The Last Lap

The car's out of gas. Kamp Klinton's $20 million in the red.

There's Good Readin' Today

Here's Newsweek's cover story on Obama.

And here's the McCain campaign's snippy response, telling Newsweek they need to see everything they write through the eyes of a Republican. Waaah Waaah Waaah.

And here's the Time cover story. Game on.

Smiley Says Any Shit That Pops Into His Mind

Like Obama will pick Dick Gephardt as his VP. Now there's the farewell to old politics Obama's trying to create.

Thinking stuff through has never been Kristol's strong suit.

Seattle Times Loses Almost 90% of its Value

Hoo boy. Seattle's second paper is in trouble.

The McClatchy Co. figures the value of its not-quite-half stake in Blethen family-controlled Seattle Times Co. has tumbled to barely one-tenth of its worth just two years ago.
 
In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, McClatchy estimated its 49.5% stake in the publisher of The Seattle Times has a value of $12.06 million. That's a drop of more than one-third from the carrying value it assigned its Times Co. interest last December -- and represents a 88% drop from its estimated value of $102.2 million at the end of 2006.

More Heartbreak in Myanmar

AP:

A Red Cross boat carrying rice and drinking water for cyclone victims sank Sunday, while the death toll jumped to more than 28,000 and aid groups warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The boat was carrying supplies for more than 1,000 people and was the first Red Cross shipment to the disaster area, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. All four relief workers on board were safe, it said.

"This is a great loss for the Myanmar Red Cross and for the people who need aid so urgently," said Aung Kyaw Htut, the distribution team leader of the Myanmar Red Cross.

The sinking was the latest setback for distribution of aid following Cyclone Nargis. Though international aid has started to trickle in, almost all foreign relief workers have been barred entry into the isolated nation. The junta says it wants to hand out all donated supplies on its own.

The Crackerjack Clinton Research Team Strikes Again!

Epic. In Chapter 416 of the volume titled, "Kamp Klinton Misreads the Room," Terry McAuliffe displays his ignorance of his subject this morning when he declared Tim Russert's father dead. When Russert corrected him, he still didn't catch it since he was so far into crazy-assed badger mode.

So again we ask the Hillheads...still want this team in the White House?

Rich: An Election Year Like No Other

Frank Rich reminds us all that comparisons of 2008 to previous elections are simply null and void.

Allow us to add the old chestnut Rich forgot to mention that both Dems and Repubs love to invoke: George McGovern in 1972, whose campaign was torpedoed only by his VP choice's psychiatric history, and McGovern's handling of that situation. Therapy was still a dirty word back then (and it should be mandatory today). People tend to forget that part of the story and simply like to use McGovern as a convenient chew toy.

That election is kinda burned into my memory. It was my first presidential vote and my first involvement with GOTV during my freshman year of college. It also set me up to expect bitter (!) disappointment throughout my activist life. Rich has given me some hope this time around.

The reason that politicians and the press have gotten so much so wrong is that we keep forgetting what year it is. Only if we reboot to 2008 will the long march to November start making sense.

This is not 1968, when the country was so divided over race and war that cities and campuses exploded in violence. If you have any doubts, just look (to take a recent example) at the restrained response by New Yorkers, protestors included, to the acquittal of three police officers in the 50-bullet shooting death of an unarmed black man, Sean Bell.

This is not 1988, when a Democratic liberal from Massachusetts of modest political skills could be easily clobbered by racist ads and an incumbent vice president running for the Gipper’s third term. This is not the 1998 midterms, when the Teflon Clintons triumphed over impeachment. This is not 2004, when another Democrat from Massachusetts did for windsurfing what the previous model did for tanks.

Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars. That’s why race keeps being portrayed as dooming Mr. Obama — surely Jeremiah Wright = Willie Horton! — no matter what the voters say to the contrary. It’s why the Beltway took on faith the Clinton machine’s strategic, organization and fund-raising invincibility. It’s why some prognosticators still imagine that John McCain can spin the Iraq fiasco to his political advantage as Richard Nixon miraculously did Vietnam.

The year 2008 is far more complex — and exhilarating — than the old templates would have us believe. Of course we’re in pain. More voters think the country is on the wrong track (81 percent) than at any time in the history of New York Times/CBS News polling on that question. George W. Bush is the most unpopular president that any living American has known.

And yet, paradoxically, there is a heartening undertow: we know the page will turn. For all the anger and angst over the war and the economy, for all the campaign’s acrimony, the anticipation of ending the Bush era is palpable, countering the defeatist mood. The repressed sliver of joy beneath the national gloom can be seen in the record registration numbers of new voters and the over-the-top turnout in Democratic primaries.