Thoughts (And Second Thoughts) On Myrtle Beach, SC

I just cried "Uncle" midway through Larry King. I heard the same things over and over again in the analysis and I'm really, really bored with all it. So, this will be a stream of consciousness catalog of things that I noticed but didn't hear discussed in the post-game analysis.

I didn't see a clear winner, although any time HRC can get Obama into the rough-n-tumble is good for her. She brushes that stuff off like lint and is always prepared for the fight. So, I think she continued to put the lie to Obama's claim that he is somehow "above all this." Though the media always tell you the opposite, he's hardly the "uniter"or "conciliator" he claims to be. He's pretty petulant and quick to anger on a good day and even by political standards he's got a huge ego, so her exchanging barbs with him takes a lot of shine off of him and doesn't affect her at all. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe she finally made the case that he's kind of the Bob Roberts in the race. A pure media creation. Somewhat vacuous. Something of an empty suit and as she showed by defending The Big Dog's fairy tale crack, pretty much the conservative in it too. Not that he's tried to hide that. Christ, he's featured it. "Reaching out across party lines," "getting beyond partisan rancor," and stuff like that always make me check for my watch and wallet.

He also lied about what he had said with regard to Reagan. Obama did not say a single critical word about the Republican Party or it's leader at the time.

I'll give her credit for bringing the fight to him at a CBC event in advance of the South Carolina primary. He sure as shit wouldn't have the balls to bring the fight to her at a NOW event in Brooklyn! I think that she won the exchange of punches as her strong stuff all worked together to prove a coherent thesis about Obama, while his punches were pretty random. The "Wal-Mart" line was a good one but, big deal, everyone knew that already. The "slumlord" riposte was almost a knockout punch because no one knew about that. His explanation was weak and he seemed pretty seasick after that. His response to her charge of his changing positions on Iraq was incomprehensible. I was almost expecting to go into his Obama-trance and start up a chant of "YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN."

To his credit, he connected with one or two, "Wal-mart" for example, though the "who am I running against?" was silly. I thought he handled the Toni Morrison thing with a lot of charm. I appreciated his being the only one of -- let's face it -- a pretty conservative trio to raise issues of criminal justice. Not that it matters. All three are capital punishment and law-and-order zealots. I just have to accept that.

HRC's knockout punch came when Obama admitted "look, none of our hands are clean." She didn't even have to bring up Donny McClurkin after that.

The media are selling John Edwards as the winner because they felt he "stayed out of it." Wow. There's a shift. Wasn't his populist message supposed to be too angry for the voters? I don't think he stayed out of it at all, actually I think when he got tough, especially with Obama, he showed his best moments of the campaign so far. He hit her with a huge counterpunch on the "trial lawyers' lobby money" barb of hers at him. By and large he was a help to her for the first time in any of these events. He would have been a clear winner of this debate if he had only taken the one more step he needed to take and had uttered the "c word" -- CLASS.

But that's still a tough one to sell in America. Race is a piece of cake compared to class as an issue. He had one beautiful opening and, again, it's part of what makes me suspicious of him. The attorney John Edwards would have gotten a summary judgement with this one. Why the candidate John Edwards can't do it is beyond me. Obama kept needling him about being the White Man and Edwards, you could tell, was not pleased. He should have said "I really respect your having 'worked in the streets' for three years with CORE or whatever, and while you may be 'African-American' you are very much not a descendent of slaves. Your father was a wealthy diplomat and your mother is a blue-blood. My dad was an itinerant mill worker in a non-union shop, so please don't get high and mighty with me...I know poverty PERSONALLY not as part of some social experiment." The camera would have panned over to Edwards' father in the audience and all Edwards would have needed to do then TO WIN THE NOMINATION would be to mouth "I Love You, Dad." Still, the tack Edwards took in defending his being a white guy, that he could compete with McCain everywhere, wasn't a huge winner for him but it probably made a few people think "hmmm..."

Again, to Obama's credit, his citing his winning Elko, NV, answered that one pretty well.

Barack Obama, though, is always a fucking show, though, and not in a good way. He did the idiotic thing. The one thing I thought even he wouldn't be so stupid as to try because it was just so damned obvious and insulting that you could tell even Wolf Blitzer got pissed off. And probably with good reason. Despite Blitzer's being super-MSM and uber-Neo Con, he is a Jew and he dinnae like thIS one at all. OBAMA ONCE AGAIN BLAMED THE DEMOCRATS FOR BEING ANTI-CLERICAL AND ONCE AGAIN HE PRAISED HIS LORD AND SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST. A fucking show. He never lets you down.

I had hopes she'd really cream the debate and have a shot to lay down gin here, but, while I think she "won", alas, it seems like Obama did enough to secure a pretty easy SC win. She only won by default. Obama hurt himself a bit and Edwards helped himself a bit but not enough to make up the ground. Weird for me to be so tepid about her performance which was as solid as any of her other performances. That's the problem her with being great at something, though. It's gets routine.

She'll close the case on Feb 2. Nevertheless, if I'm lucky enough to get the PRD steam about any internal polling this time showing her with a shot to win, I will mention it before the fact this time.

I think I know why these three do not want Kucinich on the stage with them in the short-handed format. Only HRC could play him to a draw but he'd draw blood. He'd just have made very short work of Obama and Edwards.

Final note: go over to BAC's site http://yikes101.blogspot.com/ for more stuff about the debate that the MSM and Kelso missed.

Some second thoughts. I apologize for the contradiction between my purpose in this post and the inclusion of praise for Obama's handling of the Toni Morrison question, because his response was indeed well covered by the MSM. I guess because it was one of the rare times I've had a chance to praise him it felt new to me. On viewing the debate for the second time, I also noticed that HRC seemed to appreciate it, too, and her response, "I'm sure it can be arranged" made me smile, as well. From everything I've heard from people who know her, she's got a tremendous sense of humor which she keeps under tight wraps. Obama's a pretty tightly wound dude, but I'm guessing he's probably got a good sense of humor, too.

Wolf Blitzer, whom I loathe, handled this debate better than any he had moderated before. He had basically been Obama's cut-man in every other debate, but in Myrtle Beach, not so much. He actually moderated the fucking thing. Allowing every charge and counter charge by all three to be aired and defended. I didn't even mind that while I loved the "slumlord" bit, Wolf did come back to it after a few minutes on other topics had gone by, to give Obama a chance to defend himself on it. The open-discussion format for the second half didn't require much of Blitzer other than to not show his bias. If you don't believe that he has one, well...who owns CNN, who's the CEO of that company, whom has that CEO supported with enormous contributions? Blitzer, it seemed to me, enjoyed being a journalist for the first time in a long while, and whether it was out of a sense of some ethnic self-defense or just because he didn't want to allow Obama free points, Wolf Blitzer did not let "Jesus Christ" into the debate. Credit where credit is due.

Also, kudos to CNN for their choices of questioners: Suzanne Malveaux, a stone-cold conservative, who gets that Obama's the conservative in the race and loves it, and Joe Jones, a hard-nosed progressive, who's not fucking around. Malveaux tested the candidates' right-wing bonafides and Jones tested their left-wing bonafides.

Here's what I see going forward. For Obama, the blush is off the rose. He'll probably win SC comfortably and that will pull forth the usual cries of "momentum," but the aura of the Untouchable Regent is gone. I don't know which big media outlet will be the first to become more balanced in their coverage of the race to be the Democratic nominee -- maybe CNN -- but I expect one will, then all. I think. Great article from Der Spiegel on Obama from this perspective.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,530129,00.html

It's odd that the writer found Obama to be the most "European" of the three. European politics, shit, politics in every democratic republic outside the USA, more follow the left-center-right paradigm and tend to focus on hard-core issues of economics and foreign-affairs then they do personality and hot-button social issues. There's probably little focus on those social issues abroad because most have been resolved and accepted in a way that would be troubling even to the left wing of the USA Democratic party.

One would think, viewing politics from that lens, that Edwards or Kucinich or even Clinton because of her international reknown would be seen as the "European" candidate. That Clinton was the only candidate with the finance knowledge to use the banking term "work-out" in response to a question about the sub-prime problem shows that she's probably the true international "centrist." Obama's probably never heard the term.

That Edwards is not considered the "European" candidate explains a whole bunch. I've never really bought into his conversion to populist progressivism. It seemed too abrupt. Too late in life. It seemed to grind with some of his retrograde views on sexuality and criminal justice. He's just too cautious. To be a populist, you have to fucking go for it. If you're a left-wing populist, you must use the word "class" and must take all of the liberal social stuff for granted, assuming that the alternate point of view -- anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, e.g. -- serves the wealthy. That's Jim Hightower. If you're a right-wing populist you must hit hard and -- yes -- divide groups with social issues, while implying a class-consciousness. That's Pat Buchanan. Taking a phrase from the Pat Morita character in The Karate Kid: "Populism, yes. Populism, no. Populiam, guess-so? [makes a throat-slashing motion]."

Nice job by Clinton, by the way, using similar phraseology with regard to Obama's votes of "present": "That's not 'yes.' That's not 'no.' That's 'maybe.'" Damn, that's a pretty underrated movie now that I think about it!

Edwards is too much of Everybody's All American Big White Guy (Obama's correct in a way) to try to squeeze into Dennis Kucinich's suit. I think the penny finally dropped for Edwards on this one. At least it seemed that way by his reference to being the only one who could compete with McCain everywhere. Not a bad tactical move at all by Edwards. Good in-the-running move during the debate and being the White Guy might work going forward. He's got to take some chances and it's clear that he's too timid to be a populist.

Kelso's Nuts love you