Notes On A Scorecard

I continue to be totally mystified by this Democratic race for the nomination. I really don't know how much more Clinton can do. She and Kucinich demolished every debate. She's shown great agility and strength on the trail and her results have been excellent. She's winning. Yes, as hard as it will be for people to accept this, Clinton has more delegates than Obama does.

While, she has shown many different looks, Obama has shown one, and a damned vapid one it is. I don't know how much longer he can keep saying "change" and "yes we can" instead of something -- anything -- concrete. I think it will wear thin on the people before it wears thin on the press but even if he can sell this snake oil all the way and get the nomination, how is he possibly going to handle McCain? If Obama becomes a crybaby when confronted by Clinton with some inconsistencies in his words and record, what is he going to do when McCain really drills him? Clinton is pretty restrained. McCain is mean bastard with a very bad temper. And if Obama doesn't start defining himself in terms of his ideology and stands on the issues, McCain will be more than happy to do that for him.

Obama has had a rocking chair ride so far. Has completely had the MSM wind at his back. The MSM, though, likes McCain a whole lot more than it likes Obama and Obama's going to be pretty surprised at the rough treatment he could get come September. It will not be pretty. And there is a big electorate out there just itching for a reason not to vote for an African-American for president.

I don't think Obama's getting the nomination. Clinton has a secret weapon. It's the reason that she always does better than anyone expects. There's a pretty big coterie of White Male Democrats who vote for her but lie to the between caucus and exit pollsters. For some reason this is a very embarrassing thing for White Male Democrats to admit to. I think there's a pathology there. These fellows just are not confident about their masculinity and it's an article of faith that a man mustn't be for Clinton. Why? You got me. It has something to do with It Takes A Village. It has something to do with misogyny. It has something to do with out-right fear of women. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I sure wish some American men could come down to Panama and she the kinds of men who worship the ground she walks on. I don't want to put anyone's business in the street but let's just say that these are very, very tough guys. American men would realize in a second that there's absolutely nothing un-masculine at all about either supporting Clinton or being overt about it. Let me be even more blunt about it. Clinton's supporters in the San Miguelito district would consider any gringo Democrat who was ashamed to support Clinton for that reason a -- God, I hate using words like this but if the shoe fits -- marica. Does that sound good? I wish it were different but them's the facts, Jack.

Do any White Male Democrats think the San Miguelito PRD regulars have a problem backing the female left-wing Minister Of Health, Balbina Herrera, for President in 2009 against the male, "Toro" Perez-Balladares? It's a rhetorical question, of course.

To White Male Democrats who support Clinton and are embarrassed about it or don't support Clinton because they're scared to be seen as not masculine, I would encourage you to find a Latino and ask him whom he's supporting. That's stupid. Forget that suggestion. White Male Democrats DON'T KNOW ANY LATINOS. And if even the "Democratic" side of the "immigration" is so damned hard on even legal immigrants, I don't think any White Male Democrats are in a big hurry to get to know any Latinos. All the more reason I feel I made the right move.

So, take Kelso's word for it. Kelso's "White," although becoming more and more Latino by the day. Maybe I'lll be heard and we see some of this in the exit polling but for now it's not bad to have that element of surprise when the votes come in. I get that Latinos are kind of foreign and weird while Obama has the whole Cosby/Urkel thing going but again nobody's handing out man-up points for being a Cosby/Urkel guy. Christ, no White Democrats are baseball fans? Forget that one, too, I guess. I know the kinds of players that all White guys love. The scrappy kind of untalented White guy. The "team player". Like Sean Casey. No, I got the perfect guy. Fucking Mark Lemke! Beltran, Bonds, Sabathia and Santana need not apply. Manny Ramirez ni mucho menos. While White Male Democrats may be a little narrow-minded, they're not stupid and that's why the hidden 8% always shows for Clinton.

Obama never should have opened Aunt Dora's box and less still having opened it, it was bad to have tried to throw the blame at the Clintons of all people because race and ethnicity can be used in many, many ways, as I think I've demonstrated.

And it's time to say "Goodbye, Mittens, we barely knew ye." I don't know exactly why I never could hate Mittens the way I was supposed to. I guess it's the contrarian in me. If the press tells me to love Obama and McCain, and I've just got to hate them. They tell me to hate Clinton and Romney and I'm compelled to like them. I hated Romney's rhetoric as much as everyone else did but having read the New Yorker profile on him and his business experience, I kind of wrote Romney off as being not as good as his governorship was nor as bad as his current rhetoric was. Moreover, he seemed to be in a bizarre troika with Bloomberg and Corzine of businessmen/politicians who were excellent at the former and very good at the latter. I contrast them with folks like W, Perot and Issa who weren't really much good at anything. I've written this before, too, but I thought his experiences building Bain Capital probably gave him the best purchase on the American economy. And while he adopted this uber-hawkish spiel, no son of George Romney was ever going to roast Iraqis for no good reason. Then again, I thought similar things about George W. Bush. Nevertheless, the best Republican leaves and the worst will carry the ensign in the fall. Romney was a complicated guy. You certainly can't say that about McCain.

OK. Time to discuss the George Packer piece in the 1/28/08 New Yorker. It was very readable and had lots of new info but I have to confess to being at a loss as to what his thesis was. Was he damning Obama with faint praise? Praising him with faint damnation? Was it just a hatchet job on Clinton? Or did it reflect that there was more material on her? Did it reflect that Packer's main source for a lot of the Clinton material was Carl Bernstein's uhflattering biography? Or was Packer back-handedly endorsing McCain? I sure don't know.

I do know that the RFK analogy to Obama while tortured to be sure was apt in a certain way, albeit not in the way Packer intended, I'm sure. Look, I'm sorry the guy got assassinated and all especially because he would have been way better than Nixon was. Does no one remember that up until the 1968 campaign, RFK was kind of a dick? He was an aide to Republican Senator Joe McCarthy during the HUAC hearings. He was a hard sonofabitch as JFK's attorney general. He was completely down with the French Colonial side in Vietname before the war started and was a hawk all the way until the 1968 campaign. That feels a little Obama-esque to me.

If Obama is RFK, I kind of think of him as JFK's attorney general, not as presidetial candidate. He was kind of conservative and he was pro-death penalty. The right Clinton comparison is not Hubert Humphrey but rather Johnson's attorney general, Ramsey Clark. RFK was kind of an iron-fist velvet glove guy. Clark was a professional whom Johnson needed to help him deal with the knock-on effects of Obmaa's hated civil rights and anti-war protests that were bedevliing Johnson.

Kelso's Nuts love you