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Mark Finkelstein wonders the following:

I’m measuring my words carefully. Harry Smith has raised the possibility that Barack Obama’s life could be in danger…

When you tell a man with Ted Kennedy’s family history that "you well know" about politicians becoming "targets," the implication is unmistakable.

This time, Kennedy [to his credit I would say] chose to ignore Smith’s suggestion, giving another bland answer about Obama being a candidate for change.

What could possibly have possessed Smith to raise this specter?

But Sir William Rees-Mogg had already raised that possibility:

I find myself worried by the figures with whom Mr Obama is compared. Martin Luther King obviously, John F. Kennedy, but also Abraham Lincoln and even Mahatma Gandhi. All four were charismatic figures who claimed to lead their nations in a new and idealistic way. What they also had in common is that they were assassinated. Such men attract the hatred of those who fear and resent their influence. When General Colin Powell was offered the Republican nomination in 1996, his wife persuaded him to reject it, on the grounds that he would be exposed to the assassination threat. Mrs Powell may have been right. The role of the first black president of the United States will be a dangerous one.

And Lord Rees-Mogg has a long memory, unlike so many of us on this side of the pond for whom the "long term" is after lunch.

Alan Comes thought that Dick Morris had lost his mind when Morris stated that Bill and Hillary were running a race based campaign against Barack Obama (as Morris outlines below):

If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama’s ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It’s one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don’t read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive whi te backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.

Evidently there was only one political pro on Hannity and Comes, and it wasn’t Alan, as Bill’s own comments demonstrate:

Another reporter asked what it said about Obama that it “took two people to beat him.” Clinton again passed. “That’s just bait, too. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in ’84 and ’88. And he ran a good campaign. Senator Obama’s run a good campaign here, he’s run a good campaign everywhere.”

The Democrats have a critical decision to make.  Are they who they say they are regarding race?  Or are they the same people who turned Democrat to get back at the Republicans for, in their estimation, elevating blacks too speedily during Reconstruction?

P.S. Morris’ observations on Bill Clinton’s temper are no surprise to anyone familiar with the scene down here.

The estimate that it is mathematically impossible that anyone become the clear leader in their party’s Presidential nomination race after Super Tuesday may or may not be right.

In 2000, I can remember Dick Morris confidently predicting that it was impossible for the popular vote to go one way and the electoral vote to go another.  But that’s exactly what happened.  The focus ended up on Florida (because the popular vote was so close) and to a lesser extent Tennessee (because Al Gore ignominously lost his own home state.)  But the reality is that the Electoral College favours the small states because they count two votes for the Senate seats for each state, and George Bush won more small states.  Since their popular votes are more heaving weighted in the Electoral College, they negated the 500,000 vote plurality that Al Gore had, so George Bush became President.

So much for impossibilities…

The Democrats have a better chance at getting a clear leader because there are fewer "viable" candidates in the race.  The major variables are related to the volatility of the electorate, both the voters in the primaries and caucuses and the superdelegates.

The Republicans, with their Cecil B. DeMille movie of a field (a little smaller since Fred Thompson threw in the towel) not only face the prospect of no clear winner after Super Tuesday, but also of not obtaining one when the primaries and caucuses are finished.  This could lead to something that is beyond the living memory of much of the American electorate: a brokered convention, with the wheeling and dealing in formerly smoke filled rooms.  Most recent party conventions have been staged media events (and not very strong ones at that,) but in the past conventions were exciting news.  Perhaps we will see this again.

There are two lessons to this.

The first is that our system and mentality is ill-suited for any form of coalition or brokered politics, even though in some ways such a system is the best way to avoid the rigid polarisation that has dominated American political life for so long.  No one is really looking for this kind of result, although it is very possible, especially for the Republicans, who unfortunately have become too much ideological purists to make the most of such a situation.

The second is a piece of advice, especially for the Republicans: quit basing your voting decision on who you think will win and just vote your preference.  If a clear winner comes out of Super Tuesday, fine; if not, all the money spent on the Convention won’t be such a waste.  Your candidate can use your support as leverage for your position whether or not he gets the nomination.

A little while back I posted an excerpt from Fourth of July speech in Houma, Louisiana, in 1911, about “warm receptions.”  That speech was just one of four given at that interesting occasion; another one was given by the Hon. Gabriel Montegut.  After a lengthy dissertation about Louisiana history, Montegut launched into an interesting subject: the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, both of which were still living memories in 1911.

With the “red state/blue state” dialectic, many have forgotten that, for nearly a century, the “Solid South” was solidly Democrat.  The Southern base was essential for the eventual triumph of Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrat domination of American politics in the mid-twentieth century.  How did this happen?  Montegut—a fervent Democrat as we’ll see—gives the reasoning that was fairly common amongst Southern Democrats for many years.

Note: long-time readers of this site will know that I take a jaundiced view of a lot of Southern mythology, as should be evident from my piece To Do The Work.   With that in mind, let’s join Mr. Montegut:

It is not necessary for a Southern gentleman to say much on the subject of social equality to be understood.  Referring to all the rot continually dinned in our ears by these marplots, I have but a few words to say, but I wish to say them in such a pointed manner that, “he who runs,” can read my views on the subject.  I only regret that, in my vocabulary, I cannot find words adequate to fully express my loathing and contempt for any man who calls himself a white man, whose heart beats seventy-two pulsations to the minute, who can unsheathe a dagger, draw a sword from its scabbard, and pull the trigger of a gun, and yet be so emasculated and wither in to such a pygmy as to fear for one moment, his inability to uphold the dignity of his own standard.

Grant, by the eternal Gods, Grant with his Federal bayonets, could not maintain the Negro domination in the South.  This remark brings us back to reconstruction days.  Our National quarrel was left to the arbitrament of war, and it was settled at Appomattox.  The South accepted the result in good faith, and if I refer to conditions immediately subsequent thereto, it is with neither desire nor intention to open up old sores, (no man of honour would do so,) but simply because some reference to that period, cannot be avoided in this discussion.  As I said before slavery was wrong, and emancipation was right.  But a great crime was committed by the dominant Republican party when they hastily vested millions of ignorant Negroes in the South, with the right to vote, instead of fixing a reasonable probation to prepare and qualify them for the exercise of that sacred right which Wm. M. Seward, the great Republican statesman, said was the crowning franchise of the American people.  They sowed the wind and the Nation has been reaping the whirlwind.  Abe Lincoln would have quarrelled with the entire Republican party, before he would have consented to so humiliate a brave and fallen foe.  That one political crime, committed I hope more in error for political expediency, and with less malice than we have often thought, was the cause of all our woes and tribulations.  It brought down upon the South a horde of unscrupulous carpetbaggers and adventurers, whose only motive was to enrich themselves upon our misfortunes.  They organised the Negroes, and at every election hurled that black mass of ignorance against our civilisation.  The saturnalia of corruption and misrule that existed in the South during those troublous times, no pen can describe.  A few conservative Republicans, including some coloured leaders who were just beginning to open their eyes, were themselves appalled.  Henry Clay Warmouth, the Republican governor of Louisiana, in the memorable Fusion Campaign of 1872, cried aloud and said that to save his life he could not stem the tide of corruption that had set in the Republican party in the State of Louisiana.

We stood our ills with patience and fortitude.  A day came when we were at the wall, and could go no further.  For years we talked and preached to, and argued with the Negro,–all to no avail.  He was loyal to Lincoln, loyal to the core.  He would listen to us patiently, and when we were through his only answer was, “Boss, Boss, ask me anything and I will do it for you,–but I can’t vote for you.”  He voted the Republican ticket because he thought he was paying them back for what he had received from them, his liberty,–and liberty is sweet.  He irritated us, God knows he did, but way down in our hearts we admired his loyalty.  We realised that he was a victim of a horde of white scoundrels and some miserable wretches among his own people.  He voted the Republican ticket because he thought he was voting for Lincoln, just as the mountaineers in Tennessee are still voting for “Old Hickory.”  He was loyal to Lincoln, just as he was loyal to us, when we went in the Confederate Army, and left mother and sister, wife and children in his charge.  We gave him up in despair only when we got to the wall.  The crisis came and we had it to meet.  It was then that the spirit of the Old South asserted itself, and Southern heroes and patriots rose to the demand of the occasion…They concluded that the only remedy left was to shoot to kill,–and they did so…They then called a halt.  For no consideration on earth, would they have stained their hands of honour of Louisiana with one drop of blood unnecessarily.  Any one of them could organise a revolution, but not one of them would lead a cowardly, murderous mob of lynchers.

The Negro quieted down in his ignorance.  The men of the Old South were above holding his responsible for the trouble.  They renewed their old attachment for him and redoubled their kindness.  Ah, those were troublous times…

The summary of this is simple: it was the backwash from Reconstruction, or the way the Republicans handled it after Lincoln’s assassination, that put a century of enmity between white Southerners and the Republican party, and a century of loyalty to the Democrat one.  That loyalty began to end in the 1960’s, just as the loyalty of re-enfranchised black voters entirely reversed itself to the Democrats.

And that is an unfortunate result of the whole quest for equality.  Martin Luther King enunciated a vision where all of God’s children could live and grow together, but instead of ending the apartheid the left took the easy way out and fell back on racial identity politics.  They simply inverted the division rather than getting rid of it.

And that inversion is the central reason why the Democrat party—the party of “equality”—is having such a hard time nominating a “black” man like Barack Obama for President.  Too many people have been conditioned to see themselves as the member of a group, and the person with the largest group gets to win, just as was the case in the reconstructed South.

Montegut goes on to an extended elegy about the Democrat party, a small part of which is as follows:

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty;–liberty is the offspring of Democracy, and the Democratic party is the sentinel of the Watch Tower of liberty and civilisation…

The Democratic party is indestructible, because it is the party of humanity and good will to all, and was created to vindicate, uphold and defend human rights and liberty; it is indestructible because it is the bulwark of constitutional liberty and is founded on God like principles.

Democracy and liberty, Democracy and Christianity, Democracy and chivalry walk hand in hand and as long as one lives the other cannot perish. Democracy was established on earth by Christ Jesus our Lord and Saviour, and its immortal principle is embodied in his “Sermon on the Mount…”

In political economy the policy of the Democratic party has always been broad and firm, but never arbitrary, upholding always that the tax that each individual is bound to and must pay, as his contribution toward the support of his government, must be certain, but just and proportionate, and its assessment and manner of payment must be so fixed as to meet as nearly as possible the best convenience of the tax contributor…

Bet the secularists will run for cover at this one!

Last year, when going back and forth with the combative Russell Earl Kelly, I made the following comment:

When I look at Dr. Kelly’s website and admire the long list of Christian preachers he refutes, a line from the "John Boy and Billy Show" comes to mind: "We like a good fight down here."  That’s what I thought when I saw his original comment.

Looks like it’s just the way of the Old Confederacy, as Bill Clinton reminds us:

Ex-President Bill Clinton, stumping in South Carolina Tuesday in his wife’s stead while she campaigned in the West, suggested Democrats wringing their hands over the rancor should lighten up.

"I know you think it’s crazy, but I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight," he said lightheartedly. "They’re flesh-and- blood people and they have their differences – let ’em at it."

And he’ll put on the rhetorical gloves when he thinks he needs to as well:

Bill Clinton’s performance in his interview with Chris Wallace reminded me too much of some of the things I used to see during union meetings in my old family business. All too often, when the grievance filed didn’t have the merit they thought it had, at least one on the committee would blow up in front of us.

Clinton is a product of a “working man’s” background in Arkansas. I am too close to this for my own good; not too far north of where he grew up, my grandfather worked for the railroad for 44 years. I know a hothead when I see one, and watching him berate Chris Wallace I saw one who knew he was in trouble and whose only hope was to turn the tables by shoving emotion into Wallace’s face.

The hue and cry by the GLBT community’s leadership to eject Dr. Joel Edwards from the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission is all too predictable.  The secularists have already whined about his presence on the Commission.  But the complaining is based on a simple concept: if you don’t embrace our agenda, we don’t want you at all in any meaningful place in society, irrespective of the fact that you try to be even-handed or represent a viewpoint that’s "out there" in society.

Put another way, you’re either for us or against us.  But didn’t liberals here gripe about that kind of thinking when George W. Bush enunciated it concerning terrorists?  Maybe they play by different rules in the UK.  Maybe not.

Hmmm…

Roger Cohen has hit upon an most important issue for American presidents, both the one we have and the one we’re trying to elect:

A weak dollar, outsized personal debt, a massive current account deficit, cash-strapped banks and Asian governments purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the national debt are not signs of American strength. Nor are they necessarily signs of American decline, because inherent U.S. vitality remains enormous.

But as Benn Steil, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested: "We could be seeing a secular shift in confidence in the dollar as a store of value as the impression grows that the United States, to some degree, is losing control of its destiny."

Well, sort of.

The thing he missed was what is really the most important issue of all: the preservation of American dollar hegemony.

Dollar hegemony, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, is the phenomenon whereby the status of the dollar as the world’s premier reserve currency affords the greenback "privileges" that other currencies lack.  The best example is the long-running trade deficit.  Since we owe this deficit in our own currency, the impact on our economy is diminished, because we, in an indirect sense, owe ourselves the debt.

The Fed’s overriding concern for the health of financial institutions and the people that run them over the needs for a stable currency–which has driven the recent interest rate cuts–will further devalue the currency by accelerating the flight of capital into currencies and commodities that afford a better return, be that return in value gain or interest yield.  The more this happens, the more dollar hegemony erodes, and the more "real" our indebtedness–public, corporate and personal–becomes.

Once dollar hegemony recedes, we will indeed lose control of our destiny.  And Americans are not mentally prepared to deal with others as equals.  Yes, we have a lot of vitality, but that, like dollar hegemony, can be squandered in overconfidence.