Oh!pinion

Sen. Hillary Clinton won a resounding victory in West Virginia today, garnering a bit north of two-thirds of the votes cast.

Predictably, Clinton touted her triumph as proof she can win in November, as reason to fight on in the primaries and, of course, as cause for supporters to contribute more money.

The disturbing thing about this West Virginia primary is how much Clinton owes to having been the not-black candidate. More than happenstance accounts for the fact West Virginia has a minuscule 3 percent black population.

We expect the race in Kentucky to follow a similar course, although possibly less pronounced. Oregon, however, holds the prospect for Obama to win by a margin similar to Clinton’s in West Virginia.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign rolls down an open road as rabid-right smear-and-jeer specialists do their lying best to bring Obama down.

But, let it never be said Clinton wasn’t given every chance to drag this thing out to satisfy whatever compulsion puts her ambition ahead of party and country.

Radical-right bloggers and the rest of the right-wing noise machine are on a mission to depict Sen. Barack Obama as a Hamas sympathizer and closet enemy of Israel.

Their obvious, politically motivated, goal is to drive a wedge between Obama and American Jews who support Israel.

This campaign of lies and distortions has been going on all year, but now, coinciding with Israel’s 60th anniversary and President Bush’s trip there, is being ratcheted up.

Here are headlines from two right-wing blogs, Protein Wisdom and DougRoss@Journal, respectively:

Obama campaign responds to Obama’s comment that Israel is a “constant sore” that infects all US foreign policy [Karl]

Obama: Israel a “constant sore” that “infects… foreign policy”

The posts under those headlines put words in Obama’s mouth and twist those words. They focus on a brief interview Obama did last weekend with Jeffrey Goldberg at Atlantic.com.

Here’s what Obama said in the interview shortly before the “constant sore” statement (emphasis ours).

JG: What do you make of Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that Israel resembles an apartheid state?

BO: I strongly reject the characterization. Israel is a vibrant democracy, the only one in the Middle East, and there’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal. It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.

Doesn’t sound like an enemy of Isreal talking, does it? Now, here’s the passage the right-wing bloggers are lying about (again, emphasis ours):

(More. . .)

We long ago predicted even many Republicans would rue the day they hitched their wagon to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the organized-crime family known as the Bush administration.

Surely that day is at hand, with a new ABC News-Washington Post poll reporting 82 percent of respondents feel the U.S. is “seriously” on the wrong track, and 66 percent disapprove of the job Bush is doing.

Those numbers likely indicate strong dissatisfaction among many usually Republican-friendly independents as well.

Beyond the president’s overall rating, intensity of sentiment is heavily against Bush. Fifty-two percent of Americans not only disapprove of his work but do so strongly, matching the high in ABC News/Washington Post polls set in July. Just 15 percent strongly approve.

. . . Sixty-nine percent of Republicans approve of Bush’s job performance, while just 9 percent of Democrats agree. His ratings, on average, have been more partisan than any president’s since ABC and the Post began polling in 1981.

That last is remarkable. Here we are in a presidential election year and 31 percent of Republicans don’t approve of the job Bush is doing. We’d be willing to bet a good many more privately curse Bush and the job he’s doing, but will be damned if they’ll admit it publicly or to a pollster.

The ABC story on the poll also says Bush is on track to break records for the length of time he’s been on the wrong side of most of the public.

It’s a sure bet that come mid-November right-wing Republicans will have even more reason to be thoroughly disgusted with Bush and his unindicted co-conspirators. Deservedly so.

Think of this as a little well-timed review intended to help you make sensible voting decisions not based on personality-oriented, tit-for-tat static.

The following insight helps illustrate why the last thing America needs is another Republican or Republican-lite Democratic administration.

It’s from Kevin Phillips’ excellent 2006 book, “American Theocracy,” which everyone should read before going to the polls this November.

Since the late 1970s the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States has pulled down inflation-adjusted wages for nonsupervisory employees. At the same time, huge income and assets gains in the top 1 to 2 percent, where investors, financial services professionals and wealth holders cluster, have enabled these percentiles to pull up overall national growth and income figures. The effect of this is to disguise the shrinkage elsewhere. By credible calculations, the top 1 percent of Americans in 2000 had as much disposable (after tax) income as the bottom one hundred million or 35 percent of the population. Thus, talk about the “average American income” is misleading.

Read the book and you’ll learn who made this happen, and how and why. Those are important to know before you vote, especially if you ever voted for Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

Who a presidential candidate surrounds himself with in the heat of a campaign says a lot about him or her.

In Sen. John McCain’s case, it’s all lobbyists, all the time.

But just now the Republican nominee-apparent is one lobbyist short of a full set, because Doug Goodyear, whom McCain had picked to manage the Republican National Convention, resigned today.

Seems Goodyear’s firm had represented the Neanderthal generals who run Myanmar with iron-fisted brutality. Currently, these paranoid goons are denying and delaying aid from other countries for their cyclone-devastated people.

Goodyear bailed within hours of Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff posting a story about the past tie to Myanmar’s maniacal junta. But it gets better. From Isikoff’s story:

Ironically, Goodyear was chosen for the post after the McCain campaign nixed another candidate, Paul Manafort, who runs a lobbying firm with McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis. The prospect of choosing Manafort created anxiety in the campaign because of his long history of representing controversial foreign clients, including Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. More recently, he served as chief political consultant to Viktor Yanukovich, the former Ukrainian prime minister who has been widely criticized for alleged corruption and for his close ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin—a potential embarrassment for McCain, who in 2007 called Putin a “totalitarian dictator.”

Anyone not bothered about the prospect of another lackluster Republican politician being vaulted into the White House by hard-sell professional marketers should pause to read Joe McGinniss’ 1969 book, “The $elling of the President.” It’s about the successful marketing of Richard M. “I Am Not A Crook” Nixon.

While Sen. Hillary Clinton soldiers on, campaigning for votes of West Virginia Democrats ahead of the state’s primary, she and her surrogates are also trying to stop the defection of superdelegates.

Clinton’s West Virginia prospects look good, but on the superdelegates front, Sen. Barack Obama just pulled ahead.

It’s a remarkable reversal of fortune for Clinton because she entered the presidential race with virtually all the superdelegates in her pocket.

The tally now:

Nearly 800 superdelegates will attend the convention. Obama has endorsements from 276, according to the latest tally by The Associated Press. Clinton has 271.5.

While anything is possible, it seems doubtful even a big Clinton win in West Virginia and Kentucky would keep increasing numbers of superdelegates from getting behind Obama.

One more sign that for Clinton it’s all over but the touting.

Maintaining their lock on the dubious distinction of being the lowest form of legislative life in the country, House Republicans Wednedsay voted against a resolution praising America’s mothers.

Actually, these bad-seed Republican offspring voted against H.R. 1113, “Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day,” after they had voted for it.

You might recall how these same behaviorially challenged tykes were among the right-wing chorus that spent 2004 castigating then Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry for voting for a military funding procedural measure before voting against it. But then, hypocrisy is a point of pride with these, uh, little people.

As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank relates, the House Republicans’ vote change was part of a tantrum they’ve been throwing all week.

These brats, spoiled by years of having everything their way, were sent to the corner by voters in ‘06, leaving them literally out of control. So, they decided to gum up the works with delaying tactics all week, to spite the Democratic adults in the chamber.

Being selfish and irresponsible, it didn’t bother them at all that they were also spiting their institution, the American people, and even America’s mothers.

Looks as though voters need to take these Republican rowdies out to the woodshed again, in November, to see to it they get a long time out.

“This is offensive, and I think it’s disappointing, because John McCain always says, ‘Well, I’m not going to run that kind of politics.’ And then to engage in that kind of smear, I think, is unfortunate, particularly since my policy toward Hamas has been no different than his.

“For him to toss out comments like that, I think, is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination. We don’t need name-calling in this debate.”

It appears Obama learned something important from the Pastor Jeremiah Wright media circus. It also gives reassurance that as the Democratic presidential nominee, Obama will not hang back, as John Kerry did four years ago, when the Republican jeer-and-smear specialists go to work on him.

A prompt, withering smackdown in response to the kind of slimy innuendo McCain dished out isn’t negative campaigning. Rather, it’s a Democratic candidate’s survival measure.

For more, click here.

Short of Sen. Barack Obama disappearing off the face of the Earth, the Democratic Party counting all the Florida and Michigan delegates’ votes, her winning every remaining primary, getting a sudden influx of money and benefiting from a wholesale defection of Obama superdelegates, Sen. Hillary Clinton can’t win.

Yet, Clinton intends to go on campaigning for the presidential nomination, at least to the beginning of June, before leaving the race June 15, according to Lawrence O’Donnell.

Especially since many of her major contributors are maxed out, she’s already loaned her campaign a staggering $11.4 million and her weak win in Indiana won’t inspire any windfall of donations, what can Clinton be thinking?

This appears to go beyond ambition and determination, all the way to compulsion, not unlike gambling addiction.

Unfortunately, the danger in Clinton keeping up the fight for another month is that she’s likely to further damage Obama’s chances against Sen. John McCain in the fall.

Democratic superdelegates can weigh in to bring what is now a race in name only to a merciful, prudent and prompt end — and they should.

It’s all well and good for Clinton to tone down the attacks for now. There’s just too great a chance that as the remaining primaries draw near and she’s under more pressure, Clinton will revert to anything-to-win tactics.

Pundits say Clinton is likely to win in West Virginia and Puerto Rico. Even if she does, it’s hard to imagine superdelegates ignoring Obama’s commanding lead in pledged delegates, popular vote and fund raising.

Clinton has a right to keep going. Ever the gentleman, Obama’s on record as saying any decision about staying in or bowing out is hers to make.

Here’s hoping that, come mid-November, a whole lot of guilt-ridden superdelegates don’t have to ask themselves in anguish why they didn’t act sooner rather than later.

For insight into what superdelegates are thinking, see “Why won’t superdelegates choose now?”

Good news from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for all who believe in basic fairness.

No doubt mindful of a survey of junior enlisted people who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and ahead at the possibility the next president might end the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gay and lesbian members, Mullen said if change is ordered, the services will comply.

That’s a given under our system — something Mullen acknowledged in answering a cadet’s question. But his statement seems to indicate military leadership won’t drag heels or try to buck any such order.

From Think Progress:

For quite some time, U.S. troops have supported repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy. A December 2006 poll of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan found 73 percent of those polled were “comfortable with lesbians and gays.” A 2004 poll found that a majority of junior enlisted servicemembers believed gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, up from 16 percent in 1992.

Clearly, attitudes in the military, as in American society, are changing rapidly and for the better. This is welcome news because we never go wrong when we act to treat others the way we ourselves want to be treated.