"If this is what the Democratic primary is like, imagine what the general is going to be like, with southern conservatives getting into the act."

I'm actually more worried about the danger of Hillary running as incompetent a general-election campaign as the Ferraro escapades suggest than I am about Southern conservatives trying to go all neo-Helms on Obama. I mean, the Hillaristas are already doing a pretty good impression of Helmsian subtle appeals to white bigotry, and Obama is still beating her. (And he's actually doing better among the white independents to whom Helmsian tactics are supposed to appeal than he is among highly partisan white Democrats, so these sorts of attacks are likely to be even less effective in the general than they are today. When, it bears repeating, Obama is winning.)

Meanwhile, Hillary has shown us that her political judgment amounts to fibbing about her resume and looking to the Mondale campaign for tips on how to win elections. Every day, she finds new ways to make John freakin' Kerry look like FDR by comparison.

Hillary has to dump Ferraro, painful as it might be to throw overboard a pathbreaker in the women's movement.  But these comments are WAY outside the mainstream.

Belittling Obama's achievements as race-driven is disgraceful. But even worse is Clinton's smarmy refusal to call Ferraro on the carpet for them.

Clinton wouldn't be where she is if she didn't have the last name Clinton, but Obama's people have been polite enough not to point out the obvious.

Ah - who is Geraldine Ferraro and would someone please shut her down?

composition of Democratic primary:

African Americans: 20%~

Women: 58%~

Who's lucky again?

Kudos to you evil virginiacentrist

My substance question of the day to TNR posters:

If John McCain said "I pledge to all Americans -- I will have us on an inarguable route to energy independence by the end of my first term, to be certified by [independent nonpartisan groups] by building nuclear power plants, drilling in ANWAR, funding mass transit and raising CAFE -- using ideas of liberals and conservatives alike -- OR I WILL NOT SEEK REELECTION NOR WILL MY RUNNING MATE" and Obama stuck to his current energy proposal...

who would you vote for?  

virginiacentrist ,

Ask who was screwed up.

Enwards.

McCain doesn't even have climate change on his website. So I have a hard time taking him seriously on this issue.

Sure, he sponsored the first legit cap and trade bill in 2003 with Lieberman. But he doesn't even support Warner-Lieberman (says it doesn't have enough nuclear). I say he's just pandering shamelessly.

They say it took Nixon to go to China. Maybe it'll take a Republican to address Climate Change? Or not. Maybe that Republican will submit a watered down plan that convinces the public that the problem has been addressed.

For Climate Change, you want a Democrat.

VAC - er, the q wasn't about "climate change." It was about energy independence ie lower energy prices hence lower inflation. I suspect that a much higher % of the electorate cares about energy independence than cares about (man-made) climate change. I certainly do.

"building nuclear power plants, drilling in ANWAR"

Are deal breakers. Period. And your question kind of leaves out that whole 3 trillion dollar war we're losing.

Besides the crucial question isn't programmatic its generational. Which is to say: Are we living in August 1914 or not? If we are an experienced general ready to lead our collective charge toward a machine gun nest won't do.

Well I think you are being naive in saying that she is not helping Hillary. Hillary and her staff are not racists, but they are cynics who believe everybody else is and so the goal is to keep race front and center at all times. One of these things that made Obama so appealing early on was his appeals to a post-racial vision of America. However, the more the average person who does not follow the campaign closely hears race mentioned in conjunction with Obama's name especially in the context of white people being accused of racism then they tend to get the impression of him as just another Sharpton or Jackson. I have heard several people I know who are not political junkies say they were initially interested in Obama but got tired of him playing the race card even though he rarely makes racially based appeals.

I think the problem is not just Clinton and her campaign, although they benefit from it, but also the misguided appeals on his behalf by prominent blacks and liberals. Every time they cry racism, such as in the NYT op-ed this week, even if it might be somewhat justified they just further the Clinton campaigns narrative that Obama is the race candidate.

lymon1, fantasies about what your idealized version of McCain, Free Pony Provider, might offer are not substance. When people make the choice between which candidate to vote for they will not have this magical McCain as one of the choices. So far McCain has made vague grumblings about energy independence, or climate change, or any number of pressing problems but with precious little in the way of concrete proposals to tackle them or any indication that he would be willing to expend political capital to get them enacted. His schtick is always that he would like to do something about all these problems but only if it's easy and doesn't require him to buck any of the conservative coalition members he is currently trying to pander to.  His only real passion is saving face on Iraq even if that requires us to stay there until no one remembers why or how we got into it in the first place.

lymon, wtf? since when did you become McCain's speechwriter? Um...when he says that, I will address it, but silly hypotheticals to prove what exactly I leave to others.

If I did work for McCain I would much rather advise him to condemn what Geraldine Ferraro said in the strongest terms. It couldn't hurt him no matter who he faces. He will look decent and honorable to Obama supporters making it harder for Obama, and will sure as hell make it a nightmare for Hillary. Another win-win for McCain, courtesy of Hillary. First the 3am ad, now this. Maybe it was with Hillary McCain had the affair years ago and she is still in love with him.

Tep:  I think you can even sell a short-term damage to the environment (e.g., anwar) if your long term commitments to things that would help the environment (e.g., CAFE) are solid.  

To the others, thanks for the thoughts -- I'm just more-than-frustrated with the endless parsing of the campaigns' positioning/surrogates/etc. (though I made a mistake and left this on the stump, which is for that purpose, and not the plank, which has become a second stump...) and almost complete lack of substantive debate.  What I had in mind with my question is what are progressives really looking for in Obama (who I'm presuming is the nominee).  He once tied "new politics" to "hard truths" but he doesn't talk hard truths, not the way Tsongas and Perot did.  Today TNR has a piece on what had been one of his best moments on the campaign trial: a seeming willingness to take on teacher unions.  Samantha Power became a campaign issue, but not about Darfur!   Is the war, as arson implies, dispositive?  I'll say this much for McCain: he has repeatedly shown he's willing to take stands that are politically unpopular.  Unfortunately they are on positions I don't agree on (e.g., "green card amnesty" for illegal immigrants) but I wish we could see someone take ownership of an issue and back their campaign promisses with something real.  I would ask a conservative the same kind of question with Obama making a kind of "bipartisan" pledge (education would be a good start.  

You can bet that if it is McCain vs Obama, McCain will do nothing cute with racist overtones in the way Hillary has.

First of all, because McCain is an honorable man.  The Clintons-- and few argue this-- have proven over and over that they are not honorable.

But, second, it is against McCain's interests in a major way ever to appear to be playing the race card.  

Now, it's possible PACs, etc will come out with various Swift Boat type moves and Manchurian Candidate scares.  But, McCain will disavow all of them immediately.

Again, it is both the honorable thing to do and the smart thing.  He already has shown is M.O. when he disavowed that talk radio guys intro the other week.

So, yeah, it may well be that people preferring McCain will play dirty tricks in the runup to November.  But, I don't think you'll be able to trace them to McCain's people as recent shenanigans are so obviously traceable to Hillary.

Who is Geraldine Ferraro? Do the Clintons have any supporters, anyone in their inner circle, anyone who admires them who didn't watch Hopalong Cassidy?

Tell us again, Bill and Hillary, about how you represent change...after you shake the cobwebs off Geraldine.

Do the math: It's forty years since '68!  Imagine, fellow Boomers, arguing about the Vietnam war with someone who thought American culture was at its zenith in '28, that the best and the brightest from 1928 were best-equipped to lead America into the future.

And for Ferraro to say Barack is a mere token, that he wouldn't be where he was if he was white. - wow - what irony. Ferraro's only qualification, if you can call it a qualification, was her gender. And again, who under forty would think Ferraro's opnion matters?

buffaloboy, you write, "Hillary has to dump Ferraro, painful as it might be to throw overboard a pathbreaker in the women's movement."

Maybe.  But, Hillary has a history of letting ambiguity work in her favor.  So she'll dump as slowly as possible if she does.

But, more importantly, I must question your characterization of Ferraro as "a pathbreaker in the women's movement."  

Any more such pathbreakers and women are undone.  Rep Ferraro was so obviously a token and a gimmick, so obviously inadequate to be next in line for the presidency, so obviously an embarrassment with her family financial scandals and hints of Mafia connection.

In every way she was a liability and a setback for the cause of women.  If anything, she probably delayed the re-emergence of a serious woman candidate at the presidential/VP level until now.

It's too bad for the Democrats and for women that Diane Feinstein has no ambitions for the presidency.  She could have made a run this year and knocked off Hillary.  

She has more assets and experience than Hillary and none of her baggage.  She is truly respected across the aisle as a decent moderate.  She would have gotten a lot of Republican women's votes in November.  Which, I don't think Hillary will.

The Democratic Party is peculiarly dysfunctional in burying most of the credible candidates they do have and putting up people with lots of obvious problems.  Over and over, every four years since 1968.

Well Michael this may not be helping anyone yet, but I'm sure that the Clinton campaign believes these tactics will produce votes for them in Pennsylvania.  They've set about stirring up the racial animus pot and trying to divide the electorate along racial lines, a split that works to their momentary political advantage, their only consideration.  Yet another calculated move on the part of the Clintons.

Andrew Sullivan apparently sees it much the same way.

The Ferraro Gambit Is Deliberate

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.../the-ferraro-gam.html

When I see people like the Clintons, who will do virtually anything to win, I start to feel that it is my moral obligation to do everything in my power to stop them, things I've never even considered doing, like voting for a Republican, because if they win the nomination in this way, the Democratic Party invalidates itself and everything the party once stood for, we really will be the Republican-lite party.  And if the Clintons are able to somehow worm their way back in the White House in the national election, this nation will certainly continue down the path that the Bush the Bush administration has put us on, only the names will change, not the direction of the country.  

The way I see it, with the Clintons leading this nation, the Democrats will be virtually indistinguishable from the Republicans, and their reign will signal the end of government of the people, by the people and for the people, an ideal that will certainly perish from this earth if the Clintons and what they represent reattain the White House.

Just imagine what that unstable nutcase Hillary Clinton will do with the unchecked executive power that George Bush would put in her hands.  I imagine there will be retribution throughout the land, retribution that will be brought down upon the heads of Republicans and Democrats alike, anyone and everyone unwilling to fall in line with the Clinton administration's agenda will face Hillary's wrath.

God help us all!

To Mike's closing question, a moment's reflection should be enough to answer. Every last racial theme and innuendo will out, if only to discourage Obama and supporters. McCain needn't have a hand in any of it, nor his campaign. If you don't believe it, well, wait and see. Stock up on antidepressants, booze, National Geographics, whatever it takes to distract and cheer. Just be ready.

ChanRobt

Overall I agree with your assessment of Ferraro.  But she is still the only woman ever to be a major party candidate for either President or VP.  Dumping her had to be painful for Hillary.

Keith Olbermann drinks Hillary's milkshake.  :-)

Countdown Special Comment: Sen. Clinton, “This is not a campaign strategy. This is a suicide pact.”

www.crooksandliars.com/.../countdown-special-comment-sen-clinton-this-is-not-a-campaign-strategy-this-is-a-suicide-pact

The Clinton's have to know this isn't winning politics in the Democratic Party.  So I think its just the political equivilent of a player on a losing football team starting a fight towards the end of the fourth quarter.  It does make me wonder, however, if white women now days are less afraid of being called a racist than white men are?

But...on the substance of her remarks...

Unfortunately, as long as race-baced affirmative action exists, impolitic comments like Geraldine Ferraro's will usually have some truth to them.  

One of the most impressive things about Obama is that not only was he an AA admit into Harvard law, he was also on the ultra selective Harvard Law Review.  Yet, according to the wikipedia article on the law review, even that august institution brings in a few underachievers with the desired skin color:  "using a competitive process that takes into account first-year grades, an editing exercise, and a written commentary on a court decision, The Harvard Law Review selects between 41 and 43 editors annually from the second-year Law School class, which numbers 560.

"Two editors from each of first-year class's seven sections (fourteen in all) are selected half by their first year grades and half by their scores on the writing competition. Another twenty are selected solely on their scores on the writing competition. The other seven to nine are selected by a discretionary committee, either to fulfill the review's race-based affirmative action program, to select students who just missed the cut by either of the other two processes, or by some other criteria as the committee sees fit."

It would be interesting to know if Obama got onto the law review through the competitive process, or through the affirmative action program.  It would also be interesting to know what were his grades and his score in the (anonymously graded) writing competition.  I'm sure the law firm he worked for had access to this info. when they were considering hiring him.  Why can't we?