Monday Morning Must-Reads
The Hillary Deathwatch [Slate] Hillary Clinton is as good as dead. This became the consensus over the past week, when the media awoke en masse to the dual reality that 1) Clinton can't close the pledged-delegate gap and 2) Obama has her beat in the popular vote. But the Clinton campaign shows no signs of slowing—she said herself she's prepared to compete for at least three more months. So the question now is not just "How dead is she?" but "When will she realize it?" In the tradition of Slate's Saddameter (gauging the likelihood of invading Iraq), the Clintometer (measuring the chances of a Lewinsky-related ousting), and the Gonzo-meter (charting the attorney general's demise), we bring you the Hillary Deathwatch, a daily update on Hillary Clinton's dwindling chances of winning the Democratic nomination.
Gore Launches Ambitious Advocacy Campaign on Climate [WaPo] Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history. The Alliance for Climate Protection's "we" campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from "American Idol" to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." It highlights the extent to which Americans' growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.
My Way or the Highway: Bush's Nominee [NYT] President Bush likes to talk about not being swayed by public opinion, especially the views of Democrats. At a news conference last December, he said the most important criterion for picking a president is “whether or not somebody’s got a sound set of principles from which they will not deviate as they make decisions.” Unhappily for the country, we have learned that Mr. Bush has no idea when standing on principle becomes blind stubbornness and then destructive obsession. So it goes with his choice to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Steven Bradbury. In a lower job in that office, Mr. Bradbury signed off on two secret legal memos authorizing torture in American detention camps. The first approved waterboarding, among other things. When Congress outlawed waterboarding, the other memo assured Mr. Bush that he could ignore the law. Mr. Bradbury is widely viewed on both sides of the aisle as such a toxic choice that he will never be confirmed. The Senate has already refused to do so twice. Still, Mr. Bush clings to this lost cause, snarling the confirmation process for hundreds of nominees and crippling parts of the federal regulatory apparatus.
The Case for Hillary [Taylor Marsh] The case for Clinton... Open letter from former admirals and generals supporting Clinton. This is particularly important to me given what's now unraveling in Iraq. (Please click on that link; it's Juan Cole's assessment.) National security and foreign policy are the topics I research and study most (when not in a general election primary dogfight). Obama simply does not stack up. Read Joseph C. Wilson, more from him here, as well my interview with Wilson and Valerie Plame; or see Larry Johnson, as well as Pat Lang if you need more. Read Paul Krugman when it comes to Clinton v. Obama on the economy.
Obama Uses the "R" Word [HuffPo] The focus of the presidential campaign on Thursday, and much of this past week, was on the economy, with each Democratic candidate offering a set of proposals, claiming prior ownership to other's positions, and even going after Sen. John McCain. And while both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hit many of the same notes -- the need for greater housing security, the anger towards special interests, the "I feel your pain" vibes -- there were minor distinctions. One of those was to characterize the current crisis. Speaking in downtown Manhattan on Thursday, Obama used, as NBC's Domenico Montanaro pointed out, "the 'R' word." "As most experts know, our economy is in a recession," said the Illinois Democrat. It was, despite a preponderance of evidence of a tumbling economy, a debatable use of the term, and one that the Clinton campaign declined to copy.
