Chicago Daily Observer

A Republican strategist was quoted recently saying if the presidential race is about McCain he loses—if it’s about Obama, then McCain has a chance.

That’s another way of saying this race is a referendum on Obama. Or, to put it yet another way, it’s Obama’s to lose.

Thus far he’s winning.

But before Obamaniacs or other Dems revel too joyously in the thought, there are two points to remember:

1. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, four months from now.

2. Obama continues to run substantially worse than the hypothetical generic Democrat, meaning the public has not yet fully made up its mind about him.
Which is to say that if the candidate were, say, John Edwards or any such substantial white guy it would, for all practical purposes, be over right now.

I might add that if Sen. Hillary Clinton were the candidate, the race would be ... Read More...

I wish George Carlin had been able to hang onto life at least through last week.

Just think about the dual sociopathologies he would have observed in (a) all the attention paid to the symbolic fate of Barack Obama’s testes and (b) the goofy journalistic soul searching that went on in reporting exactly what Rev. Jesse Jackson said he would like to do to them.

OK—we know only the most liberated of publications and cable outlets will permit use of Carlin’s seven unsayable (unprintable?) words.

Sophisticated periodicals ranging from the Chicago Reader to the New Yorker will print the four-letter word for coitus at the drop of a hat—or pair of pants. Most others use asterisks or dashes for the middle two or final three letters. Some will refer to the “F-word,” while hipper places call it the “F-bomb.”

But how about the series of words that are perfectly acceptable ... Read More...

Those 27 words—the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—probably caused more violent argument and political polarization through the years than any sentence since the Emancipation Proclamation.

In essence the question was whether the founding parents were saying that anyone, anytime, had a right to own a gun or whether that right was restricted to the members of a militia—or National Guard as we would know it today.

Gun-control advocates—mostly liberal Democrats and card-carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union like me—took the latter interpretation as gospel, while a substantial majority of Americans, strongly encouraged by the National Rifle Association, took the other side, tossing out the initial qualifying phrase.

In June the U.S. Supreme Court finally made a definitive ruling, ... Read More...

A potentially dangerous anti-Iran resolution is flying through Congress on the wings of some of our best-known doves. By the time you read this it may already have passed one or the other house with the all-out support of scores of liberals and progressives including Florida’s Robert Wexler, California’s Henry Waxman and the representative of the district next to where I live in Chicago, Jan Schakowsky.

Known as Concurrent Resolution 362, the nonbinding resolution expresses “the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony…”

The big problem is that a key clause can readily be interpreted as urging a naval blockade of the country, likely in the Hormuz Straits, which would be seen by most of the world as an act of war.

Its ... Read More...

As an American Jew I find that the most deceitful, depraved and disgusting sub-campaign of the presidential season is the viral e-mail and blogging attack on Barack Obama that characterizes him as an enemy of Israel if not Judaism itself.

This campaign goes far beyond the false but persistent rumor that he is a Muslim—as if that in itself were a criminal position—but tries to put him in the political bed of every enemy of Israel and America of the past half century.

Some of the slime that enters my inbox makes Joseph McCarthy look like the chairman of the ACLU.

The most recent, well-circulated missive comes from one Leon A. Weinstein of California who offers as his bona fides the claim that he is a Russian immigrant who first lived in Israel before coming to the States, and elsewhere describes himself as a marketing expert who has pledged ... Read More...

Almost everyone I know in the netherworld of political hipsterdom either agonizes or exults or plunges into deep swami-like meditation with every presidential poll that pops up on the internet or TV screen.

My advice to all, on either side of the aisle, is save yourself the agony and forego the ecstasy. Worry about gasoline prices, paying off your mortgage, the state or nonstate of your love-life—anything but the polls.

Forget them.

They have no meaning now whatsoever. Do not permit your shorts to get into a bunch about something so fleeting and ultimately without merit as a poll nearly five months from Election Day.

Remember how far ahead of the pack Hillary Clinton was just five months ago? And how Rudy Guiliani was a shoo-in?

So most of the polls show Barack Obama ahead by four to six points. If this were November 1 that might be meaningful. But ... Read More...

Since both John McCain and Barack Obama purport to be persons of faith and prayer, I have devised a little prayer for both of them. It goes:

“Lord, save me from my friends—I can cope perfectly well with my enemies.”

Oddly enough, some of the friends plaguing or having plagued both candidates are themselves persons of faith and prayer.

We need no further reminders, do we, of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and more recently Father Michael Pfleger and the varying degrees of damage they have inflicted on Obama?

“Poof!” declares Obama, quite wisely, “they are no longer my friends.”

Then there are the Reverends John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Until very recently they were McCain’s newest best friends of convenience, vigorously courted to calm the qualms of the fundamentalist evangelical constituency so necessary to Republican victory. Trouble is, their historic histrionics seriously offended other necessary constituencies.

“Poof,” declares McCain, quite wisely, ... Read More...

One of the very few truly wise cable-babblers said a while back that the loser of the Democratic nomination will determine the winner in November. Meaning, of course, that the way the loser exits and determines to come together—if at all—will make or break the winner’s candidacy.
Now that it’s all over but the final counting—I write this on the eve of the Montana and South Dakota primaries—it’s clear that Barack Obama has more or less stumbled past the finish line first. Enough super-delegates will rapidly declare for him to put him well over the top—as I, among others, predicted weeks ago.
Back on March 31 I wrote in this space:
“Sometime in June or even earlier, the party ‘elders’ such as Al Gore, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Chairman Howard Dean have a heart-to-heart with the remaining 130 superdelegates…So most ... Read More...

Among our longest-standing political clichés is that Social Security is the third rail in American politics—threaten it and you will be politically electrocuted. This could easily happen to John McCain come general election time, and here’s why:

A few years ago, 2005 to be exact, George W. Bush sidled up to the issue by proposing the creation of private social security investment accounts to supplement the present system—in effect partially privatizing the system. It didn’t take the public long to recognize that this was the first stage of the ultraconservative agenda to ultimately do away with Social Security and similar entitlements.

The response was somewhat slow to build, but soon the uproar knocked the administration back on its heels.

They tried fitfully to change the name “private” accounts to “personal” accounts, but it was too late. An overwhelming majority of the country saw privatization as a threat to the lifeline ... Read More...

If you watched the entire speech John Edwards gave in endorsing Barack Obama, you might have been struck by the first five or six minutes, which sounded almost like a nominating speech for Sen. Hillary Clinton. This was neither incidental nor accidental.

With the nomination all but wrapped up—despite the protestations from the Clinton camp—one of Obama’s top priorities is to reach out, embrace and win over the votes of Clinton’s key constituencies.

As all the polls showed, following every primary a large cluster of Clinton voters said they would be unhappy if she didn’t get nominated. They threatened to vote for John McCain or sit out the election. Obama voters make similar vows, while history shows that eventually most Democrats come together—but sometimes not all do, as witness 1968.

A key demographic among Clinton voters is, of course, late middle-aged and older women who spent decades awaiting a woman ... Read More...

I inaugurated this column early last fall with profiles of all the candidates of both parties and some predictions about the Dem and GOP races, which were just getting under way. Now that they are all but decided, I thought I’d go back and take a look at some of my calls.

Back on Sept. 20, I noted that Obama had plateaued in second place and was even falling further behind Hillary Clinton. He was definitely in need of a second leg and I wondered where he would find it.

My partially correct answer:

“Will Oprah Winfrey’s support provide him that second leg? Somewhat, but I doubt it will be enough. If, however, she (or some other issue) invigorates his black base, it will deflate Clinton’s numbers—though not in all-important Iowa or New Hampshire.”

Well, Winfrey’s endorsement turned out to be the turning point—and it brought him all-important Iowa, ... Read More...

PARIS—This column has long been sunny in its outlook for Barack Obama, but—at least in the view from overseas—some clouds are gathering.

Here, of course, he is wildly popular in the expat community—garnering 71 percent of the vote in the official Democrats Abroad primary in France—and seems to have captured the hearts of the French as well. I suspect he could be elected president of France in a landslide.

But since Pennsylvania, he has been forced to battle four opponents at once—two Clintons and John McCain frontally, plus the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from the rear. It has thrown the campaign somewhat off course and there is a sense he has been brought down to earth. The soaring rhetoric, the sense of unification he seemed to promise, the change he portended, all seem at least for the moment to have taken a backseat during this tough hand-to-hand combat.

Obama’s former ... Read More...

PARIS—There is nothing like the view from abroad to spot all the nonsense and bulljive coursing through the presidential campaign. Nonsense such as trying to project a general election winner from the results of a primary.

Does anyone really believe that the Democrat, Barack Obama in particular, would lose states such as New York, Massachusetts or California because Hillary Clinton carried them substantially—or conversely that Clinton would lose Illinois because Obama wiped her out there?

Does anyone expect a Democrat to win Alabama, even though Obama carried it handily? Conversely, Clinton carried Tennessee by a landslide, but neither of them is likely to win it against John McCain.

So it goes in perhaps three quarters of the states, although there are prospects for either to put new states into play. Clinton might be able to pull off Arkansas, while Obama could turn Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado or Nevada from ... Read More...

Counting down to the Pennsylvania primary, it surprises me that neither Democrat is hitting hard on the relationship between the two wars we’re fighting on borrowed money, skyrocketing oil prices and our descent into recession and economic turmoil.

True, a month ago, when Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes published their treatise “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” documenting the real cost of the Iraq adventure, there were a few speeches noting the incredible cost and how better the money could have been spent.

But in Pennsylvania of all places, where town after town has been devastated economically, one would expect either Clinton or Obama to probe more deeply—to rub raw the sores of discontent, to paraphrase Chicago’s own Saul Alinsky.
In interviews, Stiglitz acknowledges that the stunning rise in oil and gasoline prices is due in part to the war—the only issue is how much. ... Read More...

This year marks the 40th anniversaries of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1968 Democratic convention uproar. Having worked with King and played an active role in organizing the convention demonstrations I will take some note of these in coming columns.

But it is also the 25th anniversary year of Harold Washington’s hard-fought nomination and election as Chicago’s first black mayor—four and a half Camelot years for the city’s black and progressive white communities, riddled with historic significance.

For several weeks now I’ve been attending a series of panel discussions, exhibitions and meetings to relive or analyze the event. Some of course composed of sentimental fluff, others offering excellent retrospective insights into sociopolitical Chicago.

One permanent product is a fine book of HW photos by Antonio Dickey and Marc PoKempner with an elegant summation of the years by Salim Muwakkil. (Full disclosure: there’s even a photo ... Read More...

Today, with apologies to Richard Roeper, who created the format, you get five columns for the price of one—albeit brief ones, national and local:

First, in our (supposedly) newly invigorated dialog on race, are we really talking straight when it comes to a certain demographic that seems to be eluding Barack Obama? I speak here of white folks with less than college educations who earn below fifty grand a year. Somehow that demographic seems coterminous with what we used to call hard-hats or Reagan Democrats who started voting Republican largely on racial issues.

Somehow, a wealthy white Wellesley-grad woman lawyer from the Chicago suburbs seems to relate better to these folks than the half-black guy who bootstrapped himself into a Harvard law degree?

In a recent NYTimes piece interviewing Pennsylvanians in that demographic, almost all of them detailed why they were voting against Obama. Somehow they all began approximately “It ... Read More...

Now here’s my plan:

The Michigan and Florida delegations will be seated at the convention and Barack Obama wins the nomination. It’s all settled a month or more before the Democratic National convention in August.

Everybody’s happy except the Clintons. (You’re extra happy if you revel in a bit of schadenfreude over the Clintons.)

How do we reach this happy conclusion? A deal is likely to be struck with the superdelegates, who will in good conscience be following the will of da peepul.

I will outline the contours of the deal, but first let me take a moment to defend the concept of superdelegates.

There will be a total of 4,049 delegates to the convention who will vote to nominate the next Democratic candidate. Of these, 3,253 will have been elected in the caucuses and primaries that began in Iowa and end in Puerto Rico in June. The latter were ... Read More...

As a Chicago organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I was standing in a sweaty but ebullient crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial that torrid August day when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his epic “I Have a Dream” speech.

I was in front of my TV set nearly 45 years later, on a comfortable couch, teacup in hand, watching Barack Obama deliver what is certain to be viewed as the most important single statement on race in America since King. That statement was profound, confronting racism at many levels and explaining anger, frustration and hostility on both sides of the sadly remaining color divide. Not even King took that on.

Yes, it was a political speech, but unlike any heard in my lifetime, including John F. Kennedy’s asking us to ask what we can do for our country. The only speeches that came ... Read More...

Let me offer a Swiftian (Jonathan, not Tom) perspective on the Clintons’ largely race- and religion-based assault on Barack Obama—a multi-pronged attack they notoriously told the New York Times would mean chucking everything at him including a very mucky kitchen sink.

I modestly propose that it’s a really good thing. It will actually help Obama—make him a stronger candidate if it doesn’t kill him off in the process. Sort of the way all those lightning bolts hitting Godzilla only made him more powerful.

They began chucking muck long before their official announcement. It started when the Clintons saw they were losing the Iowa caucuses.

The first muck-chucker was Bill Shaheen, their New Hampshire organizer, who hinted Obama not only used drugs—as confessed in his autobiography—but perhaps even peddled them. This was compounded by Clinton strategist Mark Penn tossing around the words “cocaine,” “cocaine” and “cocaine.”

Shaheen had to quit the ... Read More...

Bill Foster’s decisive, six-point win over Jim Oberweis in Saturday’s special congressional election is both a combination of a perfect storm and a harbinger of bluing to come. The latter point has national and local Republicans really singing the blues: they may be losing another three congressional seats here.

Let’s look at the rosiest (for the Repubs) construction first.

This once staunch GOP district turned blue because (a) there was some general discontent with the recently resigned incumbent, Dennis Hastert, (b) the Democrats wound up with a smart, wealthy candidate remarkably well attuned to the district, (c) Oberweis was a dramatically odious candidate who happened to be nominated over an even more mean-spirited opponent, and (d) turnout was tiny, unreflective of a general election, and therefore things could be reversed come the rerun in November.

Foster had a much harder and narrower than expected primary race against John Laesch, ... Read More...

Mene, mene, tekel, Hillary.

The handwriting is on the wall.

The die is cast.

The fat lady is warbling.

It’s time to go gentle into that good night.

Hillary Clinton’s “firewall” states of Texas and Ohio will prove to be tinderboxes next week.

Even if she manages to carry both, it will not be by anywhere near the margins needed for her to get back in the game.

More likely, Barack Obama will win the delegate count in Texas even if he does not actually carry the popular vote. Further, her strongest supporters now recognize Ohio will be close—far from the minimum 12-point margin she requires.

Because she can’t catch up in delegates, Clinton should soon after Tuesday make the swift, graceful exit she implied at the end of the great Texas debate.

Now focus must be put on the strongest possible vice presidential candidate for Obama.

It certainly won’t ... Read More...

The fat lady is about to begin her aria.

The Democratic nomination is all about the delegates, so here are the numbers prior to the Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucus on Tuesday Feb. 19:

Barack Obama has 1,116 pledged delegates—won in primaries and caucuses; Hillary Clinton has 989, with 2025 needed for nomination. A handful is pledged to others, such as John Edwards.

There are 18 more states and territories to yet to vote, with a total of 1,078 delegates to be selected.

Of these, three big ones—Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania with a total of 492 delegates—are believed to be Clinton’s “firewall.” Let’s assume she carries these strongly with an average of 56 percent and thus gains 276 more delegates to Obama’s 216. (If there are any surprises here they will be to Obama’s benefit as his momentum can seriously reduce the spread.)

That leaves a total of 586 delegates ... Read More...

Her last name helped, but her first name won the election.

Prosecutor Anita Alvarez came out of nowhere to win a six-way Democratic primary race for Cook County States Attorney—which is tantamount winning in November, when she will become the first woman and the first Hispanic to hold the job. (No, kiddies, Republican Tony Peraica has absolutely no chance of coming close this fall.)

She won with a small but solid base in the Latino communities, a push from some Machine committeemen and a huge women’s vote—a pattern that applied in both the city and suburbs. The female vote was stimulated largely by her self-financed, pitch-perfect, gender-oriented ad campaign.

But the hidden story involves the breakup of the—until now—solid black voting bloc that was expected to give Ald. Howard Brookins at least 30 and likely 35–40 percent of the total vote. Instead, he got only 22.11 percent, while Alvarez squeaked ... Read More...

They used to call him “the conscience of the City Council,” which certainly has an oxymoronic ring to it, but it applies. They also used to call him “the only Negro in the City Council,” which might have a bit of a politically incorrect ring to it today, but it sure applied in the late 1950s and well through the ’60s until the civil rights movement brought him some independent company from southside wards.

I speak, of course, of Leon M. Despres, who in 1955 was elected against the candidate of the Democratic machine in the 5th Ward. That was the year Richard J. Daley was first elected mayor and their political careers intertwined for the next 20 years until the angular, bespectacled Despres retired and left a small handful of black and white independent aldermen to carry on his tradition in that mordant body.

Sunday, Feb. 3, marked the ... Read More...

Five years ago I wrote that the Democratic trend in Illinois was so strong we might never see a Republican governor again—barring some major scandal. Well, the past year or two set the stage for a GOP revival, but the Democrats are probably too smart to let it happen.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is drowning in a cesspool of financial scandals, personal betrayals, bizarre antics and political miscues so pervasive as to drive his favorables down to Ahmadinejad territory—and the worst may be yet to come. I speak, as many do, of indictment.

His recent last-minute, grandstand play on the mass-transit bill—injecting free rides for seniors—will not rescue him from the feds, nor will it raise his scrawny support numbers much past Britney Spears’.

I cannot explain the overall behavior of this unusual politician because I am a political analyst, not a psychoanalyst. Let me confess, however, I voted for ... Read More...

The more the conversation gets to be about race, the better the Clintons think they will do. It’s as simple as that.

They want to nudge—even provoke—Barack Obama into becoming the “black” candidate rather than the healing, unity candidate. They want black supporters to raise their voices on his behalf—preferably the Al Sharpton types who will shrilly cry “racism” and thus exacerbate the divide.

That’s why Billary changed the conversation in New Hampshire, risking some anger against them in the black communities—anger they know would be assuaged in a general election. Okay, let him carry South Carolina, as long as he is tagged with Afrocentrism.

Hillary went on the attack in the last 24 hours of the New Hampshire campaign, first telling Obama he was no Martin Luther King, then going on to say, in effect, that all King could do was preach and agitate—it took Lyndon Johnson to actually ... Read More...

There’s a mad, multi-candidate scramble for the Democratic nomination for Cook county state’s attorney, not only because the office is a giant plum but because its outcome has not always been determined by the Democratic machine.

Running as an independent Dem in 1980, a fellow named Richard M. Daley trounced the “slated” Alderman Ed Burke and went on to upset the two-term Republican incumbent Bernard Carey (yes, a Republican won the office in 1972 in an upset with strong racial ingredients).

Then, when Daley won the 1989 mayoral race he appointed an old-line black politician, Cecil Partee to fill his term. In the 1992 race for a full term, Partee was weakened by a race-based primary battle against a north side alderman and subsequently lost to Republican Jack O’Malley in yet another race-tinged election—the last time the GOP held a countywide office.

O’Malley was later upset by the machine ... Read More...

It’s a current cliché to opine that Republicans aren’t happy with their field of presidential candidates, but the Iowa results reinforce the concept, regardless of what happens in New Hampshire. The Republican Party is perilously fractured.

Out went Mitt Romney, one of the important establishment guys—and in came Mike Huckabee, the most outsiderish of the lot. Even if Romney recovers in New Hampshire, a die has been cast that suggests even more problems for the Grand Old Party.

To wit: all the candidates were either badly wounded or exposed serious sores that will be rubbed raw in the general election to come.

Huckabee’s incredible gaffes and displays of ignorance will not garner him the independent or crossover Democratic votes he would need in what is already an unlikely year for Republicans. Yes, he was able to inspire evangelicals and just enough traditional Republicans in Iowa to make the numbers look ... Read More...

I’m wrapping up my proctoscopic series on all the presidential candidates with this four-fer-one column on the remaining Republicans who—though in some cases not without interest—are totally hopeless and do not merit much more attention. (See, I can do political-editorial triage just like the mainstream media.)

In many ways the most successful of the also-rans just dropped out of the race. He is U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, now completing his 5th House term. Of course, that’s two terms more than he pledged to serve: He was Colorado’s champion of term-limits back in 1998 when he won his seat, then, in 2004, broke his solemn promise to serve only three terms. I’m shocked!... shocked!...to report a politician broke a solemn promise.

Tancredo was a single-issue candidate, but his issue—illegal immigration—is now the leading test on the GOP side of the divide. All the better-known candidates are joining in, ... Read More...

I’m wrapping up my proctoscopic series on all the presidential candidates with this four-fer-one column on the remaining Republicans who—though in some cases not without interest—are totally hopeless and do not merit much more attention. (See, I can do political-editorial triage just like the mainstream media.)

In many ways the most successful of the also-rans just dropped out of the race. He is U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, now completing his 5th House term. Of course, that’s two terms more than he pledged to serve: He was Colorado’s champion of term-limits back in 1998 when he won his seat, then, in 2004, broke his solemn promise to serve only three terms. I’m shocked!... shocked!...to report a politician broke a solemn promise.

Tancredo was a single-issue candidate, but his issue—illegal immigration—is now the leading test on the GOP side of the divide. All the better-known candidates are joining in, ... Read More...

Recently I wondered whether Mike Huckabee would turn out to be a Paul Tsongas—win an early primary then fade away—or a Jimmy Carter who came out of nowhere to win it all. Some readers further suggested he was Howard Dean, who flamed out even before winning that early primary (or caucus, as the case may be).

When it comes to the actor/politician Fred Thompson, another model suggests itself—Gen.Wesley Clark in 2004. Those old enough to remember will recall that the general who opposed the war in Iraq looked for all the world like the answer to Democratic dreams—a progressive with a great military background who would immediately erase any question about being strong on national security.

His announcement of candidacy was eagerly anticipated; many progressives (including myself) lined up to participate; his poll numbers looked wonderful before he even entered the race. Unfortunately, soon after entering the race he made ... Read More...

While in Paris in mid-November I spoke to Democrats Abroad-France, an officially recognized group of expat voters, about—what else? —the coming election. Naturally, the questions turned rapidly to the horserace.

Keep your eyes on Mike Huckabee as the GOP’s dark horse, I said, immediately drawing snickers and good-natured heckling from a dozen or so in an audience largely unfamiliar with his name.

“President Huckabee?” snorted one, as if the very sound of it was absurd.

Needless to say, the intervening weeks improved the name-recognition of the former governor of Arkansas (from a town called Hope, just like you-know-who).

By month’s end Huckabee surged ahead of Mitt Romney and was leading the Iowa polls (paralleling Obama’s scooting past Clinton).

Suddenly, everyone hears Huckabee. He is December’s flavor of the month, replete with major take-outs in the New Yorker, New ... Read More...

The classic definition of the Yiddish word chutzpah is: the boy who murders his father and mother, then pleads for the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

Today we must update that definition.

Willard (call him by his middle name, “Mitt”) Romney, a vigorous advocate of George Bush’s war in Iraq, was asked why none of his five grown sons were in the armed services or otherwise supporting our noble adventure over there.

His response: “One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected.”

This is the same Mitt Romney who, when asked whether he would go to Congress for authorization to bomb out Iran’s nuclear facilities, responded instead that “You sit down with your attorneys and [they] tell you what you have to do.”

Swell
.
Which lawyers? Abner Mikva? Alan Dershowitz? Clarence Thomas?

No answer ... Read More...

A year ago John McCain was the certain GOP nominee and almost a shoo-in for election—the one guy who could cross party lines and lure Democrats in a Reagan rerun.
That was then. This is now.

The Arizona senator slid down the slippery slope of immigration reform faster than an Olympic bobsled.

Yes, he was and probably still is the strongest supporter of and apologist for Bush’s war—though Giuliani runs a close second—but he also supported Bush’s “amnesty” immigration plan along with Ted Kennedy. This, the one seriously acceptable social program the administration ever proposed, remains a live third rail among Republican voters and poor McCain electrocuted himself.

A couple of months ago his funds were drying up, his staff disassembling and the punditocracy said it was all over for the Viet war hero. Likely it is—he’s just an asterisk below the Guiliani-Romney-Thompson-Huckabee leadership tier—but there is ... Read More...

This odd stew of a Republican with a pinch of libertarianism, a soupcon of conservatism, a dash of racism and a whiff of crypto-fascism was not supposed to make it this far this long.

On September 10, 2001, Rudy Giuliani, like George W. Bush, was sliding downhill. New Yorkers were tiring of his high-handed antics, such as trying to cut off funding for an art museum because a painting displeased him. His race relations were disastrous, then came his very public marital high-jinks, trying to move his girl friend into the mayoral mansion while his wife was still living there.

The careers of both Rudy and W, needless to say, were saved the next day.

Giuliani talked tough—to millions he was inspirational—though city firefighters complain bitterly about his deeds. He actually tried to extend his mayoral term by fiat because of the attack, but couldn’t get away with it.

Nevertheless ... Read More...

Chris Dodd looks so much like a president he ought to be one.

The five-term senator from Connecticut just took the best action of any of the candidates in the course of the campaign. While others were merely “presenting” programs, Dodd stood up in the senate itself and blocked Bush’s Military Commissions Act, which gives “retroactive immunity” to all the telecom companies that participated in Bush’s illegal spying on and wiretapping ordinary American citizens.

The legislation was supported by a bunch of spineless Democrats headed by Jay Rockefeller and apparently Majority Leader Harry Reid. But senate tradition permits any single senator to take a bill off the table until his or her questions are resolved. Dodd did.

His official statement summed it up telegraphically: “Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons. No more.”

He actually pledged personally to filibuster against this trashing of the Constitution.

Next, ... Read More...

They serve and protect—each other.

Chicago has its share of brutal cops, racist cops, crooked cops and corrupt cops—maybe more, maybe fewer than a lot of other towns—but they certainly don’t represent the police force as a whole.

That’s a given—but we do have a systemic corruption problem.

That problem is the way the city and the department protect wrongdoers through a conspiracy of silence. The Mob has a word for it—“omerta”—the blood oath of silence, meaning you don’t rat out your fellow Mafiosi. Unfortunately, that’s also the CPD watchword. They claim the police can police themselves.

To get any admission of police misbehavior you literally have to catch a bad cop on film. That happened recently when one thuggish specimen was videotaped brutalizing a female bartender. Or you have to catch one cop planning to murder another, as when a nest of crooked cops was exposed and an ... Read More...

“Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible,” Dennis Kucinich told Steven Colbert the other night.

The quote, from the Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamono, says almost everything you need to know about the ideological purity of the progressive congressman from Ohio and why he’s making this second run for the presidency.

He is a walking litmus test of progressive purity:

He wants us out of Iraq immediately. Moreover, he’s the only Democratic candidate who not only spoke against the war back in 2002—he actually voted against it. Plus, he consistently voted against all subsequent war funding.

He voted against the Patriot Act, too.

He voted against NAFTA and CAFTA.

He cosponsored a bill to create a single-payer national health service.

He favors same-sex marriage.

He is outspoken on all the hot-button issues and fearlessly defends his positions.

On one of those apple-pie, super-patriotic, but ... Read More...

Smart, thoughtful, experienced, a first-rate legislator who’s usually on the correct side (my side, that is) of the issues, yet given to multiple mouthy mishaps. Joe Biden talks too much and too long and his words get ahead of his brain and he spends weeks apologizing for his gaffes instead of sharing his more worthy ideas.

Right out of the box this year, declaring for the presidency, the six-term senator from Delaware called Barack Obama “articulate” and noted the guy was “clean.” Not as bad as Bill O’Reilly’s amazement at the fact that people at a black restaurant were “normal,” but stupidly patronizing.

The triage experts in the media immediately wrote him off and he’s lived up to their expectations ever since. Came up with a doozy several weeks ago with some Comedy-Channel-style comment about Indian accents behind the counters at 7–11 stores.

Does he still wonder why the press ... Read More...

Experience?

Hillary touts hers: A term and a half in the U.S. Senate; then smudges a year of screwing up both health-care and the White House travel office—plus a couple of decades playing First Enabler to Bill’s chronic case of satyriasis.

Now—you want to talk serious experience?

How about: twice elected governor of New Mexico, 14 years in the U.S. House, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. Secretary of Energy, international nuclear negotiator with North Korea, liberator of Saddam Hussein’s and other hostages and key negotiator in Sudan obtaining the recent release of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Paul Salopek. Nominated several times for Nobel peace prize—and he’s barely 60.

Good grief! If experience is what we’re looking for Bill Richardson should win by a landslide. Wouldn’t even have to hold an election.

You say you want change?

How about the first Hispanic president? (OK—so he’s hemi-Hispanic, the way Obama ... Read More...

If we can assign theoretical strategies to the top three Democratic contenders, we might say Hillary Clinton is aiming at the Big Bang—winning it all by the first week in March after picking up most of the marbles on Super Dooper Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Barack Obama is playing Smash-and-Grab—hoping to stop Clinton short in the early primaries and caucuses. Say he wins all Illinois and a goodly part of Iowa and California plus a good handful of delegates elsewhere—even gobbles up a chunk of New York. Then he knocks off a bunch of southern states on Super Tuesday where black voters tip the balance, ultimately building a majority by convention time.

This week’s subject, John Edwards, aims to light a fuse by concentrating his far more limited resources in Iowa, where his intensive efforts seem to be paying off. In Iowa he has sometimes led, but minimally stays bunched up ... Read More...

Phenomenon.

That’s the most overused description of Sen. Barack Obama, but still the most accurate. His skyrocketing from Hyde Park state senator to Democratic keynote speaker to U.S. Senator to presidential contender is, well, phenomenal.

The story needs no retelling here; it’s been splattered across the covers of every magazine in the country for the past year—though many storytellers do not realize how remarkable was his primary election victory in 2004, transcending race, ethnicity and the Chicago political machine in an historic sweep.

In an incredibly brief time the Obama team set records for fundraising, signed up supporters everywhere and established a star-studded assemblage of policy advisers.

He rose quickly in the polls, then got stuck in second place—reaching a plateau this summer, some 15 points behind Hillary Clinton, and saw her creep that up to 20 or 22 points despite the fact that he raised more money from more ... Read More...

I launch my new weekly column here with a series of commentaries and analyses of all the presidential candidates, beginning with Dem frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Frontrunner she may be, but Clinton is the Democrat I fear most as president—though if she wins the nomination I will once again hold my nose and pull the lever for another lesser-of-two-evils candidate of the party I usually support (but not every time for every office).

Why not Hillary?

Well, I find this smart, once liberal, sincere and honest woman too willing to compromise essential principles, journeying beyond pragmatism to total sellout. Voting for the Iraq war is only a recent example—20 brave Senate Democrats voted ‘no’—and her refusal to apologize elevates the stench to a higher level.

Go back to 1993, when she led the drive for national health care right down the drain—killing it politically for more than a decade. After ... Read More...