Saturday, May 10, 2008

News snippet 1: Did he or didn’t he?

On Monday, Arianna Huffington wrote that John McCain had said at a dinner some years ago that he had not voted for GWB.

On Tuesday, the McCain campaign denied this.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that an unidentified woman who attended the dinner confirmed that indeed, McCain had said that he had not voted for GWB.

On Thursday, McCain himself denied it. “I voted, campaigned for, worked as hard as I could for President Bush's election in 2000 and 2004. It's nonsense,” adding that discussing it was “hardly worth our time—this happened eight years ago.”

Thursday evening, two others that had been at the dinner—actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, who worked together on the outstanding Aaron Sorkin political drama The West Wing, independently confirmed that McCain had said he hadn’t voted for GWB. Whitford said, “He was going on and on about how horribly unqualified and untested Bush was, how the campaign had attacked his family.” According to Whitford’s account, McCain was then asked by someone else why he’d supported GWB at all, and McCain replied that he always intended to back the GOP presidential nominee. Someone else apparently asked McCain whether he’d voted for Bush, and accordng to Whitford, “He put his finger up to his lips, shook his head and mouthed, ‘No way.’ ”

Schiff remembered the conversation pretty much the same way. He says that he hadn’t discussed it before because he had considered it a private party, but since it had already come out, he didn’t see the harm in confirming the original report, and corroborating Whitford’s account.

For me, McCain just passed up his most electable moment. Finding out that he hadn’t voted for GWB actually had me reconsidering his good sense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter whether he did or not—now that he’s asserting he did vote for GWB, he’s back in the idiot box.

Personally, I suspect Huffington’s account is probably accurate—the Bush campaign (courtesy of Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung Karl Röve) used appalling tactics to sink McCain’s 2000 presidential bid. GOP push-pollers in South Carolina claimed that McCain’s adopted Bangladesh-born daughter was actually his own illegitimate black daughter. Bush supporters circulated fliers that asserted that McCain was “The Fag Candidate.” Other assertions were that he was unfaithful to his wife, that his wife was addicted to drugs, that McCain was gay, that he was mentally unstable, that he had committed treason as a POW, and called him a coward. For McCain to have voted for the other guy would have been perfectly understandable.

Alas. We may never know now. That McCain claims to have voted for a candidate whose reprehensibility he knew first-hand shows a lack of integrity that may be insurmountable for me.

News snippet 2: Clinton, Obama, and superdelegates

Also yesterday, nine more Democratic superdelegates announced their support for Senator Obama, including at least one superdelegate who had been previously in Senator Clinton’s camp. Two superdelegates announced their support for Clinton. Upshot: Clinton gained one, Obama nine.

The Associated Press has been keeping track, and says that this brings the count to 272.5 superdelegates for Clinton, and 271 for Obama. The slightly more conservative Democratic Convention Watch has the count at 270.5 for Clinton and 269 for Obama—still just 1.5 delegates apart. There are a little more than 470 superdelegates to go. As far as the primary delegates, Obama has 1590.5 and Clinton has 1426.5 (assuming you aren’t counting Michigan and Florida). This puts Obama ahead now by 162.5 delegates. It could still go either way: there are still 217 delegates available in the primaries, and over 250 uncommitted superdelegates, and only 202 more will determine the nominee.

Clinton’s superdelegate count led Obama’s by nearly 100 at the beginning of the year, but started falling in mid-February to drop to around 25 by April, where it held steady until just this past week. If I read the signs right, most of the drops (including the most recent one) have taken place after more incendiary statements by the Clinton campaign. Obama’s not necessarily going to win the nomination from Clinton so much as she’s going to lose it at this rate.

I’ve been discouraged by the droves of pundits and bloggers who are saying that Clinton should get out now. It’s her perogative to run the campaign she wants to. Let her lose fair and square—and no pushing.

(Oh, and what about Michigan and Florida? If you count those delegates and superdelegates, Obama’s lead doesn’t exactly disappear—he’s still ahead by 63 delegates.)

Book recommendation

Do check out A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz. (Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s.)

This is a fascinating account of our nation’s founding that will explode several popular myths for you. If you are committed to the truth (you thoughtful Republicans), you might even find yourself enjoying the thorough disabusing of your most cherished childhood stories about Plymouth Rock, Ponce de Léon, Powhatan, and Amerigo Vespucci (he was a riot).