -- at the 1972 chess championship match against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. At that moment, as the New York Times points out, Fischer was to chess what Babe Ruth was to baseball, or Michael Jordan was to basketball. He made people who had never heard of the game take it up after watching Shelby Lyman's low-budget and engagingly dorky live commentary on the match on PBS. For Fischer, chess wasn't a game -- it was the intellectual equivalent of gladitorial combat. But he made chess fans out of thousands if not millions of Americans.

That should be taken into account when discussing his death. Yes, he descended into madness and some of his statements in his final years were hard to stomach. But he was also the best at what he did, and played better chess than anyone ever has, and quite possibly better than anyone ever will. Which of those is more important in the final analysis is for each of us to decide.

Tom Moran

Jonah Goldberg Concedes a Point

In National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg reviewed a review of his new book, "Liberal Fascism." The title alone is enough to make me not want to read it, and since I have not read it, I will not discuss it here (not that that would discourage, say, Ann Coulter from doing so, but I have standards).

But while I won't discuss the book, I will discuss one little revealing point of Goldberg's so-called review, which is actually a protracted pout. Conservatives have become surprisingly good at pouting recently: and they'd better get used to it, because it looks like they're going to be doing a lot of it in the next few years.

David Neiwert, begins his review of "Liberal Fascism" by writing:

The public understanding of World War II history and its precedents has suffered in recent years from the depredations of revisionist historians -- the David Irvings and David Bowmans of the field who have attempted to recast the meaning of, respectively, the Holocaust and the Japanese American internment. Their reach, however, has been somewhat limited to fringe audiences.

It might be tempting to throw Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning into those same cloacal backwaters, but there is an essential difference that goes well beyond the likely much broader reach of Goldberg's book, which was inexplicably published by a mainstream house (Doubleday). Most revisionists are actually historians with some credentials, and their theses often hinge on nuances and the interpretation of details.

Goldberg, who has no credentials beyond the right-wing nepotism that has enabled his career as a pundit, has drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It’s a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history.

Sounds plausible, doesn't it? Especially the part about Goldberg owing his position as a so-called pundit to right-wing nepotism (Goldberg, for those of you lucky bastards who slept through the 90s, is the son of Lucianne Goldberg, the scummy bitch who talked Linda Tripp into taping her conversations with Monica Lewinsky).

And what is Goldberg's riposte to this opening?

First, there’s the opening where he tries ever so slightly to tag me as a member of the David Irving Holocaust-denier camp. Then, [sic] he whines that I don’t have any credentials and I have no qualifications other than “right-wing nepotism” (You can expect this bleat to get ever louder, by the way, if the book becomes a bestseller). I like that, because it seems it’s only right-wing nepotism that bothers the party poised to nominate the wife of the last Democratic president, a party which remains a cargo cult to the Kennedys — every member of whom (save for pro-Nazi papa Joe) got where they are from nepotism (as for the charge I'm the product of nepotism: Yawn).

Interesting rebuttal, isn't it? It's actually what they used to call, back in the days of Watergate, a non-denial denial.

Let's break it down, shall we?

• First, there’s the opening where he tries ever so slightly to tag me as a member of the David Irving Holocaust-denier camp.

Actually, Neiwert does no such thing: he does something far more amusing, which Goldberg doesn't seem to appreciate: he claims that, as scummy as such Holocaust deniers as David Irving might be, Goldberg is even worse, since at least Irving has at least some credentials as a historian while Goldberg has none.

• Then, he whines that I don’t have any credentials and I have no qualifications other than “right-wing nepotism” (You can expect this bleat to get ever louder, by the way, if the book becomes a bestseller).

Somehow I don't get the feeling that it's Neiwert who's doing the whining here: he's merely stating a fact (we'll get back to this in a minute). As for the book's becoming a bestseller, well, while I would have to agree that stranger things have happened, I somehow doubt that "Liberal Fascism" will be topping the New York Times bestseller list any time soon.

• I like that, because it seems it’s only right-wing nepotism that bothers the party poised to nominate the wife of the last Democratic president, a party which remains a cargo cult to the Kennedys — every member of whom (save for pro-Nazi papa Joe) got where they are from nepotism (as for the charge I'm the product of nepotism: Yawn).

Seriously -- could you stuff more crap into one poorly-written, run-on sentence?

Are we going to have to break this down even further? I think we pretty much have to if we're going to do justice to this sentence in all its gaudy glory.

• I like that, because it seems it’s only right-wing nepotism that bothers the party poised to nominate the wife of the last Democratic president...

Earth to Goldberg: it's not nepotism if they vote for you. The party is not poised to do anything. And Hillary Clinton has so far won exactly one primary -- and that primary was not won by much, either. Her winning margin was something like 3%: hardly a landslide.

• ...a party which remains a cargo cult to the Kennedys — every member of whom (save for pro-Nazi papa Joe) got where they are from nepotism...

A cargo cult? For those of you who don't know what a cargo cult is (and up until five seconds ago that included me), here's a helpful definition courtesy of Wikipedia:

A cargo cult is any of a group of religious movements appearing in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically-advanced, non-native cultures—which focus upon obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking as well as religious rituals and practices—while believing that the materials were intended for them by their deities and ancestors.

Is the Democratic Party a "cargo cult" of the Kennedys? Especially given the fact that a member of that family has not been on a presidential ticket in 48 years (36 if you include in-laws)? This ploy only makes sense if you realize that, when a conservative gets desperate in an argument, they will invariably reach for the Kennedys. And as for "papa Joe" being pro-Nazi, that's just bullshit, which anyone who can read history realizes. I'm surprised that, given the level of Goldberg's desperation at this point, he didn't throw in Chappaquiddick.

• ...(as for the charge I'm the product of nepotism: Yawn).

Feigning tedium, as anyone who has posted on Usenet will tell you, is always the sign that someone is losing an argument -- but that's not the important point to be made here.

The important point is that Goldberg concedes the point. He doesn't argue that he's not a product of right-wing nepotism, because he can't. So he concedes the point and tries to disguise the fact by claiming that it's just too-too boring to talk about.

It may be boring -- to Goldberg, anyway. But it's a fact. Which even he can't deny.

Tom Moran

About Last Night

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who watched coverage of the New Hampshire primary last night and spent a lot of the time shaking their head and asking: "What the fuck just happened?"

It's probably a good thing that we don't have yet another primary in five days. Or do we?

I'm just going to set down some first impressions on the morning after Hillary Clinton's surprise victory in New Hampshire:

• You have to wonder how her "Monday Meltdown" played into the equation. As Robert George in his "Ragged Thots" blog points out this morning, Hillary Clinton is never as dangerous as when she's playing the victim. After all, that's how she got into the Senate to begin with. Could the turning point (or, perhaps, the tipping point) of the campaign have been in between the two parts of Saturday night's debate? In the first half she came off as a harridan; in the second she smiled winsomely and said, in response to a question about her lack of likability as opposed to Barack Obama, replied:

Well that hurts my feelings. But I'll try to go on. He's very likable, I'll agree with that. I don't think I'm that bad . . .

Could that moment of ironic self-deprecation have swayed older women, who, is it thought, made the difference last night? Could we be seeing in the future much more of a kinder, gentler Hillary? Especially since it seems to work with women voters?

• Why were the polls so skewed? How could they have gotten it so wrong? Was it race? People are notorious for not wanting to tell pollsters that they're planning to vote against the black candidate, so they tell them one thing and then go into the polling place and do something else. Was that a factor? Polls were predicting a double-digit victory for Obama and he ended up losing. Either the pollsters really need to get their shit together or there is something really wrong here.
• Where do we go from here? South Carolina is looming, where Obama is thought to be a lock, but then they thought that about New Hampshire, didn't they? And what happens on what they've taken to calling "Super-Duper Tuesday"? No less than 24 states will be up for grabs on February 5th, and it could be a real free-for-all -- what happens if the results on that day are inconclusive? You can already hear pundits whispering in hushed tones the words they love to toss around this time in the cycle: "brokered convention." The fact that there isn't been a brokered convention in most people's lifetime doesn't stop them. It's every newshound's wet dream: to have a convention that actually chooses the candidate, instead of the coma-inducing coronation we've had from both parties since 1972 or so. Me, I'd be happy just to see a second ballot (offhand I don't think there's been one since Adlai Stevenson put the VP nomination up for grabs in 1956).

Finally, there are two things to keep in mind when thinking about the events of last night:

• John McCain won New Hampshire in 2000 -- and didn't win the nomination.
• Bill Clinton didn't win New Hampshire in 1992 -- and did win the nomination.

Believe me, this thing is far, far from being over.

Tom Moran

Hillary's Moment

They're calling it "the moment."

Most of you who keep up with the news know what I'm talking about: Hillary Clinton getting emotional in a restaurant in Portsmouth, NH, when asked by a sympathetic suporter how she keeps going.

The quote is from the AP (condensed to just her words):

"It's not easy. It's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I've had so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards. So. You know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political. It's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it. And some people think elections are a game. They think it's like who's up or who's down. It's about our country. It's about our kids' futures. It's really about all of us together. You know some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. And so when we look at the array of problems we have and the potential for it getting — really spinning out of control, this is one of the most important elections America's ever faced. So as tired as I am — and I am — and as difficult as it is to try to kind of keep up with what I try to do on the road like occasionally exercise and try to eat right — it's tough when the easiest food is pizza — I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation so I'm going to do everything I can to make my case and, you know, then the voters get to decide."

It's amazing that even while she's on the verge of choking up she can get in a little dig at Barack Obama ("Some of us are ready and some of us are not.")

But what's interesting is that people are speculating whether or not this was calculated -- an attempt to get people to see Hillary Clinton as a real human being, with feelings, instead of the snappish shrew of the first part of Saturday's debate in Manchester.

Was it an act? Or was it genuine? At this point does it matter?

The older pundits will compare it to the famous scene of Edmund Muskie seemingly in tears in the New Hampshire race in 1972, which cost him his shot at the White House. Tears back then disqualified you for running for president. What does it signify now?

Does it mean that Hillary knows that she's lost the New Hampshire primary -- and lost big -- and that Barack Obama is going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party?

I have no idea. I think that Senator Clinton was being genuine, but that it hardly matters. If Barack Obama beats her by less than 10 points tonight she'll claim a moral victory -- "The Comeback Kid Part II." If she loses by more than 10 points it could look hopeless, in spite of the fact that there are a lot of primaries looming up ahead and a lot of delegates to try and acquire.

It's not going to be over after tonight. But we may see the beginning of the end of the Clintons as a real power in American politics. Elections, Bill Clinton was fond of saying, are about the future. And Hillary Clinton, with all her much vaunted experience and her wonkish expertise and all her baggage, is starting to look more and more like the past.

Tom Moran

NH Debate Impressions

One solid fact emerged from the back-to-back debates in New Hampshire last night: the Democrats are going to win the general election.

Where the Republicans were sniping and bitching at each other and coming off like kids in a schoolyard yelling, "I know you are but what am I?", the Democrats came off looking like leaders.

I'll leave the Republicans for others to discuss and concentrate my remarks on the Democrats, since they're the ones who are going to win in November.

None of the candidates made a major gaffe or embarrassed themselves. The worst any candidate looked was when Hillary Clinton, looking overtired and miffed at Barack Obama, gave off a tirade about her so-called "experience" that had her coming off as shrewish -- not a good look for her. I remember thinking, "Oh, shit -- so this is what Bill has been putting up with all these years."

Someone must have spoken to her in the break, because she really toned it down in the second half of the debate and she was far more effective. Even charming.

Bill Richardson was both funny and effective but came off as a little peevish in the second half of the debate when he practically whined that no one gave a shit about the fact that he had an impressive resume (as opposed to, it hardly need be said, Barack Obama).

Obama looked a little tired but was effective if not stellar. He very deftly put Hillary Clinton on the defensive and both looked and sounded presidential: he didn't really need to do much more than that.

For me the star of the night was John Edwards. He was the only person on stage who didn't look like he was ready to keel over from exhaustion. He looked ready to tear into the Republicans and the special interests and the corporations who have so fucked up this country over the past few years. I appreciate the fact that he's just about the only candidate talking about poor people and the middle class and how to keep the latter from becoming the former. I thought he gave the best showing of the night.

There was one point in the broadcast when they had a two-shot of Edwards and Obama sitting next to each other and I had a bit of an epiphany. I thought to myself: This is going to be the ticket. You could see it right there -- the chemistry and the charisma and the impetus for change, just working between these two men. This, I thought, is a winning combination.

I don't know which of the two of them will be at the head of the ticket (and I'm not really sure it matters), but I think that an Edwards/Obama or an Obama/Edwards ticket, is going to be very, very tough to beat in the fall.

I'm excited about this election. Can you tell?

Tom Moran

The News From Iowa

Now, pundits are more likely than not to make asses of themselves when pontificating about the results of an event immediately after the fact, but David Brooks in the Times, in his own dweebish way, outdoes himself.

Writing about Barack Obama's win in Iowa, Brooks writes:

Barack Obama has won the Iowa caucuses. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel moved by this. An African-American man wins a closely fought campaign in a pivotal state. He beats two strong opponents, including the mighty Clinton machine. He does it in a system that favors rural voters. He does it by getting young voters to come out to the caucuses.

This is a huge moment. It’s one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance.

Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.

Personally, I think you'd have to have a heart of stone not to wade through this dreck without having the urge to purge. It sounds as if he's trying to channel Peggy Noonan at her worst. "The primordial themes of the American experience"? Not even Ken Burns would get this sappy.

He’s made Hillary Clinton, with her wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics, seem uninspired. He’s made John Edwards, with his angry cries that “corporate greed is killing your children’s future,” seem old-fashioned. Edwards’s political career is probably over.

Obama is changing the tone of American liberalism, and maybe American politics, too.

Is he kidding? Obama won the Iowa Caucuses, for which he should be congratulated. He got young, first-time caucus goers to come out in large numbers, which I didn't think was possible. But to extrapolate from that that he's going to go all the way, and that John Edwards should just pack it in, is just ludicrous.

Does he know how many times the winner in Iowa has lost in New Hampshire? Or how few times the winner in Iowa has even gotten the nomination, much less made it to the White House?

Give me a break. I'm glad that Barack Obama won in Iowa, even if I thought that Edwards would, and I'm even more glad that Edwards managed to finish second ahead of Hillary Clinton.

But let's not make this a coronation. Not yet anyway. Not before New Hampshire. These guys, and this woman, have a long way to go before a nominee is decided. Not when they have roughly the same number of delegates to the convention, give or take a delegate or two.

Edwards is not dead. Hillary is not defeated. It's still a race. Let's stop pretending that it isn't. And let's see how all three of them do tonight in the nationally televised debate in New Hampshire.

Tom Moran

Who Will Win in Iowa?

The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow -- is that possible? Are we really going to get this thing over with at long last? Some of these people have been practically living in Iowa the past few months.

Everyone says it's more or less a dead heat and that turnout will determine who wins. And some, like Adam Nagourney in today's New York Times, are postulating that the margin of "victory" could be so razor-thin that the results could be inconclusive.

My hunch is, though, that that won't happen. My hunch is that John Edwards is going to win the Iowa caucuses.

Why do I think that?

I have to admit, the very nature of a hunch means that it's hard to rationalize. But here are my reasons:

• 1) John Edwards is the only one of the three so-called front-runners who has run in Iowa before.
• 2) He made a surprisingly strong showing in Iowa four years ago.
• 3) He has practically lived in Iowa for the past year.
• 4) Unlike Hillary Clinton (who is targeting women and elderly voters, the latter of whom at least are disinclined to caucus in bad weather) and Barack Obama (who is targeting, among others, college kids who might not even be in the state during their college break), Edwards is targeting the hard-core caucus voters who have been there and done that before. I think that's the right move.

And last, but not least...

• 5) He's everybody's second choice. That makes a big difference in Iowa.

Now I could be wrong, and perhaps Senators Clinton or Obama will win outright, or, as the Times thinks, the results could be frustrating if not infuriating to all concerned.

But keep an eye on John Edwards on Thursday night. I think he might surprise people.

Tom Moran