How smart I'm not. Part Two.

Updated again Wednesday afternoon.

Updated Tuesday evening.

On my post Sunday night in which I Aaaaarggggh-ed over Barack Obama's remark that John McCain would be a better President than George Bush, Bias is as bias does left this comment:

I find your reaction odd. Hillary has been going around for weeks claiming that she and McCain are better than Obama, as if running for McCain's VP. Where were you then?

The answer to that one is probably "Off writing another of my over-long reviews of obscure movies nobody was thinking about going to see anyway."

But the answer could just as easily be, "Writing another of what will probably amount to dozens of posts by November about what a rotten President John McCain will make!"

And this gets at my concern this election.  The differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are slight.  The differences between either one and McCain are huge and if the National Press Corps has anything to say about the voters will not hear about that!

Unless the Democrats take hold of the narrative now, by the time the Beltway are Insiders are through, most of the country's going to think that John McCain is the true Democrat in the race.

That's all I was trying to point out in my post Sunday, that Obama had better get this idea in his head if he's going to be the nominee, and it looks like he's going to be no matter what happens today in Pennsylvania---it will be up to him and his supporters to make sure the voters know what John McCain really is.  Telling them that McCain would be a better President than George Bush is only, as a commenter over at the McEwan's place said, "a tautology...trivially true"   In the grand scheme of things, which is where the President of the United States operates, John McCain would be just as bad or worse than Bush. There's nothing to be gained by acknowledging the trivially true and lots to be lost.

As I keep saying, more important than which one gets the nomination is that whichever it is wins in November and has a truly Democratic majority in Congress to work with.  On just one point:  I think Hillary Clinton's health care plan is better than Obama's, but I won't worry too much about whether or not we'll get hers or his if the Democrats can get their 56 to 60 senators and a bunch more reps in the House---because then we'll get Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank's.  If things stay as they are or don't improve by much, then we'll get mush out of either one of them.

This is why I think Obama's going to be the nominee no matter how well Clinton does in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.  The Party leaders want this over before the convention.  The super-delegates do not want to over-ride the votes of the most loyal Democratic constituency, not out of fear but because they're practical people.  I suspect that the Party leaders are assuming that Obama will get just about every vote Clinton would have gotten PLUS! Plus independents, plus some Republicans, plus the increased turn-out among new voters, young voters, and African-American voters that Obama's been inspiring and organizing.  I'm not so sure how reasonable this assumption is anymore, but it is very far from unreasonable.  But in addition I think the Party leaders are looking at the Red States and taking into consideration how well Clinton and Obama are likely to do there.  They aren't thinking that Obama or Clinton's going to win any of them, necessarily.  They are thinking that Obama will bring out enough African-Americans, enough young people, and enough excited and hopeful Democrats of other stripes PLUS some Independents and disenchanted Republicans to tip the balance in a few Congressional and Senate races.

Those Independent and Republican voters may be fed up with George Bush but that doesn't mean they are fed up with the idea of a Republican President.  That's why I wish Obama hadn't said what he said.  There was no reason for him to have said it and I hope he'll know better than to say anything like it again.

It wasn't any big deal in and of itself.  But it is one more rock the Media Insiders and the Republican Noise Machine are going to hurl back at him in the fall.  Come the debates you can bet that one of the in the tank moderaters is going to ask, "Senator Obama, you keep saying that Senator McCain's first term would be a third term for George Bush, but back in April you said that Senator McCain would be as better a President  than Mr  Bush as yourself and Senator Clinton.  Were you lying then or were you lying now?"

Please, don't bother to tell me that that's not what Obama said.  I know that's not what he said.  It's what they're going to say he said that counts.

The Maverick and Commander is beatable.  But he's not going to be a push-over. McCain has much of the National Press Corps in his corner.  His donut-delivering toadies, sycophants, and fanboys and fangirls are going to repeat over and over that St John McCain is an independent and a moderate.  They will ignore or excuse his plan to win the war in Iraq by never ending it, his plan to save the economy by continuing and increasing tax cuts for the people who wrecked the economy, his health care plan which is simply a plan to care for the healthy while the sick go suff.  They will ignore or explain away his kow-towing and pandering to the Radical and the Religious Right.

They are going to tell voters that John McCain will be a better President than anybody, let alone George Bush.

Barack Obama's got to be the one to tell them otherwise.
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Another answer to Bias' question, where was I when Hillary made her commander-in-chief threshold remark, is somewhere off being bothered by something else she said or did.  I wish she hadn't said it.  But it's really besides the point now and even if it wasn't it's not a defense of Obama that she's said something dumber or more destructive.  He's the one who's going to be the nominee and it's really not a good idea for the nominee to go around knocking the supports out from under his own argument.

BUT!

The main thing I disliked about Clinton's comment was its clumsiness.  Her clumsiness is one of my problems with Clinton.  Her enemies in the Media like to portray her as being more calculating than any politician who has ever kissed a baby, but her trouble is that while she isn't any more calculating than either Obama or McCain she is awkward and she doesn't put things as felicitously as they could be put, so she shows herself up in ways they usually don't.

Nobody is as graceful at pandering and bootlicking as John McCain.

At any rate, the commander in chief remark was dumb because it gave points to McCain, but it wasn't unfair and it wasn't something Obama and his supporters shouldn't have expected.  What Hillary was more or less trying to say was that the Republicans are going to nominate somebody who, whether it's deserved or not, is going to run with the reputation for being strong on military issues and matters of national defense and in the choice between herself and Obama she is the one with the record and experience that can stand up next to McCain's.  You can argue that she's exaggerating her experience and padding her resume.  What you can't argue is that Obama is the one with more experience.  And you can't possibly believe that this wouldn't have been something the Republicans noticed on their own.  It was never going to be the case that on the second Wednesday of November one top McCain aide would turn to another and say, "Hey, you know what?  We should have run a lot of ads attacking that Obama guy for his lack of experience and trumpeting our guy's military cred!"

In other words, this isn't a point that was going to be ignored or is going to be ignored and rather than complaining about Hillary's raising it, Obama's people had better be thinking up ways to refute it or deflect it.  Now.

Updated to ask, What was I saying? The Media Insiders are going to ignore and explain away everything bad about McCain?  Scott Lemieux catches Richard Cohen doing just that.  And don't forget Cohen thinks he's a liberal.

Updated because Lambert reminded me of this one:  Obama's got a bad habit of saying things that give credence to ideas he's supposed to be running against, privatizing Social Security, Ronald Reagan was a great President, no one could have predicted 9/11.  Again, all of these things are trivially true or open to more favorable (to him) interpretations.  Reagan did change the country...for the worse! "I don't think anybody predicted 9/11" is true if by anybody you mean average Americans going about their business on that day.  But no one could have predicted 9/11 is Condi Rice's excuse for why she and the President and the rest of the team ignored all the warnings and predictions that were being fed to them from our own intelligence community.  I don't think it's a good idea to specifically blame Bush for 9/11 as part of his campaign. Besides the possibility of its backfiring or coming back to haunt him if there's a terrorist attack during his Presidency, it focuses too much on Bush as a screw-up, separating him from McCain.  But Operation Ignore was part of the general incompetence and failures of the last seven years and there's no excusing it.  Obama was trying to answer a stupid question from Chris Matthews, I understand that.  But stupid questions from the Beltway Media are all he's going to get.  The trick is to deflect the question and turn the conversation to what you want to talk about.  The Republicans' failure to tackle the terrorist threat and the ways they have made us less safe was where he needed to go.

Comments

[Ralph Hitchens]

Re. Hillary Clinton as "no more calculating than either Obama or McCain," I submit that one candidate and only one really merits that term, and it's Obama. He's the candidate with ice water in his veins, as the progress of his campaign has made abundantly clear. And this is a good thing, in case you were wondering.

[actor212]

To say that Obama is not as calculating as Hillary...well, the man six years ago was serving in the Illinois State Legislature, fercrisssake, just having lost a Congressional election and now he's running for President backed by the single most corrupt political machine in America, backed by crooked money from Tony Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi (former Iraqi oil billionaire and potential mega-beneficiary of Obama's victory) and former Iraqi Energy Minister Aiham Alsammarae, who fled Iraq with billions in reconstruction funds from America...and who has helped finance Obama's campaign for Senate.

That's pretty calculating, if you ask me!

He doled out...tautology is a good way to say it...a small compliment to a man that will either kick his ass in November (based on the current Reagan Democrat vote in the primaries, that seems likely) or he will beat handily....that last is based on a large star appearing in the east over Jerusalem, by the way.

[Michael Wells]

I am a fan but your attempt to explain your absence of criticism of Clinton for doing much worse fails miserably. She has repeatedly aligned herself with McCain in her attempts to distinguish those two from Obama. And as to Obama's comment,if Republicans don't need their criticisms of Obama to relate to the facts, then it doesn't make any difference what Obama says as it relates to those attacks. But yes, I am telling you that that's not what Obama said because I believe facts matter and need to be used as a sword and not merely a shield.

[zeke]

Lance,

If Clinton is the candidate, McCain can and will mock her for her harrowing account of dodging little girls and poems in Tuzla. On Iraq, McCain can and will refute Hillary's criticisms merely by pointing out that she was "for the war before she was against it." On Kyl-Lieberman, and on Iran generally McCain can and will point out that there's not a dime's worth of difference between his position and Hillary's.

And if Obama is the candidate, McCain can and will argue that even Hillary thinks that he is better qualified than Obama to be commander in chief.

This is the legacy of Hillary's brilliant campaign thusfar.

[David Parsons]

“And if Obama is the candidate, McCain can and will argue that even Hillary thinks that he is better qualified than Obama to be commander in chief.”

At which point Mr. Obama could stare blankly at Mr. McCain and say “That's all very nice, but the voters have already said they don't want an incompetent leader, no matter how experienced, running the country.”

But I suppose it's easier to whine about how Ms. Clinton's not being faaaaiiir. After all, this will be the one time in the history of modern politics that the mainstream press will pay attention to that sort of complaint from the Democrats; when Mr. McCain blindsides Mr. Obama with much more vicious attacks during the general, the cries about fairness will simply be laughed at while the press fawns over the attack as another example of McCain's steely virtue.

[zeke]

David,

I guess whining is in the ear of the listener.

Hillary and her surrogate husband have been going around accusing Obama of whining because he happened to share the views of most sentient beings that the last Democratic debate was a travesty.

Was it only a few short months ago that Hillary herself was "whining" at every opportunity about her treatment in the debates?

How time flies...

[David Parsons]

If the goal of the Obama campaign is nothing more than to defeat the Clinton campaign then, please, go ahead and whine. But don't be surprised if the old white guy wins the general election.

The sexism card that Ms. Clinton played worked because sexism exists, is very obvious, and *is* a substantial part of the attacks against her. The racism card (the bizarre "Oh, Jesse Jackson won South Carolina!" comment) that Bill Clinton pulled, then handed to the Obama campaign worked because racism exists and is very obvious. Attempting to pull a "She's a Republican!" card against Ms. Clinton for a true statement (Mr. Obama has very little experience[*]) doesn't work because, to be painfully honest, it would take a Karl Rove to play that hand and, guess what, he's an actual honest to g-d Republican so he's not likely to help the most liberal candidate left in the Democratic primary.

[* And, for heaven's sake, "experience" is /at this very moment/ wrecking the United States. The B*sh junta has, what, about 1500 years of government experience among them and all they've managed to do is to /repeatedly/ smash the United States headon into a brick wall. If Mr. Obama's campaign can't make up a advertising campaign based on that, perhaps he's not ready for the job after all.]

[Mithras]

You're citing Lambert? The guy who characterizes Obama supporters views as "Why won't the stupid bitch quit?" That's nice. Thank you. You were saying something about how it's Obama's fault that Democrats can't seize the narrative. And all this time I thought it was because he was too busy fighting off attacks from his current rival for the nomination. What the hell was I thinking? Thanks for clearing it up, Lance. What a loser Obama is.