I just read Reaper0bot's diary on the reason Barack Obama is likely supporting the current compromise FISA bill, and there was one comment that jumped out at me: someone said "okay, we'll lose the battle but win the war".  Why?

Last night I caught a screening of a new documentary called Boogie Man about legendary Reagan & Bush operative Lee Atwater. The lessons I came away with most vividly from the film, which was an interesting portrait of a truly twisted soul but not a great film, was two things: 1. when you get hit, hit back fast and hard and 2. even a 17 point lead in June can be closed.

A good chunk of the film focused on the 1988 race, which was marked by the Willie Horton ad and the Dukakis tank ad, both of which were Atwater innovations (he was Bush's campaign manager) that went essentially unanswered by the Dukakis campaign and contributed greatly to Dukakis's loss. The over-confidence of the Democrats at the convention that year was palpable and it was a problem and should serve as a good lesson for us today. But it also reminded me of how ruthless the GOP can be when they're down -- remember, they operate best that way. Even though Atwater is dead, his legacy and the memory of how effective his tactics were are not.

Which leads me to yesterday's Meet The Press. Much of the hour was spent in a debate between Joe Biden, speaking for Barack Obama, and Lindsey Graham, speaking for John McCain. Now, I don't really want to bash Biden, he was quite effective in calling Graham out on his off-shore drilling obfuscations (or ignorance) and got the message across that Barack Obama's stance on public financing is perfectly consistent with his stated goal of getting corporate influence out of our elections. But what was one of the headlines that came out of Meet The Press yesterday:

Obama's Public Financing Move Puts System at Risk, Biden Says

Great. While drama queen Lindsey Graham was putting on a show, feigning outrage and deep disappointment at what he portrayed as an almost tragic fall from grace that Obama's decision to opt out of public financing represented, going all in for his candidate, Joe Biden seemed to be most concerned with not appearing one-sided and looking even-handed. Sorry, Joe, even-handed doesn't cut it. If you can't be an advocate for our guy 100% on message, then what are you even doing out there? If we've learned anything over the past 20 plus years of Republican presidential victories, I think it's got to be that having the facts and the argument on our side is not enough and I hope Barack Obama starts to get that through to his on air surrogates moving forward.  

"I want to publicly acknowledge Hillary Clinton for the outstanding race that she has run.

"She is a great senator from New York she is an extraordinary leader of the Democratic party and she has made history alongside me over the last 16 months and I'm very proud to have competed against her."

--Barack Obama on Hillary Clinton

"I know Senator Obama understands what it is at stake here. It has been an honor to contest these primaries with him. It is an honor to call him my friend."

--Hillary Clinton on Barack Obama

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two of the ablest politicians in recent memory, have declared an end to hostilities. Understanding that they share the same goals, with some respectful disagreement on how to achieve these goals, they are beginning the process of coming together to form a united front against John McCain in the fall.

As passionate partisans, it is now time for us to follow their lead and start the reconciliation process among the netroots so that our country can turn abruptly away from the edge of the cliff it's been skating along these past few years of the Bush administration, and start heading in a direction that restores our values and reunites our country.

That's why I say: Obama Me With Fries!

You may have already seen the grossly misleading and embarrassingly political smear Bush used against Democrats (and WH aides say Obama) from Israel:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

As Singer pointed out, McSame ramped up the charge, perhaps after realizing he had been looped out of a debate between the President and a Democrat running for the job he wants:

"I think [it] is an unacceptable position, and shows that Senator Obama does not have the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation's security."

White flags, surrender, naive, etc..

But let's contrast the responses from two of the surrogates - one Republican and one Democrat.

On the right, a yahoo talk radio host on Hardball in an enormously awkward segment:

On MSNBC's Hardball tonight, right-wing radio host Kevin James attempted to defend President Bush's comments comparing Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to Nazi appeasers because he favors talking with our enemies. James compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain, about whom James could only cry: "He's an appeaser!"

Matthews pressed James at least 19 times over five minutes to simply explain what Chamberlain had done in 1938 and 1939 to make him an "appeaser." James could only shout his talking point over and over, prompting Matthews to threaten to end the interview:

  MATTHEWS: You don't know what you're talking about, Kevin. You don't know what you're talking about. Tell me what Chamberlain did wrong.

  JAMES: Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, Chris. Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, all right? [...]

  MATTHEWS: I've been sitting here five minutes asking you to say what the president was referring to in 1938 at Munich.

  JAMES: I don't know.

  MATTHEWS: You don't know, thank you.

   

(If you have a couple minutes, click through and watch the whole video - it's the best TV I've seen in weeks)

And on the left, Joe Biden:

"This is bullshit."

Bingo.

Republicans think they can breathe new life into the strategy of veiled accusations of Dems-as-traitors. But it didn't work in the '06 midterms, and it won't in '08.

It all sounds so ridiculous now. Biden's answer says it all.
 

Update [2008-5-15 20:5:18 by Josh Orton]: YouTube version of the Hardball clip below the fold. The puny conservative host Kevin James is actually a relatively good walking, breathing representation of the charge itself: desperate, dishonest, and ridiculous.

Now this is some Democratic unity.  We've had Emaneul, Dean, Pelosi, and Kerry already come to Obama's defense this morning, but Joe Biden has trumped them with raw emotion and simple truth:

"This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement."

"He is the guy who has weakened us," he said. "He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It's his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me."

"If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?" Biden asked. "Is he going to fire Condi Rice?"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0 508/Biden_Bushs_comments_were_bullshit.h tml

If this is any indication of what the general election is going to be like, then we are wimpy Democrats no more.  Here's to you, Joe.

Just suppose, purely as a set of hypotheses, that:

• Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton garner a majority of delegates going into the convention;


• Controversies about Obama continue to fester and perhaps new ones arise, rendering him unelectable in the minds of many Democrats; and


• Delegates, super or not, continue to find Clinton some combination of Bloody Mary, The Wicked Witch of the West, Mata Hari, and the Ugly Stepmother.

Is there a way out of this mess to give Democrats a fighting chance against John McCain in November?

Yes. It is another diary about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on plagiarism.

No. It's not simply a copycat or another cookie-cutter version of a Deval Patrick or John Edwards or Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for"

Where, oh, where have we heard this before? (See the YouTube video here.)

Yesterday I praised Chelsea Clinton here as possibly among the "very promising young women out there now working their way through the ranks," but then I read about an outrageous recent remark she has made.
A student asked Chelsea Clinton last Monday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison "Has your mother shown any remorse for the fact that her vote cost Iraqis a million of their lives?"
To which Chelsea Clinton replied "She cast a vote based on the best available evidence. Perhaps you had clairvoyance then, and that's extraordinary."
Granted the question was antagonistic, but that does not excuse Chelsea's arrogance. Does Chelsea realize that her answer is identical to the response Dubya gives when his decision to invade Iraq is questioned? Does Chelsea know that her mother didn't even bother to read that National Intelligence Estimate before sending 4,000 plus soldiers to their deaths with her vote?
As a U.S. serviceman that has given 12 years of his life to the country that he loves, I am mortified and offended by Chelsea Clinton's arrogant, unapologetic, response, and am drawn away from Senator Clinton for another reason all together.
What has Chelsea Clinton been doing these five years that the war her mother authorized has raged? She has been working for a hedge fund. Chelsea Clinton's occupation since she turned 22 isn't disconcerting, but it leaves a huge opening for McCain to attack Senator Clinton. Senator McCain's son, like Senator Webb's and Senator Biden's, has served his country in Iraq.
If you think that won't get thrown around in the campaign for the vote in November, then you are seriously deluded.
Today I have changed my position again; unless Senator Clinton apologizes for her Iraq War authorization vote (which has killed several coworkers from my past), then I will have great difficulty voting for her, and probably wont.