Pakistan, the US and Afghanistan - things are getting tough

Pakistan is a weak nation, one in which the central government does not control all of its' assumed land area or all of its' internal institutions. The Pakistani Army is probably more powerful than the civilian government, and the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) agency, ostensibly an agency of the Army, is very probably more powerful than either the civilian government or the Army itself. The Obama White House has rather clearly decided that the ISI obstructionism has gone on long enough.

(Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and top U.S. military and intelligence leaders delivered a tough warning to Pakistan on Thursday to cut suspected ties with militant groups which have upset relations between the uneasy allies.

Clinton led a heavyweight U.S. team at talks in Islamabad to

press Pakistani counterparts on U.S. accusations that Pakistan assists militants who launch attacks on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border and increasingly threaten U.S. interests.

"The meeting lasted for four hours. It was extremely frank, the discussion was very detailed," a senior U.S. official said after the meeting, adding that more discussions were planned for Friday.

The visit by Clinton, CIA director David Petraeus and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, was a sign that Washington is determined to get its message across amid rising tensions among three key players in the Afghanistan war.

The meeting included Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, the powerful army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, and Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who heads the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) agency which U.S. officials have singled out for its alleged support of militant groups.

Earlier on Thursday during a visit to Kabul, Clinton said it was time to send a "clear, unequivocal message" to Pakistan that it must step up efforts to broker an end to the decade-long war in Afghanistan and crack down on safe havens used by militants.

"They must be part of the solution and that means ridding their own country of terrorists who kill their own people and cross the border to kill in Afghanistan," Clinton said.

It's clear that Pakistan's cooperation is going to be necessary to resolve the US combat situation in Afghanistan, and the leaders of the ISI are aware of that. They are depending on that fact to keep the US from punishing Pakistan as a nation for the bad behavior of the ISI. The message from Secretary Clinton is clearly part of the process of ramping up the pressure on Pakistan.

All we are seeing is what each side is willing to tell the media. The US may be ramping up the pressure, but Pakistan has both India and China sitting on its borders threatening it. With those two nations as immediate threats, the US is going to have to really ramp up the pressure to even be noticed. So I do not envy Secretary Clinton in delivering the message that the US has had enough. I'm glad she is doing it, though. It is necessary.

Cllinton's mission to North Korea restarts diplomacy abandoned by Bush

Michael Hirsh of Newsweek reports that on the back story of Clinton's surprise visit to North Korea. This was a renewal of the effort to regularize international relations with North Korea started in 1994.

Apparently the Bush administration objected to the fact that recognition of North Korea and regularized international relations would be a support to the government of Kim Jong Il and prevent the American government from removing them.

But eight years of Bush/Cheney and John Bolton's hard line policy has clearly been a total failure. So a return to the Clinton process can't be worse and offers the possibility of reducing the problems caused by the rogue kingdom on the North Korean peninsula. Control of the nuclear capabilities, terrorism, criminal activities and military threats of the North Korean reclusive regime is a lot more important than continued efforts to remove the regime of the dying Kim Jong Il.

I'm no expert in diplomacy and especially not in North Korea (is anyone?) but with the rather clear regime changeover coming up, efforts to find out what is going on and who to talk to would seem to make it a lot easier to shape the incoming replacement government and its policies would seem to be a very good idea.

Does it give Kim Jong Il a chance to leave a legacy of greater security for his government after he dies? Yeah, that seems likely. But face it. Eight years of the American hard line crap hasn't worked and if continued will cause a lot more trouble than it's limited chance of success is worth. Giving Kim Jong Il a short success just before his death in exchange for the future ability to possibly have greater influence on his successors seems a small price to pay to change a bad situation.

Getting North Korea out of the business of selling nuclear technology, and possibly missile technology, will have real benefits in America's bigger set of international problems. One of those bigger problems is the unstable and terrorist-threatened nuclear-armed Pakistan. Another is the real danger of anti-American international terrorist groups getting nuclear technology. Compared to these problems, the minor negative of making commitments to stop trying to remove the North Korean regime is a very minor cost. And there is no indication that North Korean regime removal has any chance of success anyway. To commit to the near inevitable seems like a very low price to pay to get greater freedom to deal with our other much greater international threats.

It cannot be overemphasized that the Bush policies towards North Korea have utterly failed. To continue them (as demanded by John Bolton) is clearly an example practicing the insanity of repeating the same continuously failed actions over and over, each time hoping for a different outcome.

Of course, there is no indication that Clinton carried any official message to North Korea or that he conducted any official discussions. But it does appear that he may have made contacts that will be available if future diplomatic activities become possible. The anticipated death is Kim Jong Il makes such activities very likely.

What I write here is just speculation about a mysterious but major international trouble spot. Go read Hirsh's article for a few facts being reported. Just don't forget that almost everything important about North Korea is unknown.

The risks and rewards of Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea

Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea could have been a political disaster for Clinton if Kim Jong Il had wanted to continue playing games with the West, but instead it became a win-win event for all parties involved. Steve Clemons explains.

Steve also points out that John Bolton is trying to have an apoplectic fit over Clinton's trip to North Korea. When Bolton has a fit, that usually means someone did something right.

The Marc Rich pardon: some background

When Eric Holder was nominated to become Obama's new Attorney General, the question of his involvement in President Clinton's last minute pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich was raised by the Republicans in the Senate. This post is about Marc Rich and the alleged crime for which he was pardoned, and does not consider Eric Holder's involvement.

Marc Rich was an extremely successful (according to Forbes magazine he was the 242d richest man in America in 2006) commodities trader who, with his partner Pincus Green bought and sold international commodities, including Iranian oil. Rich and Green were indicted for tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran in 1983 by then U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani. At the time of the indictment both Rich and Green were located in Switzerland, and they never returned to America to answer the charges. The charges were brought under the RICO statutes. The Justice Department stopped using the RICO statutes for tax cases of this type in 1989.

Interestingly, "Scooter" Libby, the aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of giving the CIA undercover Officer Valerie Plame's name and affiliation with the CIA to the media for political purposes. Libby told Congress during hearings after the pardon that in his legal opinion, Marc Rich had not violated U.S. tax law, but could be criticized for trading with Iran even while the Iranians were holding the American hostages.

So Rich's guilt was never tested in court before the Clinton pardon, the RICO law under which the charges were made have ceased to be a basis for such charges, and a case can be made for his innocence even if it had gone to court.

But why did Clinton make the pardon at all? Bill Clinton wrote a New York Times OpEd published 02/18/2001in which he explained his reasoning.

(1) I understood that the other oil companies that had structured transactions like those on which Mr. Rich and Mr. Green were indicted were instead sued civilly by the government; (2) I was informed that, in 1985, in a related case against a trading partner of Mr. Rich and Mr. Green, the Energy Department, which was responsible for enforcing the governing law, found that the manner in which the Rich/Green companies had accounted for these transactions was proper; (3) two highly regarded tax experts, Bernard Wolfman of Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center, reviewed the transactions in question and concluded that the companies "were correct in their U.S. income tax treatment of all the items in question, and [that] there was no unreported federal income or additional tax liability attributable to any of the [challenged] transactions"; (4) in order to settle the government's case against them, the two men's companies had paid approximately $200 million in fines, penalties and taxes, most of which might not even have been warranted under the Wolfman/Ginsburg analysis that the companies had followed the law and correctly reported their income; (5) the Justice Department in 1989 rejected the use of racketeering statutes in tax cases like this one, a position that The Wall Street Journal editorial page, among others, agreed with at the time; (6) it was my understanding that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's position on the pardon application was "neutral, leaning for"; (7) the case for the pardons was reviewed and advocated not only by my former White House counsel Jack Quinn but also by three distinguished Republican attorneys: Leonard Garment, a former Nixon White House official; William Bradford Reynolds, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan Justice Department; and Lewis Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff; (8) finally, and importantly, many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Mr. Rich because of his contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes, to the Mossad's efforts to rescue and evacuate Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process through sponsorship of education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank.

Later in 1981 Bush 43 released transcripts of a phone call between Bill Clinton and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that demonstrates a lot of the pressure that Clinton was receiving. Remember that Bill Clinton ended his Presidency with an all-out push to achieve Peace in the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. On August 18, 2001 Josh Marshall discussed the transcripts in his then very new Talking Points Memo blog. This timing is interesting. The Rich pardon was big news at the time, and totally disappeared from the news less than a month later when it was eclipsed by 9/11. There is no working link I have found to the original Newsweek article by Isikoff which Marshall quotes.

Isikoff editorializes thus:

The transcripts offer no “smoking gun” showing that the former president was motivated by large donations to his presidential library or by generous campaign contributions. But the conversations do show that, in sharp contrast to the picture painted by some of his former aides, Clinton was keenly aware of details of the Rich case, and appeared determined to grant the highly questionable pardon even though, as he admitted to Barak, there was “almost no precedent in American history.”

No smoking gun? I'll say. The transcripts don't seem to contain anything even touching on this point.

Say whatever you will about the wisdom of the Marc Rich pardon, but the transcripts themselves seem to confirm a key component of Clinton's story -- that Ehud Barak, then Prime Minister of Israel, was lobbying heavily on Rich's behalf because, as he says in the transcripts, the fugitive financier had “[made] a lot of philanthropic contributions to Israeli institutions and activities like education" and because "it could be important (gap) not just financially, but [because] he helped Mossad [the Israeli intelligence agency] on more than one case."

As I look at this history two things jump out at me. First, the pardon itself had many factors that could easily justify it. Second, it is extremely doubtful with all the high level outside pressures on Clinton that anything that Eric Holder might have done except perhaps the criminal act of destroying the paperwork at the last minute might have changed Clinton's decision to pardon Marc Rich. Today this is nothing but a Senate Republican ploy to throw red meat to the extreme Clinton-hating elements in the Republican right-wing and to tar the Obama administration with elements of that irrational Clinton-hate that remains so active the much of the extremist elements of the Republican party. I doubt we'll be hearing more about it from now on. It's now just yesterday's news.

Presidential debates - how they have worked, not worked and what they mean for the next American President

James Fallows, a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, has sat through all 47 of the 2007 - 2008 primary season’s debates and analyzed how they were presented, what they have showed us about the various candidates, and what can be gleaned from them about what the general election is going to be about and what kind of President Obama will be.

He focuses finally on Obama, because the Republican debates displayed very little of significance about McCain, certainly not enough to predict much about what his Presidency would be like. He starts with an analysis of the nine series of Presidential debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Bush43-Kerry, but then focuses on the recently completed primary debates. The article is a long one, but fascinating.

Apparently Obama was a much more fluid and comfortable debater back in 204 against Alan Keyes than he has demonstrated in the recent Democratic Primary, but he has clearly grown and improved from the beginning to the end. Hillary, on the contrary, has shown a massive knowledge of current issues and functioned consistently from beginning to end.

Fallows explains why the debates unfolded as they did. Candidates needed exposure - moderators needed a grab-you headline for the next day's news; also the extremely knowledgeable Tim Russert set the tone for the kinds of questions that were asked. Fallows also describes five kinds of questions that should never be asked in a political debate, and Russert used them all. They are

1. The will you pledge tonight question, which is always about something no responsible politician could ever flat-out promise to do.
   
2. The gotcha question, involving any change of policy.
   
3. The loaded hypothetical question, which assumes factors that can’t be known.
   
4. The raise your hand question, for reasons of intellectual vulgarity and personal rudeness; and
   
5. The lightning round, in which the candidates have 30 seconds to address a point.
   

Fallows explains each of those with examples on Page 2 of his article.

This is a fascinating article, one I feel sure that the Obama camp is reading and taking to heart. We can hope that the media experts similarly take it to heart. As for the McCain camp? They have two choices. Find another candidate, or work the referees. McCain, even at his best, is simply not first tier material. Obama is.

But of course, the media will grade McCain on the curve, not on his demonstrated abilities. That's why the McCain camp is already pushing the line that McCain's POW experience is off-limits, even as they use it as an excuse for everything he screws up on, and that's also why any mention of McCain's age and obvious frequent periods of confusion sets the McCain camp into hysterics.

It's going to be interesting which Obama shows up for the TV debates - the rapid-fire fun-loving debater who successfully went toe-to-toe with the top-notch debater, Alan Keyes, in 2004, or the more thoughtful and restrained Constitutional Law Professor who responds with a brief review of all sides of each question before going on to answer it the way he wanted it asked.

Since the election is probably going to be decided by voter turn-out, more than likely we will see the law prof. That's less risky in the face of clear efforts by the media to trap him while they carefully avoid presenting McCain's many flaws [*]. Much of the consolidated corporate media is working hard to elect McCain.

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[*]See Frank Rich's Sunday editorial entitled "The Candidate We Still Don’t Know" in which he reports all the things the media (especially TV) are covering up for McCain. Rich does not name editors at the Washington Post (Leonard Downie Jr. and Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt) or the New York Times editors who are also orchestrating part of the cover-up.

Why did Obama win the Democratic nomination intead of Hillary? Here's Joe Trippi.

Joe Trippi presents his list of the things that went wrong for the Hillary Clinton nomination campaign.

In politics the number of things you can wonder “if only” about are legion in a losing campaign, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign has hundreds of them.

If only they had actually contested the caucus states, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they had known the campaign was going to last past February 5th, and planned accordingly, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they hadn’t spent all that money prior to Iowa, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they had figured out just a little earlier that change was more important than experience, Hillary Clinton would have been the Democratic nominee.

If only they had run a more bottom-up campaign that empowered people, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they had let Hillary be authentic, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

And of course, if only Barack Obama had not run for President, Hillary Clinton would be the nominee.

I think Trippi's list can be summarized.

• If Hillary has not voted to let Bush invade Iraq or had adequately dealt with her mistaken vote early in the campaign she might have won.
• If Hillary had campaigned as an agent of change against Bush early on, she might have won. And
• If Obama had not run such a really well-managed campaign, taking every possible advantage and offering few weaknesses, Hillary might have won.

But it is clear that none of those things happened, and Obama won the campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.

A lot of Hillary's weaknesses came from trying to run on the strengths her husband had displayed in the late 90's together with her early fund raising advantage. But conditions had changed, and Obama was the new kid on the block, aware of the newer conditions early on. He also had to work harder to find Hillary's weaknesses, and he found them when they ran a campaign based on winning states and Obama ran a campaign based on winning delegates.

Trippi is right. John Edwards did not cause Hillary to lose the Democratic nomination. Her own weaknesses as a candidate and Obama's ability to take advantage of those weaknesses allowed Obama to win the nomination.

The Obama Primary strategy

How did an unknown junior senator come literally out of nowhere and defeat the clear front-runner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination? He out-strategized and out-organized her. Here's how.

The insurgent strategy the group devised instead was to virtually cede the most important battlegrounds of the Democratic nomination fight to Clinton, using precision targeting to minimize her delegate hauls, while going all out to crush her in states where Democratic candidates rarely ventured.

The result may have lacked the glamour of a sweep, but last night, with the delegates he picked up in Montana and South Dakota and a flood of superdelegate endorsements, Obama sealed one of the biggest upsets in U.S. political history and became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to wrest his party's nomination from the candidate of the party establishment. The surprise was how well his strategy held up -- and how little resistance it met.

"We kept waiting for the Clinton people to send people into the caucus states," marveled Jon Carson, one of Obama's top ground-game strategists.

"It's the big mystery of the campaign," said campaign manager David Plouffe, "because every delegate counts."

Hillary is still trying to bluster her way in and somehow defeat Obama when she claims she has had more voters vote for her than Obama has had. Even that is false, since she can only claim that if she counts Michigan where Obama wasn't even on the ballot, and if she fails to count how many voters showed up for caucuses.

When I voted in the Texas primary, I felt it was a 51 - 49 decision between the two, but now that I have seen the sloppy strategic thinking from the Hillary camp, there is no doubt that Obama will make a better President than Hillary will.

Hillary has done herself no favors by her clear refusal to accept Obama's victory and to exacerbate the divisions in the Democratic party, most of which she herself initiated. Her public refusal to accept that Obama has beat her last night will be a memory I recall every time I ever see her in the media in the future. She wants the Democratic nomination for her own ego, not for what she can do with the Democratic Party and for the nation. If there was any doubt before last night, she made it perfectly clear that the only thing that matters is her and her feelings.

Not that Obama is perfect, he's not. I was first for Edwards because Hillary is too damned conservative. But I think that Obama is educable. Hillary clearly is not.

The better person has won the Democratic nomination.

Hillary is toast - the recriminations have begun; the media weighs in.

If there was any doubt that the Clinton campaign is over, then The New Republic is working hard to spike those doubts. Michelle Cottle has published an article today filled with anonymous insider quotes that list as many of the Clinton campaign errors as Cottle could find.

While it is filled with a lot of score-settling statements by some people blaming others, a great deal of it sounds accurate. Everyone who writes a book about their experience in the Clinton campaign is going to have to read this article do see who to get back at. That said, there are several themes that appear quite reasonable.

First - someone reports that Hillary did not seem to really want to go all out to win the election at first, and only after she began to lose did she throw herself into the campaign fully. [Maybe. And maybe she wasn't sure what direction the campaign was going to take and was just being tentative.]

Second - it is reported that there was no real central top management and no real strategy. Hillary had no one at the top who could knock heads together and get everyone working for Hillary instead of their own pet projects. (*cough* - Mark Penn - *couch*) [This one would explain a great deal about the inflexibility of the campaign when it hit rough spots and the apparent awkwardness that at times seemed apparent.] Which leads to:

Third - the campaign is described as being staffed by Clinton loyalists rather then people experienced in running a nation-wide primary. Then, since it was run out of Washington, D.C. they were not aware of a lot of things that were going on in the various states and were not especially open to criticism from people out there. With the absence of primary campaign experienced leaders at the top controlling the Intelligence gathering, message and strategy, the entire campaign just never came together. [This one also seems reasonable. My impression is that the campaign and its top managers had a "tin ear" which this confirms.]

As I say, a lot of it seems pretty accurate. What's missing is is the dynamic and the personal stories that would make it a decent case study for education. Without the story over time and the personalities involved, it is difficult to discern which of the various quotes are score-settling and which are really core to the problems the Clinton campaign has had. I'd guess a lot of the quotes are accurate, but some are attempts at blame-shifting [Not MY fault.] while others really do describe core problem in the organization.

As for core problems - all organizations have them. Good organizations identify the critical problems that are impeding them and resolve them. Less good organizations do not. But there is one other element that is not addressed in this compendium of complaints - the Obama campaign has been run extremely well and Obama is both a highly gifted politician and is clearly a better public speaker than Hillary is. (Although Hillary is a better debater.) Had the Clinton campaign not come up against a gifted politician like Obama, the problems aired in this article would not be being presented at this time, possibly never.

Still, it's early yet. Clinton's campaign is not even dead and buried, as West Virginia proved. For the moment, this is an interesting set of (tentative) insights. But the article also says as much about the media as about the Clinton campaign. It says the media has gotten tired of the Democratic primary and is ready to declare it O*V*E*R!

Compare this article to the sweetness and light with which Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas of Newsweek describe Obama's campaign management style, and you can see each of the media organizations announcing the end of the nomination process and their choice of the winner.

Not that the media are wrong, but can we trust them? We certainly can't trust their objectivity. It's clear that both Time and The New Republic expect to have to deal with Obama extensively in the future and don't want to offend him, while they see no real danger in piling on Hillary Clinton. The difference in tone of the two articles shows that. Time and The New Republic have publicly chosen sides.

Go read The New Republic article. It'll give you some perspective with which to deal with the wave of similar articles we will see appearing in the near future.

Here's why Hillary lost the race for the nomination

Karen Tumulty of Time describes how Hillary lost the Democratic nomination. She describes five major problems.

1. In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent's strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability — and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics.
   
2. Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game.
   
3. Clinton based her strategy on the big contests, [and] she seemed to virtually overlook states like Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, which choose their delegates through caucuses.
   
4. For a decade or more, the Clintons set the standard for political fund raising in the Democratic Party, and nearly all Bill's old donors had re-upped for Hillary's bid. ... But something had happened to fund raising that Team Clinton didn't fully grasp: the Internet.
   
5. Clinton's strategy had been premised on delivering a knockout blow early. ... She fought him to a tie in the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests but didn't have any troops in place for the states that followed.

This may not be the only major mistakes Clinton made, but they were enough to allow Obama to win the nomination.

I think there was at least one other major problem with Hillary's campaign, and that was her vote for the war in Iraq. Her vote to give Bush approval to invade Iraq, combined with her refusal to admit that was an error and somehow deal with it, created an opening for an opponent in the Democratic primaries. Obama is a brilliant politician and stepped in to take advantage of that opening.

Then the campaign for the Primary itself has demonstrated how effectively Obama has organized to win. Hillary was not allowed to make mistakes in her campaign. Obama also demonstrated that he can recognize and quickly deal with problems where Hillary has clearly demonstrated that she cannot do so.

This isn't the final word on what has happened in the Democratic primaries, but it is a good start.

And yes, this is a postmortem of the Democratic campaign for the nomination for President. The campaign is over, Barack is the presumptive nominee, and now we will watch the Democrats work to unify the party.

Stephanopolous defends ABC; Ed Kilgore eviscerates that defense

The nasty Republican-oriented questions that Stephanopolous and Gibson threw at Obama and Clinton last night had a reason, according to Stephanopolous. They were intended to focus on the subject that ABC thinks is uppermost in Democratic voter's minds right now - who is more electable in November. Or so George stated in his defense of the disaster last night.

Ed Kilgore destroys that explanation handily.

• Apparently Gibson and Stephanopolous know in advance what is going to make either Obama or Clinton electable next October. No one else does.
• How does S know that is currently in the forefront of voter's minds today? Who'd he ask? Or is it just floating in the air above the heads of the inside-the-beltway political media?
• Did they even bother to try to measure electability by head-to-head general election trial polling? (Of course not. They are the super-journalists drawing the big bucks because they are TV personalities and superior to everyone else.)
• Did it occur to them that they could better measure electability by asking Obama and Clinton how they would go about criticizing McCain, his platform and his record? The general election isn't going to be all about "Gotcha" questions. (Hey! That'd wouldn't show what super questioners Stephanopolous and Gibson are, would it? They wouldn't get to show off like Tim Russert does.)

Ed explains what is really behind the disaster. ABC needed to beat NBC and CBS in that time slot, and conflict does that. Addressing questions the voters really want to hear the candidates address and really need to get answered just wouldn't deliver the conflict and ratings.

ABC got some ratings (but Jay Leno says American Idol still creamed them.) They also lost massive amounts of credibility.

What's the ruckus all about? Talking Points Memo presents a set of highlights from the disaster debate.

I don't always agree with Ed Kilgore, who is a Democratic Leadership Council semi-Republican. But this time he nailed it.

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Digby describes how the ABC treatment of Clinton and Obama comes out to the conservative frame. Stephanopolous has bought into the frame so deeply that he does not even realize taht he is conservative attack dog instead of a journalist.

The debate was apparently just sad

I had other things to do, so I missed the debate last night. At least I didn't waste my time watching it. That's about the best news I can offer.

Apparently Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC have shown that they can do for political reporting what reality shows like "Cops" have done to prime time TV.

Perhaps they are attempting to get new jobs on E!, but I'd bet they can't do gossip about-celebrities-as-news any better than the did political reporting last night.

It's clear that the use of corporate media personalities to run presidential debates should be ended. Those organizations and people no longer do news.

Obama strikes back hard!

This is really good. You want a fighter for a Democratic nominee for President? Obama just put out a fund raising letter that says:

A few days ago, Barack spoke about the frustrations that working people in this country are feeling and said what we all know is true: that many people are bitter and angry because they believe their government isn't listening to them.

...our opponents have been spinning the media and peddling fake outrage around the clock. John McCain's campaign, which will continue the George Bush economic policies that have devastated the middle class, called Barack out of touch and elitist. And Hillary Clinton, who is the candidate who said lobbyists represent real people, didn't just echo the Republican candidate's talking points: she actually used the very same words to pile on with more attacks.

So Hillary is no better than the Republicans.

That's good on so many levels!

Clinton campaign: trapped in unreality, spouting blind spin

The Clinton campaign seems stuck, with wheels spinning but traction lost. Obama seems to be moving rapidly towards the nomination with the wins over the last weekend. The political momentum is away from Clinton and towards Obama, and the Clinton campaign seems to have no idea what action they can take to change the situation.

The Clinton campaign has responded with strange, unrealistic threats that they will take the nomination based on the decisions of the superdelegates even if Obama gets more regular delegates. This has been a major misstep, one that Josh Marshall blames on Clinton adviser Mark Penn.

How a misstep? Take a look at yesterday's post by Digby. The suggestion from the Clinton campaign that if the regular delegates break towards Obama that the Clinton campaign will take the nomination on the strength of the superdelegates has infuriated a lot of Democrats. That's not a reaction that a campaign that finds itself sliding out of the lead wants from the party members they expect to represent.

Not only has revealing that proposed tactic made the Clinton campaign’s problems worse rather than better, it's also obviously unrealistic. It looks as though the Clinton campaign, having run the campaign for the nomination from the start on the theory that they would simply overwhelm the opposition and roll to victory, has bought into its own fantasy and can’t respond when reality intrudes. Clinton is clearly no longer the inevitable Democratic nominee for President. Are they so trapped inside the beltway bubble that they can’t see that the dynamics have changed? What makes them think that if Obama gets more regular delegates, the Clinton campaign has a lock on the superdelegates?

Nothing forces the superdelegates to vote for Clinton, not even their previous commitments. Superdelegate, Congressional Representative and long-time Civil Rights leader John L. Lewis, who earlier endorsed Clinton, has just announced that he is switching his support to Obama.

As Josh Marshall says, endorsements don’t ordinarily sway votes. But Lewis’ is not just an endorsement. It is also proof that the supposed inevitability of the Clinton nomination is a mirage. Even the old-line Democrats who make up the superdelegates are wavering and Lewis’ announcement gives a lot of other Superdelegates as well as primary voters in Texas and Ohio new freedom to take a second look at the decision between Clinton and Obama. Since the Clinton campaign has been based on the Mark Penn strategy that Clinton is the inevitable nominee, the events of the last few weeks leave Clinton without a viable campaign strategy as well as a clear appearance that they don't know how to react to the Obama surge.

Spin isn't going to get the Clinton campaign any traction. Nor is going negative on Obama, since that feeds into his real strength as a candidate that he is above the nastiness. So Clinton's strategy to run the campaign based on appearing to be the inevitable candidate is gone. Worse, the Clinton people clearly don't know how to respond to the changed circumstance. In fact, their attempts to deal with the new situation gives the appearance that they don't even realize that their circumstances have changed.

It's really looking like the Democrats will nominate Obama for President in Denver this summer, and Clinton is simply gobsmacked. She and her people can't believe it and don't know what to do about it.

Of all the surprises that have occurred during this strange Presidential campaign season, I think this one surprises me most.

So far.

Obama for Veep

Armando, writing as Big Tent Democrat, makes a strong case that yesterday was the high water mark for Obama. He points out that Obama has been an insurgent candidate trying to knock off the front runner, and his media, momentum and endorsements put him in the position on Super Tuesday where, if he could win at least one of the large states (California, Massachusetts, New Jersey or New York) he might be able to keep the momentum going forward and defeat Hillary. Unfortunately, Obama failed to get any of those states. Since Clinton is preferred by the Hispanics and White women, Texas is probably out of his reach also. Without at least one of those five very large states, Obama will not get the nomination. Armand puts it this way: "He can not win women, Latinos, older voters and lower income non-African Americans. The Obama coalition is simply not enough".

That analysis seems quite persuasive to me. I don't think that Texas is going to be changed enough in the next month for Obama to win. Since Texas has 28 different television markets, any fast change in the attitudes here are extremely unlikely. Any attempt to make such a change is prohibitively expensive. (California, I am told, has only four TV markets.)

That's going to leave Obama in an interesting position as the convention approaches. It is clear that the strongest Democratic ticket would be Clinton/Obama. It is also very clear that Obama wants to run for the Presidency. If he can't do it this year, he will have a much better shot at it later from the position of Vice President than he would from being just another Senator.

I've heard rumors that Clinton and Obama don't like each other that much, and that would prevent him from accepting the position of Vice President on the Democratic ticket. That's what people thought in 1960 when Kennedy took the Democratic nomination from Lyndon Johnson, too, and it didn't stop LBJ from taking the job. Even if there is bad blood, which I consider more of a media artifact to gin up conflict and make stories more interesting than it is a fact, if Clinton gets the nomination and offers the position of vice President on the ticket to Obama, he'd be a fool not to take it. And, since the Democratic nomination looks like it is coming down to the decision of the roughly 20% superdelegates, I think those professionals will push both individuals into such an arrangement.

A race between Clinton/Obama and McCain/(Huckabee?) would pit the strongest Democratic coalition against the a Republican coalition that leaves out the extremists conservatives but otherwise carries the moderate Republicans and the evangelists, which is probably the strongest possible Republican coalition. And the extremist conservatives are not going to sit on their hands and not vote when they have a chance to vote against both Hillary and a Black Democrat at the same time. So the only people to be left out on the Republican side are the extremist right-wing talk radio hosts and Mitt Romney.

The comparative turnout between the Democrats and the Republicans in the Primaries and caucuses indicates that a Democratic win in November is very likely.

The other thing that is extremely likely is that the wealthy Republicans who hate losing and who fund swift boat campaigns will be out in force, making this the most nasty Presidential election in the memory of living voters. I don't think they will change the election dynamics this time, except possibly against the Republicans. One of the main things that Obama has had going for him as a candidate is his promise to make elections about the future of America instead of fighting off nasty attacks, and I think the climate this election is going to one in which swift boat attacks become a negative for the candidate they are supposed to support.

And no, I don't think that the Democrats do the same thing, certainly not as blatantly. These dirty tricks are a trademark of Republican politics as played by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.

But this isn't a prediction. It's a possible scenario.

Chris Matthews hates Hillary Clinton

Matthews detests Hillary, yet continually denies it. That's clear just from listening to him. But it's nice to get some numbers to support that impression, and Media Matters has done a study of his opinions on his show, MSNBC's Hardball, during the months of September, October, and November. MM compared his opinions on Hillary to his opinions on Rudy Giuliani.

The results demonstrate that Matthews has been particularly friendly to Rudy Giuliani in recent months, and extremely hostile toward Hillary Clinton. Not only is there a qualitative difference between the kinds of praise and criticism he offers these two candidates, but a quantitative difference, as well: Matthews made 10 negative remarks about Clinton for every negative remark he made about Giuliani, and nearly three times as many positive remarks about the former New York City mayor as about Clinton. The ratio of positive to negative remarks was 3.5-to-1 for Giuliani, but 1-to-8.2 for Clinton.

• Matthews made 10 positive remarks about Hillary Clinton in the past three months, most of which were evaluations of her campaign performance. But six of these 10 remarks also contained some criticism, as when he said, "She has been charming but cold and absolutely flawless," or when he described a debate as "a highly scripted, brilliant performance by Hillary Clinton." Others -- for instance, his praise of Clinton's success in getting support from "every interest area in the Democratic Party" -- could also plausibly be interpreted as backhanded compliments.
• Matthews made 82 negative remarks about Clinton during this period. They cover a wide range of topics, but most have to do with character issues -- that Clinton is overly calculating, disingenuous, or unethical.
• Matthews made 28 positive remarks about Rudy Giuliani, most concerning how much of a leader and how tough Giuliani is.
• Matthews made eight negative remarks about Giuliani, most about his stance on immigration.

The complete list of positive and negative remarks is available at the end of this report.[2]

The picture painted by this list is clear. Indeed, the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine reported in June 2001 that Matthews told an MSNBC colleague, "I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for."

Why does this matter? Well, here is Rachel Maddow discussing the fact that women voted for Hillary in New Hampshire because they are angry that the media is piling on Hillary because she is a woman.



Chris' anger at being questioned comes through this clip clearly. Apparently he can't accept that others have the temerity to disagree with his self-image as a competent, fair-minded and balanced journalist.

Chris clearly doesn't understand just how many people in the TV viewing audience recognize his misogyny and find it disgusting, so that when the differences between the candidates are not of major import, those people just might vote in a way so as to demonstrate their disgust with him.

That's an interesting, if unprovable, explanation of Hillary's vote from women. Whatever - I don't like Chris at all, and I'm glad to see him getting flack. He has set himself up for the flack, and it is good to see it going his way. The media matters study certainly justifies it.

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Addendum 5:01 PM CST
Here is a great example of Chris Matthews expressing his personal loathing for Hillary Clinton.



I got this from a really excellent post by Tristero over at Hullabaloo. Tristero and Bob Somerby of the Howler are completely correct. The problem for Democrats like Hillary isn't just that the right-wing Wurlitzer and their propaganda outlet, FOX News, don't like Democrats. It's that the entire national Press corps detests Democrats. Ask Al Gore and John Kerry.

But don't ask Chris Matthews. He'll just tell you that he is an even-handed unbiased journalist selling his opinion on TV, and that he has no influence at all on how people think about the people they have never seen in person, but know only by the way the media (like Chris) portrays them.

Hillary is treating the media as hostile - good move, they ARE hostile..

Good news this morning from TPM.

"The New Republic's Michael Crowley has posted an engaging piece about Camp Hillary's strategy for dealing with the media. His basic take is that Hillary's advisers view the press as a hostile foe to be defeated at all costs."

Hillary's right. The media is her enemy, and the enemy of Democrats in general. Think not? Take a look at Digby's article Sunday on how the media is treating the strike of the Writer's Guild and the strike by the New York stagehands. The media is taking the corporate line hook, line and sinker. And it's clearly not the unionized news writers pushing the line. It's their corporate bosses.

No one in politics today should understand that the media is the enemy better than Hillary does. That's why she is going after them for their lies and inaccuracies.

That's also why I find Obama's "Kumbaya" politics of "Let's all come together and work as a team" utterly unrealistic. Apparently Obama is beginning to see that the media trope of him as "the flag-pin-hating Muslim" is beginning to sink in, but he seems to be a slow learner.

The refusal of the media to recognize and report on Giuliani's authoritarian behavior, his meglomaniacal statements, his severe narcissism and its accompanying grandiosity, his racism and his total inability to judge character in his subordinates as demonstrated by his appointments of Bernie Kerik and Russell Harding. The media is treating Giuliani just like they did George W. bush in 2000, and trying to treat the Democrats like they did both Al Gore and John Kerry.

The corporate media is not a set of neutral observers providing information to the electorate. They are the enemies of Democrats and of the American people in general.

Bill Clinton & Richard M. Scaife sit down to talk

So "Bill archenemy Richard Mellon Scaife now has 'admiration' for him." according to Newsweek. Last July arch-Clinton hater Richard Mellon Scaife sat down and had a long, pleasant meal with the man he tried to destroy during Clinton's eight years as President.

That is a surprise. So here is what I think happened.

There is an over-class of wealth and power in the world today. Members of that over-class operate above the law, where there are no rules except victory to the strongest. The purpose of lawyers at that level is to allow the members of the over-class to ignore restrictions established by the law. At that level alliances are the major consideration in trade.

Bill Clinton has moved into that over-class. George Bush (both of them) and Richard Mellon Scaife were born into that over-class and inherited their wealth. Members of the over-class sometimes fight each other, but battle between members of that over-class last only as long as there is a likelihood of profit or total destruction of the enemy, and their battles are simply shut down when those two possibilities disappear.

Scaife is not a lunatic. He was and is simply doing what he sees as necessary to protect his wealth. His billions of inherited wealth put him into the over-class, and Scaife's goals are to maintain his status and the wealth that got him there. Almost everything the financial conservatives do is aimed at preserving and augmenting family wealth, because it is what lets them remain in the over-class during the dry periods between positions of power.

Bill Clinton is famous for what has come to be called "post-ideological politics," and his peacemaking with Scaife is what it is all about. "Post-ideological politics," is a recognition that the members of the over-class will take the most extreme actions to protect their status, generally preventing all significant government mandated change in society. Because of this visceral reaction by those holding extreme levels of inherited wealth nothing can be done to improve society. At the same time the over-class cannot be destroyed. It even existed in the USSR when there wealth was not permitted to protect positions over periods when out of power. The primary purpose of the Bush administration domestic agenda has been to protect the over-class wealth and to placate the Evangelical Republicans who provide the foot troops and votes to elect them into office.

This meeting between Clinton and Scaife resembles the peace meetings between two mafia dons after an extended and bloody mob war in which neither side could eliminate the other. There are no rules to control the members of the over-class. They are above the law and the rules (as they see it.) The only thing that exists at that level is power and alliances. In teh absence of sufficient power to destroy the enemy, these people have to make alliances. That is what has happened between Clinton and Scaife.

The reaction of many Democrats upon learning of this peace deal between Clinton and Scaife has been to blame Clinton, saying "How Could he break bread with that slimeball!" I'd say that Bill was operating under the old line "Don't get angry, get even." and he has added, "When you can't get even, stop fighting when there is no profit in it."

An important part of the deal includes reassuring Scaife that his wealth and position are not threatened. Scaife started the battle because he was afraid that Clinton, when he became a Democratic President, would pass legislation that would damage Scaife's fortune. Clinton was not part of the over-class when he was elected in 1992, so Scaife went after him before he could become powerful.

Clinton learned with the universal health care proposal that he could not destroy the over-class, so he had to work with them to get things done. Thus we got "Post-ideological politics," also known as triangulation. Since they have proven that neither can destroy the other, there is no action they can take other than continue suicidal combat or enter an alliance.

Bill has basically assured Scaife that his wealth and the resulting membership in the over-class is not threatened. Once Scaife was assured of that, he has no further reason to fight.

The meal between Bill and Scaife was probably a signal of the peace treaty between the two of them. Scaife feels protected, and the Clintons can negotiate the needed social changes. It is an entente, mostly DE facto, equivalent to that between the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War.

That's my bet, anyway. I'll be looking for facts which prove or disprove the thesis. And, yes, I am this cynical.

Here's what makes Clinton the best candidate in spite of MoDo

Maurine Dowd (find it yourself) thinks that Hillary Clinton is running for President on the victim ticket. Molly Ivors from Bingham, NY shows what a load of crap that is. It's not the gender game. It is the fact that Hillary is an extremely good politician who works to represent her constituencies, unlike the idiot conservatives who work to represent their fantasy ideology.

Go read it.

Giuliani - Clinton, the Presidential election and beyond

My bet bet is that the Republicans will nominate Rudy Giuliani for President. Romney isn't going to get past the 'Mormons aren't Christians' test with the evangelical Republicans. I expect to see more evangelicals move towards Rudy before Spring. Rudy's campaign geared towards the evangelicals will be a fear campaign as the 'counter-Hillary,' fear of the looming threat of 'IslamoFascism' and anger at the way Liberals have 'stabbed the troops in the back' and prevented victory in Iraq. First let's look at Rudy's campaign aimed at the social conservatives, then look at what he offers the economic Republicans.

Rudy and the social conservatives

Rudy will take the social conservative position towards women (Women should not be in charge of men and should defer to their husbands.) which will effectively counteract the charge that Rudy is too liberal on gay rights and abortion. This part will be conducted as a stealth campaign with rumors, viral messages and sermons in mega-Churches. The public campaign will be recycling all the anti-Hillary attacks from Bill Clinton's Presidency, and the usual anti-Liberal smears of demonizing Gays, African-Americans and immigrants and blaming the 'liberals' for permitting such abominations to exist outside ghettos or prisons.

Foreign Policy Rudy

Rudy has already shown what his foreign policy will be by his choice of foreign policy advisers. Chief among them is Norman Podhoretz. He laid out the Giuliani position towards Iran on the News Hour in his angry argument with the right-wing (but sane) Fareed Zakaharia.

Norm's argument, presented with anger and disgust that anyone would even dare to disagree with him, consists of conflating every bandit, partisan, Jihadist and ex-soldier who considers himself a Muslim as members of some fictional entity he calls "IslamoFascism," then equating that non-existent mob with the tightly organized and centrally controlled German armed forces led by Hitler, and calling this fictional entity the greatest threat the West has ever faced.

The rather insane rant presented on the News Hour by Podhoretz is just the first step in appealing to the Republican social conservatives, many of whom are milleniarists who think that the war in the Middle East is a prophetic event that precedes the second coming of Christ. It may also be a realistic reflection of the view held by Israelis of the Muslim threat to their small nation. Keep in mind, Norm Podhoretz is in line to become Rudy Giuliani's National Security Advisor if Rudy wins the Presidency.

The threat of IslamoFascism be being ginned up to conceal the failure of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Along with selling the fear of IslamoFascism and a woman as President (particularly Hillary), Giuliani is also going to run on the "stabbed in the back' theory to explain why the invasion of Iraq (which Podhoretz pushed hard to accomplish) failed. The intent is to focus anger on the 'Anti-War Liberals' who robbed America of its victory in Iraq. A sub theme here is that Iraq failed because Bush was not 'Conservative enough' so Bush is becoming a non-person in the Republican Primary debates.

[Addendum 12:57 PM CDT] Josh Marshall has a very good video on Giuliani's foreign policy advisers. [/Addendum 12:57 PM CDT]

All of this is aimed to get the social conservatives to get out and vote. The economic Republicans are a different group.

Rudy and the economic conservatives

Rudy offers the economic conservatives more union-busting, lower taxes, further removal of regulations, no Sherman Anti-Trust enforcement, and more outsourcing of government jobs into lucrative contracts to favored cronies. Selling toll-roads to private contractors creates overnight multi-millionaires, as does contracting out military logistics to firms like Halliburton and also contracting out prisons and hiring security firms like Blackwater.

Wall Street continues to salivate at the great pots of money that would be handed to them if Social Security were privatized. Universal health care is a similar bonanza if the government can be forced into using the private insurance companies to administer it.

These are all ways for Republican cronies to make a lot of money quickly, especially if there is no effective oversight of the contracts. Government oversight is a threat posed by incoming Democrats, probably a bigger threat than increased taxes on the wealthy.

I'm wrapping the 'Movement Conservatives' into the economic conservative category for right now. I see them as primarily economic conservatives, who cross over into extreme dislike for government interference in Race, Gender and Sexual Preference decisions in business. They are allies with the evangelist Republicans, but most movement conservatives are not, themselves, politically motivated by religious views. They are involved in politics to make money and gain power. I am open to disagreement on this, but I think that's how Rudy's campaign will approach the movement conservatives.

Rudy and the NeoCons

The NeoCons like Podhoretz are also outside the social conservative - economic conservative axis, but they provide the justifications for the wars in the Middle East which appeal to the social conservatives especially. They have been consistently wrong since they were the main force pushing Bush into the invasion of Iraq, but they have suffered no political consequences, as demonstrated by Podhoretz' interview on The News Hour. They have simply shifted to pushing for an attack on Iran. The provide Giuliani with his foreign policy, so he has to keep them.

Authoritarian Rudy

Rudy's campaign already offers a very authoritarian take on governance as demonstrated by his period as mayor of New York. Why is this important?

Authoritarian power of the President and freedom from restrictions on its use will be needed because enforcing the demands of the evangelical Republicans and letting the economic Republicans plunder government will create a major backlash. The institutions of the Unitary Presidency and of an authoritarian government will be required to repress the backlash and maintain 'stability.' Republican leaders and the right-wing think tanks are all fully aware of this. Power is more important than democracy, particularly if democracy acts to remove them from power.

They will use democratic institutions to gain power, but once they have power themselves they will weaken the democratic institutions for anyone else. As an example, that's why Tom DeLay used illegal contributions from corporations laundered through the Republican National Committee to fund the Republican take-over of the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, then had the new Republican leadership call three special sessions of the legislature in order to conduct a mid-decade redistricting the Texas Congressional districts. The result was the five Democratic Congressmen were replaced. Those Republican Congressmen were elected by the action of the Republican Texas Legislature (elected by corporate money rather than by voters), not by the voters of Texas.

Election 2008 and after

Election year 2008 is going to be ugly. If Bush begins to pull troops out of Iraq in early 2008 and is seen to be effectively winding down that war, at the same time ratcheting up fear of Iran, I think there is a possibility - not a big one - of a Republican being elected President. That's not likely. That means that I expect to see Hillary Clinton taking the oath of office in January 2009, but it's not a sure thing. If she wins, though, the campaign will not be over for four more years at least.

The anger and lies demonstrated by the Clinton-haters from 1992 until 2000 and frequently expressed by the Bush regime are going to seem mild compared to what our next Democratic President faces through 2012. The Republican right-wing is not going to accept the finality of the election in 2008. The final vote count is not going to wipe away the fear and anger this upcoming campaign is going to unleash. Conservatives do not accept majority rule if it means they didn't win, and they will continue to attack Hillary (or any other Democrat) by fair means or foul as long as she is in office.

The Democratic candidates for President

I suspect that Hillary is ready for it, at least emotionally and intellectually. It will not surprise her. I seriously doubt that Obama has a real clue, and I know he doesn't have the experience to handle the upcoming social and political storm. That doesn't mean he can't learn on the job, but that was part of Bill Clinton's problem. He had to learn on the job. Obama is competent and ambitious, but too inexperienced to be ready to deal with being a Democratic President with a third of the country out to get him the way they were when Bill Clinton was President. Hillary clearly is sufficiently experienced. I'd prefer Edwards for his positions, but I haven't seen him go after anyone yet, so I don't know how well he can do it.

The next half-decade in American politics

The 2008 Presidential campaign has started a year early. It is taking form now, and I think that it will be Clinton - Giuliani, and if so, the Rudy is probably the nastiest, most authoritarian and most desperate (this is his one shot, and it is a real long shot) candidate for the Presidency in at least a century. The social conservatives are the largest block of the Republican party, and they have felt empowered under Bush, but now feel it being snatched away from them. They, too, are nasty and desperate. The economic conservatives and movement conservatives feel the same way.

One thing that is going to be interesting is the way the incoming President deals with the Press. Until the election, the candidates all need the Press, and FOX in particular is throwing all their weight behind the Republicans. But after the election the Press become dependent on the administration for news. The Republicans have used this dependence to restructure to reporting and opinions from the corporate media. An incoming Democrat cannot simply let the Press do as they wish with no penalties for favoring the other side. I rather hope the incoming administration cuts off access to all opposing reporters while favoring up and coming reporters who will support the Democrats. I'd also cut out any access to Chris Matthews and George Stephanopoulos since they were Democrats who now attack Democrats. The return of the "Fairness Doctrine" and anti-Trust applied to news conglomerates and radio and TV chains would also be very good. All of these things can be manipulated by the current administration, and clearly are being manipulated by the Bush administration. The Democrats would be fools to let the existing anti Democratic Party structures retain all the power given them by the Bush administration.

America has been living in that old Chinese Curse "May you live in interesting times" since at least the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Not only is it not slowing down, the right-wing idiots are out of the woodwork and pulling government levers like never before. (See the TV clip of Norm Podhoretz again if you don't think so.) With the failure of Iraq, they are losing power and they hate it. They are going to pull out all the stops to keep the Presidency or damage the incoming Democrat in every way possible, and Rudy Giuliani is there current best vehicle.

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This is the way things look to me today and most of the trends will not change. The primaries could throw in a surprise, but with the collapse of the Fred Thompson boomlet, that is looking less and less likely. Similarly, a terrorist incident in October 2008 might change the election if it changed the views of independent voters enough. If we are still heavily invested in Iraq, I doubt that the 2008 Presidential election will be that close.

An attack on Iran might change that and possibly shift the 2008 election, but I don't really know which way right now. The Republicans could gain IF the build up to the Iranian attack is effective, but it hasn't had much traction so far. A terrorist event in America that was blamed on Iran might, but anyone who believes the Bush administration needs to have their meds increased.

So while I don't rule out surprises, they are beginning to look less and less likely to me.

Here's what a Super-Pollster does for a campaign

Mark Schmitt describes what functions a Super-pollster performs for a political campaign. Then he explains what the Super-Pollster Mark Penn ("Worldwide President and CEO" of Burson-Marsteller, the fifth-largest public relations firm) does and how he does it. He starts his commentary from the excellent article in the Nation by Ari Berman.

This is definitely worth reading. Burson-Marsteller's website is found here.