Levees Not War

Mardi Gras has come and gone, and Ash Wednesday too, and now it is Lent: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Speaking of dust and repentance . . .

Two years ago we endorsed John Edwards for president. That was before we realized how far superior Barack Obama was (is), and before we read Heilemann and Halperin’s Game Change from beginning to end. (Click here for an excerpt.) Now, our endorsement got a bit of attention through Huffington Post (because we said “Democrats need a tough candidate who won’t hesitate to kick the Republicans in the balls”), but apparently the endorsement caused no irreversible damage. Still, we would like to issue a correction, an admission of error of character judgment.

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‘America, this is our moment.
This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past . . . to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face . . .to offer a new direction for the country we love.’

Photo: T. C. Worley / NYT

After 16 months and 54 contests, Barack Obama has clinched the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. He gave a stirring, uplifting speech to a raucous crowd of some 18,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota—taking the fight to the city where the Republicans will hold their convention in September—but Hillary Clinton has not yet conceded or endorsed him. Speaking to a fervent crowd of supporters in the basement of Baruch College in New York City, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe introduced her as “the next president of the United States,” and Hillary claimed, “Thanks so much to South Dakota. You had the last word,” when Montana voters were still pulling the levers.

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‘You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.’

—Hillary Clinton, Sioux Falls, S.D., 23 May 08

‘We have seen an X-ray of a very dark soul. One consumed by raw ambition to where the possible assassination of an opponent is something to ponder in a strategic way.’

—Michael Goodwin, New York Daily News

Samantha Power was right.

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‘The Democratic voters in America have made their choice, and so have I.’

John Edwards and Barack Obama in Grand Rapids, Mich., May 14.

We were wondering if we would ever have the pleasure of seeing John Edwards’s endorsement of Barack Obama. And yes, we were grumbling impatiently and muttering ‘What’s taking him so damn long?’ But now we think maybe he has a good sense of timing after all. This endorsement feels well worth the wait. After Hillary’s big win in West Virginia, supported by that important demographic where Obama’s been falling short, John Edwards’s support is welcome indeed.

We’ll never know how Edwards’s endorsement might have helped had he chosen Obama earlier. The withholding of support was creating a kind of suspense, a vacuum of doubt. There was something missing from the ‘Obamomentum.’ As long as Edwards had not definitely stood up for Obama, it left open the possibility that he did not have confidence in Obama as a winner, or that he knew something the rest of us didn’t know, and that he might in the end go for Hillary. (The hesitation also made us wonder about John Edwards’s priorities. Were he and Elizabeth truly getting hung up (as reports suggested) on which candidate had the better health care plan? Did the entire endorsement really depend upon that single criterion?)

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TPM Cafe reader “57andFemale” has written a powerful rant against the Clinton campaign’s race tactics and tepid ‘regrets’ of Geraldine Ferraro’s well-publicized outpourings. (Original spellings are retained.) HillaryMcCain ‘mindmeld’ composites by Mike Ferry of 2millionth web log, inspired by Driftglass.

• See also ‘Senator Clinton Is Not a Republican, As Far As I Know’ by Bob Cesca @ HuffPo.

You Think It Can’t Get Worse

By 57andFemale
March 12, 2008

And then it does. Big time. Not one interview by Geraldine Ferraro, but cable news shows, Good Morning America, a new interview with the Daily Breeze and the NY Times. Saying the same things. Over and over. Hillary Clinton’s Finance Chair is still standing, to say words that should offend any Democrat.

Obama’s appeal is he is the candidate for everyone. He transcended race. It was the Clintons who squandered the black vote, let’s remember that.

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We are voting for Senator Barack Obama in the primaries—as many times as possible. The more we see of him, the more we like. But first, we want to take a parting glance at the contributions our First Favorite, John Edwards, made to the presidential campaign of 2008.

We pushed hard for Edwards, and it’s hard to let go, but we’re grateful to him for returning the Democratic party to its populist roots. Our strongest gratitude is for the attention he brought to New Orleans and for the bold ideas he proposed, which, to the public’s benefit, Obama and Clinton have incorporated to some extent into their own campaigns.

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Becoming the second Democratic presidential candidate (after Barack Obama) to warn the White House away from hostilities against Iran, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut has written a letter notifying the White House that the Senate’s 2002 authorization of military force against Iraq does not authorize war against Iran:

“I am extremely concerned that your administration’s failure to employ robust diplomacy in dealing with the challenges posed by Iran could lead us down the same disastrous and ill-conceived path that has produced a failed policy in Iraq that has made us less secure. . . . Moreover, it is my firm belief that the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in no way grants license to deploy any military campaign against Iran. . . . Mr. President, the time for robust diplomacy is now. For that reason, I strongly recommend that you appoint an experienced and well respected diplomat as a special envoy for Iran.”

We are still waiting to hear from John Edwards and Hillary Clinton (among others).

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AlterNet.org reports here on the administration’s multi-pronged strategy against Iran: “The Administration Is Coming at Iran from Every Which Way.“