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The day before all Hell broke lose regarding The Speech, Ron Fournier filed a story for the AP in which he claimed, Obama "bordered on arrogance."

Fournier:

"If arrogance is a display of self-importance and superiority, Obama earns the pejorative every time he calls his pre-invasion opposition to the war in Iraq an act of courage.

"While he deserves credit for forecasting the complications of war in 2002, Obama's opposition carried scant political risk because he was a little-known state lawmaker courting liberal voters in Illinois. In 2004, when denouncing the war and war-enabling Democrats would have jeopardized his prized speaking role at the Democratic National Convention, Obama ducked the issue.

"It may be that he has just the right mix of confidence and humility to lead the nation (Obama likes to say, 'I'm reminded every day that I'm not a perfect man'). But if the young senator wins the nomination, even the smallest trace of arrogance will be an issue with voters who still consider him a blank slate."

The Speech swept this trenchant observation piece away on a tidal wave of immediate analysis specific to the unfolding crisis--but Fournier, as always, was spot-on when it comes to character study.

An Aside: Fournier is an equal-opportunity iconoclast, unrelentingly fair and impartial as he is blistering in his critiques. You may remember these earlier pieces critical to the Clintons, which were devastatingly perceptive: here and here.

Now we learn somewhat inadvertently from John Heilemann, writing a "will she or won't she for the good of the party" piece for New York Magazine, that Obama clumsily squandered a logical John Edwards endorsement back in February.

How did he boot the fairly routine play?

According to Heilemann, "Obama came across as glib and aloof" with the vanquished but still very proud couple:

"His response to Edwards’s imprecations that he make poverty a central part of his agenda was shallow, perfunctory, pat. Clinton, by contrast, engaged Edwards in a lengthy policy discussion. Her affect was solicitous and respectful. When Clinton met Edwards face-to-face in North Carolina ten days later, her approach continued to impress; she even made headway with Elizabeth. Whereas in his Edwards sit-down, Obama dug himself in deeper, getting into a fight with Elizabeth about health care, insisting that his plan is universal (a position she considers a crock), high-handedly criticizing Clinton’s plan (and by extension Edwards’s) for its insurance mandate."

One more piece of anecdotal evidence. Several of my female colleagues (not all of them Hillary supporters) have been telling me for months now that Obama is too arrogant and patronizing.

In terms of arrogance, ironically, Obama is reminiscent of George Bush in 2000 in that both men emerged inexperienced and relatively unknown--but likable and supremely confident. Like Senator Obama, Governor Bush marshaled his light resume as an asset: he would set a "new tone" in Washington and be a "uniter not a divider." Of course, a suspicious press corps raised the specter of "gravitas" in 2000, and Mr. Bush faced nagging questions back then regarding his "smirk" and his "swagger." Thus far, for the most part, Candidate Obama has fairly skirted similar pejorative personality assessments.

But perhaps the honeymoon is coming to an end. Perhaps "arrogance" is the next nettlesome hurdle for the junior senator from Illinois.
The talk of an impending implosion for the Blue Team continues to rage.

In a nutshell: the conventional wisdom of the moment confidently asserts that a rancorous primary equals a big loss in November.

This storyline is mostly driven by partisans for the candidate slightly ahead right now, who see advantage in prematurely calling the contest on account of damp underpants, and a press corps that lacks a sense of history or the ability to take the long view--but loves to push the panic button and breathlessly report on an onrushing cataclysm.

An aside: none of us are very good at predicting the future--but no cohort in America is any less prescient than the jittery chattering class of mainstream media impalas, nervously sniffing the wind, kibitzing with one another as they pass the time between dashing off to the next stampede.

There is a crisis looming for the Democrats--but it is a brand of trouble that they all seem completely blind to at the moment. The Democratic Party is not positioning itself very wisely for a general election.

First, the good news for Democrats.

No matter what happens between now and August, this remains a Democratic year.

The eventual Democratic candidate of 2008 will run buoyed by intense George W. Bush fatigue. The electorate is restless with an unpopular five-year war with no end in sight, and the uncertainty concerning the economy always plays in favor of the out-party.

The eventual Democratic candidate of 2008 will run against a presumptive Republican nominee who is seventy-one-years-old, who is admittedly inexpert on the economic questions, and who stubbornly (albeit bravely) advocates extending the five-year war indefinitely.

Bottom Line. Incontrovertible Fact. This is a good year to run as a Democrat.

However, for the first time in a long time, I am starting to believe that John McCain has a slim chance to prevail in November.

But not for all the conventional hand-wringing reasons we keep hearing presently.

Why might McCain actually have a chance?


The unique and thoroughly unpredictable Obama Phenomenon has pushed the Democratic party well to the left of traditional viability.

Obama is the most unapologetically liberal candidate to seriously contend for the Democratic nomination since George McGovern.

Obama is unabashedly against the war in Iraq. He is no less adamant on this point than Dennis Kucinich.

Anti-war candidates do not get elected president of the United States. Never. Not once.

Mrs. Clinton certainly understood this, which is why she began her campaign for the nomination as a centrist Democrat, strong on defense, tough as nails on terrorism, and committed to success in Iraq.

But then came unforeseen calamities between the Tigris and the Euprhates--and then came Obama. When she voted for the war back in 2002, she bet on a more competent Bush administration and a few more of the intangibles breaking our way--but Iraq surprised everyone. Perhaps Mrs. Clinton is the only person in America who had more to lose from a mishandled Iraq than George Bush.

A festering Iraq opened up the door for O--and he did the rest with his charisma, oratory, message of reconciliation, and implicit offer of racial redemption.

But the Obama Juggernaut comes with a price. Not only is Obama anti-war, he is for higher taxes, national health insurance, more social programs, a radically liberal view of America and its place in the world, and a whole host of things to which most Americans are completely unsympathetic.

These are views that Republicans take great pains to project on a Democratic candidate (oftentimes needing to exaggerate for political purposes). There will be no distortion necessary in the case of Obama. He is the genuine article.

If Obama wins the nomination, Democrats will need to hold their breath for three months, hoping that the "spell" does not wear off before the first Tuesday in November. For, stripped of the magic, Obama's views on public policy and political philosophy are not the stuff of successful general election campaigns.

And, even if Mrs. Clinton "steals" the nomination between now and August, she has tarried too long in the left-wing morass: parroting his anti-Iraq rhetoric, bad-mouthing free trade, and promising billions to every American in need. She had no choice: she had to either move left or get crushed--nevertheless, there she is, spinning her wheels in the soft turf of liberal disconnect.

Mrs. Clinton has enough political acumen to start steering back toward the center line ASAP--but is it too late? Will she be able to gain traction? Has she gone too far? Specifically, would she lose all credibility, if she suddenly started speaking sanely on Iraq again for a general election audience?

Of course, let me repeat, this is such a dismal year for the GOP--none of that may matter. But it gives McCain some hope.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers; it is always an honor--but we especially appreciate the company. In tribute to the Senator from CT, here is the BB "Lieberman file" from 2006.
D-Day: War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it's over! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he's on a roll.
Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard]
Bluto: the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[runs out, alone; then returns]
Bluto: What the [expletive deleted] happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my [expletive deleted] from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer...
Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these [expletive deleted]. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.
D-Day: Let's do it.
Bluto: LET'S DO IT!

I continue to be flabbergasted by the parade of effete column-writers and faint-hearted Democratic Party hand-wringers who suggest that Mrs. Clinton should quit.

Did these guys never have a high school football coach?

Quitters never win and winners never quit.

There is time on the clock, and she's got the ball. Granted, she needs to march the length of the field and three points won't win it--but so what. Fourth quarter, man! This is why you come out for two-a-days in the heat of August. Gut-check time.

Seriously, what kind of a message would a Hillary capitulation send to the youth of America?

Quitting is for lightweights like John Edwards. Mrs. Clinton may go down, but she goes down swinging. She doesn't quit; they have to beat her (God help them).

Nancy Pelosi be damned, I still think this thing is going the distance.
An old coarse joke:

A man walks into a supermarket and ponders which toilet paper to purchase. He asks a stock person about the generic option. "Oh this is the new no-name line of products," he says. "They are much cheaper. Give it a try."

A few days later the shopper encounters the stock person in the supermarket once again: "I've come up with a name for your no-name toilet paper."

"Really?"

"Yes," the consumer says, "you can call it John Wayne toilet paper, because it's rough and tough and don't take excrement off nobody."

If I were to tell that joke today, with all due respect to the Duke, I would probably call it "Hillary Clinton" toilet paper.

Politics aside, she is one muy mal hombre.

A brief history of the repeated and exaggerated reports of the political demise of Hillary Clinton:

Dead as a doornail on the eve of NH (which she won). Clinging to life on the morning after NH and dead on the eve of Nevada (which she won). Dead after South Carolina. Presumed dead on the eve of Super Tuesday, after the Kennedy family collectively passed the torch to Barack Obama, mainstreaming the young lion for old guard Democrats and presumably neutralizing Hispanics--do you recall the spate of Bobby and César Chávez stories?

However, Mrs. Clinton spoiled her impending funeral by winning California, Arizona, and New Mexico on the strength of Latino votes, holding off a serious charge in New York and New Jersey, winning handily in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, and, sweetest of all, winning by a wide margin in Kennedy-land: Massachusetts, where both senators and the sitting governor endorsed her opponent.

Then came the Obama winning streak, fourteen in a row (including Virginia and Wisconsin).

Especially dead after Wisconsin. The week prior to Ohio and Texas ("Hillary's Last Stand"), Jonathan Alter exhorted her to show some class, respect party unity, and quit before any more votes could be cast.

An Observation: every Jonathan Alter column must include a random FDR quote, an ostensibly fair-minded weighing of the facts, followed by a conclusion that finds that Hillary is finished and Obama is ascendant.

Mrs. Clinton elected not to follow Alter's advice.

It was March 4th and long, and she stepped back into the pocket, scrambled, somehow evaded the grasp of several 300-pound linemen, and threw a perfect strike thirty yards down the field, which she somehow pinned with one hand against her helmet for one of the greatest big plays in the history of primaries.

She won RI, Texas, and Ohio.

Still alive.

Now after losing two more primaries that do not really matter much, the funeral dirge is once again playing non-stop on every station.

Now she is Tanya Harding. "She can only win by destroying her opponent." Yeah, that's how it pretty much works in American politics.

Jonathan Alter is taking a rest, evidently, but he must have tagged David Brooks to beat on Mrs. Clinton for a few rounds.

Brooks repeats the suggestion that Clinton do the heroic thing for her nation and her party and quit:

"If she [withdraws voluntarily], she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw."

Are these guys watching the same game I am?

One more time: this nomination will be decided by superdelegates. Both sides have arguments to make for the nod. Obama has the better case on the numbers--but that does not matter. Hillary's claim is compelling enough, especially with a big victory in Pennsylvania and solid wins in Indiana and North Carolina—from which she can emerge as the candidate with momentum.

Moreover, Obama just took his first big hit over the last fortnight. Barack boosters, like David Brooks, would like us to believe that Obama "weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects," but I am skeptical.

There is a lag time to public polling. The daily numbers will be behind any real change in public sentiment resulting from this imbroglio. The public has not really had time to digest this affair.

In truth, Obama sustained a serious shot to his image, and we have no idea how debilitating the wound will prove to be.

Hillary Clinton would be foolish not to keep throwing into the end zone. Knowing what we know about her and this campaign thus far, we would be foolish to bet against her.

Endnote: kudos to Howard Kurtz for his tongue-in-cheek treatment of this phenomenon earlier in the week.
This afternoon, Robert M. Goldberg, vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (whatever that is), writing for The American Spectator, charged Barack Obama surrogate, Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, USAF, Ret., with pursuing an anti-Israel agenda.

McPeak recently in the news charging former-President Bill Clinton with McCarthy-like innuendo, serves as an "Obama for President" co-chair.

According to Goldberg, "McPeak has a long history of criticizing Israel" and its insistence on holding on to territory won during wars with Arab neighbors.

Goldberg quotes McPeak In a 2003 interview with the Oregonian, complaining that the Israeli lobby (Jews) intimidated American politicians from pursuing American interest in the Middle East.

I do not know Goldberg. The Spectator is an unabashedly agenda-driven opinion journal. Having said that, if this assessment bears out, taken on the heels of Senator Obama's Jeremiah Wright problem, this revelation poses another serious distraction for the Obama campaign.

Goldberg writes:

"Obama has a Jewish problem and McPeak's bigoted views are emblematic of what they are. Obama can issue all the boilerplate statements supporting Israel's right to defend itself he wants. But until he accepts responsibility for allowing people like McPeak so close to his quest for the presidency, Obama's sincerity and judgment will remain open questions."

Only time will tell, but this looks like something worth watching.