TOO LATE THE INDIGNATION

Digby is miffed because McCain tells a story wrong and the press doesn't blow it up into a big story.

Sorry, Digby, but it's hard to work up a good mad-on, when Obama has gotten away with the same kind of thing over and over -- from his talking about being conceived after the Selma march (it happened after he was born) to the Auschwitz thing, to the Kennedys bringing his father to the USA to study, the errors and misrememberings and embellishments in his two books, the list is long. He's a kind of Forrest Gump, who loves to associate himself with great historic moments, only he makes the sh*t up. In the case you cite, the only McCain falsity was in the identity of the NFL team.

But yes, you're right, if Hillary had made a comparable mistake she'd have been pilloried (maybe we should change that word to Hilloried?) by the media and her political opposition. Since Obama's gotten pretty much the same pass from them as McCain in this regard, your indignation, at this point anyway, is IMHO misplaced.

As much as I have loved Digby since Hullaballoo began, I sure wish she'd aired a little more of her righteous anger while HRC was being belittled in the primaries. It's a little late for me to work up any heat against the media for their treatment of Obama now when he was so obviously the beneficiary of their regard and favoritism during the primary -- and none of the Obamacrats were crying foul then.

HE TOLD YOU SO (AND SO DID I)

Today on Morning Joe, Scarborough asked columnist Gail Collins if she was surprised that Obama had moved so sharply and quickly to the center. Collins expressed surprise at the question. I'll try to paraphrase from memory.

Haven't you been listening to him all along? she replied. How exactly did you think he was going to get all this "unity" without compromising with the Republicans?

The unity shtick has never worked for me, not from the beginning. It's smacked of more and better capitulation to the forces of darkness, and we've had enough of that from Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer and the like. What we Democrats needed at this point in time was a FIGHTER, not an appeaser. What did you THINK post-partisan meant, anyway? You can't have an after-partisanship candidate until there's no partisanship! The Rethuglicans certainly have no intentions of making nice with the Dems, so the only logical conclusion is that Obama has been advocating unilateral Democratic disarmament.

But BO's "transcendence," his oratory, his manly maleness, and most of all the fact that he isn't a Clinton, bamboozled the media, the DNC, and the Blogger Boyz to the extent that they ignored (or maybe they were just crossing their fingers) all the signs that he is a typical politician and opportunist extraordinaire who can show no evidence of actually doing any good for anyone in his entire life and career.

I am quite sure now that once the Democratic National Convention takes place, I will be checking out of the blogging world. The only reason I'm still around at this point is that I harbor an infinitesimal hope that something will shake out that will, after all, bring Hillary the nomination. Lacking that, I have no intention of or interest in being an active spectator of the mess that will follow.

The DNC and all too many Democratic/liberal leaders have betrayed the party and precisely half of its voting base. I never thought I'd live to see the day when Democrats would adopt Republican/right-wing tactics and talking points, and I have no intention of rewarding that bad behavior with my vote.

SWEETIE'S GOT THE BLUES

Marie Cocco is seeing red.

Somewhere along Barack Obama's winding road through the red states, he lost me. It happened when he talked about women who are "feeling blue."
...
But I do wonder why a candidate praised for his rhetorical gifts talks about women in the way that he does. During the primary campaign, he said Hillary Clinton launched political attacks on him "periodically, when she's feeling down." He called a Detroit reporter "sweetie" when she was trying to ask him about job creation. Now he has incorporated a myth created by the right -- that women who seek late-term abortions should not be allowed to do so if they are "feeling blue" -- into his own lexicon. And this is enough to make me see red.

Good stuff.

WISHIN' AND HOPIN'

Well, well. Bob Herbert is feeling the pain.

Mr. Obama is betting that in the long run none of this will matter, that the most important thing is winning the White House, that his staunchest supporters (horrified at the very idea of a President McCain) will be there when he needs them.

He seems to believe that his shifts and twists and clever panders — as opposed to bold, principled leadership on important matters — will entice large numbers of independent and conservative voters to climb off the fence and run into his yard.

Maybe. But that’s a very dangerous game for a man who first turned voters on by presenting himself as someone who was different, who wouldn’t engage in the terminal emptiness of politics as usual.

Time flies and the Iowa caucuses seem a very long time ago.

Is it really too late to do something about this? Is there even the remotest possibility that party leaders could wake up, throw open the nominating convention, and enough superdelegates change their minds and throw their support to HRC, securing her the nomination?

Nah. But a girl can dream.