Prediction For North Carolina, Indiana Democratic Presidential Primary

Each primary night this year we thought that the results would somehow move the Democratic nominating process to a point where the eventual nominee would be known.  Once again, for better or worse, depending on your point of view, we will not know where the nomination will fall on Tuesday night after the North Carolina and Indiana Democratic primaries are held.  If you are a political junkie such as myself, this election cycle is like eating chocolate brownies covered with raspberry sauce every day!   As a Democrat who understands the needs of the nation, I know the necessity of wrapping the process up, and having a party nominee that can win in November.  But we will not know the nominee on Tuesday night.  But since I am enjoying this campaign I thought I would add a few thoughts and early predictions for the May 6th contests.

In the nearly two weeks since the Pennsylvania primary if has been a series of tumultuous blows and counter-blows as the Barack Obama campaign was forced to deal with the remarks of Reverend Wright.  At a time when Hillary Clinton was capitalizing on a new found populist message regarding gas prices and a cozy relationship with the “bubba vote’, Obama was scrambling to tamp down the daily news stories over his former pastor.  He will have a full-blown interview on “Meet The Press” with Tim Russert Sunday morning, and will have a chance to round the rough edges off a hard week.  But the only way to blunt the hard news these past weeks is with convincing wins for Obama on Tuesday.  I do not see that in the cards.

It is imperative that Barack Obama score above the expectations in order to stop the hemorrhaging in the minds of the superdelegates about his nomination.  While North Carolina has long looked favorable for him, and still does, he must show that he has not lost ground by allowing Clinton to close the gap and come in with a close second.  Sadly I do not think that will happen.  Where Obama had enjoyed a double-digit lead over Clinton, he now has been reduced to the single numbers in some polls.

The real prize however is in Indiana where the once tight race has opened in Clinton’s favor. The key will be the blue-collar voters that seem more than willing to give the nod to Hillary “where is my gun and shot of whiskey” Clinton.  I may disagree with her on issues, but I do not discount her ability to morph into whatever the campaign requires.  That will prove handy to some extent if she is eventually the Democratic nominee.  However, that concession in no way speaks to the more principled stand and demeanor that I think most want, and need, from a president.  Clinton is seen in poll after poll to lack the integrity and truthfulness test.  In the end, should she become the nominee, after the war and economy are debated endlessly, this character issue will weigh on the mind of the voters and pose as her biggest problem.  McCain will use this flaw over and over again to his advantage, if Clinton were to be the nominee.

In Indiana I will be watching the number of Republicans who switch over to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton, knowing that she is the weakest candidate to face John McCain.  Meanwhile independents are more likely to line up for Obama.  It seems that voters who are not Democrats could select the winner in Indiana.

I do not predict a sweep of the contests for either candidate.  If Clinton were to win both North Carolina and Indiana her rival Barack Obama would still have more delegates, and the struggle would continue as he fights to be the nominee.  I have long argued the eventual nominee will be the person leading with the most elected delegates.  The problem with Clinton doing well at the end of the nominating process is that the superdelegates are getting mighty nervous.  I do not discount the major news event that a sweep for Clinton would create, but I do not think superdelegates can overturn the will of the powerful forces that have made Obama all but the nominee, without a fissure so deep and wide in the party that the only outcome would be a GOP victory in November.  A Clinton sweep would be a blow to the Obama campaign, but not one that would necessarily prove to be the end for him.   (By this time some readers may think I never give Clinton a break….I actually like her but think her campaign style and tactics are slimy.)

However, if Obama were somehow to sweep the two states on Tuesday it would then be the end for Clinton’s White House dream.  If Obama could sweep after the two weeks he has endured, then a clear message so loud will have been sent that even the Clinton household would understand it.

So with all these thoughts and views what are my predictions?

I think that Obama wins by 6 % in North Carolina.

Clinton wins with 8 % in Indiana.  A more conservative and blue-collar crowd that has no ability to process the Obama phenomenon will prove to be Clinton’s gift. 

Technorati Tags: Predictions, NorthCarolinaPrimary, IndianaPrimary, BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Election08, Democrats, JohnMcCain

The Problem Is Not With Reverend Wright, But With Republican Operatives

I have argued here on this blog that the type of political tactics which allows for the Reverend Wright matter to dominate the whole of America is troubling.  Barack Obama suffers as the result of the GOP working over-time to demonize him, the one candidate they fear most in the fall campaign.

Now comes a well written national article that adds on to that theme.  THIS IS A MUST READ!

Not all of what Wright says is comforting.

His views are not universally appealing, nor are they or should they be seen as unassailable.

But, for the most part, they are well much within the mainstream of American religious and political discourse.

The problem is not Jeremiah Wright.

The problem is a contemporary political culture that has come to rely on character assassination as an easy tool for reversing electoral misfortune — and a media that willingly invites manipulation.

Let’s not forget how Wright became an issue in the 2008 presidential race. Republican operatives, fretful about their party’s political fortunes, decided that the only way to weaken the candidacy of Wright’s longtime parishioner, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, was by suggesting the Democratic presidential front-runner was in the sway of an anti-American radical.

That end was achieved by separating out from long and thoughtful sermons regarding matters biblical and political seemingly offensive phrases and then inviting the Grand Old Party’s media echo chamber to repeat the sound bites until they became conventional “wisdom.”

This is a classic guilt-by-association maneuver, played out so aggressively in the current circumstance that it would make Joe McCarthy blush. But it has worked, at least in part because people of good faith have not taken the time to assess and appropriately answer the charge that Obama’s connection to Wright confirms the candidate to be either a closet radical or, worse yet, a dupe of some free-floating, ill-defined but still frightful fringe.

###

Wright can be unsettling, thought-provoking, often right and sometimes wrong. But he is neither anti-American nor unpatriotic.

In more ways than Republican and now Democratic critics seem prepared to admit, Wright is the embodiment of an American religious and political tradition of challenging the country’s sins while calling it to the higher ground that extends from the founding of the republic. No less a figure than Thomas Jefferson — who constructed that wall of separation between church and state but who worried a good deal about questions of the divine — worried openly about the retribution that would befall a nation that permitted slavery.

“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other,” wrote Jefferson in 1781’s Notes on the State of Virginia, where he asked, “(Can) the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

The wrath of God brought down on a country that permits slavery? A nation damned by its original sin? God damn America?

America has been blessed from its beginnings by champions of liberty, by abolitionists and civil rights marchers, by suffragists and union organizers, by anti-imperialists like Mark Twain and challengers of the military-industrial complex like Dwight Eisenhower. Necessarily, these patriots have said some tough things about American leaders and policies. They have acknowledged flaws that are self-evident. Yet, they have not done so out of hatred. Rather, they have loved America sufficiently to believe it can be as good and as just as figures so diverse and yet in some very important ways so similar as Thomas Jefferson and Jeremiah Wright have taught us.

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Election08, Democrats, ReverendWright

Federal Judge Forces Action On President Bush’s Interior Department Regarding Polar Bears And Global Warming

The Bush Administration has dragged its heels so long with the matter over saving the polar bears that a federal judge has been forced to press the Interior Department to make a decision.

A federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide within 16 days whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken agreed with conservation groups that the department missed a Jan. 9 deadline for a decision. She rejected a government request for a further delay and ordered it to act by May 15.

“Defendants have been in violation of the law requiring them to publish the listing determination for nearly 120 days,” the judge, based in Oakland, Calif., wrote in a decision issued late Monday. “Other than the general complexity of finalizing the rule, Defendants offer no specific facts that would justify the delay, much less further delay.”

Allowing more time would violate the Endangered Species Act and congressional intent that time was of the essence in listing threatened species, Wilken wrote.

The ruling is a victory for conservation groups that claim the Bush administration has delayed a polar bear decision to avoid addressing global warming and to avoid roadblocks to development such as the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast to oil company bidders.

I say in November that we put Bush and Company, and all their allies, on the endangered list in government.

Technorati Tags: PolarBears, PresidentBush, InteriorDepartment,

Did Barack Obama Do The Right Thing By Denouncing Reverend Wright?

One can understand the political needs that Barack Obama faces as he runs for the Democratic Party nomination, while at the same time understanding the desire of Reverend Wright to publicly defend himself.  The right-wing use of Wright’s comments, often out of context, is not a new tactic for the GOP.  Contortions and confusion is a game plan they use often.  Sadly it works.

As CNN reports Obama made it clear today that he was ”outraged” with Reverend Wright over comments made in the past couple of days.

“I have been a member of Trinity Church since 1992. I have known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years,” he said at a news conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “The person I saw yesterday is not the person I met 20 years ago.”

What particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing,” Obama said, adding that Wright had shown “little regard for me” and seemed more concerned with “taking center stage.”

I cannot prevent him from making these remarks,” but “when I say I find these comments appalling, I mean it. It contradicts what I’m about and who I am. … It is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country.”

In a break with previous comments, Obama focused his criticism on Wright the man, and not simply his remarks.

Obama had at the center of his campaign the idea that the old ways of ‘doing’ politics was not in the best interest of the national needs.  Many agreed and cheered him on.   More importantly they voted in large numbers for him.  When confronted with the Wright matter I had hoped that Obama would speak to the larger themes of not allowing the conservative’s rant on Wright, which was amplified by the media, to deflect from the larger issues, and thereby drive the race for the White House.  By denouncing his pastor in the fashion that he did, Obama gave in to the basic premise that the conservatives had laid out when they started their constant barrage of Wright.  The GOP playbook worked again.  And the public gets the shaft.

What Obama should have done is attack this style of campaigning by the Republicans.  These types of political attacks on Barack Obama about his pastor are aimed at playing politics with the lowest common denominators.  Again.  Will the Wright matter effect the price of gasoline or improve health care coverage for working Americans?

The GOP has a bloody war on their hands and an economy that has soured into a recession.  So they needed to have a diversion that affects the strongest person who could kick their ass in November. 

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, ReverendWright, CNN, Election08 

Helen Thomas Still Seeking Truth In White House

I have admired and respected Helen Thomas all my life. She has demonstrated what a tenacious and credible White House reporter is all about.   Thomas again proved her mettle when taking on White House Press Secretary Dana Perino yesterday over the issue of torture.

Technorati Tags: HelenThomas, DanaPerino, Torture, WarOnTerror, PresidentBush, WhiteHouse

 

Hillary Clinton’s Win in Pennsylvania Gained By Dirty Tactics At Expense Of Barack Obama

The idea that the Democratic nomination should be Hillary Clinton’s, and that her right to that goal is paramount above the needs of the party and the nation, is hard to understand.  Granted there needs to be within the heart of every candidate the idea that they are the best for the position for which they campaign in order to make it through the daily grind of the race.  That is, I suspect, only a natural feeling.  If a candidate did not feel so strongly that they were superior to the opposition the race should never have been attempted.  But when ego and power becomes the driver of the campaign at the expense of the greater good, than we need to examine that candidate even more closely.  That is where we are this morning after the conclusion of the Pennsylvania Primary where Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama 55% to 45%.

The issue is how she won in yesterday’s primary.  By ripping Barack Obama, who many Democrats feel will be the eventual nominee this fall, she only gives ammunition to the Republicans who drove the nation off the road during the past two terms of President Bush’s time in office. 

Despite Clinton’s victory in the state, overall expectations were on Obama’s side. Fifty-five percent said they expected him, not Clinton, to be the party’s eventual nominee.  And Obama supporters were more confident: just 5 percent of his supporters thought Clinton will win the nomination; by contrast, 22 percent of Clinton supporters said they think Obama will be the nominee.

By undermining Obama in such harsh and deep ways, when she knows full well there is no way she can become the nominee, she is feeding the opposition talking points for the fall.  In addition, she is driving a wedge through the Democratic Party that may not be so easy to mend after she has finally been defeated from her seemingly never-ending quest to chase a dream.  Two-thirds of voters in exit polling in Pennsylvania felt that Clinton attacked Obama unfairly.

Bigger needs and issues, from the Iraq War to the recession that grips the nation, should be the topics that are brought home to the dinner tables of the voters.  Instead a steady stream of ‘nasty’ is wrapped in campaign bunting by the Clinton forces and presented as political discourse.  The whole nation suffers by her tactics.

The fact that Barack Obama leads in the national polls, and has more delegates and popular votes, gives no good reason for superdelegates to view Clinton with more enthusiasm now then they did before her six-week trek through the mud of Pennsylvania.  She has taken the Democratic Party on a path no thoughtful or wise party elders wish to travel. 

We are where we were before Pennsylvania.  Barack Obama is ready to be the nominee, and qualified to be President of the United States.

Who will tell Hillary Clinton it is time to exit the stage?

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, HillaryClinton, PennsylvaniaPrimary, Democrats, Election08, IraqWar, PresidentBush, ABCNews

 

When Speaking Of Barack Obama Do Conservatives Mean ‘Uppity’ When They Say ‘Elitist’?

A great friend sent a link today with an article by David Shipler that deserves a read.  The use of words, and the coded messages they are meant to convey, is very important to understand and take note of in our society and political process.    The whole matter arises here due to the phenomenal rise of Barack Obama as a very possible Democratic presidential nominee. And the underlying racism that is only a breath away in far too many cases.

For a couple of weeks far too much has been made of the “bitter” remark that Obama made.  In response to the speech conservatives have labled Obama as ‘elitist.’  Shipler writes that this response harbors a darker and more serious message by those who use the term.

Perhaps he (Obama) was being more sociological than political, and more sympathetic than condescending. But when his opponents branded him an elitist and an outsider, his race made it easier to drive a wedge between him and the white, rural voters he has courted. As a black man, he was supposedly looking down from a place he didn’t belong and looking in from a distance he could not cross.

This could not happen as dramatically were it not for embedded racial attitudes. “Elitist” is another word for “arrogant,” which is another word for “uppity,” that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.

At the bottom of the American psyche, race is still about power, and blacks who move up risk triggering discomfort among some whites. I’ve met black men who, when stopped by white cops at night, think the best protection is to act dumb and deferential.

Furthermore, casting Obama as “out of touch” plays harmoniously with the traditional notion of blacks as “others” at the edge of the mainstream, separate from the whole. Despite his ability to articulate the frustration and yearning of broad segments of Americans, his “otherness” has been highlighted effectively by right-wingers who harp on his Kenyan father and spread false rumors that he’s a clandestine Muslim.

In a country so changed that a biracial man who is considered black has a shot at the presidency, the subterranean biases are much less discernible now than when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. They are subtle, unacknowledged and unacceptable in polite company. But they lurk below, lending resonance to the criticisms of Obama. Black professionals know the double standard. They are often labeled negatively for traits deemed positive in whites: A white is assertive, a black is aggressive; a white is resolute, a black is pushy; a white is candid, a black is abrasive; a white is independent, a black is not a team player. Prejudice is a shape shifter, adapting to acceptable forms.

So although Obama’s brilliance defies the stubborn stereotype of blacks as unintelligent, there is a companion to that image — doubts about blacks’ true capabilities — that may heighten concerns about his inexperience. Through the racial lens, a defect can be enlarged into a disability. He is “not ready,” a phrase employed often when blacks are up for promotion.

###

Clinton surely had no racial intent, but none is needed for a racial effect. In a society long steeped in stereotypes, such comments reverberate. The incessant loop of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. cursing America and repeating old conspiracy theories has revived fears of black anger among whites whose threshold of tolerance for such rage has always been low. No matter that Obama seems anything but angry. A few sentences from his pastor are enough to incite such anxieties.

Technorati Tags: DavidShipler, BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Election08, Democrats, Racism

Pope Gives Support For Millions Of Undocumented Immigrants Living In US. What Would Vicki McKenna Do?

I wonder if the same conservative folks who are upset when drivers license exams are printed in languages other than English, also are upset when the Pope recites the Lords Prayer in Spanish while he visits America? Do English only advocates get angry over such things?  Just wondering. 

That thought crossed my mind tonight as the words from the first full day of Pope Benedict XVI’s trip here were played around the world.  The Pope had led many to think that his trip here would raise the issue of undocumented workers when he visited with President Bush.  He was true to his word and hopefully will continue to address these themes in the days ahead.  The Pope’s political role in the world can be very important.

The German Pope said he would be raising the issue of immigration reform with President Bush and would urge him to push for granting legal status to the illegal immigrants living in the US.

For Carlos Aquino, who heads the Shrine of the Sacred Heart’s Youth Ministries, the Pope’s words were comforting.

“I think his statement was very clear,” said Mr Aquino.

“His comments demonstrate once again that the Church is with the poor, with the immigrants and those who are in need - as well as those 12 million people who are here looking for status or an opportunity.

“I think the Pope is there for them.”

Latinos are likely to make up a large part of the 40,000-strong crowd expected to attend the Pope’s first open air Mass in the US here in Washington, and they will figure heavily when he moves on to New York this weekend.  Would Madison conservative talk radio host Vicki McKenna advocate that the feds target undocumented workers at the open air mass for deportation?

Just wondering.

Technorati Tags: PopeBenedictXVI, , CatholicChurch, Immigration, PresidentBush, Conservatives,

 

Barack Obama “Bitter” Statement Reflects Reality, And Will Help Him With Superdelegates

I am not writing about this matter as a Barack Obama supporter, as much as I am over the fact this story has been so bastardized by those who wish to either win the nomination (Hillary Clinton) or fear him in the fall campaign (Republicans) they therefore need to distort his original intent.

The actual words that Barack Obama said are important to read…..in their entirety.  They are important to read as they are true.  They reflect reality.  There is no way that anyone can get a sense of elitism or any other such tone from these remakes when read fully.  Instead Obama is talking directly to the issues and facts that confront many Americans as the economy suffers, and to the political promises of the past that did nothing to resolve the underlying needs.

America, I strongly suspect, gets the message that Obama was making; they know that there is a dreadful disparity between the economic reality in the small towns, while bailouts on Wall Street are easily and quickly done.  And sure voters are bitter.  Because they have the right to be.

Obama has the ability to use this story to his advantage.  He has proved very capable as a campaigner for the White House.  Even though this story might truly hurt any other candidate given how it is being spread and misused by opponents, Obama has the skills to turn this back to his good.  And I predict that when he does it will yet again make a  huge impact on superdelegates.  Hillary Clinton gets pounded by her own efforts with dirty campaigning….again.  Superdelegates that have not committed are looking for a winner, and every step of the way Obama has proved he is best prepared not only to lead the nation, but also to win in the general election.  This controversy will in the end help him.

The full statement that Barack Obama made is here to read. 

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.
Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is — so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Elections,

 

Time Magazine’s “Raising Obama” A Great (Must) Read

How Barack Obama’s mother made him who he is will make for a great read for Democrats who support him, and Republicans who need to know more about the next President of the United States.  Time Magazine presents a well-written piece.  Anyone who knows the story of Obama as a child, or cares about the impact that his mom had on his life, will find reading this time well spent.  A portion is here below.

“When I think about my mother,” Obama told me recently, “I think that there was a certain combination of being very grounded in who she was, what she believed in. But also a certain recklessness. I think she was always searching for something. She wasn’t comfortable seeing her life confined to a certain box.”

Obama’s mother was a dreamer. She made risky bets that paid off only some of the time, choices that her children had to live with. She fell in love—twice—with fellow students from distant countries she knew nothing about. Both marriages failed, and she leaned on her parents and friends to help raise her two children.

“She cried a lot,” says her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, “if she saw animals being treated cruelly or children in the news or a sad movie—or if she felt like she wasn’t being understood in a conversation.” And yet she was fearless, says Soetoro-Ng. “She was very capable. She went out on the back of a motorcycle and did rigorous fieldwork. Her research was responsible and penetrating. She saw the heart of a problem, and she knew whom to hold accountable.”

Today Obama is partly a product of what his mother was not. Whereas she swept her children off to unfamiliar lands and even lived apart from her son when he was a teenager, Obama has tried to ground his children in the Midwest. “We’ve created stability for our kids in a way that my mom didn’t do for us,” he says. “My choosing to put down roots in Chicago and marry a woman who is very rooted in one place probably indicates a desire for stability that maybe I was missing.”

Ironically, the person who mattered most in Obama’s life is the one we know the least about—maybe because being partly African in America is still seen as being simply black and color is still a preoccupation above almost all else. There is not enough room in the conversation for the rest of a man’s story.

But Obama is his mother’s son. In his wide-open rhetoric about what can be instead of what was, you see a hint of his mother’s credulity. When Obama gets donations from people who have never believed in politics before, they’re responding to his ability—passed down from his mother—to make a powerful argument (that happens to be very liberal) without using a trace of ideology. On a good day, when he figures out how to move a crowd of thousands of people very different from himself, it has something to do with having had a parent who gazed at different cultures the way other people study gems.

It turns out that Obama’s nascent career peddling hope is a family business. He inherited it. And while it is true that he has not been profoundly tested, he was raised by someone who was.

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, Time, Election08, Democrats, Republicans,

American Troop Levels Will Remain Too High In War-Ravaged Iraq

There have been many pundits who have argued over the past months that the Iraq War was no longer the main issue in this election year.  Housing woes and health care, as part of the overall ailing economy, were seen to be the issues that most Americans were now stressing to pollsters as more important than the war.  The fact that the national price tag for the war is damaging the national economy seems forgotten by many Americans. 

To be sure the economy is a major issue that makes many uneasy, but after the Congressional hearings today and Wednesday I think the Iraq war will again become an issue.  The smooth talk from Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker does not quite balance out the fact that 4,000 Americans have been killed, and the lull in violence in Iraq has now started to climb once again.

The fact that there have been no real political answers applied in Iraq over the past year, while the whole purpose of the ’surge’ was to allow for that very thing, is unsettling.  The lead paragraph from the New York Times seems to place the right somber tone for the nation.

The senior commander of multinational forces in Iraq warned Congress Tuesday against removing “too many troops too quickly” and refused under stiff questioning to offer even an estimate of American force levels by the end of this year.

There is no end to the conflict, and no hope for an end given the current political climate in Washington, D.C.  Instead of hoping that the war will somehow end if we just no longer concentrate on it is folly.  The economy is rough, but the war should be the top priority this election cycle as it deals with international, economic, legal, and moral aspects of our lives as citizens.

It is time for the war to be back on page one above the fold in our morning papers.

In stating the Democratic Party’s case against administration war policy, Senator Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that Mr. Bush’s goal of creating “breathing room” for political progress by sending five additional combat brigades last year “has not been achieved.”

“That reality leads many of us to once again challenge President Bush’s policies,” Mr. Levin said as the general and the ambassador sat motionless at the witness table. Senator Levin said the current Shiite-led government in Baghdad has shown “incompetence” and “excessive sectarian” policies.

The fact that an occupying force of American soldiers will be in Iraq for the foreseeable future is clear.  And wrong.  Has no one ever read the history of the Middle East in the Bush White House?

It has been widely anticipated that American troop levels in Iraq would be held steady for some weeks after the departure by July of five extra brigades ordered to Iraq last year by President Bush. There would be 15 combat brigades and close to 140,000 troops remaining in Iraq.

Given the time required to remove troops from Iraq or to halt departures of heavy equipment from the United States, senior officials have said that even under the best of circumstances no more than two or three more brigades could be brought home before Mr. Bush leaves office in January.

Even if all goes well, more than 100,000 troops would probably remain in Iraq into next year, leaving any decision on major reductions to the next president.

Technorati Tags: IraqWar, PresidentBush, Election08, Democrats, GeneralPetraeus

John McCain’s Iraq Speech Interrupted By Green Zone Bombing On MSNBC

No one can make this stuff up.

 

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