Declarations - Getting Mrs Clinton - Peggy Noonan on WSJ.com

Declarations - WSJ.com
All hail Peggy Noonan. With all due respect to David Brooks, for me, recently Peggy has been the right's most consistent voice of reason. And now this Wall Street Journal oped on the latest Clinton drama:

I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.

That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she as saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual). But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape.

Fired Up in Chapel Hill NC

Obama for America has finally come to the sky-blue dot in the semi-red state of North Carolina. This is our fearless, tireless team in their new home at 504 West Franklin.
Our kickoff meeting is this Saturday March 29 at 10 am.
We will soon see how fired up the Tar Heels are for Barack Obama.

Making the personal political: Another view on Obama's Big Speech

With thoughtful, measured analysis and uncommon historical context, Duke law prof Jedediah Purdy considers "A More Perfect Union" and debunks some of the more shallow criticisms leveled at it, noting, "the most principled political heroism has always grown up out of what Yeats called "the foul rag and bone shop of the heart"." Further, "King himself, far from being the universally accessible Tiger Woods of racial politics, said plenty of things that would have gotten him pilloried." It's a really smart, insightful commentary on what is already one of the most talked about speeches in recent history.

This is one of Purdy's most important contributions, exposing the false dichotomies and extremes presented by so many professional commentators:

So which is it: the "profile in courage" that the New York Times admired, the evasive cop-out that conservatives denounced or the failed tactic that horserace handicappers predicted would not placate white swing voters?....It was, for all its ambition, a tactical speech by a candidate in a corner. It's amusing to see some commentators chide Obama for going after the Clinton campaign here and here....Even Lincoln's speeches - the mythic standard Obama has managed to get himself thrown up against - are political through and through, full of wry, ironic digs at opponents (and outright laugh lines, which Obama couldn't risk). The idea that moral and rhetorical ambition can't coexist with running to win is a trap for Obama, one he's mostly managed to avoid. That kind of ambition is how a candidate explains why he wants to win, not a high-minded consolation prize."

Purdy also remarks at length on the honesty and singularity of the vision and voice put forth in "A More Perfect Union", placing the speech squarely in context alongside Obama's memoir Dreams of My Father.

Most important, he acknowledges that, in addition to being necessary means to an end, enabling Obama to secure political redemption in the eyes of the American public, the personal, revelatory tone of "the speech" was needed simply because that's the way change is made:

The reason to go through the unpleasant stuff Obama called up is that there is no other way. There is no alternative that is purely "rational", washed pure of unstable emotional elements, whether technocratic problem-solving or clean principles. Every redefinition of the rights and duties of American citizenship has come with a vision of dignity. From Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon Johnson and beyond, civil-rights residents have helped people give up (some of) the perquisites of race in favour of the dignity of belonging to a (more) free country. Franklin Roosevelt redefined frontier independence as requiring security against sickness, joblessness and poverty in old age. Ronald Reagan justified his takedown of Roosevelt's welfare state by reasserting, in sometimes beautiful political prose, that we had been stalwart frontiersmen all along. [italics are mine]

It's a really smart reflection. But don't take my word for it, everyone should really read the whole thing and tell me what you think!
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Lessig Bets 'Wikipedia' Approach Will Transform Congress

A prominent Stanford law professor on Thursday launched an ambitious project that aims to use collaborative software to harness the extraordinary levels of pent-up political energy and dissatisfaction that voters have shown over the past two years with their members of congress.

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New CBS Poll: Most See Barack's Speech on Race as a Success

New Poll Shows Obama Speech Effective: "Most voters following the events regarding Senator Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright think Obama's speech was a success. Most agree with his thoughts on race, and think he did a good job explaining his relationship with Rev. Wright..." 1/4 of Dems say they are now MORE likey to vote for Barack.

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Story behind the story: The Clinton myth - Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen - Politico.com

Politico makes a well researched, but surprisingly bold and likely controversial assessment given Barack's recent troubles, "Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning."

Citing a variety of unnamed inside sources, they explain:

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet."

McCain getting crushed by Dems in money war - Kenneth P. Vogel - Politico.com

And yet even as this AP report reveals a huge imbalance in financial terms in favor of the Democratic candidates and the record shows similar imbalances in primary turnout, the polls are telling a very different story. There, McCain is running strong with little paid media support. This should give any Democrat pause, a sense of mission, and a great deal of respect for the candidate we will face and the work we have to do in the Fall:

"John McCain had his top fundraising month in February, pulling in $11 million mostly after he all but secured the GOP presidential nomination with a collection of big wins in the Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5.

But that was less than the $11.7 million the senator from Arizona raised in January, when he was still locked in a tight four-way race for his party's nomination, suggesting Republican donors have yet to coalesce behind their standard-bearer.

His February tally pales in comparison to the staggering sums raised by the two Democrats, raising troubling questions for Republicans as they look toward November and perhaps increasing the likelihood McCain will accept taxpayer cash for his general election campaign."

Full Faith

Writing for the New Republic EJ Dionne, author of "Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right," provides a fuller look at the place of Christian faith in Obama's progressive vision:

"In truth, Wright's statements highlighted by the press ran directly counter to the gospel Obama has been preaching: the message of Civil Rights Christianity, a decidedly multiracial and hopeful creed. Obama's emphasis on hope; his talk of struggle, organizing, and movement-building; his repeated references to 'the fierce urgency of now'-all openly echo the vocabulary of a civil rights cause steeped in the Scriptures. In particular, he invokes not the
side of Martin Luther King Jr. capable of great anger over injustice, but, rather, King's most conciliatory themes.

If Obama's approach is a sincere move (he is plain in his book that he became a Christian in part because he was 'drawn to the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change'), it is also a shrewd one. In trying to move the religious dialogue forward, Obama is drawing it back to a time when so many pastors were successfully allied with liberalism on the civil rights question that none other than Falwell scolded, 'Preachers
are not called upon to be politicians, but to be soul-winners.'

Civil Rights Christian language has many political advantages; most notably, it is resolutely centered not on the defeat of adversaries, but on their conversion. The conversion theme, and Civil Rights Christianity's notion of building a cross-racial 'beloved community,' fit almost perfectly with Obama's core message of political and racial reconciliation. 'We need to take faith seriously,' Obama writes in his book, 'not simply to block the religious right but to engage all persons of faith in the larger project of American renewal.'"

Richardson Endorses Obama - New York Times

Great timing, excellent statement by Bill Richardson:

"“I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world,” Mr. Richardson said in the statement, provided by the Obama campaign early Friday morning.

“As a presidential candidate, I know full well Senator Obama’s unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent
challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.”"

A Thinking Man's Speech - Peggy Noonan

I even agree, at least partially, with Noonan's one caveat about the speech. Well worth reading in full. Key quote:

"it was a good speech, and a serious one. I don't know if it will help him. We're in uncharted territory. We've never had a major-party presidential front-runner who is black, or rather black and white, who has given such an address. We don't know if more voters will be alienated by Mr. Wright than will be impressed by the speech about Mr. Wright. We don't know if voters will welcome a meditation on race. My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former."