By a combination of brilliance on the part of Obama/Axelrod and Clinton/Whoever, Obama has already banked enough Red State delegates so that Reverend Wright while a huge issue, is not a material issue with the delegate count.
If you give Clinton lay-down wins in PA, IN, KY, WVA, PR and ties in NC and the remaining Red States, you can't give her enough to get even in committed delegates. There is not enough time for her to make anything but Red State ties no matter how the speech comes off.
Florida and Michigan are still a mess. Both are likely to end up in court with out an accord between Obama and Clinton and there never will be one because Obama's committed delegate lead is just slightly too strong and Clinton's lead among popular vote of registered Democratic voters is overwhelmingly large. Pelosi tripped over her shoes today. Dean is going to have to be firm on something with regard to FL and MI but even then his voice is only worth 1/3 of the ultimate decision before they hit the state courts.
Wright, Red and Blue states, coalitions, the supers, the speech, Dean, Pelosi...it's all of a piece.
Recent polling has nullified the argument that Obama is stronger heads-up versus McCain. McCain is a slight favorite over both, and a smaller favorite to Clinton.
As I've been writing for I don't know how long, this campaign has never been about "vision" or "themes" or "voices" or "historical firsts." It has been about coalition-building and winning and is straight out of your von Neumann & Morganstern, your Nash, or your Shapley.
Obama's overall strategy has been masterfully played to this moment in time. He has been all things to all people and has assembled a loose, shallow coalition (in commitment not brains) of the Republican anti-Bush vote, the independent vote, the Democratic "Right" and the Democratic "Left" and ALL African-Americans. Clinton always had a knowable floor and ceiling and has had a dependable and narrow (in scope not brains) coalition of rank-and-file labor, loyal Democrats, and Latinos. But not always for neither.
A funny workl with Waters and Watson for Clinton and Capuano and Delahunt for Obama. Baldwin, Hastings, and Payne for Clinton. Inslee, Scharkowsky, Wexler for Obama. Bizarro.
Which brings us to Revernend Wright. And the speech. And to some degree an unfamiliar name, Gavin Newsome, mayor of San Francisco. And two new layers of the Clinton coalition now out-flanking Obama: the Far Right and Far Left.
This sort of drags the media in. CNN is 100% pro-Obama. FOX is 100% anti-Obama. CNN is corporate centrist and has the corporate centrist it wants. FOX is red-meat hard right and is race-baiting any way possible. To wit: after an unsuccessful attempt to link David Paterson's ascension to the governorship of the State of New York to Obam-ania, because well clearly Obama and Patterson are as alike as an apple and a violin, whereas as Obama and Spitzer shared some compadre, CNN is pulling out the stops. During Paterson's inaugural speech, the stirring finale in which Paterson announces all the notables in the audience and ends with "...the two Senators from the great state of New York...the Senior Senator, Charles Schumer (stands, applause) and...the Ju----" CNN then cuts away to the anchor who says "yes, lots of notables there but we bring you ongoing reporting on the aftermath of the tornado in Atlanta." They could at least be subtle about it. Subtlety, never Fox's strong suit, is going with the Reverend Wright's greatest hits in a tape loop!
In the cash market, Obama hovers around -300 and the best available number on Clinton is only +263, down from Obama -430 late last week. This means that there was a wave of money for Clinton and now nobody wants to trade. What happened? To put it bluntly, Obama se metio la pata -- he fucked up -- and jammed himself into an untenable position by not being forthright about Wright on Friday. He distanced himself too much and probably lied in the process.
[I try to fit in as much Spanish as I can to needle Obama supporters because I know how much they LOVE Spanish!]
This was Obama's first major fuckup in this kind of thing. He needed the big coalition and worked hard to focus on his right flank, assuming his left flank was solid. On the gay issue, he refused to have his picture taken with the (straight) mayor of San Francisco, Newsome, because Newsome had just signed a municipal gay-marriage bill into law. He told Wright last April that if things looked good to shut up. It had worked to a fare-thee-well until this weekend. Big trouble now. Obama's Christian bona fides with Red State White Male voters were solid because nobody knew who Wright was. They merely needed to know he was a Hard Christian and not a Muslim. Very effective. It's no longer a committed delegate issue. It is a super-delegate issue because the Red State White guys care very very much. The superdelegates know all this. They want to back a winner in November. End of story.
For me, Wright and Farrakhan are irrelevancies. They have no material effect on my life at all and I believe everybody has a right to a point of view and should voice that view at will. I don't reflexively take an ethnic side. Despite all illusions to the contrary, we yahoodies don't really do that. Quite to the contrary. Hollywood and Wall Street are two places where Jews find ever more elaborate ways to take each others' money and make each other miserable. As LOVEBABZ has pointed out here, it's a whole other smoke in that other strong Democratic voting bloc, African-America. I take her at her word when she writes that Farrakhan, Obama and Wright have a place at the table and always will.
Obama's coalition, his oratory, his nimbleness and his media savvy are on trial tomorrow. He's got to find a way out of having lied about Wright without lying again and put this whole thing to rest, while retaining his coalition and taking "race" off the table. He's got a tough job to do. Basically, he has to put some new spin on his old mantra of "post-racial, post-partisan, new politics of tomorrow" pablum and needs headlines like "STEMWINDER" and "THE NEW MANDELA."
He cannot hide behind BearStearns which is the real problem because he'll get jammed-up having to have an opinion on how complex foreign currency derivatives trades are cleared. It's not that he's not smart enough to understand this, it's that he has never needed to care before. Details like that were "old politics". "Words" and "themes" are his bag and he's got a doozy of a "words" and "themes" political problem.
Yet, no matter what happens tomorrow, it's still going past Denver into court(s). Don't be surprised if your Democratic nominee for President is Al Gore, Jr. Cash price last week +15000. Right now +6000.
Writing as someone who has chosen a "side," the green stuff in my pocket with a rubber band around it, this is what it's all about. Here's Obama's 3AM call. Given the history of the USA and the contemporary culture, this is harder than dealing with Vladimir Putin. Bill Clinton handled something equally testng. Obama gets this right and he'll probably be one of America's best presidents. He gets this wrong and he'll lose his Senate seat to Patrick Fitzgerald.
Kelso's Nuts love you
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8 comments:
I don't have anything to add, but I feel like I haven't commented over here for awhile. Just wanted to let you know that I'm still reading.
SR: But is this post any good?
Unless the polls indicate a landslide loss for Obama IF he's nominated, then they're measuring nothing but wishfulness and false hopes.
His two-decade connection to a black separatist, his wife's claim that she only recently felt her first moment of pride in her country and the photo of a smiling Obama with his arm around Al Sharpton show a pattern that is sufficient to destroy his presidential dreams.
If Obama is on the ticket in November, white voters will feel about him like Jesse Jackson said he feels about young black males when they pass on the streets late at night.
slappz, you should have taken the bet with Kelso when he bet that HRC would win the Dem nomination. You would have won a bundle.
Oh and BTW, now that Bear Stearns has tanked and it appears that others are headed that way (Lehman Bros???), what does your analyst sense tell you about the state of the stock markets? I don't mean to piss on your stock and trade, but being the market analyst, what are your thoughts on this one?
Finally, I have to ask, so what Obama is hugging Al Sharpton? And what's a black separatist anyway? Considering that whites have been trying to separate from blacks since the end of the Civil War, it's so deliciously ironic (but not surprising) that you would even use such a term. Why that would be like the pot calling the kettle black.
N_s: Funny how you should highlight the things I kind of LIKE about Obama! But I'm not like other people or haven't you figured that out yet?
Plus, I'm not talking my book. I'm where I should be more or less. You've argued my case for me. That the Right-Wing of the Obama coalition is very close to abandoning him. What that means in terms of his beating Clinton or McCain is anybody's guess. Obama's got to deal with men who think as you do right now if he wants to be president. Materially, I prefer Clinton for very narrow reasons and will either vote for Cynthia McKinney on the Green Party or pass.
I'm trying to get a handle on how to squeeze extra money out of this. And maybe do some teaching and preaching in the process.
Spartacus:
Slappzie tambien te metiste la pata! Huevo puta pero equivoco el!
He could have laid me $20k/$10k on the CLINTON NO-PRESIDENT proposition and would have way the best of it. Of course, I would have hadged off a big piece of it at CLINTON-YES +125! And free-rolled Clinton, but that's the difference between a player and an analyst. Right now, I'm free-rolling Gore.
Thankfully, none of this is my ideological fight. I just watch, wait and enjoy the show. I like the politics here. Two parties and both are "green". Not horrible on the environment and respect money.
kelso,
As I've said, I'm not interested in having a financial stake in the outcome of binary events like elections. I like the freedom of changing my mind simply because I've heard a better argument.
spartacus, as I reminded kelso in the preceding post, I have no interest in playing another man's game. My political interest is about getting to the points of view without creating an emotional bias due to a financial stake based on an outcome of a pending event.
On the other hand, you were eager to see me bet. In other words, you wanted to be a spectator at an event where you expected to witness a comeuppance. You liked that idea more than placing your own bet.
As for what's ahead in the securities markets? More of the usual.
We've been down this road before. The late 1980s collapse of Drexel Burnham and several other firms that went with it, all while the Savings & Loan Crisis was in high gear is one example.
The Internet NASDAQ meltdown of 2000 is another.
Financial companies are tricky operations. But Lehman and others will survive.
Net, ent. The window of opportunity is now open.
Slappzie: Whether as passenger or pilot, Spartacus is always a part of my conversation here. He did not at that time have a side in the outcome. He was still deciding. He had been responding to your certitude in words but fear in deeds. I never discussed this with him further but I'm sure he would have been happiest with a re-tooled Edwards winning, me losing and you cashing. And I wouldn't have blamed him. You flinched. He didn't. He merely affirmed that there were cultural norms in effect in that proposition and explained what those norms were.
As to this business about politics being on some higher plane than filthy lucre, what planet you on, son? It's all about money or some kind of weird political equivalent -- "power."
I think that this is worse than 1987 or 2000 or even 1929. I don't think Hoover, Reagan or Clinton were as bellicose as Bush and thus had not put the fiscal situation in as bad a place as Bush has. 1929, 1987 and 2000 deficits were well within normal parameters for an economy of the size of the USA. Not so much now. Add Bernanke having flipped the coin and guessed wrong and something bad's coming.
Unless McCain just goes beserk, it won't affect me in the slightest. I'm in a dollar purchasing power parity bubble in Panama because of the canal, the (lack of) tariffs and embargoes, low taxes, the bank privacy laws, the lack of an export market and the vast amounts of every currency in the world in every bank here.
I don't predict developed markets. No es mi vaina o sea. But I'm surely not looking at anything "good" happening in the USA's economy. And since when did intervention become a Republican watchword. It wasn't under Reagan or Bush, Sr. Just under the madness of the freaky little regent and his absurd legacy, I guess.
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