Hillary Clinton Seems Determined To Give Her Old Pal Trump A Second Term

Hillary would have certainly preferred to win the presidency in 2016 instead of seeing her old friend-- did you go to any of his weddings?-- win. No, absolutely she was in it to win it (for herself, herself, herself, herself).  And Bernie, after making a strong and compelling case for himself in the primaries, worked harder for her victory than anyone else who almost got his party's nomination-- especially considering how her establishment allies like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Harry Reid stole the nomination for her. So how is she repaying Bernie for all the hours logged on the road for her in 2016? Remember, while Hillary did about a dozen events for Obama after he beat her in 2008, Bernie did over 40 events for her-- everywhere her campaign asked him to go. She;'s a sore loser and many people thought he shouldn't have listed a finger for her. But he did-- again and again and again. She's an unappreciative monster.

Hillary is one of the most despised figures in American politics today. Much of it is unfair-- but not all of it. Every time she shows up on TV or in the press, she reminds some people-- many people-- exactly who they think the greater evil was/is. She has an explosive 4 part Hulu mini-series coming out just before the election. No one in America can be happier about the timing than Donald J. Trump. The series, which begins running March 6, but debuts next Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival, was all her idea, too. She pitched it to Hulu; they didn't pitch it to her. The hot mess of a puff piece is called Hillary. None of the villains of the series-- Trump, Monica Lewinsky (whose life Hillary viciously and consciously destroyed) nor Bernie-- were asked to participate.

The real life Hillary sat down, unbelievably bitter, for an interview a few days ago in Pasadena with the Hollywood Reporter's Lacey Rose, who lobbed some very softball questions in her direction.

Rose: In the doc, you're brutally honest on Sanders: "He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it." That assessment still hold?

Hillary: Yes, it does.

Rose If he gets the nomination, will you endorse and campaign for him?

Hillary: I'm not going to go there yet. We're still in a very vigorous primary season. I will say, however, that it's not only him, it's the culture around him. It's his leadership team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture-- not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it. And I don't think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don't know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you're just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or after Elizabeth [Warren]. I think that that's a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions.

I really wish that Rose would have asked her who she really likes better-- deep down-- Trump or Bernie. Another reporter should ask her that question while she's on the road promoting this horrible shit show of hers.

An NBC News reporter caught up with Bernie in the Senate and asked what he thought about Hillary's typically ugly smear. He didn't seem to take it too seriously: "On a good day, my wife likes me, so let’s clear the air on that one... My focus today is on a monumental moment in American history: The impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history." When asked by the reporter why he thinks Clinton is still talking about 2016, he responded, "That’s a good question. You should ask her."





Former Republican activists, like Hillary, especially crooked multimillionaires like her, hate everything Bernie stands for. It would be inconceivable that someone like her would ever support him. She has always hated working people and despised their plight-- exactly like Trump does-- so a working class candidate like Bernie is someone she intuitively wants to sabotage. If he loses to Trump, she will go down in American political history as the Nosferatu of the 2020 election.

Are You Glad Hillary Now Says She's Backing More Of The Progressive Agenda Bernie Has Been Formulating For 30 Years?

Last night I mentioned that a progressive Member of Congress who had just endorsed Hillary's very establishment campaign instead of Bernie's-- with which he is much more ideologically aligned-- had written that he believes "that Bernie has pushed her far enough to the left now that she is supporting more progressive policies that help regular people and the poor. (Keystone and the TPP were huge for me.)" OK, although I wonder what will happen if she becomes president and no longer cares what Bernie and progressives have to say. Will she revert back to her decidedly non-progressive self-- turning even more Democrats off to the political process? Meanwhile, though, political expediency has her adopting one Bernie position-- or a variation on it-- after another. This weekend she actually told South Carolina Democrats that she would break up the big banks if needed. Really? The people who have spent $36,621,366 on her political career since 2000? I guess "if needed" could always come in handy as an excuse down the road.

The Democratic primary front-runner told Democrats gathered at a rally in North Charleston that she has the "toughest" proposals for dealing with Wall Street. She says would "break up the big banks" if necessary and hold top financial executives accountable.

"I go after not just the banks," Clinton told the crowd, pledging a tough approach to regulating the industry despite receiving tens of millions in speaking fees, donations to the family foundation and campaign cash from Wall Street in her career. "I go after the hedge funds, big insurance companies, shadow banking."

You may recall that a couple weeks ago ole Hillary refused to commit to the progressive approach of expanding Social Security or to even refuse to take an unequivocal stand against future cuts that her Wall Street and New Dem allies are clamoring for.

Meanwhile, Bernie, speaking at a senior center in Manchester Saturday told voters that he and Hillary have a disagreement on Social Security. And, wouldn't you know it-- BOOM! She's got a proposal to roll out. It's not even a bad one-- though it's kind of sad seeing a good policy idea like caregiver credit being used to provide political cover for her refusal to agree to expand benefits across the board or to just come out and say she will not abide the future cuts to Social Security conservative are demanding. Politico was the first to break the story of her newest attempt to persuade voters she's almost as good as Bernie on something.

Clinton is proposing a new tax break for those caring for elderly or disabled family members.

At a campaign event in Iowa today, she will outline a plan to offer a $6,000 tax credit toward costs associated with providing long-term care to aging parents and grandparents, a campaign aide said.

She will also propose expanding Social Security benefits for caregivers, saying many see their benefits reduced when they must take time off from work to care for ailing relatives. That's because Social Security benefits are based on their top 35 years of annual earnings. The plan would provide a credit toward the benefits for caregivers who are out of the workforce.

" ... [A]s baby boomers age, more and more families will need to provide care for or will need care from loved ones," her campaign said. "Many family members, most often spouses and adult daughters, spend time out of the workforce, cut back on hours, or use personal days, vacation, and family time to provide needed care."

Another element of the plan would expand respite care, which provides substitute health care when the main caregiver needs a break from his or her duties. Clinton wants to invest $100 million in the initiative over 10 years. She also said she would launch a program to improve the wages of professional child care and health care workers.

The entire plan would cost $10 billion over a decade, the campaign estimates. It would not add to the debt, the campaign said, because it would be financed with payfors Clinton has previously proposed.

It is the latest in a series of narrowly targeted tax breaks Clinton has proposed, and comes as she battles rival Bernie Sanders over whether any taxes on the middle class should be increased.

She doesn't mention, as far as I can tell, how anyone is going to "prove" to the IRS that someone is meriting the tax break. A doctor's note? Serious about a progressive agenda? You can contribute to Bernie's grassroots campaign here or just click on the Bernie thermometer.

No Inevitability? Are You Sure?

Yesterday we talked about why Wall Street loves Hillary Clinton. The obvious corollary to that is that Hillary is "inevitable." (In the low key campaign for the DCCC Chair-- with an electorate of one, Nancy Pelosi-- former Golman Sachs executive Jim Himes is the Wall Street favorite and he is also considered "inevitable," although the MoveOn petition for progressive Donna Edwards keeps growing bigger and bigger. Maybe Himes isn't as inevitable as the Beltway pundits think he is.) Is Hillary? Ryan Lizza points to her being caught in what he calls The Inevitability Trap.

Clinton’s support among Democrats has been as high as seventy-three per cent. That makes her the most dominant front-runner at this stage of a Presidential contest in the Party’s modern history. Media pundits and political strategists agree overwhelmingly that Hillary’s lead within the Party is unassailable. Tuesday’s results, which gave Republicans control of both the House and the Senate, may solidify her standing, as Democrats close ranks around her in an effort to hang on to the White House, their last foothold on power in Washington. But the election results could also lead to an entirely different outcome: a Republican Party that overinterprets its mandate in Congress and pushes its Presidential candidates far to the right, freeing Democrats to gamble on someone younger or more progressive than Clinton.

...Many liberals are frustrated with Obama’s inability to enact more progressive change, such as assertive policies against global warming and income inequality, comprehensive immigration reform, or a less hawkish foreign policy. Democratic-primary voters are always eager to see a fresh potential candidate. “Seventy or eighty per cent of people want to hear from a new perspective before they make a decision about whether to go with what they know,” [Maryland Gov. Martin] O’Malley told me. “A person becomes very famous in this country very quickly.”

...The history of Democratic primaries suggests that an insurgent can’t expect to gain recognition with only a fresh face and a superior organization. Inevitably, the candidate must attack the front-runner from the left. O’Malley is not necessarily a natural candidate to pursue this strategy, but he is trying... Until recently, he hasn’t offered much to Democrats who are worried that Hillary is too centrist on economics and foreign policy. But in the past two years he has won approval of gun-control legislation, a new state immigration law, the repeal of the death penalty, and an increase in the minimum wage. There was only one warning sign for O’Malley as he canvassed Iowa. His lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown, who was running to succeed him as governor, was in a close race against a local businessman and political upstart, Larry Hogan, who attacked the O’Malley administration for raising taxes.

O’Malley’s strategy so far suggests that the 2016 primaries may turn into a debate not so much about Clinton’s record as about Obama’s effectiveness as a leader—an issue that Republicans used to win races last week, and which they would almost certainly raise in a general election against Clinton. O’Malley told me that Obama’s response to the 2008 financial crisis was too timid: “When the Recovery and Reinvestment Act was introduced, it was probably half of what it needed to be, and the congressional parts of our own party watered it down to a half of that, which meant it was about a quarter of what it needed to be.” And Obama was too soft on Wall Street, O’Malley said. “The moment was ripe for much more aggressive action. If an institution is too big to fail, too big to jail, too big to prosecute, then it’s probably too damn big.” O’Malley also talks about inequality, in terms that more populist Democrats, like Elizabeth Warren, who insists she isn’t running for President, have embraced, but which Obama and Clinton have generally avoided.

Clinton has said little about economic policy in recent years and could co-opt some of the same arguments without seeming overly disloyal to the President. Many liberals, though, will want concrete promises on policy rather than mere sound bites. Michael Podhorzer, the political director at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, “What we learned from the Obama Administration is that if the Presidential candidate surrounds themself with the usual Wall Street suspects, then, whatever the populist rhetoric is, that’s not going to be good enough.”

...Democratic strategists like to divide the Party’s electorate into “wine track” and “beer track” voters. Insurgents typically have done well with the wine track-- college-educated liberals-- and although that portion of the electorate has grown, it’s still not enough to win. (Hart once told me that he did well in all the states that were benefitting from globalization; Mondale, who had union support, did well in all the states where workers were feeling economically squeezed.) It’s not clear what major demographic group O’Malley could steal from Clinton; for now, he seems like a classic wine-track insurgent. On Tuesday, the Republican victory in Maryland was fuelled by working-class and suburban voters, who revolted against higher taxes.

Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who served one term, from 2007 to 2013, and then retired, has the potential to win the beer-track vote.

...“Because of the way that the financial sector dominates both parties, the distinctions that can be made on truly troubling issues are very minor,” he said. He told a story of an effort he led in the Senate in 2010 to try to pass a windfall-profits tax that would have targeted executives at banks and firms which were rescued by the government after the 2008 financial crisis. He said that when he was debating whether to vote for the original bailout package, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, he relied on the advice of an analyst on Wall Street, who told him, “No. 1, you have to do this, because otherwise the world economy will go into cataclysmic free fall. But, No. 2, you have to punish these guys. It is outrageous what they did.”

After the rescue, when Webb pushed for what he saw as a reasonable punishment, his own party blocked the legislation. “The Democrats wouldn’t let me vote on it,” he said. “Because either way you voted on that, you’re making somebody mad. And the financial sector was furious.” He added that one Northeastern senator-- Webb wouldn’t say who-- “was literally screaming at me on the Senate floor.”

When Clinton was a New York senator, from 2001 to 2009, she fiercely defended the financial industry, which was a crucial source of campaign contributions and of jobs in her state. “If you don’t have stock, and a lot of people in this country don’t have stock, you’re not doing very well,” Webb said. Webb is a populist, but a cautious one, especially on taxes, the issue that seems to have backfired against O’Malley’s administration. As a senator, Webb frustrated some Democrats because he refused to raise individual income-tax rates. But as President, he says, he would be aggressive about taxing income from investments: “Fairness says if you’re a hedge-fund manager or making deals where you’re making hundreds of millions of dollars and you’re paying capital-gains tax on that, rather than ordinary income tax, something’s wrong, and people know something’s wrong.”

The Clintons and Obama have championed policies that help the poor by strengthening the safety net, but they have shown relatively little interest in structural changes that would reverse runaway income inequality. “There is a big tendency among a lot of Democratic leaders to feed some raw meat to the public on smaller issues that excite them, like the minimum wage, but don’t really address the larger problem,” Webb said. “A lot of the Democratic leaders who don’t want to scare away their financial supporters will say we’re going to raise the minimum wage, we’re going do these little things, when in reality we need to say we’re going to fundamentally change the tax code so that you will believe our system is fair.”

...Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist and the longest-serving independent in Congress, is seventy-three; he speaks with a Brooklyn accent that is slightly tempered by more than two decades of living in Vermont, where he was previously the mayor of Burlington and then the state’s representative in the U.S. House. One evening in mid-October, he was hunched over a lectern addressing students at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Supporters selling “Run, Bernie, Run!” bumper stickers milled around the edges of the crowd, along with a local labor leader, Kurt Ehrenberg, who is a regular volunteer with Sanders’s potential Presidential team in the state. Long wisps of Sanders’s white hair levitated above his head, as if he were conducting electricity.

“The great crisis, politically, facing our nation is that we are not discussing the great crises facing our nation,” he told the students. He launched several attacks on billionaires, each one to cheers. “We look at the United Kingdom and their queens, their dukes, and whatever else they have, and say, ‘Well, that is a class society, that’s not America.’ Well, guess what? We have more income and wealth inequality in this country than the U.K. and any other major country on earth.” It was time “for a political revolution.”

Earlier in the day, Sanders had told me that he was thinking about running for President. If he does, he will be the Democratic Party’s Ron Paul: his chance of winning would be infinitesimal, but his presence in the race and his passion about a few key issues would expose vulnerabilities in the front-runner’s record and policies, as Paul did with John McCain and Mitt Romney. Sanders recited for me a list of grievances that progressives still harbor about the Clinton Presidency and made it clear that he would exploit them in his campaign.

“The Clinton Administration worked arm in arm with Alan Greenspan-- who is, on economic matters, obviously, an extreme right-wing libertarian-- on deregulating Wall Street, and that was a total disaster,” Sanders said. “And then you had the welfare issue, trade policies. You had the Defense of Marriage Act.”

He said that the George W. Bush Presidency “will go down in history as certainly the worst Administration in the modern history of America.” But he has also been disappointed by Obama. “I have been the most vocal opponent of him in the Democratic Caucus,” he told me. In his view, Obama should have kept the grass roots of his 2008 campaign involved after he was elected, and he should have gone aggressively after Wall Street. “His weakness is that either he is too much tied to the big-money interests, or too quote-unquote nice a guy to be taking on the ruling class.”

Sanders, like Paul, has a loyal national following that finances his campaigns. He made life difficult for Democrats in Vermont for many years. In 1988, when he was the mayor of Burlington, he went to the Democratic caucus in the city to support Jesse Jackson’s Presidential campaign. One woman, angry with Sanders for his attacks on local Democrats, slapped him in the face. Soon after he won a seat in the House of Representatives, in 1990, some Democrats tried to exclude him from caucusing with them. At a meeting to decide the matter, his opponents humiliated him by reading aloud his previous statements criticizing the Democratic Party.

“I didn’t know that they could track back everything you had ever said,” Sanders told me. “That did not use to be the case. You could certainly get away with a lot of stuff-- not anymore!”

The Democrats eventually welcomed him back as a collaborator. In 2006, when he ran for the Senate, the Party supported his candidacy. He now campaigns for those Democrats who are comfortable having an avowed socialist stumping for them, and raises money for others. But he has never been a member of the Democratic Party, and if he decides to run against Hillary in the primary, he will have to join. The alternative would be to run as a third-party candidate in the general election. “It’s a very difficult decision,” he said. “If I was a billionaire, if I was a Ross Perot type, absolutely, I’d run as an independent. Because there is now profound anger at both political parties. But it takes a huge amount of money and organizational time to even get on the ballot in fifty states.”

Most likely, he said, he will run in the Democratic primaries, if he runs at all. I asked him if he thought there was deep dissatisfaction with Hillary on the left. “I don’t think it’s just with Hillary,” he replied. “I think it’s a very deep dissatisfaction with the political establishment.” He insisted that he would run a serious campaign against her, not just “an educational campaign” about his pet issues. “If I run, I certainly would run to win.”

A Pew Research survey right after the GOP sweep last week couldn't be very inspiring for Republicans since most Americans seem nonplussed by the whole thing. They found that "about half of Americans (48%) are happy the Republican Party won control of the Senate, while 38% are unhappy. That is almost a carbon copy of the public’s reactions to the 2010 election: 48% were happy the GOP won control of the House, while 34% were unhappy. There was much greater public enthusiasm after the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, and after the GOP swept to victory in both the House and Senate in the 1994 midterm election... About as many approve (44%) as disapprove (43%) of Republican congressional leaders’ policies and plans for the future. Following the 2010 election, 41% approved and 37% disapproved of Republican leaders’ plans. The public by wide margins approved of Democratic leaders’ future plans and policies in 2006 (50% to 21%) and Republican leaders’ proposals in 1994 (52% to 28%)."

While victorious Republicans do not engender a great deal of public confidence, neither does President Obama. His overall job rating is virtually unchanged since just prior to the election: 43% approve of his job performance while 52% disapprove.

Obama’s job rating is higher than Bush’s was following the 2006 midterm election (43% vs. 32%), but there is as much skepticism about Obama’s ability to get things done over the remainder of his term as there was about Bush’s in 2006. Just 6% think Obama will accomplish a great deal of what he would like to do in the remaining two years of his presidency, while 33% say he will accomplish some of it. Most (59%) say he will be able to accomplish not much or nothing of what he wants to get done. After the 2006 midterm election, 57% thought Bush would get little or nothing done.

On several specific issues, more prefer the approach offered by congressional Republicans than President Obama, although a sizable share sees little difference between the two sides. On jobs and economic growth, for instance, 35% say Republicans in Congress have a better approach compared with 29% who say Obama’s approach is better; but nearly a third (32%) think there will not be much difference. Across nine issues tested, Obama has a clear advantage over congressional Republicans on only one: 35% say he has the better approach on the environment, while just 20% prefer the Republican approach; 41% think there is not much difference between the two.

And now for some good news. Chris Ladd-- GOPlifer-- is a right-wing blogger. His perspective on the midterms was pretty dire... for a partisan who had just seen his party win so many seats. "Few things," he posits, "are as dangerous to a long term strategy as a short-term victory. Republicans this week scored the kind of win that sets one up for spectacular, catastrophic failure and no one is talking about it." He doesn't see the Republicans taking the lead in building a nationally relevant governing agenda. Here's why:

• Republican Senate candidates lost every single race behind the Blue Wall. Every one.

• Behind the Blue Wall there were some new Republican Governors, but their success was very specific and did not translate down the ballot. None of these candidates ran on social issues, Obama, or opposition the ACA. Rauner stands out as a particular bright spot in Illinois, but Democrats in Illinois retained their supermajority in the State Assembly, similar to other northern states, without losing a single seat.

• Republicans in 2014 were the most popular girl at a party no one attended. Voter turnout was awful.

• Democrats have consolidated their power behind the sections of the country that generate the overwhelming bulk of America’s wealth outside the energy industry. That’s only ironic if you buy into far-right propaganda, but it’s interesting none the less.

• Vote suppression is working remarkably well, but that won’t last. Eventually Democrats will help people get the documentation they need to meet the ridiculous and confusing new requirements. The whole “voter integrity” sham may have given Republicans a one or maybe two-election boost in low-turnout races. Meanwhile we kissed off minority votes for the foreseeable future.

• Across the country, every major Democratic ballot initiative was successful, including every minimum wage increase, even in the red states.

• Every personhood amendment failed.

• For only the second time in fifty years Nebraska is sending a Democrat to Congress. Former Republican, Brad Ashford, defeated one of the GOP’s most stubborn climate deniers to take the seat.

• Almost half of the Republican Congressional delegation now comes from the former Confederacy. Total coincidence, just pointing that out.

• In Congress, there are no more white Democrats from the South. The long flight of the Dixiecrats has concluded.

• Democrats in 2014 were up against a particularly tough climate because they had to defend 13 Senate seats in red or purple states. In 2016 Republicans will be defending 24 Senate seats and at least 18 of them are likely to be competitive based on geography and demographics. Democrats will be defending precisely one seat that could possibly be competitive. One.

• And that “Republican wave?” In Congressional elections this year it amounted to a total of 52% of the vote. That’s it.

• Republican support grew deeper in 2014, not broader. For example, new Texas Governor Greg Abbott won a whopping victory in the Republic of Baptistan. That’s great, but that’s a race no one ever thought would be competitive and hardly anyone showed up to vote in. Texas not only had the lowest voter turnout in the country (less than 30%), a position it has consistently held across decades, but that electorate is more militantly out of step with every national trend then any other major Republican bloc. Texas now holds a tenth of the GOP majority in the House.

• Keep an eye on oil prices. Texas, which is at the core of GOP dysfunction, is a petro-state with an economy roughly as diverse and modern as Nigeria, Iran or Venezuela. It was been relatively untouched by the economic collapse because it is relatively dislocated from the US economy in general. Watch what happens if the decline in oil prices lasts more than a year.

• For all the talk about economic problems, for the past year the US economy has been running at ’90’s levels. Watch Republicans start touting a booming economy as the result of their 2014 “mandate.”

• McConnell’s conciliatory statements are encouraging, but he’s about to discover that he cannot persuade Republican Senators and Congressmen to cooperate on anything constructive. We’re about to get two years of intense, horrifying stupidity. If you thought Benghazi was a legitimate scandal that reveals Obama’s real plans for America then you’re an idiot, but these next two years will be a (briefly) happy period for you.

300 Spartan Hoplites Saved Greek Democracy But Will 400 American Billionaires Destroy Ours?

Whether Huntsman was the one who revealed that multimillionaire GOP tax cheat Mitt Romney paid no taxes at all for years, what we do know for sure is that for the years he did pay something his rate was 13.9%, considerably less than the 35% the very rich are supposed to pay. And that doesn't count his non-taxable income-- nor the money he had stashed away in foreign accounts of dubious legality-- which probably accounted for more than half his wealth.

When Eisenhower, the last mainstream Republican president, was in office, the marginal tax rate on incomes over $400,000 was 92% and capital gains was taxed at 25%. In 1954 Eisenhower reduced the marginal rate to something Republicans felt was more fair… 91%. His greatest accomplishment-- aside from keeping the U.S. out of wars-- was the building of the Interstate Highway System, judged so not just by historians but by Eisenhower himself. Although his 1952 landslide gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress, they made no moves to reduce taxes beyond the modest 1% reduction for top payers. While Ike was in the White House the economy expanded and the Dow more than doubled.

JFK kept the top rate but LBJ made the effective top tax rate 75.25%, a gigantic tax cut for the very wealthy and Nixon kept that rate, while raising the capital gains rate to 36.5%. At that time Mitt's father, George Romney, ran for president and released his tax returns, showing a $2,972,923.58 income during 1966 and a total of $1,099,555.18, a very different story than the one his son's taxes told.

Ford's brief presidency saw no changes in the marginal rates but did see capital gains go up to 39.875%, the peak, as it turned out, which helps explain why the rich have gotten much much richer since the end of the Ford presidency. The decrease in capital gains taxes began under Jimmy Carter, decreasing by over 10 points to 28%. This just whetted the appetites and the greed of the very rich for more and bigger cuts. Reagan was glad to oblige. He slashed the top marginal rates from around 70% to just 28%, the seed for economic catastrophe and endlessly unbalanced budgets. George H.W. Bush tried to undo some of the damage Reagan's tax cutting had done and rates increased slightly. Clinton kept the marginal rate for top earners basically the same as Reagan and decreased the capital gains tax by 8 points.

Then came George W. Bush (or, more to the point, Dick Cheney, who was in charge of the economy). The rate for top earners sunk to 15.35% and the capital gains tax was pushed down to 15%, exploding the deficit and sending the U.S. economy careening towards the disaster that ended the 8 catastrophic Bush-Cheney years. Obama kept the unsustainable Bush tax cuts for the rich. according to James Stewart's widely discussed NY Times piece over the weekend, High Income, Low Taxes And Never A Bad Year, the rich just keep on getting richer and richer under the tax policies they pay for with their campaign contributions. "The fortunate 400 people with the highest adjusted gross incomes," he wrote, "still made, on average, $202 million each in 2009, according to Internal Revenue Service data. And this doesn’t even count income that doesn’t show up as adjusted gross income, such as tax-exempt interest." And for many rich people that tax-exempt interest is over half their income.

Yet the top 400 paid an average federal income tax rate of less than 20 percent, far lower than the top rate of 35 percent then in effect.

They also paid a lower rate than the top 1 percent, which were people with adjusted gross incomes in 2009 of at least $344,000. These affluent but hardly superrich taxpayers paid on average just over 24 percent of their adjusted gross income in federal income tax. Even the top 0.01 percent, people earning at least $1.4 million, paid 24 percent.



“The top 400 have enormously high incomes even after the dip,” said Leonard E. Burman, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and a professor of public policy at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “It’s still over $200 million each. And yet they’re still paying at a lower rate.”

Even in a bad year like 2009, the federal tax code at the very top is regressive, not progressive.

Of course, the top 400 are a tiny fraction of the overall population (there were over 140 million returns filed in 2009). But I’ve always found them to be a useful window to the otherwise hidden world of the ultrarich. And if the tax code is perceived as unfair to the wealthiest citizens, is it any wonder that there’s widespread resentment at lower rungs of the prosperity ladder?

It may seem surprising that some of the country’s richest people had a banner year in the depths of the recent recession, but recall that 2009 was a year that Wall Street paid itself big bonuses even after taking billions in government rescue money. And while the stock market bottomed in March of that year, it went on to rack up impressive gains. These were especially favorable conditions for nimble hedge fund managers.

…Among those at the top of the rankings that year were David Tepper, founder of Appaloosa Management, who earned an estimated $4 billion; George Soros, who earned $3.3 billion; James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who made $2.5 billion; and John Paulson, at $2.3 billion, who famously bet against mortgage-backed securities and cashed in on the housing collapse.

Most of the income of hedge fund and other managers of investment partnerships-- so-called carried interest-- is treated as capital gains rather than earned income, and is taxed at a low preferential rate, which was 15 percent in 2009. This much-criticized loophole has survived repeated attempts to remove it, and was left untouched by the Obama administration’s 2009 tax increases.

The success of hedge fund managers as well as others who bet on both market declines and gains may help explain why members of the top 400 still managed to report average net capital gains of over $92 million in 2009. That was significantly lower than the peak year of 2007, when net capital gains for the top 400 averaged $228.5 million. Still, it represented 46 percent of their income, which is much higher than for most people.

This tiny sliver of taxpayers accounted for an astounding 16 percent of all capital gains in 2009, the highest percentage by far since the statistics started to be compiled in 1992.

…Dividend income for the superrich also hit a record in 2009, at an average of $10.6 million each, which accounted for 13 percent of the top 400’s total adjusted gross income. With interest rates hitting new lows, many superrich people apparently shifted more of their assets to stocks paying higher dividends. Dividend income is also taxed at a preferential rate.

“They’re still paying much lower rates because their income is dominated by capital gains and dividends,” said Edward Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Law and a former chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. “As long as those forms of income are taxed at a preferential rate, the rich are going to benefit the most.”

It remains a pillar of Republican orthodoxy that taxes on unearned income, especially capital gains, should be low, or even eliminated. But it was Ronald Reagan who as president championed taxing capital gains at the same rate as earned income. This was a crucial part of his 1986 tax reform, which lowered overall rates by broadening the tax base.

“Capital gains have taken on a totemic significance to the Republicans,” said Professor Kleinbard. “But they’re just another way that you earn a return by investing capital in productive activity. There’s nothing magical about capital gains from an economic point of view.”

…Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, and Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, have been working on a much-anticipated bipartisan approach to tax reform, and the House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has said, “They agree on the fundamental principles: Broaden the base, lower the rates and simplify the code.”

Last week, the Democratic Party's version of Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, hosted a $15,000 a plate lunch for Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton at his 23,000 square foot mansion in Beverly Hills. Not even counting the$10 million check Saban wrote to the Clinton Library, he's given over $12 million to Democratic Party candidates. He's worth something in the neighborhood of $3.5 billion-- and without that nice tax code both parties champion, that would have never happened. There were no billionaires when Eisenhower was president. It was mathematically impossible. And it was good for democracy and good for America.

After examining the voting records of freshmen Democrats-- not Republicans who are owned lock-stock-and-barrel by the plutocrats-- but Democrats who are supposed to be serving the interests of working families and the middle class, we have a list of the 13 freshmen-- a baker's dozen-- who have been the most slavish adherents class warriors on behalf of the rich for this session of Congress. This is what the DCCC gave us last year-- and this is in order, worst first:

• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Pete Gallego (New Dem/Blue Dog-TX)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)
• Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Cheri Bustos (D-IL)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• Brad Schneider (New Dem-IL)

HILLARY CLINTON READY TO END BID FOR THE PRESIDENCY

I was never thrilled about all that baggage and trash around her-- the Terry McAuliffes, Mark Penns, Howard Wolfsons, Sandy Bergers, Richard Holbrookes-- but I've always harbored an affection for her and before the primary season really got under way I thought it was 50/50 between Obama and her in terms of who would make a better president. Even as her campaign turned more and more Rovian by the day, I always harbored a great deal of good will for Hillary herself and wouldn't have minded all that much if she wound up beating McCain instead of Obama. I suspect that Hillary Clinton would have made a decent president and even if Obama is 100 times as inspiring and 100 times as charismatic, the idea of shattering the ultimate glass ceiling for more than half the citizens of this country, is pretty inspiring in and of itself. But that baggage and trash...

Anyway, last night one of the CNN talking heads-- it was on in another room so I was just listening while blogging-- started talking about how two of her confidantes had said that she wants to be Obama's running mate. I think Obama should get to pick his own running mate and I wonder, as some wag on CNN did, if the "dream ticket" wouldn't turn into a nightmare ticket. That'll be his call though. If he wants my advise, he'll go with benign Clintonista Wes Clark, at once reaching out to the "other side" and also shoring up his national security and military cred.

Over at HuffPo today, very well-connected Lawrence O'Donnell claims she's dropping out "by June 15." He claims a "senior campaign official and Clinton confidante" told him there would be a nominee by June 15 and that Hillary is a reasonable person. I guess we can assume that that last assurance means she doesn't plan to rip Obama's throat out. "Everything about our conversation implied," writes O'Connell, "that he had already had this reality-based discussion with Hillary."

Today Amy Sullivan in Time makes the case that Hillary no longer has a case to make. I guess that was the genesis of the tear in Bill Clinton's eye last night. It's pretty much over-- nearly as much as Vito Fossella's political career.

No matter how hard she and her steadfast backers try, the exit polling from Indiana and New Carolina are not going to help make the case for her going on. In order for Clinton to persuade superdelegates to back her over Obama, she needed to demonstrate that she was the less divisive candidate who could win over general election swing voters in states like Indiana. Her aggressive campaign, however, has led to a growing gap-- now between 15 and 20 points in Indiana and North Carolina-- in the perception that she has been more unfair in her attacks than Obama has.

Clinton's recent embrace of a "gas-tax holiday"-- an idea dismissed by others in her party as a bit of ineffective pandering-- also reinforced questions about her trustworthiness. In Indiana exit polls, a full quarter of Clinton's own supporters said that they did not think she was honest. Just as Obama suffered in Ohio for looking like he was too political on NAFTA, Clinton's position on the gas tax issue riled Indiana voters, who consistently raised it in conversations with reporters the weekend before the primary vote.

Perhaps the most disturbing indicator for Clinton was the fact that 15% of those who voted for her on Tuesday said they would not back her in November (7% of Obama voters said they would not support him in the general election). Some conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh have urged Republicans in the remaining primary states to prolong the process by casting votes for Clinton, who they think would be an easier opponent for John McCain. Numbers like this, which some pundits claimed meant that Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" helped put Clinton over the top in Indiana, are watched closely by superdelegates and do not ease their concerns about Clinton's electability.

In today's New Republic John Judis writes that the primary is over. She "might still run in West Virginia and Kentucky, which she'll win handily, but by failing to win Indiana decisively and by losing North Carolina decisively, she lost the argument for her own candidacy. She can't surpass Barack Obama's delegate or popular vote count. The question is no longer who will be the Democratic nominee, but whether Obama can defeat Republican John McCain in November. And the answer to that is still unclear. Obama is going to need Hillary now to undo some of the harm her campaign has done to Obama-- to make sure that at least Democrats know he didn't ever take any oaths on the Koran and that he isn't anti-American or Muslim or just a puppet of Jeremiah Wright.

It was more newsworthy that early Clinton supporter George McGovern had endorsed Obama today and urged Hillary to pull out of the race but when I read that the most clueless and lamest Democrat in Congress, Heath Shuler, who apparently had had one too many smashes in the head in his day, had endorsed her, I knew the campaign was wrapping up. The latest Gallup polling shows Obama beating McCain in the general population-- and wait til he's the nominee!-- but also beating him overwhelmingly among Jewish voters. Hopefully we won't have to wait too much longer for Hillary to do the right thing and start working with Obama to bring the party together and defeat one of the greatest enemies America has ever faced, John S. McBush.

WHY BE BITTER? HILLARY & McCAIN HAVE SHOWN THE COUNTRY WHAT DIVISIVE HYPOCRITES THEY ARE

Two bitter insiders sing from the same desperate prayer book

All day yesterday I was trying to keep myself from noting how remarkably similar the rotten vicious Clinton campaign was to the rotten vicious McCain campaign-- or at least how remarkably similar the two vile Insider campaigns sound in regard to Barack Obama's stumble. The corporate media, of course, is beside itself with joy. This is, after all, what sells their product. So they're taking great delight in blowing it all out of proportion. To them it's almost as big as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I used to live in one of those small Pennsylvania town-- in Monroe County. Obama's description was extremely polite and understated and Clinton's and McCain's reactions, if nothing else, point out their own shared, smug hypocrisy. And the media-- half clueless and half venal. Right now I'm in the middle of reading the rather extraordinary new book by former Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Against The Tide-- How A Compliant Congress Empowered A Reckless President. I expect that I'll be writing more about Mr. Chafee's book in the coming days. But there were a few pages I read a few days ago that made me think about the role the media plays in these kinds of verbal gaffes candidates make. But I don't want to talk how the media is piling on the Obama "bitter" comment but instead compare a story by Chafee with how the media has pummeled Clinton mercilessly over her whopper of a lie regarding her dangerous mission to Bosnia. I never heard this story before; I don't think the media covered it. And if they did, they sure didn't cover it the way they covered Clinton's Bosnia lie, even though her tall tale seems more innocent than the Cheney episode that Chafee relates early in his book:

I thought back to the Republican convention in Philadelphia just six months earlier, in August, when I applauded Mr. Cheney’s speech. It was uplifting and emotionally charged, but that was before I knew the Bush administration would be so willing to use words dishonestly.

Mr. Cheney recalled for the convention his days as secretary of defense, describing his frequent helicopter flights over Washington and how he looked down on the city with thoughts that were solemn, patriotic, and reverent.

“When you make that trip from Andrews to the Pentagon, and you look down on the city of Washington, one of the first things you see is the Capitol, where all the great debates that have shaped two hundred years of American history have taken place.

“You fly down along the Mall and see the monument to George Washington, a structure as grand as the man himself. To the north is the White House, where John Adams once prayed ‘that none but honest and wise men [may] ever rule under this roof.’

“Next you see the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, the third president and the author of our Declaration of Independence. And then you fly over the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, this greatest of presidents, the man who saved the Union.

“Then you cross the Potomac, on approach to the Pentagon. But just before you settle down on the landing pad, you look upon Arlington National Cemetery, its gentle slopes and crosses row on row.

“I never once made that trip without being reminded how enormously fortunate we all are to be Americans, and what a terrible price thousands have paid so that all of us, and millions more around the world might live in freedom.”

A day later, I was jolted to read that the staff at Arlington National Cemetery had put out a statement correcting something our candidate for vice president had said in the most inspiring part of his address.

The cemetery staff took note of the reference to “gentle slopes and crosses, row on row,” and noted: “There are no crosses in Arlington National Cemetery.”

They suggested that Mr. Cheney had lifted the image from “In Flanders Field,” a moving poem by Canadian John McCrae, in 1915.

In Arlington National Cemetery the American war dead of all faiths lie under tombstones with rounded tops.

Richard Cheney, who avoided military service as a young man, may never have looked out the helicopter window as secretary of defense to reflect solemnly on the sacrifice of the fallen.

Did he think it was all right to push that emotional button for political gain? To use America’s war dead as a campaign prop?

The cemetery staff stood up for the truth and held Mr. Cheney to account. This was no partisan press release; it came from the professionals who see our war dead to their final resting places, and who work under the motto “Where Valor Proudly Sleeps.” They resented that Richard Cheney had made up a tender story about the hallowed grounds they tend, or had allowed a Republican National Committee speechwriter to make one up for him.

If he was willing to speak falsely about Arlington National Cemetery, what else in his speech would prove inaccurate?

Cheney's lies predicted the next 7 years. Later in the speech at the Republican Convention he claimed that George W. Bush had “the courage, and the vision, and the goodness, to be a great president.” He promptly proved himself a coward with no vision except self-serving greed and the short-term outlook of someone who comes along and wrecks a company. Except he wrecked a whole country. The media doesn't see their own complicity. They can't even see their complicity in how they have created an absurd myth around John McCain. In fact, Big Tent Democrat points out a very telling comparison between Obama's statement about the feelings of people in small town Pennsylvania with what McCain said-- which went largely unreported-- about how people feel in small town Iowa.


UPDATE: ANOTHER PENNSYLVANIA OBAMA ENDORSEMENT

Although Fox and CNN are rolling in their own shit, encouraging Hillary to destroy Obama and the Democratic prospects in November, one newspaper you might expect to have taken seriously the purposeful misinterpretation of Obama's remarks, the Allentown Call, hasn't fallen for the Clinton-McCain trope nor it's hysterical amplification by a disgraceful national media. They endorsed Obama today.

In fact, while both candidates are members of the same U.S. Senate, Sen. Obama is the one who has distinguished himself as the better agent for changing Washington. Remember, on the issues, the differences between the Obama and Clinton platforms are thin or nonexistent. He has set himself apart by enunciating a vision of a different America, one that people recognize as resting on the nation's founding principles. His vision calls upon ''the better angels of our nature'' just as Abraham Lincoln did in 1861.

Obama was also endored by the Scranton Times-Tribune this morning. I guess these guys aren't as concerned with brie as the pathetic hacks in the mainstream media trying to drum up some business for their dying dead tree operations.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH JAMES CARVILLE?

We've tried to keep out of the vituperative aspects of the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Personally I voted for Obama, although the decision wasn't a slam dunk. I think they're both decent candidates-- though neither is great, until compared to trash like Bush or McCain-- and that each has some serious drawbacks for committed progressives. Each also represents something symbolic that is awe-inspiring-- Hillary, the shattering of the ultimate glass ceiling for every woman in America (and much of the world) and Obama, the triumph of hope over hopelessness, despair and societal impotence. Her overall voting record is slightly better than his. Hers is moderate leaning towards progressive. His is moderate and not leaning nearly as progressive. On the progressive scale among Democrats, Hillary is the 29th of 50 and Obama is the 40th, down there with problematic Democrats like Tom Carper (DE), Max Baucus (MT) and Byron Dorgan (ND), not as supportive of progressive legislation as-- hold your breath-- Ken Salazar (CO) but a bit more progressive than Blanche Lincoln (AR) and Claire McCaskill (MO). Neither of them has a voting record like an actual progressive, such as Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Ben Cardin (MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Barbara Boxer (CA), or Dick Durbin (IL). Even the always suspect Dianne Feinstein has a generally better record than either of them.

What ultimately made me cast my vote for Obama-- the tiebreaker, more or less-- was the sleaziness and corruption she's surrounded herself with. He may not be ideal either and his voting record is too moderate for my tastes but she is the DLC and people she chose to run her campaign are nearly as bad as the people driving the Double Talk Express-- and not nearly as smart or ruthless. It goes beyond just McAuliffe and Penn and Wolfson, 3 especially bad actors inside the Democratic party. The whole upper echelon of her campaign is all about looking backward instead of looking forward.

James Carville is the perfect example. Forget that he served as the conduit for information about the Kerry campaign to Cheney via his wife. Forget that he tried engineering the replacement of the popular and successful-- and elected-- DNC Chairman Howard Dean with the unpopular, unsuccessful and electorally defeated reactionary Harold Ford. Just go to his latest outburst, denouncing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as a "Judas."

Richardson was all torn up between personal loyalty and affection for the Clintons and doing what he knew was the right thing for his country. To a slime-bucket insider like Carville, that makes him a Judas Iscariot, someone who betrayed Jesus, God, mankind... I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton because her campaign-- and presumably the plans for her administration-- are filled with people like James Carville.

Carville was at the Young Democrats convention in North Carolina yesterday. I hope he didn't charge them as much as he charged me when I hired him to entertain at a convention for my company a few years ago, but I noticed that any young Democrats who wanted to hear him spewing his poison had to pay $50 to get in. I imagine it was all about how people should vote for Hillary, in a state where Obama is polling over 20 points ahead of her. But then he went further. He endorsed the Insider, anti-grassroots hack, Kay Hagan in a way that purposely made it seem like she was the nominee of the party, when in truth she's only the nominee of the Lizard Man and the lobbyists. The progressive grassroots candidate for the Democratic nomination, Jim Neal, was in the room and he loudly reminded Carville and the Insiders that "We have primaries here in North Carolina. We don't have coronations... It was the first time I've ever seen him quiet," Neal said. I guess in Carville-World, Neal, who has also endorsed Obama is another Judas.

A DEMOCRAT ANSWERS McBUSH'S IRAQ WAR PROPAGANDA BARRAGE-- HILLARY

So while Cheney is in Baghdad trying to strong arm the puppet regime there to sign over Iraq's oil wealth to his cronies at the big oil companies and while McCain and the other 2 stooges are trolling for media time to push a third McBush term, Hillary Clinton was delivering a serious address on Iraq policy. Oh you didn't know? Maybe that's because the Republican-owned corporate media is too busy talking about Obama's pastor or Spitzer's mistress or whatever they've ginned up to try to make the GOP look less like a stinking, smoldering heap of garbage. I just looked at the NY Times (nothing; although that is understandable since Heather Mills just got a $48.6 million) settlement from Sir Paul McBeatle) and the Washington Post (also nothing-- but a startling revelation that when she made her ridiculous racist remarks last week Ferraro was channeling the Clintons and that white male voters are important in the election. The only place I could find where the speech was covered was the Moonie Times, of all places. Perhaps when the Times figues out that the no one cares about Heather Mills' millions and when the Post realizes that white men have always been... uh... "important," they'll get to the Iraq speech by the probable next president of the United States. The report on her own blog starts with a sensible where are we now statement:

Five years after the start of the war, we have come to a crossroads. The war has sapped our military and economic strength, damaged U.S. national security, taken the lives of almost 4,000 brave young men and women in uniform, and placed a lasting toll on the tens of thousands of wounded, many with invisible injuries like Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The George W. Bush-John McCain strategy is to continue this failed policy. We need to end this war and bring our troops home. We need to press the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country. We need to rebuild our alliances and enlist the international community in securing stability in Iraq and the region.

The full text of her speech is here and it's worth reading, certainly more so than the details of the McGreevey menage a trois with the chauffeur. The short version is basically an outline of how to disengage from the role of an occupying power. "As President, one of Hillary's first official actions will be to convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff, her Secretary of Defense, and her National Security Council. She will direct them to draw up a clear, comprehensive plan for withdrawal that starts removing our troops within 60 days," although she also says she plans on retaining "counterterrorism forces in Iraq and the region to fight al Qaeda and will not permit terrorists to have a safe haven in Iraq from which to attack the United States or its allies." She supports banning the use of mercenaries by the U.S.

OBAMA, MARKETER-IN-CHIEF?

In Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton has a pollster/top strategist who is getting rich off campaign contributions as he steadily sinks his employer's hopes and dreams. The pollster DWT consults, Dave Beasing, is far more successful. He has to be; he works for real companies in the real world that expect results; not for Inside the Beltway Democrats (who never expect results). This morning Dave analyses a masterful political e-mail he, like so many of us, got from the Obama camp.

Whether or not you're personally swept up in Obama Fever, read the following email.  Purely as a piece of marketing, it's brilliant. 
 
1.    Obama's campaign strategists begin with an excellent awareness of public sentiment toward politics-- specifically that most tactics are tired, demeaning, and underestimate everyone's intelligence.
 
2.    They then use that awareness to say they're different from the rest of politics-- and to label anything the opposition does as not understanding those shared values.
 
3.    They quickly parry all attacks by labeling them as personal insults-- not just of their candidate but of the supporters themselves. 
 
Now re-read the 3 points above-- substituting your own industry for the word "politics"-- and learn from Obama. Would he make a great President? That's a different subject. He's a great marketer. 

-Dave Beasing
 

This morning, the New York Times reported that Senator Clinton is launching what even her aides admit is a "kitchen sink" bombardment of negative attacks against Barack.

This is the same stale, Washington playbook that has driven so many Americans away from the political process.

Yesterday, in a speech on foreign policy, Senator Clinton misrepresented Barack's positions and compared him to George W. Bush.

She questioned his "wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security," despite her support for Bush's war in Iraq-- a war that Barack showed the judgment to oppose before it ever began.

These negative tactics are exactly what voters have been rejecting this election season.

While others focus on trying to tear us down, we will continue to highlight what is most inspiring and most important about this campaign-- you.

And while others may try to score cheap political points, millions of ordinary Americans are talking to their neighbors, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and turning out to primaries and caucuses in record numbers to support this movement for change.

Barack has organized and inspired what yesterday's Time magazine called a "new breed of grassroots campaign-- viral, internet-based, built from the ground up."

Today, we are within reach of a goal that is unprecedented at this point in a presidential primary-- one million people giving to this campaign.

Thank you for being a part of this historic moment.

This campaign has always been about bringing new people into the political process. Please help us reach this goal and show your support for a new kind of politics and a new kind of leadership.

Make an additional donation today as part of our matching program, and encourage a fellow supporter to give for the first time:

https://donate.barackobama.com/promise

Thank you for your support,

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Every nasty, negative attack Hillary's clown patrol advisors persuade her to make on Obama drives down her approval ratings. This has happened in state after state. But they don't learn. They never learn. The advise she gets is abysmal. And she doesn't fire them. What kind of administration would she put together and run? One filled with nincompoops like Penn and Wolfson and McAuliffe?

AT WHAT POINT DO THE CLINTONS ENDORSE OBAMA AND START WORKING ON SAVING THEIR BRAND?

Another day, another 3 more wins

Obama didn't just win in Wisconsin, which we were told would be very close; he rolled right over her, close to 60% of the vote. Funny, even Hillary beat the entire Republican field. But what Obama did to McCain in Wisconsin, which his operatives claim will be a battleground  state in the general, was just sad. Obama had nearly triple the number of votes that McCain managed to get. He also pulverized Hillary's demographic firewalls, edging her among women and tying her among voters where she would have had to have rack up big margins to have a chance of winning-- or even coming close.

Among voters 49 years old and younger he had a significant 64-39 percent advantage over Clinton. College-educated voters, who made up 72 percent of those polled, favored him 59 percent to 39 percent.

Obama had a slight edge among voters who called themselves Democrats-- 50 percent to 49 percent-- but overwhelmingly topped Clinton among the 27 percent of respondents who called themselves independents, taking 63 percent of their votes to Clinton's 36 percent.

Independents have smelled the Bush stink coming from McCain and they have almost entirely deserted him for Obama. Ron Paul won the few independents voting in Wisconsin's Republican; the bulk of independents voted in the Democratic primary-- and overwhelmingly for Obama. It looks like more than double the number of Democrats than Republicans voted in Wisconsin. Republicans there, like everywhere else, are just dispirited with Bush, McCain, the GOP, the hateful and unpopular policies.

As I head off for the sack, we have word that Hawaii's caucuses are having a record turnout. The Clintons, despite sending their daughter there to campaign, will claim it's just a caucus so it doesn't mean anything and that it's a small state and doesn't count anyway. I mean their Machine stole more votes from certain Brooklyn and Manhattan neighborhoods than there are in all of Hawaii.

"There has not been this kind of interest and excitement in my political lifetime," said US Representative Neil Abercrombie, a veteran lawmaker from the Aloha State who is a superdelegate supporting Obama. "It makes my heart beat fast."

Jane Bond, a Democratic party official who started "Kauai for Obama" on the northernmost island in the Hawaiin chain, said she cannot recall any other political contest here that has energized Hawaiians like the 2008 presidential nominating process.

...Obama was expected to win in the state where he spent 14 of his first 18 years, running his winning streak to 10 contests and claiming most of the 20 delegates at stake.

As predicted, Obama also beat Hillary in the Washington state primary, a straw poll. He already won the bulk of that state's delegates in the caucuses two weeks ago when he trounced her two to one.

The Clintons ought to be working on a graceful and dignified exit strategy for her. She fired the campaign manager and the assistant campaign manager and maybe she'll fire the awful speech writer but none of that matters. People are ready for real change and real change does not mean a Bush or a Clinton or John McCain.


UPDATE: THE VOTES ARE COUNTED IN HAWAII

I hope Chelsea enjoyed her vacation; it was a landslide for Obama-- 76% to 24%.


UPDATE; BURNISHING THEIR BRAND ISN'T WHAT THE CLINTONS HAVE IN MIND APPARENTLY

They're reacting badly to the fact that Obama is now way ahead of Hillary, not just in popular vote and momentum, but with the hard delegate count. Instead of accepting reality, endorsing Obama, singing "Kumbaya" and regaining some dignity and respectability, the Clintons are going for a vicious Rove-like attack on Obama with a 527 of questionable legality. A shadowy group of special interests type Democratic Insiders calling themselves the American Leadership Project, is mapping out "an expensive, stealth campaign to buttress her standing in the must-win states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. They're canvassing Clinton donors for pledges of up to $100,000 in the hope of raising at least $10M by the end of next week. The money will be placed in the account of a political committee organized under section 527 of the tax code." She'll lose anyway; people are starting to really hate her and her husband. And I guess Obama needs the practice because the mud the Clintons sling his way will be baby play compared to what the McCain Machine has in store for him.


UPDATE: CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY GETS IT HALF RIGHT

Today CQ pointed out that Hillary faces two choices: Losing Pretty or Winning Ugly. The Clinton Machine seems to have opted for a third choice: Losing Ugly.

A WEEK IN THE LOOKING GLASS

-by Noah

I think about doing a post like this every week. Certainly, the material is available, but it just seems that every time you think our world has gotten as dysfunctional and warped as it can possibly be… Last week was special.

It Just Gets More And More Absurd

New Yorkers have to take their amusements wherever they can find them. It’s part of the defense mechanisms one needs to live here, in a harsh environment. One source of amusement, for me, has always been the headlines of our daily newspapers. I hit the street everyday (we walk a lot in NYC. It’s faster.) and I can’t wait to see what the nearest newsstand (limit, 3 per block) has to flash at me. The best in headline history may be the NY Post’s "Headless Body In A Topless Bar" from about 25 years ago, but the competition goes on and on. It’s not just the tabloids, though. The NY Times, our stuffy would be protector of the elitist establishment status quo, is known for its own unique headline style. Their specialty is the ridiculously reserved or inadvertently understated headline; a headline so coy that it seems to be hiding something, like for instance the truth or a truth they’d really rather not come out and say. One such headline appeared on Saturday. It even used the word understated; perhaps breaking new ground. The headline reads "Unofficial Tallies In City Understated Obama Vote." The first line in the story immediately belies the headline. "Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama. That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district." Read it again if it hasn’t sunk in. Now, I don’t want to assume that just because there are great multitudes of humans of African descent and huge numbers of young college students in my town that they would all vote for Senator Obama, but none? NONE is a pretty understated turnout for any candidate, let alone one who generates the enthusiasm of the Senator from Illinois. For instance, in Harlem’s (!) 70th Assembly District, not a single vote ended up in the Obama column. That’s according to the unofficial count. Incredibly, there are 80 more election districts in NYC where Obama DID NOT RECEIVE A SINGLE VOTE. Kinda hard to believe isn’t it? This reminds me of those old elections in the U.S.S.R. where Khrushchev got all of the votes, every one of ‘em. Oh, I know you might say, "well, New York is where Senator Clinton is from". Believe me, we don’t love her that much. In fact, most people I know, barely tolerate her. We look at her and we don’t see the funny pant suits. We look at her and we see a t-shirt emblazoned with "The Lesser Evil." I personally know a couple of people who voted for her. I know dozens who voted for Senator Obama. Clinton is our Senator and she can expect a lot of votes in New York City, but not all of them. Something is amiss. Or, as the Times might say it: "Some Theorize Something May Be Amiss."

In an even more ethnically African-American district in Brooklyn, the vote on primary night stood at 118 to 0 for Senator Clinton. Since then, more votes have been "found." She now leads 118 to 116, still a suspicious count. Back in that Harlem district, the count is now 261 to 136. Well, I guess 136 is better than the ZERO. ZIPPO. NONE Obama was credited with a week ago. Is this home field advantage? Is this love for the local Senator, or, is this confusion?

Has Jeb Bush been spotted in NYC? With all of the time Bill has spent with Daddy Bush, did he get a few pointers? New York’s delegates are apportioned by proportion of vote count. The more zero counts Senator Obama gets, the fewer delegates he gets. Guess who gets those. We all heard about the Super Delegates and the war for delegates past this week but, this is getting really dirty and suspicious. It may get Senator Clinton more delegates but it sure won’t increase her likeability quotient. We’ve spent 8 years pointing at Bush and Rove and what happened in Florida and then, the last four years, at what happened in New Mexico and Ohio. We’ve spent 8 years seething about Republican corruption and the sleaziness of the Bushes. Now, it looks like instead of rectifying the corruption, someone is adopting the same methods of "electoral" politics. It’s not new, of course, but, it is sickening. The Clinton Machine is a mighty big machine. I can’t wait ‘til the dead people rise up from the grave and start voting. I can just see Ann Coulter leading them to the polls for Hillary, directed by Roger Corman, no doubt.

And Doncha Come Back No More

Back in the middle of the week, on Valentine’s Day, Rep. John A. Bo(eh)ner, of Little Germany, er, te northern Cincinnati suburbs, stood up in our House Of Representatives and threw one of those 14 year old girl tantrums that he is so known for. This time it was about FISA, the Immunity For Bush And His Telecom Buddies Act of 2008. He just couldn’t believe that some dastardly Americans, including all too few of their elected representatives were against Bushie’s cherished FISA bill. It didn’t matter that even Bush, in a moment of carelessness or once in a lifetime honesty, had already publicly admitted that he had broken the law over the wiretap issue. No, this bill was an absolute must if America was to be saved from "the terrorists." By America, of course, he meant the huge campaign contributors that they so generously give to campaigns and, oh yeah, just happen to run the telecoms. He also meant, I’m sure, virtually the entire A-team of the Bush administration, Bush, Cheney, Rice, former Attorney General Gonzales et. al. After all, it is a little known aspect of the bill that it would not only grant immunity for the telecoms and the slime that sit in their corner offices; it would also grant the Bushies immunity from prosecution, strip away a high crime and misdemeanor that they could be impeached for during or after the long national nightmare of their regime, and, quite neatly, protect everybody from lawsuits that could potentially be filed against them by the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have been illegally spied upon.

For some reason, the media doesn’t talk about all of that very much. Oh, that’s right! They just happen to be part of the telecom industry. I’m sure what they think is that what we, the public, don’t know won’t hurt us, or is it them. Make no mistake, this bill isn’t about protecting Americans. Bush and his lapdogs in Congress care more about protecting their own butts and those of the telecom giants than you or I. But, J.A. Bo(eh)ner got so worked up that he said words to the effect that he just wasn’t gonna stand for "the other side of the aisle," or those who want to protect the Constitution that all congressional representatives are sworn to uphold with or without their fingers crossed behind their backs, opposing his and his dark master’s desires. The J. A., as I like to call him, wasn’t about to stand for a bill that was amended so that it didn’t grant all of those blessed immunities, so, he walked out and walked out with all but around 30 Republican representatives. The Republican congresscreeps ran out so fast you woulda thought there was a Valentine’s Day half-price sale on male hookers in back of the dumpster down the street, or, maybe they heard Tucker Carlson was doing a pole dance out on the Mall with the Washington Monument as a backdrop. In either event, don’t let the door hit you, J.A. (unless, of course, you kinda like that sort of thing). Oh, and J.A., while you were running down to the dumpster, the rest of Congress voted contempt citations for administration officials Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers. Yeah, if I was you, I’d wanna avoid that vote and I’d be afraid of what they might say before Congress too, if only they were compelled to talk. I could say you and your filthy colleagues walked out on the American people who hired you to work for them and defend the Constitution, but, you guys walked out on us long ago.

Three Ring Circus

One ring is named Clemens. One ring is named McNamee. And, one is a congressional panel headed up by a guy who is almost always one of our very best Congressmen, Rep. Henry Waxman. I guess he had to hold the hearing since Roger Clemens requested it, but, although somewhat riveting, it sure was a circus. Watching it was like watching a train wreck that you have advanced knowledge of and can do nothing about. I made a comment to one of Howie’s posts earlier in the week about the whole thing. For those who didn’t see it, I offer a couple of observations on some subtext of the whole thing. Both Clemens and his accuser came off quite badly, but what was interesting was that the Republicans on the hearing supported Clemens while the Democrats leaned toward McNamee. There was a clear partisan divide. Behind it all was a subtext. First of all, Clemens is a longtime buddy of both Dubya and Daddy Bush. This goes back to a time when Sonny Bush owned the Texas Rangers ballclub. Maybe some on the panel received a word from on high. Maybe they didn’t. Secondly, I really enjoyed seeing Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana tear apart the trainer sleazo, but, hmmm, aren’t there some Big Pharma companies based in Indiana? Do you think they might like Republicans these days? Gee, maybe they even contribute big sums of moola to Burton. Is McNamee being assaulted by Repugs because of sleaze or because he upset the apple cart? Is this all coincidence? I doubt it!

Now consider that some of the biggest (literally) stars in sports are poster boys and girls for the results that can be achieved through the use of Big Pharma’s products. To Big Pharma and their lapdogs in Congress, it’s "how dare anyone damage the reputations of our sports hero customers and, by connection, our products!" Lastly, doesn’t Congress have more pressing business on its plate? I don’t want to see high school athletes ruining their bodies and lives, but, such hearings smack of grandstanding. Now, I hear that Sen. Arlen "Single Bullet Theory" Spector wants to investigate the video taping habits of the New England Patriots, another great use of time and taxpayer money. More grandstanding for the public. The clowns have been already sent in.


David Shuster

Last week, on MSNBC, David Shuster referred to Chelsea Clinton as being pimped out by her parents. Poor choice of words, even if true. He shouldn’t have said it, at least not that way. To many, particularly younger people, the word pimp no longer carries the baggage that it does for older folks like myself and Senator Clinton. You see, Senator Clinton got very upset about the comment Shuster laid on her daughter. Any parent would. The difference is that Clinton has access to the upper management of NBC and was provided with an opportunity to abuse her perceived power. And, she is so arrogant that she felt she could suggest that Shuster be fired. Excuse me Frau Clinton, we already have an arrogant prick in the White House. We really don’t need another one. Is it that you feel that being an arrogant prick is a job qualification? Were Reagan, JFK, Eisenhower, FDR, Carter, Truman etc. all so arrogant? OK, I left out LBJ, for one.

Not that you care, but if you ever do wonder why so many people don’t view you as likeable, why do you continue to make yourself so UNlikeable? I gotta tell ya: If the 2008 Presidential election comes down to you and Mr. Straight Talk Out Of Both Sides Of His Mouth and it comes down to just who is more likeable, YOU LOSE, and so do the rest of us. Chelsea is a big girl, 27 and out in the world, the corporate world no less. She is leading a very public life. She can stand up for herself. You’re both in public life. Things get said. Thicken your skin and let it go. Please for your own sake and the sake of your campaign, lighten up a little. Have you ever called for the firing of the numerous conservative commentators that say bad things about you and your family? On the scale of saying your kid is pimped out vs. accusing you of murdering Vince Foster…

CNN To Become Public Access Television

Oh sure, they call it "Citizen Journalism" but CNN’s iReport is a new low in journalism. It’s also an indication that CNN is throwing in the towel. They are now taking "news reports" from the public at large. Anyone with a camera can play. Now, you can be a TeeVee journalist! It’s like those public access TV channels that feature things like Tele-psychic and people who spend hours talking about their sex lives, or just go around to horrible clubs interviewing junkies and fashion disasters. It’s like CNN either doesn’t know what news to report or they don’t know what news people want to see. I’d like to think that CNN might now actually cover and expose some truths but they’ve already had ample opportunity to do that kind of serious investigative reporting and have passed. iReport is desperation in a quest for ratings. It’s the turning of journalism into American Idol, complete with long lines of wannabees who wouldn’t know news if it bit ‘em in the butt. Oh wait, that’s what CNN already has! I mean, how is Glenn Beck different than any public access TV loon? And CNN gave him $50 million to sit on camera and babble his bug-eyed drooling nonsense.

Now, get ready for endless tales of people reporting their abductions by aliens and in depth reporting of the weekly appearances of the Virgin Mary on pieces of French toast. Get ready for some goofball reporting that he saw Nixon having ultra-caffeinated coffee with Bin Laden and E. Howard Hunt coffee at a Starbucks way back in 1976. Wait. No. That was ME!

What I Want To See

It looks like McCain has the Repug nomination all wrapped up, but, it looks like all of his campaigning is aging him fast, faster than normal. The Presidency ages people very fast. I remember my father watching JFK on the telly in early1963. He commented on how much Kennedy had aged in a little over 2 years. It was true. Kennedy was a young man, in his early 40s, but he looked 10 years older than he had just 2 years before. McCain is already 72. Reagan had alzheimer’s disease in his second term, if not earlier. I think that, by now, the 2008 campaign is aging all of us. The 24 hour coverage is over the top. Make it stop! Can’t we have those last three debates between the two finalists, one from each party, and be done with it? I have one suggestion, though. If it’s Obama vs. McCain, let’s dispense with the silly podiums that each candidate stands behind. I say we put Obama and McCain on treadmills, in front of a national audience while they debate. That should tell us something!