TUESDAY,  MARCH 11,  2008

POLITICAL DEATH WATCH

Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York is reported to be at his palatial New York apartment, and citizens have sighted vultures circling above.  This is a political death watch.  Spitzer's resignation, which WCBS said could come last night, didn't.  But it's just a matter of time, in the view of virtually all political observers.  Some legal authorities interviewed on TV suggested that Spitzer will use his resignation as a bargaining chip to avoid federal prostitution charges:  I'll resign if you won't prosecute me.

Republicans are threatening impeachment proceedings if the governor refuses to step down.

Hillary Clinton has still not issued a formal statement.  She did say, in a quote that undoubtedly will be on a marble memorial some day, "Let's wait and see what comes out of the next days."  These ringing words electrified reporters and are being studied in foreign ministries around the world. 

Some political analysts suggest Clinton could be hurt by the scandal because she's an ally of Spitzer.  I can't see that, unless someone proves that she interviewed the ladies before they entertained him.  Clinton had no dealings with Spitzer that remotely touched on this mess.

Barack Obama has been silent.  This isn't the kind of change he can believe in.  Mississippi votes today.  He's expected to win there because of the large African-American population, but his victory will be overshadowed by the soap opera in New York.

Perhaps the best quote of the day came from Xaviera Hollander, New York's top madam in the sixties, who expressed shock at the prices that Spitzer paid for his sensual partners:  "Five thousand dollars an hour!  That seems like a lot of money for anybody.  I used to do it for a hundred."

If you don't think inflation has hurt this country, just read that again. 

SURE, I'D SAY SO

Sometimes news organizations can get a bit behind in reporting a story.  Sometimes they don't seem to know what it's about.  So it is with the Associated Press, which this morning reports the Spitzer affair with this headline:

Scandal Puts Spitzer's Career in Danger

I'd go along with that, wouldn't you? 

Wake up, fellas.  Understatement is for novelists.

ANOTHER CHALLENGE FOR OBAMA

I said here yesterday that Barack Obama could show real leadership by demanding that the Rev. Al Sharpton cease interfering in the Florida electoral process.  In order to help Obama, Sharpton is trying to use his influence to permanently bar Florida delegates, most of whom are pledged to Senator Clinton, from the Democratic convention this summer.  The delegates are currently barred anyway because the Florida primary in which they were elected violated party rules.  The Obama and Clinton camps are trying to work out some way to have Florida, and Michigan as well, represented at the convention.  A party approved re-vote in each state is possible.

But Obama has been silent, once again allowing supporters to run the show.  Sometimes it doesn't appear that he's in charge of his own campaign. 

Ed Lasky and Thomas Lifson, of American Thinker, one of our preferred websites, suggest another way for Obama to show some much-needed spine.  There's an ugly situation in Tennessee.  Steve Cohen, a one-term white congressman, is running for reelection in a predominantly black district.  He's being subjected to despicable attacks.  Lasky and Lifson point out:

Barack Obama has pledged work to "rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community."

(This is something his church and his close friend, mentor, moral compass, and inspiration Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Jr has never done.)

Now he has been presented with a prime opportunity for him to join actions with words. A fellow Democrat and incumbent Representative from Tennessee who has shown great concern for his African-American constituents and has shown a stellar record in Congress is apparently being opposed for re-election purely on the basis that he is the wrong race.

The piece quotes a story from the New York newspaper, The Forward:

"Freshman Rep. Steve Cohen - one of a handful of white lawmakers to represent a majority-black congressional district - faces a rematch of his racially charged 2006 campaign that already has seen one local minister brand him a Jesus hater. In the face of such attacks, Cohen says he is disappointed that fellow lawmakers in the Congressional Black Caucus have not rallied to his defense. It is traditional for members of Congress to support fellow incumbents from their party, but that has not been the case with Cohen and the CBC."

American Thinker properly asks:

Will Barack Obama remain silent and let Congressman Cohen whither on the vine just because he is not an African-American? Is Obama comfortable with attacks from some people in the African-American community, attacks that are tinged with anti-Semitism and racism? The flier circulated by an African American minister which encourages other black leaders in Memphis to

"see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election"

cries out for moral leadership on the part of someone pledged to bring "change we can believe in."

Leadership involves a series of tests. Will Barack Obama step up and show leadership and loyalty to a fellow incumbent Democrat? Will he fulfill his promise?

Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.  The fact is, Obama has never shown courage, political or otherwise.  He has a history of missing legislative votes that could embarrass him.  He became the most left-voting member of the U.S. Senate, drifting from a more measured record the year before, just in time to enter the presidential primaries, where an appeal to the leftist base of his party is key to victory. 

Obama should be confronted on the Tennessee congressional race.  But who will confront him?  What reporter will have the courage to demand answers to the questions American Thinker rightly asks? 

There has to be one member of the press corps who has the gall to ask what needs to be asked.  Right now, I hear only silence.

MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA - THE DEM NIGHTMARE

The Democratic Party is facing a nightmare in its refusal to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations because their states' primaries, as noted above, violated party rules.  There's a prospect of a national convention nominating a presidential candidate with two major states left out of the vote.  The imagery couldn't be worse.  Florida, after all, is the Democratic poster child for unfair politics.  Some Democrats still believe the 2000 election was stolen from them in Florida.  It wasn't, but kids believe fairy tales.  Real Clear Politics reports:

Florida and Michigan, both states who jumped ahead of the party's pre-approved window in which they were allowed to hold nominating contests, are now casting about for a way to have their delegates seated in Denver this summer. That's not the way their gambit was supposed to go.

When both states' legislators moved their contests to January 15, in Michigan, and January 29, in Florida, they thought they knew exactly what they were doing: While the DNC might strip them of delegates, the eventual nominee would instruct credentials committee members to allow the two states' slates to sit on the convention floor. But that plan did not factor in the possibility of a contested convention.

Now, based on delegate allocation, it looks almost certain that votes to seat the delegations in their current iterations - both overwhelmingly favoring Hillary Clinton - will not exist. Examining the 186 members of the DNC's Credentials Committee, which would decide any contested delegations, the deck is heavily stacked against both states.

The piece points out that a re-vote could be held in both states, but that the cost would be enormous.  So far, no one has agreed to write the checks.  Real Clear Politics concludes:

Democrats already caught bad luck when John McCain won the Republican nomination, as the rival party chose the candidate who would be strongest in November. Now, faced with the option of holding new contests in Florida and Michigan or nominating a presidential nominee without input from two key swing states, Democrats are seemingly losing the choice they would clearly prefer, the revotes.

A party whose fortunes looked so brilliant just months ago could be on the brink of the most public collapse since 1968. After riots in Chicago that year, Democrats rewrote their rules to resemble those they operate under today. The rules are clear, and everyone knows what they are. The trouble is that neither candidate seemed to imagine that the rules would actually have to be enforced.

Arcane political party rules are not what voters looking for change want from their candidates. Thanks to two strong, and stubborn, candidates, the Democratic Party is seriously in danger of taking what was once an embarrassment of riches and turning it into a plain old embarrassment.

Sounds like a train wreck.

Fun, fun.

THE McCAIN DEMOCRATS

The Dems have other troubles as well.  Froma Harrop, a sharp political reporter I've quoted often, notes the emergence of the McCain Democrats, who could come from the ranks of disgruntled Clinton supporters:

A significant slice of Hillary Clinton's supporters -- that is, moderate Democrats -- might prefer McCain over Obama, or so I speculated a few weeks back. It was a hunch based on conversations and some suggestive but hardly definitive poll numbers.

But...

A recent Pew Research Center survey supports my impression. It has 20 percent of white Clinton voters saying that if their candidate does not get the Democratic nomination, they might vote for McCain. Older, lower-income and less-educated Democrats also indicated some willingness to support McCain if Obama is the candidate. These are your Reagan Democrats -- blue-collar voters who responded to the broad appeal of Ronald Reagan.

Gilbert Ray, a Democrat from Fayetteville, N.C., describes this inner conflict as follows: "There's a lot that he (McCain) believes in that I disagree with, but unfortunately Sen. Obama doesn't appear to me to have any answers to anything."

Harrop concludes:

Recent reportage bubbled over Obama's ability to attract an overflow crowd of 10,000 to a Rhode Island rally -- twice the number that came to see Clinton in the same gymnasium a week before. Wouldn't it be something, the commentators said, if Obama prevailed in an old-school Democratic stronghold such as Rhode Island?

As it happened, Clinton handily won the primary with a 59-40 percent margin. While Obama's young crowds were jumping up and down in the gym, the Clintonian masses were sitting quietly in their suburban split-levels, rural Capes or blue-collar triple-deckers.

Lots can happen between now and November. But if Obama is the nominee, a chunk of the Democratic heartland could well be up for grabs.

This requires careful strategy on McCain's part.  And it requires that the we-demand-purity ideologues recognize that a McCain victory is an imperative, even though he may not be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. 

Consider the alternative...very carefully.

THE NEW BATTLE OF BRITAIN

Britain has a new crisis.  Okay, it isn't quite on the level of Nazi bombers over Big Ben, or breaching the Normandy wall.  But, by what passes for social standards in the UK today, it's important: Britain's kids are grim.  Please don't laugh.  Think of grim kids and what they can do to Western civilization.  A reliably leftist British newspaper reports the latest evidence of downtrodden masses:

Teachers are to take the extraordinary step of calling for an independent Royal Commission to investigate why so many of Britain's children are unhappy.

The unprecedented move by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers follows a welter of evidence highlighting the fragile states of mind of many of the country's seven million primary and secondary school pupils.

A motion to be debated at the ATL's annual conference in Torquay next Tuesday says: "Conference notes with deep concern that many children in our schools appear unhappy and anxious." Over the next two weeks, ATL members will discuss several topics relating to the mental health of primary age children and the pressures they face in modern society. Another motion on the ATL's agenda warns that "social dysfunction and family breakdown are damaging the educational attainment of children and the performance of schools and colleges", while a third speaks of the growing number of pupils being driven to suicide by "academic, social and peer pressure". The recent spate of teenage suicides in Bridgend, South Wales, is symptomatic of the unease felt by today's children, delegates will hear.

But we thought the nanny state would keep everyone happy.  Wasn't that the plan?  The crisis grows:

In February 2007, the United Nations Children's Fund reported that British pupils were the unhappiest in the western world because of the lack of social cohesion in the UK.

That was followed by the most in-depth study of primary education for 40 years, which claimed that 3.5million younger children were affected by a worrying "loss of childhood".

The inquiry, led by Professor Robin Alexander of Cambridge University, said primary schools were engulfed by a wave of "anti-social behaviour, materialism and the cult of celebrity."

A separate report blamed this anti-social behaviour on the Government's rigid system of testing and its constant drive to meet targets.

And the real knife in the heart of youth:

The ATL, in its call for a Royal Commission, will blame homework for heaping further pressure on children and making them "unhappy and anxious."

Sure, sure, that's the culprit.  Homework.  If it weren't for homework, the Nazi bombers wouldn't have gotten anywhere near those white cliffs of Dover. 

Am I glad this is finally coming out.

Of course, a spokesman for Britain's Department for Children, Schools and Families - what a nice warm name - sees it differently:

"Research shows that, for most children, 2008 is a great time to be a child.

"Most children are happy, most are achieving to a higher level than ever before, enjoying better health, more opportunities to travel, to engage in sport or cultural activities than was the case for any previous generation."

It's a cover-up, I tell you.

I'm going to recess, and will be back later.

Posted on March 11, 2008.