The Best on the Internet: The Gregory Brothers "Auto-Tune the News"

Gotta love The Gregory Brothers when they "auto-tune the news". It's the only time these folks all make sense.

Cool Hand Paul

By MAUREEN DOWD
Paul Newman taught me how to peel a cucumber.

My eating habits were so bad for many years that I didn’t actually know the intricacies of making a salad. So when the man who has made $250 million for charity with Newman’s Own dressings and sauces asked me to help him make a salad in 1986, while I was writing a profile of him for The Times Magazine, I mangled my cucumber so thoroughly that he snatched it away and showed me how to do it.

At a moment when America feels angry and betrayed, when our leaders have forfeited our trust and jeopardized our future, we lost an American icon who stood for traits that have been in short supply in the Bush administration: shrewdness, humility, decency, generosity, class.

When I asked W. in 1999 if he identified with any literary heroes, he said no, but he was drawn to Paul Newman’s defiance in “Cool Hand Luke.”

The Texan cast himself as an anti-hero and rebel. But as president, he knew how to strut only in photo-ops, not when actual calamities loomed or hit.

Newman was a rare liberal who loved the label; he made it onto Nixon’s enemies list for supporting Eugene McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam run. In 1997, I called him when he began writing a bit for The Nation (where he was an investor). He ranted about right-wingers “popping out of rat holes” but also faulted the Clintons.

“Everything is about what’s winnable, not about the morality of the issues,” he told me. In politics, as in racing cars, he said: “You can do anything if you are prepared to deal with the consequences.”

I was nervous the first time I met the star, because he’d been a teenage crush — along with William F. Buckley Jr. (I loved Buckley’s sesquipedalian dexterity — a lost art in the anti-intellectual conservative set of W. and Sarah Palin.)

We met at a restaurant on the Upper East Side, where he proceeded to interview me.

Newman: “What do you know about nuclear disarmament?”

Dowd: “Ummm.”

Newman: “How can you justify The Times’s editorial position on the moratorium?”

Dowd: “Ummm.”

He was deeply uncomfortable at getting adulation for playacting, acknowledging that “there’s something very corrupting about being an actor. It places a terrible premium on appearance.”

With a Butch Cassidy grin, he told me that he pictured his epitaph being: “Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.”

He did not want to talk about his movies; he wanted to talk throw-weights. He liked Bach and Budweiser and playing goofy practical jokes. (Once, when we were driving, he began high-speed bumping the car in front of us, driven by his friend.) He was bored by fashion and embarrassed by women who brazenly flirted with him or asked him to take off his sunglasses to show his blue eyes.

Once, when he was handing out punch at a Westport charity event, a dowager asked him to stir her drink with his finger.

“I’d be glad to,” Newman replied, “but I just took it out of a cyanide bottle.”

He recalled how utterly flummoxed he was the time a stunning call girl approached him on Fifth Avenue and offered to dispense with her fee.

“You want to send her off with something classy and stylish, the way Cary Grant would, or Clint Eastwood,” he said. “You think, how would Hombre handle this? And when this woman came up to me — the guy who played Hud — what comes through? Laurel and Hardy. Both of them.”

He said he was not like his sultry, flamboyant characters: “You don’t always have Tennessee Williams around to write glorious lines for you.”

He and his wife were reputed to have one of the happiest marriages in Hollywood, but the outspoken Joanne Woodward admitted that it took a lot of therapy to cope with the fact that, even though she got an Oscar first, he was able to stay a leading man for four decades. She told a magazine that she was always “uncomfortable and even angry” that “Paul was so much bigger than I was ... Because he was living my fantasy” to be a star.

She would not talk to me for The Times’s profile that her husband did to promote “The Color of Money” — even just on the topic of his role as the director of five movies that she had starred in. She said she did interviews only solo or jointly with him — not about him. That byzantine deal reflected the rivalry that threaded through their romance.

He said that he appreciated her, as he looked around his elegant Fifth Avenue apartment, observing dryly: “If anyone had ever told me 20 years ago I’d be sitting in a room with peach walls, I would have told them to take a nap in a urinal.”

Friday Reflection: Rothschilds, Rednecks and John McCain

Form The Sleuth, by Mary Ann Akers, Wash.Post
Posted at 1:28 PM ET, 09/19/2008

Our favorite political story of the week by far was news of John McCain's highly touted endorsement from one Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a "Hillraiser" who chose to support the GOP presidential nominee over Barack Obama, the man who defeated her dear friend Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary.

De Rothschild didn't stop making news with her endorsement. Later in the week, the famously wealthy London socialite went on to call those working-class Americans who Obama insulted during the primary "rednecks."

"Barack Obama went and called the people who have guns and cling to their religion bitter," de Rothschild told CNN's Campbell Brown. "The people out - who are the rednecks or whatever - are bitter."

Click here to watch a YouTube clip of milady's redneck riff. When, do you suppose, was the last time Lady de Rothschild knocked back a few Pabst Blue Ribbons with a redneck, perhaps over NASCAR or wrestling?

The GOP presidential campaign made much ado this week over the New Jersey-born Baroness for Hillary crossing over to become an Aristocrat for McCain - in the midst, of course, of the nation's worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression, and as both McCain and Obama are desperately trying to woo middle-class voters hit hardest by the ongoing credit crisis. But hey, far be it from the Sleuth to judge when a presidential candidate should roll out the red carpet for a baroness embracing him with open arms and purse.

Lady de Rothschild's decision to back McCain may have had less to do with loyalty to Hillary than it did in joining the rest of the aristocratic clan she married into.

The Rothschilds lent their name and historic property for a fundraiser held for McCain back in March at the storied Spencer House, which is owned by the famous banking family of England. (Mrs. de Rothschild's husband, Sir Evelyn Rothschild, recently sold his stake in the family banking empire, for a reported $600 million.)

Lady de Rothschild - "the flashiest hostess in London," as Portfolio magazine calls her - says she'll be spending much of her time between now and Election Day campaigning for McCain.

But something tells us we probably won't be seeing as much of milady as she thinks we will. Would she really be the most appealing of McCain surrogates to all those "rednecks" clinging to their 401k plans?

Superdelegates Turned Down $1 Million Offer From Clinton Donor

One of Sen. Hillary Clinton's top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization's two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.

Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment magnate and longtime Clinton supporter, denied the allegation. But four independent sources said that just before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Saban called YDA President David Hardt and offered what was perceived as a lucrative proposal: $1 million would be made available for the group if Hardt and the organization's other uncommitted superdelegate backed Clinton.

Contacted about the report, Saban, initially very friendly, became curt. "Not true," he said, "it's simply not true." He declined to elaborate. Did he talk to the YDA superdelegate? "I talk to many, many superdelegates. Some I don't even remember their names." Did he propose any financial transaction? "I have never offered them or anybody any money" in exchange for support or a vote, he said. The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment.

Members of the Young Democrats agonized about the potential fallout of Saban's call; his financial offer represented one-third of the group's 2008 budget. Democratic officials and fundraisers were consulted about how to respond, and at times the discussions were "emotional," one participant said. "It is scary for them, Haim is very powerful, he has great influence over donors who give to them."

Another source said that Hardt and others were acutely aware of Saban's status within Democratic circles and were concerned that their organization would suffer long-term harm if they declined his offer or if news of the proposal became public.

"I said I thought that the appropriate response was to call Haim back and say thank you but we are not interested," said the source. "I also said that it was surely the case that this story would get out because it is too interesting not to and they should think about how to deal with it. It was a day or two [before they responded]. They felt afraid. They were like, 'Holy shit, this is Haim Saban.'"

Nevertheless, the group declined the overture. A YDA official cited moral reservations as well as the overwhelming consensus of its members to back Sen. Barack Obama.

The group had not directly solicited Saban's financial support prior to the call, the official said, and records show no money from Saban has been given since. He did donate $15,000 to the group's 2005 convention, a separate political entity, and is a natural benefactor for groups such as YDA, a 527 which describes itself as the "largest youth-led, national, partisan political organization."

Saban is the nation's largest political campaign contributor over the last decade, FEC records show, giving nearly $13 million since 1999 to dozens of candidates, PACs, and Democratic campaign committees.
This past week, Crystal Strait, a YDA superdelegate, publicly announced she was supporting Obama. Another YDA superdelegate from Puerto Rico, Francisco J. Domenech, endorsed Clinton several months ago. Hardt, the third superdelegate, remains uncommitted.

"Crystal made an independent decision for all the reasons that she stated and David has consistently stated his position of choosing who to support after the primary is done," Alexandra Acker, the executive director of YDA, said when asked about why the two individuals made their respective decisions.

Hardt also released a statement explaining his current neutrality: "With just five contests left, I will wait to declare my superdelegate vote until every young voter has made their voice heard. The Young Democrats of America will proudly unite behind our nominee." Strait did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Saban's offer, which was hinted at last week by John Aravosis, publisher of AmericaBlog, underscores the heightened pitch of the Democratic primary.

Those familiar with campaign finance rules say that monetary promises for superdelegates are "problematic," but may not, in the end, be legally out of bounds.

"This is not an FEC issue," said Jan Baran, a Republican campaign finance attorney. "There are federal and state laws that bar 'vote buying' but I'm not sure they apply in this situation since this involves a convention delegate and not a voter in an election. In short, I don't know whether this is illegal or just hardnosed political horse-trading."

While no other accounts of direct financial offers have surfaced, both Democratic campaigns have attempted to use the power of the check to recruit the support of influential party insiders.

In March, high-ranking donors for Sen. Clinton, including Saban, sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chastising her for suggesting that superdelegates had a responsibility to support the candidate who finished the primary process leading in the pledged delegate count.

"We have been strong supporters of the DCCC," they wrote. "We therefore urge you to clarify your position on super-delegates and reflect in your comments a more open view to the optional independent actions of each of the delegates at the National Convention in August."

And in February, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that Sen. Obama's political action committee had given $694,000 to superdelegates in the previous three years. Of the 81 who had announced their support for Obama at the time, 34 had received donations totaling $228,000.

Is She a Trojan Rabbit?

by Maureen Dowd, NY Times Op-Ed Columnist
Washington, May 11, 2008

Now Barack Obama faces a true dilemma: how best to punish Hillary Clinton.

After 15 months of fighting her off, as she veered wildly from bully to victim, as she brandished any ice pick at hand, whether racial, sexual, mathematical or marital (in the form of her Vesuvian husband), Obama must decide the most efficacious means of doing to Hillary what she has been trying to do to him: putting her in her place.

Her last resort is to continue to press the “Psssst — he’s a black man” tactic. She insisted to USAToday, after the North Carolina and Indiana slide, that she has a broader base, citing an Associated Press article “that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

So how does Obama repay Hillary for running a campaign designed both to unman him and brand him as an unelectable black? Is the most ingenious way to turn the screw by not choosing her as his running mate, or by choosing her?

It is, verily, a sticky wicket.

One top Hillary supporter who is black warns that, despite the giddy dreams of some punch-drunk Democrats, a fusion ticket could backfire because “Americans can’t handle too much change at once.”

But should Obama ignore that caution and appease Hillary fans by putting her on the ticket?

As president, he could announce that, because Dick Cheney abused the powers of his office so grievously, taking the title “Vice” literally, he intends to shrink the vice presidency back to its “bucket of warm spit” Constitutional prerogatives — presiding over the Senate and taking over if the president goes under anesthesia.

He might also neglect to give Bill (whose acronym would be SLOTUS, Second Lad of the United States) full White House access.

Aside from the delight Bill would get from living at the Naval Observatory and having a huge telescope to window-peep with, there wouldn’t be much joy in Hillaryland.

The lady-in-waiting would be surrounded by Obama disciples who disdained her for fighting dirty. And she would be miserable holding up the train of the young prince who usurped her dream, derailing the post-nup she had with Bill to trade places.

As de facto veep for Bill, she had enough leverage over him, due to his shenanigans, to co-opt huge chunks of policy and personnel decisions.

But in a return engagement with Obama at the top, could she really wake up every day in the back seat and wish him well, or would she just be plotting? (Fourteen vice presidents have ascended, after all.) Wouldn’t she be, in Monty Python parlance, the Trojan Rabbit behind the gates?

On a positive note, maybe she could bring back all that stuff she pilfered on her way out.

Obama’s other option, laid out by Teddy Kennedy on Friday, is to go with someone who wouldn’t be a big dark cloud over his sunshiny new politics.

Teddy told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt that Obama should choose a partner “in tune with his appeal for the nobler aspirations of the American people.”

That would be smart for another reason: Hillary has a strange, unnerving effect on Obama, and whenever he is around her, he’s unable to do his best. Probably, it’s because she’s furious, always shaking his hand off her arm, ignoring him, giving him the evil eye and emasculating him, and the Golden One is not used to such rough treatment.

In the last few days, as Hillary has deflated and Obama and the Democrats have dashed for daylight, he has been more like his old self, flashing his all-is-right-with-the-world smile on the cover of Time, joshing and charming Democrats and Republicans as he wooed superdelegates on the House floor, taking on James Carville for insulting his manhood.

“James Carville is well known for spouting off his mouth without always knowing what he’s talking about,” he told Terry Moran on “Nightline.”

Obama will never be at his best around Hillary; she drains him of his magical powers. She’s Jane Jinx to him. It’s a similar syndrome to the one Katharine Hepburn’s star athlete and her supercilious fiancé have in “Pat and Mike.”

The fiancé is always belittling Hepburn, so whenever he’s in the stands, her tennis and golf go kerflooey. Finally, her manager, played by Spencer Tracy, asks the fiancé to stay away from big matches, explaining, “You are the wrong jockey for this chick.”

“You know, except when you’re around, we got a very valuable piece of property here,” he says, later adding, “When you’re around, she’s no good, she’s dead, see?”

The best way Obama can punish Hillary is to reward himself. He’s no good around her, see?

Seeds of Destruction

May 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

By BOB HERBERT, NY Times

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.

(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)

But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.

I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.

The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.

Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.

Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.

Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.

Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.

Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”

It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on.

In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.

So class is not a Clinton forte.

But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.

The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.

A Response From CNN's Roland Martin on Hillary's Campaign's Racial Overtones

Commentary: Democrats need more than working-class whites
Story Highlights
Roland S. Martin: Sen. Hillary Clinton argues she appeals to working-class whites
But Democrats need more than working-class whites to win, commentator says
Clinton wrongly assumes she also will get all traditional Democrats, Martin says
Candidate who's able to build a broad coalition should be nominee, Martin says

By Roland S. Martin CNN Contributor

(CNN) -- Excuse me if a look of bewilderment crosses my face when a surrogate of Sen. Hillary Clinton's starts off on the "we need hard-working white workers to win in November" mantra.

Roland S. Martin contends the Democratic nominee will need a broad-based coalition to win in November.

The candidate herself has now made that notion the primary -- and latest argument -- to superdelegates to convince them she's the best person to beat Sen. John McCain in November.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she told USA Today.

The newspaper quoted her as saying that an Associated Press article showed how Sen. Barack Obama's support among "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

Now, I know I'm not one of those voters she's talking about, but the reality is that hard-working white Americans alone will not put Clinton or Obama in the White House.

Neither will African-Americans alone or young voters, senior citizens, the college-educated, the "no-working" Americans, gays and lesbians, nonreligious voters, veterans, Hispanics, women, etc.

In fact, Democrats alone won't do it. You also must take a good portion of independents.

No Democrat can win the White House unless he or she is able to pull from all the various constituencies in the country, and it's downright silly for the Clinton campaign to assert that idea that hard-working white votes are the only ones that matter.

Sure, the Clinton camp will contend that's not what it's saying. But it sure sounds that way (and no, I don't agree with what's being said on blogs -- that this is playing the "race card").

Is Clinton suggesting that whites who voted for Obama in Iowa, New Hampshire (where she beat him by around 8,000 votes), Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington state, Minnesota and so many other states were phantom voters? Were they not hard-working white voters? Were they only the "eggheads and African-Americans" whom Paul Begala referred to on CNN on election night?

Look, I get spin. And I get that Clinton must figure out some kind of argument that makes sense for the superdelegates to go her way and ignore Obama's lead among pledged delegates, the popular vote and states won. But when a Democratic candidate continues to ram home this notion that hard-working white Americans somehow are the bedrock foundation of the Democratic Party, it's just not true.

Clinton wants to make the argument that her white working-class support in Ohio and Pennsylvania -- states the Democrats need to win in November -- shows she's the best choice.

But one major failure in Clinton's argument is the assumption that all the traditional Democratic constituencies will offer her broad support if she's the nominee. And considering her high negatives, she can't afford any erosion.

Obama could make the case that she has failed miserably in the primaries in garnering young and African-American voters, and without them, she loses.

Not only that, the Democratic Party has a chance to expand the map beyond the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Democrats have a solid shot at winning Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire. Of those states, Obama won four of the seven, and he had narrow losses in New Mexico and New Hampshire.

Small states? Sure. Winnable? Absolutely. Their electoral votes can be as important as the big states.
If Democrats are serious about winning, they are going to have to put on ice this notion that white working-class voters or any other constituencies are the be-all and end-all in November.

Winning the White House is about building a true broad coalition. You should judge which candidate has been able to do so in the primaries. If it's Obama, he's the nominee. If it's Clinton, then she is.

Such a coalition should be on the mind of every superdelegate -- not the debate over which ethnic group reigns supreme at the ballot box.

Roland S. Martin is a nationally award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. Martin is studying to receive his master's degree in Christian communications at Louisiana Baptist University. You can read more of his columns at http://www.rolandsmartin.com/

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Troubling Racial Overtones Emanating from the Clinton Campaign Again

Clinton: Obama Not Winning Over "Hard-Working Americans, White Americans"

The Huffington Post May 8, 2008 09:13 AM

USA Today notices that Sen. Hillary Clinton has begun referring explicitly to her appeal among white voters while on the campaign trail:

Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters -- including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

This is the second time since Tuesday's primaries that the Clinton campaign has referred to the racial dimension of the voting electorate. Ben Smith reports from yesterday's conference call on the state of the race:

And Garin brags, specifically and explicitly, about her strength with the white vote, comparing North Carolina's white voters in North Carolina to those in Virginia. (The conversations have always been about these voters, but they're usually referred to as "blue collar" or by some less specifically racial euphemism.)

"We lost the white electorate in Virginia, started even in North Carolina among the white electorate just two weeks ago, and ended [with] a very significant win of 24 points among those voters," he said, acknowledging that among black voters, Clinton "did not do as well as we would want or need."

Sources: Clinton supporter pressures Pelosi

This just in from CNN: (Note from Greetings preceding) Weinstein is one of the same Democratic financial backers I blogged about back in March (28th), when a group of them threatened Pelosi and the DCCC back then with pulling out their financial support for both the DCCC and various Congressional races, if Pelosi did not step back from suggesting that the superdelegates vote according to their states' votes. They were leading up to this, I'm sure.. which is to win any way possible, despite the popular vote - since Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan and did not campaing in Florida, abiding by the DCCC rules - something Clinton "suggested" she would do at the time. If you go back to my March 28th blog again, you can learn more about these super-rich "superbackers" of Senator Clinton's. Are these folks whose special interests you want running the White House?

By Ed HenryCNN White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut off contributions to congressional Democrats unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi embraced his plan to finance revotes in Florida and Michigan, three officials familiar with their conversation said.

Sources say Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut contributions to congressional Democrats.

Weinstein and Pelosi talked on the phone late last month, the sources said.

The three officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the conversation.

They said Weinstein, a top supporter of Clinton's presidential campaign, appeared determined to buy Clinton more time in her battle against Sen. Barack Obama by pushing for the revote. He was also pressing Pelosi to back off her previous comments that superdelegates should support the candidate who's leading in pledged delegates in early June, the sources said.

Weinstein, a co-founder of Miramax Films who now runs the Weinstein Company, called CNN Thursday to vehemently deny that he issued any threats. "Never, ever was the thought about denying funding to Democrats," he said.

Weinstein said the phone call focused on his offer to put together a team of people to help finance a revote in Florida and Michigan. "I told her people felt there would be a disenfranchisement of voters" unless Democrats came up with a remedy, he said.

Another person familiar with the phone call said what might have upset Pelosi is that Weinstein also suggested that if Democratic leaders "did not fix" the Florida and Michigan problem, powerful Democrats may abandon the eventual party nominee in favor of Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, in November.

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But the three officials briefed on the call insisted Weinstein went further by suggesting that if Pelosi did not consider his proposal on the revote, he would help slow the flow of donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect House Democrats.

"He was trying to get [Pelosi] to promise not to shut the race down," said one of the officials familiar with the call, which came before the primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

But Pelosi, who has repeatedly insisted she is neutral in the presidential showdown, refused to meet Weinstein's demands.

"She said, 'Don't ever threaten me again,'" said a second official familiar with the heated conversation.
Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami would not characterize the phone call to CNN, saying only: "This was a private conversation, one of many the speaker has about the presidential campaign."

The possibility of a revote in the delegate-rich states of Florida and Michigan is a critical issue because it may be Clinton's last chance to catch up to Obama in the delegate count.

Currently, Obama has 1,845 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,686.

The tense confrontation between Pelosi and Weinstein is raising private concerns among some Democrats that tensions run so deep that it may be difficult to heal the party's wounds when the primary season is scheduled to end in early June.

Pelosi's decision to refuse to sign on to Weinstein's proposal for revotes in Florida and Michigan -- which were stripped of their delegates by the Democratic National Committee for moving up their primary dates -- is likely to further irk Clinton allies who have charged that the speaker has been tilting her support to Obama.

A superdelegate herself, Pelosi angered the Clinton camp in March by saying that superdelegates should back the candidate who leads in the pledged delegate count by early June.

Clinton allies saw that as favoring Obama, who has been leading in the pledged delegate count. Pelosi has stressed she is only concerned it will be a problem for the Democratic party as a whole if superdelegates are perceived to have overturned the will of the people by backing a candidate who is behind in pledged delegates.

In March, 20 Clinton fundraisers scolded the speaker in a letter for her remarks on the superdelegate issue, hinting they might hold back funds for the DCCC if Pelosi did not allay their concerns. Weinstein was not among the fundraisers who signed the letter.

"We have been strong supporters of the DCCC," the fundraisers wrote to Pelosi. "We therefore urge you to clarify your position on superdelegates and reflect in your comments a more open view to the optional independent actions of each of the delegates at the National Convention in August."

Pelosi did not back down then either, and Democratic party officials hardly seem scared by any of the threats. The DCCC reported more than $44 million in cash-on-hand recently, far outpacing its rival, the National Republican Congressional Committee.

While Weinstein is a prolific fundraiser for favored candidates like Clinton, he has not given much money out of his own pocket to the DCCC. His only contribution to the DCCC was a mere $2,000 in 1993, according to Federal Election Commission records, though he has given tens of thousands of dollars in personal money to Senate Democrats over the last decade. The mogul has also raised tens of millions of dollars for Democratic candidates from other donors.

Hillary Loans Campaign $6 Million - Is She Asking for Repayment from Senator Obama?

I had recently heard reports on MSNBC's political coverage that (1) Senator Clinton has loaned her campaign $6 million to continue her ill-fated run; and (2) given this past Tuesday's election results, she is looking towards Senator Obama's Campaign to repay that money to her campaign, which I imagine, would in turn go back to repaying the Clintons.

I do not believe the Obama campaign or the Democratic Party owe the Clinton campaign the amount she has loaned her campaign personally. She has chosen to continue her run, long after people have stopped contributing - even her billionaire friends - with just a few of the millions she and Bill have earned in the last years. John Edwards was forced to drop out, although a worthy candidate, because of a lack of funds. Hillary Clinton chose to use her vast personal wealth to promote her campaign.. Unity or not, it would be a misuse of funds of both the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign to offer corporate welfare to a multi-millionaire who made an investment in herself which did not work out.

I hope Senator Obama does not do this. Certainly, Senator Edwards, a great and honorable man, did not make such a request. He withdrew, or suspended, his campaign. Such a request, and any agreement to such a request on the Clintons' behalf would convince me the Democratic Party is back to "business as usual".

I'm missing you now, John Edwards.

Are Black Voters Being Disenfranchised in Today's Indiana Primary? From Black Box Voting

I received this startling news from Blackboxvoting.org, yet I have seen nothing in the press on it, even though it would seem to HEAVILY affect today's Indiana primary. It also seems it would leave open the Indiana results to a legal challenge on disenfranchising black voters, if this story is true. It SHOULD be followed up in the press, I would think. With this story out there on election day in Indiana, I wonder why it hasn't appeared. CNN's lead is John McCain's take on Obama's "elitist" take on judges. That is not a story, but a report on what John McCain is saying in a political statement. Who will cover this MAJOR Indiana voting story? Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - 6:22 am:
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Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - 6:22 am:

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Yesterday, we reported that according to Indiana's own figures, 1.1 million voter registrations had been cancelled, one-quarter of a million of those in just two counties. Another researcher, Steve Rosenfeld, began tracking back through data from the Election Assistance Commission, finding that the cancellation quantities didn't jive with the numbers you'd expect. According to Rosenfeld, after talking with the office of the Indiana Secretary of State the explanation is that "cancelled" does not mean "cancelled registrations" it means "changes" to registrations.

IF TRUE, THIS RAISES ANOTHER CONCERN

Because Indiana is implementing an ID requirement, and this will require that voters name and address match when the voter registration database is compared with their ID, an unscrupulous data entry person would no longer need to PURGE registrations in order to knock people off the voting rolls. All that's required is CHANGING the registration slightly, to introduce typos.

Many locations are now enamored of using "electronic pollbooks" instead of the paper printouts. We all know what happens when you enter a name with a typo: The computer says "can't find".

Try it. Use any computer program you have, and enter your name with a typo. Then do a search for your name. If I typo "Ben Harris" and search for "Bev Harris" I won't find it. Now, with the paper pollbooks, a pollworker might see that it's a typo, if my address is the same. Whether they accept that Bev Harris is Ben Harris is open to how flexible they feel at the moment.

With electronic pollbooks, they may not find the typo-name at all. And if an unscrupulous political hack enters "changes" or "updates" that introduce a typo into the address, or name and address, it may be impossible to find you at all. Example: I alter "Bev Harris" to make it read "Ben Harris" and then change "973 SW 43rd St" to "793 SW 43rd". Gone. Poof.

Some say the problems with the Florida 2000 election have now been codified into federal law nationwide. In terms of the now-mandatory statewide voter lists, that's true. These centralized records allow changes to be introduced from either your county or the state, and a single person can cook the list.

When you add voter ID into the mix, it allows very subtle attacks that will produce mismatches. Mark my words, the new watchword for 2008 will be "human error." Add "human error" to the term "computer glitch" for meaningless and unacceptable terms that introduce voter disenfranchisment without accountability.

SECOND CLASS BALLOTS

If your name is not found on the voter rolls, you are entitled to vote on a provisional ballot. However: The networks will call the race, engaging in their traditional journalistic malpractice of saying who "won" when they mean who they "project WILL win". NO PROVISIONAL BALLOTS ARE CONSIDERED AT ALL when the networks "call the race." They are taking their projections from called and faxed-in reports of the voting machine results tapes -- and no provisional ballots are in those results.

Provisional ballots are also "second class" ballots because:
- They are not counted until many days later
- Some of the rules applied to which ballots count or don't count actually disenfranchise voters based on pollworker errors. For example, in Volusia County Florida, citizen extraordinaire Susan Pynchon fought to get a whole set of provisional ballots counted that they were about to deny, based on the reason that "the poll worker didn't write the REASON it was a provisional ballot" on each one.

CANCELLED DOESN'T MEAN CANCELLED

The word "cancelled" is the one chosen by the Indiana election officials and their computers. They say it doesn't mean "cancelled." Here is a picture of Porter County from their report. Cancelled means cancelled, or cancelled means changed, but something happened in Porter County and there is no explanation as to what:




Here is a link to the original Indiana document containing voter registration information:
http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/pdfs/Statewide_Voter_Count_by_County5.1.08.pdf

According to this document, here is a map with the percentage of voter registrations cancelled or changed, along with the quantities.



If you try to vote and they can't find you on the list, please report it to us for data collection and public records actions.

DISCUSS AND EVALUATE AS VOTER REPORTS AND RESULTS ROLL IN

You can post and discuss the Indiana and North Carolina 2008 primary elections here.

Here is a compendium of links that you may find helpful when tracking incoming results. Some of them are live already, others will go live as results come in:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/73764.html

--Fear, by Harry Truman "When even one American - who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all of Americans are in peril."

It Sounds Like an 80's Tune: "We're Goin' On A GAS TAX... HOL-i-DAY!

I'm thinking we should promote Hillary's and McCain's "Gas Tax Holiday" co-plan ( co-conspirators?) as the following:

1 - A 1980's song by The Go-Go's (We're Goin' On a Gas Tax... HOL-i DAY)
2 - A 1950's Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movie (Gas Tax Holiday)

I think I'm feeling Hillary as more number 1.... let's write a song for her for it. And McCain and Bush can use it, too.

Obama Proposes Gas-bag Holiday

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor May 5, 2008

Breaking News

Prominent Gas-bags Oppose Plan After a week in which a chorus of television pundits talked about the Rev. Wright controversy ad nauseam, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama introduced a proposal today to silence such repetitious discussions. "I am proposing a gas-bag holiday," Sen. Obama told a capacity crowd in Indianapolis. "Under my plan, all gas-bags would go on vacation until the second week of November." Some observers called the Illinois senator's plan a shrewd one since, in addition to the pundits, it seemed guaranteed to sideline the Rev, Wright himself for the next four months. But within minutes of floating the idea of the gas-bag holiday, Sen. Obama came under fire from several prominent gas-bags, including MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "This whole gas-bag holiday thing raises two important questions: how much has the Rev. Wright controversy hurt Barack Obama?" he said. "Also, how much has the Rev. Wright controvers y hurt Barack Obama?" CNN's senior gas-bag, Lou Dobbs, said that Sen. Obama's proposal of a gas-bag holiday should make Americans "question his patriotism." "The right to be a TV blowhard is as American as wearing a flag pin on your lapel," he said. "By the way, isn't Hussein a Mexican name?" Elsewhere, Iran "definitely has an active nuclear program," said new White House spokesperson Paula Abdul.

Indiana Holiday

May 3, 2008

Gail Collins, NY Times

Our question for today is: What does the debate over that cheesy plan for a gas tax holiday mean to the American voting public?

This all started with John McCain, who proposed suspending the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day in order to give regular hard-working Americans “a little relief.” In terms of rational policy-making, this is a little bit like announcing that you want to reduce tensions in the Middle East by drilling an enormous hole in Sweden.

Economists instantly pointed out that dropping the tax would cost the government around $9 billion, possibly add to the already obscene profits of the oil companies and do little or nothing to actually lower the price of fuel. Not to mention that it points us in the exact wrong direction on global warming and energy independence.

But, hey, nothing’s perfect.

McCain has taken to responding to criticism like this by saying that his proposal is not “the end of western civilization as we know it.” This is a little weird coming from the guy who spent the early primary season depicting Hillary Clinton’s attempt to get a million dollars for a Woodstock museum as a nuclear strike against the nation’s economic security.

The real point of the tax holiday proposal is, of course, to show sympathy for the little guy. It’s been a tough few months for McCain and the smallish folk, what with all those tax-cut plans for the wealthy. And then there was the health care speech when he told people to take responsibility for buying their own insurance policies and “watch your diet, walk 30 or so minutes a day and take a few other simple precautions” so they won’t get sick. We will think of this forevermore as his Let Them Not Eat Cake moment.

Sniffing at the Washington elite who make fun of his tax holiday, McCain told Joe Scarborough Thursday on MSNBC: “You know that the people who live in Georgetown could literally walk to work.” Yes, there is nothing worse than snobs who live close to the office making fun of a gas-tax holiday that would in the best possible circumstances save real hard-working Americans 30 cents a day. The point is particularly piquant when made by a guy who flies around the country in his wife’s private plane.

Meanwhile, to make up for the lost revenue, McCain says “all we need to do is cut out hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of pork-barrel projects.” These are presumably different pork-barrel projects from the ones McCain is going to cut in order to pay for $613 billion in permanent tax cuts.

Hillary Clinton, who jumped on the gas-tax holiday bandwagon posthaste, wants to pay for it with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. This makes her plan much more fiscally responsible. Not only does she balance the books, she turns a proposal that was unlikely to ever get passed into one that could not make it through the Senate if Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy both rose from the dead and hand-carried it there.

There are few things more satisfying than taking a strong stand in favor of something that is never going to happen. Free pander!

“I find it, frankly, a little offensive that people who don’t have to worry about filling up their gas tank or what they buy when they go to the supermarket think it’s somehow illegitimate to provide relief for ... millions and millions of Americans,” said Clinton the other day. She rammed the point home with a photo-op at a gasoline station while, as The Washington Post pointed out, her own fleet of S.U.V.’s ran their engines patiently right out of camera range.

Barack Obama thinks this is all incredibly stupid. He is certainly not pander-phobic himself. (See: Nafta, promise never to raise middle-class taxes.) But he drew a line on this one. In Indiana, his new ad calls it “a short-term quick fix that we can say we did something even though we’re not really doing anything.”

All this actually tells us something about the Democratic candidates, which has nothing to do with fuel prices. Obama believes voters want a sensible, less-divisive political dialogue, that the whole process can become more honorable if the right candidate leads the way. Hillary really doesn’t buy that. She has principles, but she doesn’t believe in principled stands. She thinks that if she can get elected, she can do great things. And to get there, she’s prepared to do whatever. That certainly includes endorsing any number of meaningless-to-ridiculous ideas. (See: her bill to make it illegal to desecrate an American flag.)

On Tuesday, root for the Democrat whose vision of the political process comes closest to matching your own. And I do not want you to be swayed by the fact that Hillary and Barack are finally having a policy debate, and it’s about the dumbest idea in the campaign.

Hillary Should Be Dismissed From The Democratic Party For Iran Comments

Huffington Post, Ben Cohen

4 hours ago -Nobody seems to have noticed that Hillary Clinton has broken international law by threatening Iran with 'obliteration.'

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said in an interview with ABC. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Why are alarm bells not ringing?

In chapter I, article II of the United Nations Charter, it states:
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

The U.N Charter was signed in San Francisco in 1945 by the United States along with 50 other countries. Each country is bound by its articles, and the treaty prevails over all other treaties (including 'special' relationships with other nations). In other words, regardless of any hypothetical attack on Israel, the United States is legally bound not to threaten Iran or any other country. This is also enshrined in the constitution. Article IV Clause II states:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

It is incredible that public debate regarding Hillary Clinton's threat to annihilate Iran centers around campaign strategy rather than international law. I have been scouring the mainstream media to find anything criticizing Clinton's remarks for their illegality, but can find nothing other than comments like 'Clinton's tough talk on Iran' (taken from ABC News)

While most Democrats have kept quiet, Obama rightly denounced Clinton's remarks saying, "It's not the language we need right now, and I think it's language reflective of George Bush."

» Full Story on Huffington Post

Barack Obama, Reverend Wright, and My Iron Man Suit

Chronicle and John Diaz for the chance to write the essay this video is based on. I've been a supporter of Sen, Barack Obama for President for 17 months, and one large reason is that he's like me. We share the same August 4th birthday, and have walked similar paths of racial discovery. Both of us have carved out our niche as individuals able to walk in different circles and still be ourselves. That's not easy; it comes as those around you tell you what they think your "place" in life should be; it's no wonder that I felt violated by Rev. Jeremiah Wright's National Press Club speech, as much as Senator Obama did.

Pastor Wright made me put on my Iron Man Suit again.

Manoj: Telemarketer Elite

This is funny. Except for the fact that Hillary and McCain voted FOR Bush's bill to give credit card companies more power to collect debt and raise interest rates, while simultaneously reducing the power of Americans to be able to declare bankruptcy from 30 % interest rates, even under extreme circumstances, such as health issues. (Is this their universal health care? Debtor's prison?) And.. she was FOR NAFTA before she was AGAINST it. But enjoy and smile.. perhaps a change is in the wind...

Was Jeremiah Wright's Speech Set Up By a Clinton Supporter?

Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?

NYDailyNews.com
Errol Louis

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted.


Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.

A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister).

It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.

On a blog linked to her Web site- reynoldsworldnews.blogspot.com
Reynolds said in a February post: "My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you" to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.

The same post criticized Obama's "Audacity of Hope" theme: "Hope by definition is not based on facts," wrote Reynolds. It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time."

In another blog entry, Reynolds gives an ever-sharper critique of Obama: "It is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray, the senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement."

I don't know if Reynolds' eagerness to help Wright stage a disastrous news conference with the national media was a way of trying to help Clinton - my queries to Reynolds by phone and e-mail weren't returned yesterday - but it's safe to say she didn't see any conflict between promoting Wright and supporting Clinton.

It's hard to exaggerate how bad the actual news conference was. Wright, steeped in an honorable, fiery tradition of Bible-based social criticism, cheapened his arguments and his movement by mugging for the cameras, rolling his eyes, heaping scorn on his critics and acting as if nobody in the room was learned enough to ask him a question.

Wright has, unquestionably, been caricatured and vilified unfairly. The feeding programs, prison outreach and other social services he has built over more than 30 years are commendable, and his reading of the Judeo-Christian tradition as an epic story of people trying to escape slavery is far more right than wrong - and not something to be caricatured or compressed into a 10-second sound bite.


But Wright should have known - and his friend and ally Reynolds, a media professional, surely knew - that bickering with the press can only harm Wright and, by extension, Obama.


I hope that wasn't their goal.

Judgment Day looms for Hillary Clinton the wrecker, London Times

They endorse Barack for hope, but fear that Hillary will play on our fears as Bush did.

From The Sunday Times of London
April 20, 2008 Andrew Sullivan

Even after all the hype, this Tuesday’s vote in Pennsylvania will be a watershed primary election. This isn’t because it could determine whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues on its brutal, nihilistic path towards the destruction of the most promising figure in the Democratic party since Kennedy.

It isn’t because it’s been an age since the last primary vote and every nasty toxin in American culture has been drawn to the surface by the Clinton poultice. It isn’t even because Pennsylvania is an indisputably important and large state that any Democrat needs to win in November.

It is because the Clintons have turned Pennsylvania into a microcosm of what they think the general election will be in November. And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove – Bush’s master of the dark arts – destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.

That’s what is being tested this coming week. It may be the most important vote in America until the final one in November.

For a month now, Obama has been pummelled by a Democrat in ways I have never witnessed in a primary campaign. Senator Hillary Clinton has directly argued that he is less qualified to be commander-in-chief than the Republican nominee, John McCain. She has said that she doesn’t know for sure that he is not a secret Muslim. She has said his choice of church is unacceptable to her. She has said he deliberately wants many Americans to continue scraping by without health insurance.

Her campaign has insinuated that he was once a drug dealer. Her husband has equated him with the rabble-rousing preacher Jesse Jackson. The Clintons have publicly associated Obama with domestic terrorist William Ayers, with the militant Palestinian group Hamas, and with antisemitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan. And what is remarkable about all this is that most of it was not done by surrogates, but by a former president of the United States against a senator in his own party, and directly by Clinton herself. Every time you think: “Nah, they won’t go there, will they?” – they do.

Right now, in Pennsylvania, Clinton is running only negative advertisements designed to exploit Obama’s gaffe a fortnight ago, when he described some rural Pennsylvanians as bitter, and as “clinging” to some traditional identities because they feel left out of economic and social change. It was a stupid offhand comment, easily misinterpreted, and Obama deserved a hit.

But this is what the Clintons’ actual advertisement says, voiced by several unidentified Pennsylvanians: “I was very insulted by Barack Obama.” “It shows how out of touch Barack Obama is.” “The good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said.”

This is a swing state. For the Clintons baldly to coopt exactly the kind of antielitist rhetoric used to marginalise Democrats by Republicans for three decades is to take the campaign warfare to a whole new level of earth-scorching.

For good measure, the ABC News debate last Wednesday night could have been crafted by Rove. For the first three-quarters of an hour, every conceivable personal attack on Obama was aired by the moderators, including former Clinton protege, George Stephanopoulos.

Obama was asked if his failure to wear an American flag lapel pin at all times was a sign that he didn’t really love America. He was asked if he was an elitist. He was asked if he secretly condoned domestic terrorism, on the grounds that an old 1960s Weather Underground radical had sponsored a fundraiser for him. He was asked whether his former pastor, an ex-marine, was a patriot. And on each occasion, Clinton jumped in to exploit the attacks by the ABC moderators. It was so brutal and unrelenting that you almost looked away.

Obama, moreover, wilted. He didn’t punch back. He seemed completely exhausted, drained, almost detached. I’ve seen him this way before, but never before 10m viewers in prime time. It was his worst performance yet.
In one debate, all the tactics deployed by Republicans since Lee Atwater ran George Bush Sr’s guns-and-flags-and-taxes campaign in 1988 were unloaded on the rookie. Clinton grinned. The next day, her husband said she “did great”. There was almost a liberated sense in the Clinton camp that, finally, they had been able to do to a Democrat what Republicans had done to them for the past two decades: insinuate treason, lack of patriotism, elitist snobbery, countercultural deviance, and every other red-blue hot-button meme that could stroke some electoral erogenous zone somewhere.

Not since the Clintons ran radio ads in 1996, bragging that they had defended American values from homosexuals, had the adoption of pure Republican tactics been so obvious. And this time, it was against a Democrat.

This, the Clintonites tell us, is what the Republicans will do to Obama this autumn. So we’re only showing you! The strategy is to persuade super-delegates that only the Clinton brand can withstand Rove-style attacks, and so foment a revolution before or at the convention to dislodge the candidate with the most pledged delegates and the greatest number of popular votes.

They are, of course, only doing this for the sake of their party, their country and the world. That the tactic also correlates with the Clintons’ recapturing control of a party that was finally moving past them is pure coincidence.

And that’s why Tuesday will be so instructive. Hillary Clinton should win Pennsylvania easily. She had a 20-point lead until relatively recently. And if the Clintons are right about their classic Atwater-Rove tactics, she will win by double-digits after throwing the kitchen sink, the boiler, the couch and the septic tank at her opponent.

However, if Obama keeps her lead to single digits, if he goes on to win in North Carolina and Indiana, if the momentum of the race does not change, something else will be shown.

It will show that the crisis America is in now has made the kind of tactics of the past two decades moot. It will show that the issues of the Iraq occupation, the teetering economy, the unsustainable debt, the collapsing dollar, the constitutional disarray and the moral collapse of the torture programme are now more salient than cultural identity. It will show that the voters actually want to debate something more than lapel pins and who is or is not a secret Muslim or patriot. It will show we are in a new era.

Maybe we’re not. Maybe the old politics and the old patterns have one more turn of the screw to go. Maybe the Clintons are right. And that’s the beauty of democracy. On Tuesday, we will go a long way towards finding out.