marbury

the sick party

A Democrat victory this week in a district of Mississippi considered one of the safest GOP strongholds in the country has chilled the spines of Republicans everywhere, who fear a heavy defeat in November's congressional elections. It's also provoked a spate of 'Whither the Republican Party' articles, of which the best is this one by conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, a writer incapable of using a cliché without turning it inside out:

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

She talks to Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, who states the predicament plainly:

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a mountain." Analyses of its predicament reflect an "investment in the Bush presidency," but "the public has just moved so far past that." "Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis." Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: "He can't articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it."

hillaryland on what the hell happened

Michelle Cottle at The New Republic has consistently got the inside juice from Hillary Clinton's campaign. Her latest piece quotes the verbatim responses of staffers who were asked, off the record, what went wrong? Much blame laid at the doors of Patti Solis Doyle (campaign manager and Hillary BF who got fired in February when the scale of Clinton's troubles became clear), Mark Penn (former chief strategist), and Bill Clinton. Of course, the person they should be blaming was never on staff.

three men in a fight

Throughout his campaign Obama has said he will, as president, talk to leaders of rogue states. The conventional foreign policy wisdom is that the president should only engage with leaders acceptable to the US and the international community. Obama's position was attacked by Clinton early on in the campaign, who saw it as an opportunity to present him as weak and naive. Rather than taking it on the chin he came back strongly, linking her adherence to conventional wisdom with the decision to go to war in Iraq. The exchange served notice that Obama can play political ju-jitsu pretty well, using the energy of an opponent's attack to strike back, strengthening his own positioning in the process.

This week President Bush, speaking in Israel to mark its sixtieth birthday, jumped into the presidential race with both feet, making a none-too-subtle allusion to Obama by comparing those Democrats who believe in speaking to America's enemies with the appeasers of Hitler. McCain wholeheartedly endorsed Bush's remarks. On Friday Obama used a set-piece speech to respond to both in very strong terms. I won't go into the detail of their arguments (you can read/watch the remarks yourself) but we can draw some conclusions from this scrap:

- President Bush, if he's not careful, will end up playing Bill Clinton to McCain's Hillary in the general. McCain delivered a major speech about his vision for the country on the day Bush made his remarks, but Bush's intervention ensured it got no coverage whatsoever (it's not clear that McCain's people were informed of Bush's remarks prior to them being made). Arguably Bush handed Obama a gift, allowing Obama to sound forceful in response, rallying Democrats to Obama's side, and giving Obama another chance to bind Bush and McCain together in the public mind.

- The argument about how to deal with American's enemies will be a key theme of the coming election. The Republicans know that they are in deep trouble. The Republican brand is badly damaged, the economy is in the toilet, the war drags on. The biggest card they have to play is an oldie-but-goodie: we know how to keep you safe, they don't, we are strong, they are weak. If McCain wins in November it will be because he persuaded enough voters that Obama is too inexperienced to be Commander-In-Chief. So although the terms and timing of this skirmish may not have been at McCain's choosing, it is an argument he wants and needs to have.

- Bye bye Hillary. The person coming out worst from this is Hillary Clinton. Bush's implicit attack on Obama squeezed her out of the debate, and the whole exchange highlighted her current irrelevance in the starkest terms. She could only look on as Obama, Bush and McCain squared up to each other.

veep contender #1: biden

The first in an occasional series: bite-size sketches of potential vice-presidential picks. First up, Joe Biden, a possible running-mate for Obama.

Biden is 66, and one of the longest serving Senators on the Hill. He became internationally famous in 1987 when he had to withdraw from a presidential run after being caught plagiarizing the speech of an obscure European politician called Neil Kinnock. He claims this saved his life because it gave him time to get his headaches seen to: he was diagnosed as having an aneurysm that required immediate surgery.

Since then he's rebuilt his career and his credibility, becoming one of Washington's foremost experts on foreign policy (he's now Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), and is well-regarded by colleagues in both parties. He made a third and final run for the presidency this time around, but was rather overshadowed by the top three and dropped out after Iowa.

PLUSES

- He balances Obama's youth with experience, particularly in the arena of foreign policy.

- A traditional role of VP is attack dog, and Obama, who likes to stay positive, needs one more than most. Biden can attack with wit and credibility, a valuable skill. He has unimpeachable credentials on national security, and is capable of drawing blood when he attacks McCain on those issues in particular (note his outraged savaging of Bush over the president's 'appeaser' comments the other day).

- He has working class, Irish Catholic roots and can reach out to the sort of voters Obama has difficulties with.

- At his best, he's a compelling communicator with an ear for the ringing phrase. He delivered the funniest line of the campaign so far in an early debate, saying of Rudy Giuliani - then the GOP front-runner - that "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11".

MINUSES

- He is a naturally garrulous fellow, and his mouth can run several yards ahead of his brain. He provided one of the unintentionally hilarious moments of the campaign season when, in the opening press conference of his candidacy he said: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man." Obama did not take offence for being congratulated on his hygiene, and Biden's campaign, despite nearly imploding immediately, staggered onwards. But it reminded everyone that he can be a bit of a liability.

- If Obama's campaign is all about 'new politics' and changing the old Washington ways, how credible is it for him to have a Senator who was first elected at the height of Richard Nixon's popularity on the ticket?

there's setting the bar high and then there's...

Intellectual type Sean Penn gives us his thoughts on Obama:

"I hope that he will understand, if he is the nominee, the degree of disillusionment that will happen if he doesn't become a greater man than he will ever be,” Penn said.

Mmm-kay...

sonnova millworker

I go away for a few days and John Edwards endorses Obama. This after months of will-he won't-he and are-we-really-bothered-anymore.

I'm not really sure what Edwards's game has been, if he had one. He missed the chance to make a truly influential endorsement earlier on, and yet he's decided he doesn't want to try for above-it-all party elder either. Still, he gave a good speech today, including a generous tribute to Clinton (in fact it sounded more heartfelt and personal than the one he gave Obama, to these ears).

Will his endorsement make a difference? Well, not to the nomination process - except to push Obama's embarrassing West Virginia defeat out of the headlines - and possibly not to the general either. I know he's meant to have a hotline to the working class white voters that Obama has difficulties with (or who have difficulties with Obama) but we heard the same thing about Ted Kennedy's hotlines to blue collars and Hispanics and look how that worked out. Having said that, Edwards is a formidable campaigner and a great salesman - and thus will make a useful surrogate for Obama in the general.

What will he be expecting in return? A place on the ticket? More likely Attorney-General, I think.

hicks for hillary

Hillary wins West Virginia 67-33. It doesn't change much though it does give her justification to carry on until the last primary on June 03.

Obama might feel he did OK, considering he was up against this.

the conservative nader?

In 2000 Ralph Nader ran to the left of Al Gore as an independent and won enough votes in Florida and elsewhere to tip the election to George W. Bush.

In a sign of how divided today's conservative movement is, former GOP Congressman and current fruitcake Bob Barr has announced a run for the presidency as the Libertarian Party's candidate. At his press conference yesterday he left little doubt that he's running as the anti-McCain, and he might just cause as much trouble for McCain as Nader did for Gore.

A state like Georgia, for instance, would normally be expected to swing Republican, but because its large black population is likely to come out in force for Obama in November it could be close this year - and by siphoning off some True Believer conservatives to his candidacy Barr may just do the Illinois Senator a big favour.

mccain does a cameron

This ad is not particularly interesting in itself, but the fact that McCain is running one about climate change is significant. The big issues in this election are likely to be the war and the economy. After that, it's healthcare and education; you have to go quite a long way down the list before you get to the environment. So why is McCain spending his money at this early stage on an ad about the weather?

The answer lies here. An extraordinary 81% of the population believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, and President Bush's approval ratings have hit an all-time low (again). McCain's tricky task in the next few months is to put daylight between himself and Bush, without pissing off the hardcore of Bush supporters in the GOP. The climate change issue, something McCain has a sincere interest in, offers a way of doing that.

In other words, McCain is (consciously or unconsciously) following the lead of David Cameron, the UK Conservative Party leader who made a big deal out of the environment in his first year as leader, not because it tops the list of vote-winning issues in the UK but because it offered a way to send powerful signals that he was a different type of Conservative leader

Talking loud on the environment helped to reposition Cameron and his party in those early days; now he focuses on the so-called bread-and-butter issues of the economy, education and so on. Expect to see the same from McCain.

forecast: light blogging

I'm on holiday for a few days this week so posting will be sporadic. I hope Hillary stays in the race for a while, at least until I get back...