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What the pundits say

Dick Morris: Hillary’s big Pennsylvania win, “doesn’t mean anything.”

He continues:

Because of the Democratic Party’s arcane proportional-representation rules, her win stands to give her a net gain of 10 to 15 delegates when all is counted. That means that Barack Obama will fall from a lead of 161 in elected delegates to about 145 or so. Big deal.

The primaries coming up in the next two weeks - Indiana and North Carolina - are likely to give Obama back a goodly portion of those delegates. By the time all the primaries have been held, after June 3, there is no doubt that Obama will lead by more than 100 elected delegates, and likely 150. From there, it will be an easy route to the nomination.

Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard says Hillary is making the case that Obama can’t win the general election:

Forget delegates and the popular vote for the Democratic presidential nomination. The most important thing Hillary Clinton gained by winning the Pennsylvania primary yesterday was a better argument–indeed, a much better argument.

Chances are, Clinton will trail Obama in the delegate count when the primaries end on June 3, as she does now. And while she may cut into his lead in the popular vote in the Democratic contests, she’s not likely to exceed his vote total. So the only way she can capture the nomination is by convincing roughly 300 uncommitted super-delegates that Obama cannot defeat Republican John McCain in November but she can.

This isn’t an easy case to make, especially with the super-delegates who will provide the margin of victory for whoever captures the 2,025 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. And at the moment, they appear strongly inclined to back Obama if he leads in delegates when the primary season is finished.

But after Pennsylvania, Clinton’s argument that she’s a stronger opponent against McCain will be impossible to ignore or dismiss. And it’s not just because Clinton was outspent by nearly 3 to 1 by Obama and got tougher coverage from the media, yet trounced him by a substantial margin in a state that the Democratic presidential nominee must win in November.

John B. Judis in The New Republic says Obama could be the next George McGovern,

…If you look at Obama’s vote in Pennsylvania, you begin to see the outlines of the old George McGovern coalition that haunted the Democrats during the ’70s and ’80s, led by college students and minorities. In Pennsylvania, Obama did best in college towns (60 to 40 percent in Penn State’s Centre County) and in heavily black areas like Philadelphia.

Its ideology is very liberal. Whereas in the first primaries and caucuses, Obama benefited from being seen as middle-of-the-road or even conservative, he is now receiving his strongest support from voters who see themselves as “very liberal.” In Pennsylvania, he defeated Clinton among “very liberal” voters by 55 to 45 percent, but lost “somewhat conservative” voters by 53 to 47 percent and moderates by 60 to 40 percent. In Wisconsin and Virginia, by contrast, he had done best against Clinton among voters who saw themselves as moderate or somewhat conservative.

The Democrat Delegate Count

Hillary wins Pennsylvania, 54.3% to 45.7% (with 99% reporting).  She wins 80 delegates, Obama wins 66.  12 more are still to be awarded from the Keystone state.

Here are the delegate breakdowns:

ABC:

Obama, 1715   Clinton, 1583

CBS:

Obama,  1710   Clinton, 1584

NBC:

Obama, 1720    Clinton, 1589

CNN:

Obama, 1714    Clinton, 1584

FOX News:

Obama, 1703    Clinton, 1573

AP:

Obama, 1714    Clinton, 1589

Politico:

Obama, 1720    Clinton, 1588

NY Times:

Obama, 1636    Clinton, 1481

Obama: Against Concealed Weapons

This hasn’t made many headlines yet, but Sen. Barack Obama said, “I am not in favor of concealed weapons.  I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations.”

Wow.  That seems like a blatant liberal anti-gun position.  Naturally, the media is absent on this.

It’s even more ironic because Politico is running a story today, Obama aims for pro-gun vote.

From the article:

Barack Obama did not hunt or fish as a child. He lives in a big city. And as an Illinois state legislator and a U.S. senator, he consistently backed gun control legislation.

But he is nevertheless making a play for pro-gun voters in rural Pennsylvania.

By highlighting his background in constitutional law and downplaying his voting record, Obama is engaging in a quiet but targeted drive to win over an important constituency that on the surface might seem hostile to his views.

The need to craft a strategy aimed at pro-gun voters underscores the potency of the issue in Pennsylvania, which claims one of the nation’s highest per capita membership rates in the National Rifle Association.

So which is it Barack?

Dems Want Hillary Out!

Last week, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy made headlines by saying Hillary Clinton should bow out of the race right now because there is no change she can win.  This has never happened before.  As both the Clintons have pointed out, in 1992 Bill Clinton didn’t secure the Democratic nomination until June 2.

Steven Stark writes today, this argument “is, in truth, an argument virtually without precedent in modern political history.” He also drops some history on us:

• In 1988, Jesse Jackson took his hopeless campaign against winner Michael Dukakis all the way to the convention, often to great media praise.

• In 1980, Ted Kennedy carried his run against Jimmy Carter all the way to the convention, even though it was clear he had been routed.

• In 1976, Ronald Reagan contested the “inevitability” of Gerald Ford all the way to the convention. Few, then or since, have ever thought to criticize Reagan’s failure to step aside and let Ford assume the mantle.

• Also in 1976, three candidates — Mo Udall, Jerry Brown, and Frank Church — ran against Jimmy Carter all the way through the final primaries, even though Carter seemed more than likely to be the eventual nominee.

• Even in 1960, Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Stevenson fought the “certain” nomination of John F. Kennedy all the way to the convention floor.

So why the rush to get Clinton out?  This was supposed to be her nomination and she was the golden child in the Democratic party: the first woman elected President.  That all changed with the rise of Obama.

I’ve noticed the Democrats talk about doom and gloom often.  They do it with the economy, by constantly talking it down.  They use buzz words like recession and remind us that things are going to get scary without their help.  Democrats have done it on the Iraq War now for years.  Harry Reid has said the “war is lost.”  Others have said the surge hasn’t worked, etc.  Now, Democrats are talking doom and gloom about their national convention.  They are worried a rift between Clinton and Obama will open the door for a McCain Presidency because their convention will be 1968 all over again.  My take:  They are making it worse by constantly talking about it and the talk could do them in.

Obama’s Church is Pro Hamas?

Sen. Barack Obama is once again coming under fire today because of his Church.  In July of 2007 the Trinity United Church of Christ reprinted a column in the Los Angeles Times by Mousa Abu Marzook.  Marzook was born in Gaza, but received his PhD in the U.S.  In 1991 he was elected as chairman of Hamas.  In 1995 Marzook was arrested at JFK Airport in New York because he is believed to be responsible for planning Hamas terrorist attacks during 1994.    He was later deported from Jordan in 1999 as part of their crackdown on Hamas.

Here is the orginal column from the LA Times:

Hamas’ stand

An official of the movement describes its goals for all of Palestine.

By Mousa Abu Marzook
MOUSA ABU MARZOOK is the deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.

July 10, 2007

Damascus, Syria — HAMAS’ RESCUE of a BBC journalist from his captors in Gaza last week was surely cause for rejoicing. But I want to be clear about one thing: We did not deliver up Alan Johnston as some obsequious boon to Western powers.

It was done as part of our effort to secure Gaza from the lawlessness of militias and violence, no matter what the source. Gaza will be calm and under the rule of law — a place where all journalists, foreigners and guests of the Palestinian people will be treated with dignity. Hamas has never supported attacks on Westerners, as even our harshest critics will concede; our struggle has always been focused on the occupier and our legal resistance to it — a right of occupied people that is explicitly supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Yet our movement is continually linked by President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to ideologies that they know full well we do not follow, such as the agenda of Al Qaeda and its adherents. But we are not part of a broader war. Our resistance struggle is no one’s proxy, although we welcome the support of people everywhere for justice in Palestine.

The American efforts to negate the will of the Palestinian electorate by destroying our fledgling government have not succeeded — rather, the U.S.-assisted Fatah coup has only multiplied the problems of Washington’s “two-state solution.”

Mr. Bush has for the moment found a pliant friend in Abu Mazen, a “moderate” in the American view but one who cannot seriously expect to command confidence in the streets of Gaza or the West Bank after having taken American arms and Israeli support to depose the elected government by force. We deplore the current prognosticating over “Fatah-land” versus “Hamastan.” In the end, there can be only one Palestinian state.

But what of the characterization by the West of our movement as beyond the pale of civilized discourse? Our “militant” stance cannot by itself be the disqualifying factor, as many armed struggles have historically resulted in a place at the table of nations. Nor can any deny the reasonableness of our fight against the occupation and the right of Palestinians to have dignity, justice and self-rule.

Yet in my many years of keeping an open mind to all sides of the Palestine question — including those I spent in an American prison, awaiting Israeli “justice” — I am forever asked to concede the recognition of Israel’s putative “right to exist” as a necessary precondition to discussing grievances, and to renounce positions found in the Islamic Resistance Movement’s charter of 1988, an essentially revolutionary document born of the intolerable conditions under occupation more than 20 years ago.

The sticking point of “recognition” has been used as a litmus test to judge Palestinians. Yet as I have said before, a state may have a right to exist, but not absolutely at the expense of other states, or more important, at the expense of millions of human individuals and their rights to justice. Why should anyone concede Israel’s “right” to exist, when it has never even acknowledged the foundational crimes of murder and ethnic cleansing by means of which Israel took our towns and villages, our farms and orchards, and made us a nation of refugees?

Why should any Palestinian “recognize” the monstrous crime carried out by Israel’s founders and continued by its deformed modern apartheid state, while he or she lives 10 to a room in a cinderblock, tin-roof United Nations hut? These are not abstract questions, and it is not rejectionist simply because we have refused to abandon the victims of 1948 and their descendants.

As for the 1988 charter, if every state or movement were to be judged solely by its foundational, revolutionary documents or the ideas of its progenitors, there would be a good deal to answer for on all sides. The American Declaration of Independence, with its self-evident truth of equality, simply did not countenance (at least, not in the minds of most of its illustrious signatories) any such status for the 700,000 African slaves at that time; nor did the Constitution avoid codifying slavery as an institution, counting “other persons” as three-fifths of a man. Israel, which has never formally adopted a constitution of its own but rather operates through the slow accretion of Basic Laws, declares itself explicitly to be a state for the Jews, conferring privileged status based on faith in a land where millions of occupants are Arabs, Muslims and Christians.

The writings of Israel’s “founders” — from Herzl to Jabotinsky to Ben Gurion — make repeated calls for the destruction of Palestine’s non-Jewish inhabitants: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places.” A number of political parties today control blocs in the Israeli Knesset, while advocating for the expulsion of Arab citizens from Israel and the rest of Palestine, envisioning a single Jewish state from the Jordan to the sea. Yet I hear no clamor in the international community for Israel to repudiate these words as a necessary precondition for any discourse whatsoever. The double standard, as always, is in effect for Palestinians.

I, for one, do not trouble myself over “recognizing” Israel’s right to exist — this is not, after all, an epistemological problem; Israel does exist, as any Rafah boy in a hospital bed, with IDF shrapnel in his torso, can tell you. This dance of mutual rejection is a mere distraction when so many are dying or have lived as prisoners for two generations in refugee camps. As I write these words, Israeli forays into Gaza have killed another 15 people, including a child. Who but a Jacobin dares to discuss the “rights” of nations in the face of such relentless state violence against an occupied population?

I look forward to the day when Israel can say to me, and millions of other Palestinians: “Here, here is your family’s house by the sea, here are your lemon trees, the olive grove your father tended: Come home and be whole again.” Then we can speak of a future together. This column appeared in the Trinity Church of Christ Bulletin on July 22, 2007 under the headline, “A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle.”  In response Obama has said, “I have already condemned my former pastor’s views on Israel in the strongest possible terms, and I certainly wasn’t in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin.”  Once again, Obama conveniently says he wasn’t there when something controversial happens.  Isn’t he the candidate of change?  Seems just like another politician to me.

Carville vs. Richardson

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama last week. It didn’t sit well with the Clintons. Adviser James Carville said, “Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.” That is a Carville slap right there.

Richardson responded by saying, “I’m not going to get in the gutter like that and you know that’s typical of the many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency.” Bang. Take that Carville. Take that Hillary. Take that Bill. Keep in mind, Richardson served as US Ambassador to the United Nations and as Energy Secretary under former President Clinton. Richardson added, “it shouldn’t just be Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton, what about the rest of us?” Think about this. We could have a four president span that stays in two families.

Given that neither side is giving up we can expect a few more months of this.

Hillary caught in a lie

In 1996, First Lady Hillary Clinton went to Bosnia.  During the 2008 campaign Clinton has talked about her experience in the war torn country.  She said, “I remember landing under sniper fire.  There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles.”  As this video shows Hillary is flat out wrong.  The entire landing was caught on video.  No where does Clinton duck.  She is not wearing a bullet proof vest.  She doesn’t appear to be in danger.   Reporters from both CBS and NBC that were on the trip have both now said Clinton was wrong about her “sniper fire” description.

Clinton has admitted to making a mistake, but hasn’t admitted to embellishing.  She said this, “I did misspeak, the other day, you know this has been a very long campaign (laughs).  Occasionally, I am a human being like everyone else.”  A mistake due to long campaigning is getting a couple of statistics wrong.  This is a Hillary Clinton flat out lie.  You don’t mistakenly remember sniper fire when it wasn’t there.  She should just admit she was making that part up to further exemplify her foreign policy credentials.   After all, Clinton keeps campaigning on her “35 years” of experience.  I know all politicians trump up their pasts and to make themselves look better.  But, do we have to fall for it every time?

All 3 Candidate Passport files accessed

Once again our government shows it’s competence.

From the New York Times:

The State Department said on Friday that the passport files of all three presidential contenders were improperly accessed by employees and the department’s inspector general is reviewing the matter.

The revelations began Thursday night, after department officials said that Mr. Obama’s passport file had been accessed by three contract employees who did not have authorization to do so. Mr. Obama’s file was breached on three separate occasions, in January, February and March.

How can three contract employees just access this? Was it for fun? I can picture a couple of guys wanting to impress their friends by showing them they have access to passport files in the State Department.

Ms. Clinton’s passport file, Mr. McCormack said, was breached during a training session for State Department employees. The breach of Mr. McCain’s files was also revealed on Friday.

So what is in a passport file, again the New York Times answers:

Typically such files, which are maintained for all people who receive passports, include materials like passport applications and supporting identity documents. After 1978 such records were kept on microfilm, but the documents from the time covered in Mr. Clinton’s record were kept on paper. It is not known what missing pages covered, when they were removed or who removed them. Neither was it clear how the State Department determined that the material was missing.

Poll: Obama hurt by Rev. Wright

A HCD Research poll shows Barack Obama’s ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright could hurt him if voters watch some of his inflammatory comments.

52% of Democrats said they would be less likely to vote for Obama if they saw Wright’s comments. 54% of Independents and 71% of Republicans said the same.

Up until this point, Barack Obama has been walking on cloud 9. But, what do we really know about the man? He has ties to a corrupt Chicago businessman named Tony Rezko. Rezko is currently on trial. Obama also has been attending the Trinity United Church where Rev. Wright has preached for almost 20 years. Could Wright be the iceberg that brings the unsinkable Obama campaign down? Americans don’t respond well to blatant rage and hate. We never have. And if Obama claims Wright is like family to him, that might be too close an association. Even though Obama tried to diffuse the issue in his speech yesterday, the good news still remains, at this point it will still be hard for Hillary Clinton to catch up.

In closing, I’ll leave you with this, thanks to the American Thinker blog.   In Obama’s first book, Dreams of My Father, he seems to admit to knowing Rev. Wright was a bit off the beat and path.  “Some of my fellow clergy don’t appreciate what we’re about.  They feel we’re too radical.”  Read it for yourself on page 283.  Still think Obama had no idea how angry Rev. Wright really was?

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