Dashing for Daylight

In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd takes about the current split in the Democratic party - between those dashing from the darkness and those embracing it. An excerpt:

Hillary Clinton denounced Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, but she did not absorb the ultimate lesson of the destructive vice president: Don’t become so paranoid that you let yourself be overwhelmed by a dark vision…

Darkness seeking darkness. It’s an exhausting specter, and the reason that Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, Claire McCaskill and so many other Democrats are dashing for daylight and trying to break away from the pathological Clinton path. “I think we should never be derisive about somebody who has the ability to inspire,” Senator McCaskill told David Gregory on MSNBC on Tuesday. “You know, we’ve had some dark days in this democracy over the last seven years, and today the sun is out. It is shining brightly. I watch these kids, these old and young, these black and white, 20,000 of them, pour into our dome in St. Louis Saturday night, and they feel good about being an American right now. And I think that’s something that we have to
capture.”

Hillary’s strategist Mark Penn argued last week that because the voters have “very limited information” about Obama, the Republican attack machine would tear him down and he would lose the support of independents. Then Penn tried to point the way to negative information on Obama, just to show that Obama wouldn’t be able to survive Republicans pointing the way to negative information…

Better the devil you know than the diffident debutante you don’t. Better to go with the Clintons, with all their dysfunction and chaos - the same kind that fueled the Republican hate machine - than to risk the chance that Obama would be mauled like a chew toy in the general election. Better to blow off all the inspiration and the young voters, the independents and the Republicans that Obama is attracting than to take a chance on something as ephemeral as hope. Now that’s Cheney-level paranoia…

The relentless Hillary has been the reticent Obama’s tutor in the Political School for Scandal. He is learning how to take a punch and give one back. When she presents her mythic narrative, the dragon she has slain is the Republican attack machine. Obama told me he doesn’t think about mythic narratives, and Tuesday night in Chicago he was reaching up for “a hymn that will heal this nation and repair the world.”

But, if he wants to be president, he will still have to slay the dragon. And his dragon is the Clinton attack machine, which emerged Tuesday night, not invincible but breathing fire.

Words of Wisdom

"Sadly, great talent and ideas are too often dismissed because those who possessed them were seen as too idealistic, too young, or too unwilling to submit to the same old Washington way of doing things." - Rep. Linda Sanchez

The Dream Ticket

In the Post, Richard Cohen describes why he came to believe in an Obama/Clinton dream ticket:

At the most recent Democratic debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer referred to "a dream ticket for the White House" - either Hillary Clinton for president and Barack Obama for veep or the other way around. Both candidates demurred, giving me the opportunity to describe my own dream ticket: Obama for president; Clinton for chief of staff.

That's the long and short of it. Just about everything Clinton says about herself - her experience, her indomitability, her presumed ability to work long hours - says to me that she would make a swell chief of staff. Beyond that, she either lacks the qualities that would make a great - not merely competent - president or hides them from us...

Election Forecast

The Prince of Darkness offers his political forecast following Super Tuesday.

1. Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) late-night Super Tuesday victories in Missouri and then California give him half the convention delegates needed and all but clinch the nomination for him. Once again, Romney's tactics such as pouring $10 million into California worked in theory but not in practice.

2. The anti-McCain barrage from conservative talk show hosts led by Rush Limbaugh did not work. The old GOP tendency to get behind the presumptive leader trumped irritation with McCain. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour went on TV last night to say it was time for McCain's opponents to get out and make him the nominee.

3. There is now no clear path for Gov. Mitt Romney to the nomination. The former Massachusetts liberal never was able to sell himself as a conservative, finishing third behind former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and McCain in Southern states.

4. McCain is still a heartily disliked figure in the Senate, but usually soft-spoken Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), uncharacteristically, was the only anti-McCainiac to speak out. The reason may be that Cochran is the Senate's king of pork while McCain is a leading anti-porker.

5. A test for McCain comes Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an event he stiffed last year. He has to repeat what he has been saying lately: First, he will veto any tax increase passed by the Democratic Congress. Second, he will name Supreme Court justices in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. More than that, he has to say he is one of them.

6. McCain's asset is that there is no genuine conservative left against him. Huckabee is an evangelical, not a conservative (which is one reason he is unlikely to be picked as McCain's running mate). In next week's "Potomac primary" (Virginia, Maryland, and D.C.), it looks like McCain will be the winner, with Huckabee a strong second in Virginia.

7. Thanks to proportional representation, the Democratic fight will stretch out into April. It would have been a very big night for Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) had Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) not squeezed out a win in Missouri. The next really big tests come March 4 in Texas and Ohio.

8. The overriding story is that twice as many Democrats as Republicans voted on Super Tuesday, and the gap in enthusiasm was even larger. McCain as nominee faces a massive task ahead.

The Wrong Experience

As has been said, the "experience" touted as a virtue by some in this campaign, is viewed as a hindrance by others. The experience that some claim prepares them to confront the challenges of tomorrow is the same experince that leaves them firmly entangled in the ideology and the battles of the past. Fareed Zakaria speaks to "The Wrong Experience." An excerpt:

And yet there are important distinctions between Obama and Clinton - and not simply in the broad, almost gassy talk of inspiration versus experience. They come to today's challenges from very different places. Consider Cuba policy. Almost anyone who is being honest will acknowledge that America's approach toward Cuba is brain dead. No one even remembers why we've imposed a total embargo on the country...

Obama has advocated easing the Bush-imposed ban on Cuban-Americans visiting the island and sending money to their relatives. He makes a broader case for a new Cuba policy, arguing that capitalism, trade and travel will help break the regime's stranglehold on the country and help open things up. Clinton immediately disagreed, firmly supporting the current policy. This places her in the strange position of arguing, in effect, that her husband's Cuba policy was not hard-line enough. But this is really not the best way to understand Clinton's position. In all probability, she actually agrees with Obama's stand. She is just calculating that it would anger Cuban-Americans in Florida and New Jersey.

This is the problem with Hillary Clinton. She is highly intelligent, has real experience and is an attractive candidate. But she is terrified to act on her beliefs. In fact, she seems so conditioned by what she sees as political constraints that one can barely tell where her beliefs begin and where those constraints end.

Partly, this is a generational difference. Bill and Hillary Clinton grew up in an era of Republican dominance. For much of the last 30 years, the Republican Party has been the party of ideas (a point made repeatedly by Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Ronald Reagan was seen by much of the country to have rescued America from malaise and retreat. The Clintons' careers have been shaped by the belief that for a Democrat to succeed, he or she had to work within this conservative ideological framework. Otherwise one would be pilloried for being weak on national security, partial to taxes and big government and out of touch with Middle America's social values.

For 30 years this has been the right bet. It's why Bill Clinton was the only successful national Democratic politician in that period. But is it still the right wager? Obama has grown up in a different landscape - with vastly different geopolitics, economics and culture. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been the defining political figures of the recent past. Conservatism has lost its monopoly role. As a result, the new generation is not defensive about its beliefs, nor does it feel trapped into the old categories like hawks versus doves and markets versus taxes.

This is not naiveté. Obama's position on Cuba is not all hope. Most of the older generation of Cuban-Americans are hard-line Republicans anyway, so it's probably pointless courting them. And the younger ones - under 45 or so - are far less wedded to the punitive approach and symbolic battles of the past. So Obama is taking a calculated risk that the time is right. Cuba policy is a microcosm for this difference in attitudes. Obama has spoken in favor of a proposal - made by Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn - that in order to get the world more serious about nuclear nonproliferation, the United States should begin to fulfill its end of the treaty and reduce its own nuclear arsenal. Again, for all I know, Hillary Clinton agrees with this approach. But she won't say so. Her long years of experience - in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s - warn her against such audacity.

But the world has changed so much - the cold war is a distant memory, capitalism has spread across the world, new threats come not from states but small bands of people, unilateralism is discredited - that perhaps it is time for America to change as well.

Super Tuesday Preview

For a closer look at the Super Tuesday states, the New York Times provides a great breakdown. Also, the Fix discusses the dynamics of each race. While conceeding that the Republican delegates are McCain's for the taking, the Democrats are a different story:

On the Democratic side, it is state by state, hand-to-hand combat with neither Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) or Barack Obama (Ill.) optimistic that tomorrow's vote will decide much of anything. Both candidates have a big state or two he or she is sure to win (New York for Clinton, Illinois for Obama), but they are still fighting for a handful of other key states that could tip the margin one way or the other when the winners are being sorted out. Here's a quick look at five of the biggest battlegrounds:

* Arizona: Symbolic of the rapid gains of Democrats in the southwest, Arizona is the biggest prize in the region tomorrow. Obama has the endorsement of Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) as well as Rep. Raul Grijalva (D), an influential voice in the Hispanic community. Clinton made a stop in Tuscon on Saturday (where she participated in the MTV/MySpace candidate forum). A MSNBC/McClatchy poll shows the race in a dead heat, with Clinton taking 33 percent of the vote to Obama's 31 percent. One fascinating finding from that survey: NBC political director Chuck Todd notes that unlike in other states where Clinton is winning Hispanic voters by a 4-1 margin, it is Obama who is actually winning among that key voting bloc in Arizona.

* California: By virtue of being the biggest state - with the most delegates - voting tomorrow, the Golden State is sure to gets lots of attention. Remember: Democrats give out delegates by congressional district, so no matter whether Clinton or Obama wins the popular vote in the state, both are likely to pick up a considerable number of delegates. An MSNBC/McClatchy survey in California put Clinton in the lead 45 percent to 36 percent; a Field Poll had the margin far closer, with Clinton at 36 percent to Obama's 34 percent.

* Georgia: The crown jewel of the southern states voting tomorrow seems to favor Obama. He has a slight lead in the MSNBC/McClatchy poll in the Peach State (the only state where he currently leads the New York senator) and Georgia's significant black population - nearly 30 percent of the state's residents - makes it prime territory for Obama.

* Missouri: The Show Me State always seems to find itself in the mix in any competitive presidential election. In the last 100 years, Missouri has voted for the eventual president in every election but one - 1956. It's expected to be a battleground yet again in November, and both Clinton and Obama want to show that he or she is the Democratic candidate who can win Middle America back for the party. MSNBC/McClatchy has Clinton up 47 percent to 41 percent over Obama, but this race will go down to the wire and could well depend on how African American cast their votes.

* New Jersey: What once looked like a Clinton stronghold has become more competitive. The latest survey in the Garden State put Clinton ahead of Obama by seven points, but the way the delegates are awarded in the state - not by congressional district but by specially designated delegate districts could aid Obama, his allies believe. Any sort of weak showing in what is arguably Clinton's backyard could have symbolic importance well beyond the raw delegate apportionment.

Meanwhile, Political Wire provides some of the latest polls:

California: Clinton 47, Obama 39 (American Research Group)
Connecticut: Obama 48, Clinton 46 (SurveyUSA)
Georgia: Obama 49, Clinton 27 (Strategic Vision), Obama 53, Clinton 37 (Public Policy Polling)
Illinois: Obama 60, Clinton 30 (SurveyUSA)
Massachusetts: Obama 46, Clinton 44 (Suffolk)
New Jersey: Clinton 47, Obama 41 (Strategic Vision), Clinton 48, Obama 43 (Quinnipiac), Clinton 52, Obama 41 (SurveyUSA)
New York: Clinton 53, Obama 39 (Quinnipiac), Clinton 56, Obama 38 (SurveyUSA), Clinton 51, Obama 32 (Public Policy Polling)
Tennessee: Clinton 56, Obama 34 (Public Policy Polling)
Utah: Obama 53, Clinton 29 (Deseret Morning News)

Burned Bridges

Today’s Washington Post provides an interesting perspective on how John McCain is viewed by some of his Republican colleagues in the Senate. While his “maverick streak” has earned quite a few enemies amongst the Republican base, it’s apparent that his style and legendary temper have certain Republican Senators a bit uneasy about a McCain presidency.

In a chamber once known for cordiality if not outright gentility, McCain has battled his fellow senators for more than two decades in a fashion that has been forceful and sometimes personal. Now, with the conservative maverick on the brink of securing his party's presidential nomination, McCain's Republican colleagues are grappling with the idea of him at the top of their ticket.

"There would be a lot of people who would have to recalibrate their attitudes toward John," said Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), a supporter of Mitt Romney's who has clashed with McCain.

Many Senate Republicans, even those who have jousted with McCain in the past, say their reassessment is underway. Sensing the increasing likelihood that he will be the nominee, GOP senators who have publicly fought with him are emphasizing his war-hero background and playing down past confrontations… But others have outright rejected the idea of a McCain nomination and presidency, warning that his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office.

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), also a senior member of the Appropriations panel, told the Boston Globe recently. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

A former colleague says McCain's abrasive nature would, at minimum, make his relations with Republicans on Capitol Hill uneasy if he were to become president. McCain could find himself the victim of Republicans who will not go the extra mile for him on legislative issues because of past grievances.

"John was very rough in the sandbox," said former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who is outspoken in his opposition to McCain's candidacy. "Everybody has a McCain story. If you work in the Senate for a while, you have a McCain story. . . . He hasn't built up a lot of goodwill."

The Obama Opportunity

In today’s Wall Street Journal, three prominent female red-State Democrats - Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill - speak to the “Obama Opportunity.” A couple excerpts:

Once in a generation, an opportunity comes along - not just for the Democratic Party, but for the United States of America - to build a new majority for change. Barack Obama's candidacy offers us that opportunity. As Democrats, and as Americans, we must seize it.

This moment in history is marked by the magnitude of our challenges. Our nation is fighting a war in Iraq that has made us less safe. Our planet is imperiled by a global climate crisis that we have done little to combat. Our economy is sliding toward a recession. Wages aren't keeping pace, as the cost of everything from health care to college is rising. Whether it's a world-class education, a secure mortgage or a dignified retirement, too many Americans are seeing their dreams slip out of reach…

Mr. Obama has lit a spark that has not been seen in American politics in a long time… In his campaign, Mr. Obama has built a movement for change from the bottom up. He draws enormous crowds. He has shattered fundraising records, with some 650,000 contributors and a seemingly limitless ability to tap small donors. He has inspired a flood of new voters, particularly young Americans. He's reached independents and Republicans who have voted for him by large margins. He's won with a diverse coalition, scoring decisive wins in the demographically different states of Iowa and South Carolina. And as the campaign goes national, polls show that the more voters see of Mr. Obama, the more they support him.

No matter how Democrats vote in this election, they will make history. The choice is not between race and gender. It is between the past and the future. We know the Republicans will try to unite their party by fighting the old partisan battles. If we choose Mr. Obama as our nominee, the Republicans won't be able to make this election about the past because we will have already chosen the future - a nominee who can bring all of us together, push back against the special interests, and offer leadership that is honest, open and inspiring.

For the sake of our party and our country, we cannot let this opportunity pass. Now is the time to build a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans that finally stretches across Red States and Blue States. Now is the time for us to have the courage to choose to change. Now is the time for Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, Peter Wehner speaks to Obama’s appeal amongst Republicans, despite his liberal ideology.

What is at the core of Obama's appeal? Part of it is the eloquence and uplift of his speeches, combined with his personal grace and dignity. By all accounts, Obama is a well-grounded, decent, thoughtful man. He comes across, in his person and manner, as nonpartisan. He has an unsurpassed ability to (seemingly) transcend politics. Even when he disagrees with people, he doesn't seem disagreeable. "You know what charm is," Albert Camus wrote in "The Fall," "a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question." Obama has such charm, and its appeal is not restricted to Democrats.

A second reason Republicans appreciate Obama is that he is pitted against a couple, the Clintons, whom many Republicans hold in contempt… A third reason for Obama's GOP appeal is that unlike Clinton and especially John Edwards, Obama has a message that, at its core, is about unity and hope rather than division and resentment. He stresses that "out of many we are one." And to his credit, Barack Obama is running a color-blind campaign… Obama, more than any figure in America, can help bind up the racial wounds of America. In addition, for the past eight years, one of the most prominent qualities of the American left has been anger, which has served it and the country very poorly. An Obama primary win would be a move away from the politics of rage…

Barack Obama is among the most impressive political talents of our lifetime. If he defeats Hillary Clinton, the question for the general election is not whether he can transcend his race but whether he can reach beyond his ideology.

Yes, We Can

Africa on Fire

The violence and chaos sweeping across Africa in recent weeks has shown the world that the entire continent is in danger of becoming completely engulfed by political unrest and widespread violence. The ensuing clashes have left hundreds of thousands dead and as each domino falls, the chaos spreads from border to border.

This weekend, “after a three-day advance across the desert, hundreds of rebels fought their way into the capital of the oil-rich nation of Chad.”

The government of Chad, a former French colony with a population of almost 10 million and a newly booming oil industry, has in recent years battled a variety of rebel groups along its volatile eastern border with Sudan, forcing an estimated 170,000 Chadians to flee their homes for sprawling camps in the scrubby desert.

While tonight, Chadian President Idriss Déby, the “cowboy of the sands”, appears to have the upper-hand in the conflict, the outcome is far from certain. Regardless, its implications will undoubtedly have international implications, spreading beyond Chad and likely fanning the flames of the violence in Darfur.

As reported, “Some 3700 EU soldiers are on alert for immediate deployment along Chad's eastern border with Sudan under a UN mandate to protect hundreds of thousands of refugees from Darfur. Advance units were meant to begin deploying last week, but the mission's Irish commander, Lieutenant-General Pat Nash, said the operation is on hold until the security situation becomes clearer.”

If (Déby) survives, he will emerge stronger, the crisis emphasising his importance to western strategy in containing the Darfur conflict across the border in Sudan… But if Mr Déby falls, the conflict in Darfur could worsen, plans to deploy European Union troops in Chad may stall, and turmoil could spill into Central African Republic, potentially destabilising a swathe of Africa.

Although he was originally installed with Khartoum’s help in 1990, his support for Darfur rebels from his Zaghawa community has angered his former friends. Observers say the Sudanese government has adopted Chadian rebels in the hope of ousting Mr Déby and cutting supply lines to fractious insurgents in Darfur... The real winner if Mr Déby falls would be President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s Islamist government in Sudan, who might feel encouraged to try to smash the Darfur rebels and even challenge Mr Déby’s allies in CAR (Central African Republic).

A victory for Bashir, one of the world’s worst war criminals, is the last thing we need, given the ongoing futility of our efforts in Darfur.

There has been no shortage of outrage in the Western democracies over the genocidal repression of Darfur's African population. Effective action to force Sudan to stop it, however, has been harder to come by. The latest illustration of the gap between rhetoric and action is the proposed joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force, which was supposed to be up and running with 26,000 soldiers by Jan. 1 - but isn't. In fact, only about 9,000 poorly trained and equipped soldiers are on the ground, most of them African Union troops left over from a previous, ineffectual force sponsored by that organization...

Through administrative harassment and diplomatic obstruction, Sudan's government has thwarted the deployment of other forces, including those from more substantial Scandinavian and Asian militaries. The danger is compounded by the splintering of Darfur's rebel groups, which has made it more difficult to bring all the parties into peace talks.

And while the fires burn in central Africa, the New York Times highlights the turmoil in Kenya.

It is far too easy to become inured to bad news from Africa, a continent of great promise and peril. Kenya’s rampage of ethnically driven killings that is now five weeks long is especially sickening and attention-grabbing because of how much hope the world had for Kenya’s democracy and economic revival - and how fast the country has descended into madness...

The vicious tribal violence - condemned by one American official this week as “ethnic cleansing” - has spread with stunning speed since late December when Kenya’s electoral commission hastily handed a second term to President Mwai Kibaki, despite independent reports of glaring voting irregularities. The toll is now more than 800 Kenyans dead, 70,000 driven from their homes and thousands more fled to neighboring countries. The economy is paralyzed.

Instead of trying to calm their supporters and negotiate a political solution, Mr. Kibaki and his principal challenger, Raila Odinga, have called for peace, and then incited more killing, accusing each other of orchestrating the mayhem. For too long, both men have succumbed to their baser ambitions and resisted high-level mediation...

Sustained and robust international efforts are needed to persuade the Kenyan rivals to do the right thing. We are encouraged that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon decided to personally intervene and that his chief mediator, Kofi Annan, the former secretary general, was able to announce on Friday an agreement on a framework for talks that could resolve the crisis. Major countries, including the United States, which provides Kenya with more than $600 million in aid per year, need to bring a lot more pressure on both Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga to ensure that that happens. If reason can’t persuade them to reconcile, then sanctions and a suspension of nonhumanitarian assistance must be seriously considered.

The United States lack of an Africa policy is compounded by the precarious situation our military is confronting by being overstretched and under-equipped in Iraq. Putting a substantial number of American troops on the ground in Africa may never be practical or politically acceptable in Washington, especially in the aftermath of Somalia. But without the ability to leverage that sword over the head of the Bashirs of the world, we can only expect more of the same.

The People are Hungry for Change?

We're reading a lot of articles these days stating that the American people are "hungry for change." (This comes as no surprise, given the steady diet of mismanagement we've been fed for the past 7 years.) It seems that there has not been much attention paid to exactly the "change" is that we're all wanting, though; change in foreign policy? change in environmental policy? change in partisanship, in rules for lobbyists, in oversight of drug use in professional sports, in tax codes, in our television-watching options (end the writers' strike!), in just how many hours an airline can take to retrieve our luggage? We want something to change, but what?

So...to that end, who would best bring about change? This depends on what the change is you'd like to see. It's rather hilarious that slippery Romney (who, according to the non-striking writers of The Tonight Show, looks like the "guy at a party who'd give you his card"), tired McCain, inspiring Obama, and pragmatic Clinton each presents him or herself as the only one with this ability. This Frank Rich column spells out which of these is actually on the money. (And it's not the MBA who has invested his own fortune in a poorly managed, and losing, effort...hah! Nothing makes this blogger happier than seeing Mitt Romney's fakery exposed for what it is.)

An Endorsement's Impact

Since this week's endorsement of Barack Obama by the Kennedys, pundits have been trying to interpret the implications. Here are a couple excerpts from vastly different perspectives:

From the right, David Brooks: The Kennedy endorsements will help among working-class Democrats, Catholics and the millions of Americans who have followed Caroline’s path to maturity. Furthermore, here was Senator Kennedy, the consummate legislative craftsman, vouching for the fact that Obama is ready to be president on Day One. But the event was striking for another reason, having to do with the confluence of themes and generations. The Kennedys and Obama hit the same contrasts again and again in their speeches: the high road versus the low road; inspiration versus calculation; future versus the past; and most of all, service versus selfishness.

“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion,” Senator Kennedy declared. “With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign - a campaign not just about himself, but about all of us,” he said. The Clintons started this fight, and in his grand and graceful way, Kennedy returned the volley with added speed.

From the left, E.J. Dionne: The South Carolina struggle may have shifted the balance of risk in a way that favors Obama. His candidacy has created excitement that Clinton's has not, and that was palpable at yesterday's rally in Washington, where several members of the Kennedy family offered him their political blessing. As the Kennedy endorsements underscored, Obama has the potential of mobilizing new energies among African Americans, and among young and well-educated voters generally. Ted Kennedy's campaigning could also bolster Obama's standing among Latinos, who have favored Clinton.

In the meantime, Democrats worry far more than they did even two weeks ago that Hillary Clinton will have great difficulty in escaping the negative aspects of her husband's legacy. History teaches that writing off any Clinton is a mistake. But South Carolina has placed large obstacles in Hillary Clinton's way. And Barack Obama, stuck just days ago in a nasty tit-for-tat with the Clintons, has been granted a chance to return to the transformational style of campaigning that was always his best path to victory.

Desperate Conservatives

With the growing inevitability of a McCain nomination, the irrational base of the Republican Party will likely pull out all the stops to defeat his flamingly liberal candidacy (which, oddly enough, falls into line with the party 9 out of 10 times). In the latest assault, a rabid Ann Coulters tries to rationalize to the base that a Clinton Presidency will ultimately benefit the conservative movement more than a McCain Presidency.

Why would any Republican vote for McCain? At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they're supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas - tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals - Republicans in Congress will support "our" president - just as they supported, if only briefly, Bush's great ideas on amnesty and Harriet Miers.

You need little flags like that for Republicans since, as we know from the recent unpleasantness in Florida, Republicans are unalterably stupid. Republicans who vote for McCain are trying to be cute, like the Democrats were four years ago by voting for the "pragmatic" candidate, Vietnam vet John Kerry. This will turn out to be precisely as clever a gambit as nominating Kerry was, the brilliance of which was revealed on Election Day 2004.

Super Tuesday Primer

For those looking forward to Super Tuesday, Larry Sabato provides a great primer on the day's primaries and caucuses.

Ready or not, here it comes... Super-Duper Tuesday, Tsunami Tuesday, Monster Tuesday, or whatever name one chooses to call it. The huge, historic nationwide vote Feb. 5 is at last at hand. Two dozen states from Massachusetts to California will vote next Tuesday, electing more than 40 percent of all Democratic and Republican delegates in 2008.

The only other single-day event that has ever come close to this size during the presidential nominating process came on March 8, 1988, when the first full-blown Super Tuesday featured 16 primaries, actually one more than is scheduled next Tuesday. But that one-day votefest 20 years ago was a Southern-oriented event, rounded out by a handful of primaries in the Northeast and a smattering of low-visibility caucuses in the West.

This year's Super Tuesday, by contrast, is truly a nationwide event, the largest in scope ever held outside the November general election. It is vast and varied in virtually every way. Each region of the country is well represented. Red and blue states abound. Racial diversity is accented. Voter enthusiasm has rarely been higher, and turnout should be huge.

The half of the country that will vote Feb. 5 includes nearly 80 million registered voters. Most will have the opportunity to participate in primary elections, where turnout records have already been broken this year in a number of states. Lower-turnout caucuses will be held in a few small to medium-sized states west of the Mississippi River.

The Lessons of Darfur

Slate's Shmuel Rosner provides a thoughtful perspective on the international efforts in Darfur. In stopping the genocide, he contends that we've achieved most of our objectives, except for the most important one.

"The campaign to save Darfur is alive, but it is no longer kicking. You could say that it has achieved all its stated goals: public awareness, international pressure, congressional action, the administration's involvement. Well, all but one: The crisis in Darfur is not yet solved, and the campaign to save Darfur is running out of options."

"So, here's the problem of the campaign to save Darfur: Public interest has waned, the simple options have all been exhausted, the political machinery is mired in the election process, and other problems - Pakistan, Iran - have taken over the front pages."

"This story provides many valuable lessons, but we shouldn't forget the most elusive: The good people of America who wanted and still want to save the miserable people of Darfur expect too much of their government. And many of their desires are contradictory - almost impossible to achieve. Darfur illustrates these contradictions nicely."

"Americans who want to help the persecuted people of Darfur want U.S. policy to be righteous, but they also prefer a government that doesn't pursue its goals too aggressively. They want the U.S. government to cooperate with the international community but also to be effective. They want America to be the policeman of the world, but in most cases, they are willing to support it only when it acts like a social worker."