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Did you mean President-elect Boatman? Barack Obama may be
one of the most recognizable figures in America, but there's a decent chance your copy of
Microsoft Word or Outlook is still shrugging when you type in his name.
The 2003 Word nudges you in the direction of Osama or Bema, which, in one of life’s delectable little ironies, apparently
refers to a platform for
public oratory in Ancient Greece. Outlook 2003 also offers Boatman, Agama, and Boom, and a
handful of others.
A Microsoft spokesperson tells me that they added Obama into
their spell check library in April 2007, and issued a hotfix—basically, a small update
to the software—that adds both “Barack” and “Obama.” (I installed the 2003 version of the Hotfix,
which is at least a five-step process and requires installing a 5.9 MB file. It
worked.)
“We consider a number of factors when updating our content,
including user feedback, frequency of the words in market area publications,
and the first names of public figures whose last names have been added,” the
spokesperson says. According to the version of the hotfix for
Office 2007, the words Friendster, Klum, Nazr, and Racicot also
shipped out with Obama.
Because the Office products are using a spell check library
on your local machine, however, these updates don’t show up automatically. The Obama add was included in a large
batch of updates for Word 2007, while those of us using 2003 are stuck with
a corrugated red line under the president-elect. The Webmail version of Outlook that the Washington Post uses is similarly clueless, also suggesting "Barracks" for Obama's first name.
The built-in spell checker in Firefox 3 also fails to
recognize Obama—Obadiah? Bamako?—while
Gmail’s spell checker does. (It’s easy to confuse the two if you’re reading
mail in Firefox. The browser spell checker underlines words as you type, while
the Gmail version activates when you click “Check Spelling” to the upper right
of the body text.)
Update, 3:30 p.m.: In an e-mail, Firefox director Mike Beltzner says the browser uses an open-source framework called Hunspell for its spell checking. Hunspell, in turn, relies on open-source spelling dictionaries to determine which words are recognized. A ticket has been filed with the Hunspell team to add Barack and Obama. Like with Word, Beltzner notes that Firefox allows users to add custom words themselves in the mean time.
Update, Nov. 6: Predictably, Google has a innovative way to keep its library relevant. A spokeswoman passes along this statement: "Our vocabulary for spell checking is automatically derived from occurrences in
our query stream and in web documents. As soon as a word appears in the query
stream or web documents, it is eligible to be part of our spell check
vocabulary. The word will actually start getting used in spell check when we
next refresh the spell checking model. Thus, Barack Obama has probably been in
our spell check vocabulary for many years now."
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With a Democratic win in Ohio, Slate is officially calling the
election for Barack Obama, whose convincing performance in early returns has
made it all but impossible for John McCain to win.
Even as visions of a mega-landslide victory for Democrats
faded with McCain victories in dubious tossups like Georgia
and North Dakota,
Obama’s core strategy paid off: Win all of John Kerry’s states from 2004 and
pick up a handful of moderate states that elected George W. Bush.
An Obama win in Ohio
preserves the state’s role as an electoral kingmaker. McCain had virtually no
chance of winning the election without it, and Ohio has almost always voted for the winning
candidate in recent memory.
Just how dramatic this year’s political reorganization turns
out to be depends on more final results. Virginia and Indiana are both still too
close to call, and many Western states are still wrapping up their voting.
While it’s still entirely possible that McCain can pull out a respectable loss
in this election, a win would require a miracle.
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With the handful of states he has already won, plus those that are nearly certain to fall into his column, Barack Obama is nearly certain to clinch the presidency in the near future.
Although battleground states like Virginia and Indiana are still too close to call, Obama’s core strategy of carrying John Kerry’s states and tacking on a few extras appears to be in the bag. While there are no surprises among the states he has won thus far, his early performance has put to rest fears by paranoid Democrats that his comfortable lead in the polls was greatly inflated.
With a win in one or two states that George W. Bush won in 2004, Obama will have wrapped up this election. Based on the last round of polls before the election, Obama is already poised to win at least 264 electoral votes comfortably. A win in Colorado or another Bush state will push him over the edge.
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Early returns from Virginia are not encouraging for those who are hoping that Democrat Mark Warner's popularity in the state can push Obama over the top as well. Some had hoped that Warner, who is running for the Senate against fellow former governor Jim Gilmore, would produce a "reverse coattails" effect, attracting voters who support him to vote for the other Democrats on the ticket as well.
With 10 percent of precincts reporting at a few minutes before eight, however, it appears Virginians are more than willing to split the ticket. Obama trails McCain 43-56, while Warner leads Gilmore 57-41, prompting MSNBC to call the race for him. Students of Virginia politics will not find this terribly surprising; in recent years the state has rarely had a governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general of the same party, even though all three offices are elected independently of one another on the same ballot every four years.
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Although Barack Obama’s maternal grandmother passed away late Sunday night, Hawaii’s chief elections officer says the absentee ballot she cast on Oct. 27 will still count in today’s election. At the risk of being callous about this sad story, the subject of whether Madelyn Dunham’s vote should count is open to interpretation.
A similar case cropped up during the Democratic primary, when a South Dakota woman named Florence Steen voted by absentee ballot for Hillary Clinton but passed away prior to the state’s June 3 primary. (Clinton thanked Steen by name during a victory speech in West Virginia.) As Slate reported in a May 14 "Explainer," Steen’s vote was not counted; South Dakota law allows for the fairly quick and efficient removal of such ballots. States vary on how they handle this situation.
After Slate re-posted that column today in response to news that Dunham’s vote would count, reader Jon Cohen e-mailed me to point out that Hawaii’s election law contains a provision similar to South Dakota’s. Section 15-13 of the state election law’s chapter on absentee voters (PDF) explicit states that:
Whenever sufficient proof is shown to the clerk that an absentee voter who has returned the voter's return envelope has died prior to the opening of the polls on the date of election, the voter's ballot shall be deemed invalid and disposed of pursuant to section 11-154.
So why was Dunham’s vote allowed to count? Hawaii Chief Elections Officer Kevin Cronin tells Trailhead that, when an absentee voter dies, the ballot is not removed until Hawaii’s Department of Health issues an official list of the names of deceased persons to the city clerk’s office, which will not happen until later this month. Unlike Steen, who passed away several weeks prior to the election, the two-day turnaround in Dunham’s case creates “a practical administrative problem,” Cronin says, in fishing out her ballot out from among the tens of thousands of absentee ballots in Honolulu—even if her death had been officially reported by the Department of Health.
Robert Ichikawa, an attorney at the Honolulu firm Kobayashi, Sugita, and Goda, says the decision comes down to how one interprets the phrase “sufficient proof” in the law, saying the use of an official health department report is reasonable if applied consistently.
Even if Hawaii’s four electoral votes were decided by one person’s ballot, a challenge over Obama’s grandmother could not throw the election. The law specifically states that “[t]he casting of any such ballot shall not invalidate the election.”
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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are:
Health Care for America
Now
Purpose: To
support quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
Director: The national campaign manager is
Richard Hirsch, previously executive director of Citizen Action, an
organization that helped the poor find insurance in New York state.
Funding: The
organization has received a $10
million dollar grant from the Atlantic Philanthropies as well as $500,000 a
piece from their 16 steering
committee members, which include MoveOn.org,
the Center for American Progress
Action Fund, and the recently
targeted community-organizing group ACORN.
Cost: $1 million,
part of a larger $4.3 million dollar ad buy that will air similar ads against
congressional candidates.
Where It Ran: The
ad aired on national cable and major markets in Ohio for two weeks starting Oct. 8.
Claims: The ad is
narrated by a woman with cancer who says that John McCain’s health care plan
could cause 20 million people lose their employer-provided health insurance
plans. Those with existing conditions like her, she says, would not be able to
get a new plan.
Accuracy: John
McCain’s health care
plan would give families a $5,000 dollar tax refundable tax credit to
purchase health insurance while reducing incentives that encourage employers to
provide their employees with coverage. The main thrust of the ad – that 20
million people would lose their insurance if John McCain’s plan were instituted
– is supported by a recent
paper published in the journal Health
Affairs and a follow-up
report (PDF) by the Economic Policy Institute. These studies argue that, with
fewer tax incentives, fewer businesses will offer insurance plans. The
Commonwealth Fund has documented
the difficulty of finding health care individually after losing an
employer-sponsored plan and the Kaiser Family Foundation including in the case
of breast-cancer
survivors (PDF) and other individuals with pre-existing conditions. However,
another
recent study (PDF), by the health system consultant HSI, argued that McCain’s plan would in
fact reduce the number of uninsured people by 20 million. And a Tax
Policy Center report (PDF) lands in the middle, agreeing that McCain’s proposal
would cause 20 million to lose or leave their employer-sponsored program but
saying also that overall the proposal would decrease the number of uninsured by
one million as 21 million bought non-employer-sponsored plans, including some
of those who lost their employer-sponsored plans.
Factcheck.org
has examined McCain’s proposal and found a consensus among health care experts
that McCain’s proposal would most likely cause employers to reduce the coverage
offered. Their report also stated that while some would benefit from the
adjustment of incentives, the old and unhealthy would probably get the short
end of the stick, as Jane Bryant Quinn argued in Newsweek.
Swift Boat Rating:
Several studies state that around 20 million people could
lose their employer-sponsored coverage, though the ad doesn’t mention that many
would likely get non-employer plans. That being said, many health care experts agree
with the assertion that McCain’s plan would make it harder for people like the woman
portrayed in the ad to secure health insurance.
Background: Health
Care for America Now is a coalition of non-profits and public officials. Obama
has signed their statement of
principles.
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Did Obama miss the best pitch he's going to see in this debate? The second question, from a man named Oliver Clark, asked the candidates: "Well, senators, through this economic crisis, most of the people that I know have had a difficult time. And through this bailout package, I was wondering what it is that's going to actually help those people out."
McCain responded first, giving an airy answer about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—institutions, he suggested, the questioner "may never even have heard of ... before this crisis"—and taking a snipe at Obama for his contributions from those institutions. At this point, the moment felt eerily analogous to the most famous question from the 1992 town hall debate below, in which a young woman asked the three candidates how the national debt had personally affected them. (She probably meant the recession.) George H.W. Bush's response (about 20 seconds into the video) was muddled and aloof, and Bill Clinton pounced on the opportunity to give a personal, compassionate-sounding response (2:30 in the video). The exchange was instant presidential-debate lore.
As Jack Shafer wrote in Slate today, Clinton's '92 playbook has more than a few valuable pages in it, and Obama's answer hardly lived up. After a mini economics lesson about frozen credit markets and their effect on business, he flipped the question into an attack on McCain's support for deregulation. The man-of-the-people card may not be Obama's strong point, but one can't help feel that he missed an essential opportunity to connect with voters.
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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are: The American Issues Project
Purpose: Promoting conservative values
Founder: Ed Martin, former chief of staff to Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt
Funding: The organization recently named Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons as its sole funder, to the tune of $2.87 million. IRS reports show that Simmons gave $3 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004.
Cost: $2.87 million
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Every campaign season, independent groups on both sides drop huge sums on attack ads targeting the presidential candidates. Sometimes, people even notice. (See: Boat Veterans for Truth, Swift.) But, for the most part, they sail under the radar.
So in case you’re not living in a swing neighborhood of a swing district of a swing state, where these ads air constantly, Trailhead will be tracking the latest ads from these 527s—so named for their tax-code status—and other independent groups, such as 501(c)4s, that are diving into the fray. We’ll tell you who’s behind them, what they want, and just how sneaky their claims are. Depending on this last part, we assign between one and four Swift Boats.
Who: BornAliveTruth
Founder: Jill Stanek, former nurse and anti-abortion activist.
Funding: Raymond Ruddy, pro-life philanthropist from Massachusetts, donated $350,000 for the ad after Stanek contacted him.
Cost of the Ad: $350,000
Where it ran: Ohio and New Mexico
Claims: Barack Obama voted “no” on the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois, which would have provided legal protection to infants born alive during abortions and unlikely to survive.
Accuracy: Obama opposed the bill in 2001 and 2002 as a backdoor attack on abortion. He said, though, that he would vote for it if it included a “neutrality clause” that would prevent it from affecting Roe v. Wade. But when a version with a neutrality clause came to the floor in 2003, Obama again voted “no.” The ad is correct about Obama’s voting record, but the group takes some liberties with the reasoning behind his votes. (Check out Factcheck.org’s analysis here.)
Background: Gianna Jessen, an abortion survivor, narrates the short spot. Her story is corroborated with her birth certificate, which says she was born during an unsuccessful third-trimester saline abortion. Jill Stanek, the group’s founder, worked as a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. After discovering that the hospital performed “partial birth abortions,” she began publicly advertising the fact. Stanek and Jessen both testified before Congress in 2000 and lobbied heavily to get the 2002 federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act passed.
The group originally listed its purpose on IRS forms “informing the public of Barack Obama's support of infanticide,” but after talking to lawyers this summer, Stanek says, they changed their description to "inform the public about issues related to laws concerning infants who are born alive after unsuccessful abortions." Stanek says the group’s core goal is still the same. (See the group’s original filing here and the amended filing here.)
Swift Boat Rating:
While in the Illinois State Senate, Obama did vote “no” four times to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, even when the bill contained the neutrality clause. The ad’s claims are accurate even if the logic is a bit off.
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Several blogs and publications have recently attempted to calculate the odds that John McCain will live another four or eight years, bringing an actuary’s dispassion to the delicate subject of the Republican nominee’s age. Based on the Social Security Administration’s life expectancy tables, the Times Online concluded that McCain will live another 13 years, while a Daily Kos diarist calculated that McCain’s odds of dying naturally during his first term were 15 percent. His odds of not surviving two terms were nearly 1-in-3. Politico arrived at similar figures.
Actuaries get rightfully nervous when journalists get their hands on these tables. The odds that a 72-year-old male will die in the next year are calculated from large data sets and apply rather poorly to individuals. To get a better picture of how both McCain and Barack Obama fare, an actuarial firm in Atlanta called Bragg Associates made a series of calculations tailored to the health records that both candidates made public. Rather than estimating life expectancy, Bragg specializes in “health expectancy,” the ability to function lucidly and without assistance—the kind of qualities one hopes for in a president. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, Bragg originally concluded that McCain has 8.4 years of good health ahead of him while Barack Obama has 21.9.
At Slate’s request, Bragg fleshed out those predictions into a series of probabilities that the two candidates will remain healthy in office year by year. Their findings are below. (Mouse over a data point to see the percentage value.)
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DENVER—Native Denverites here are all too eager to offer tips to us flatlanders on how to survive on 17 percent less oxygen to the brain. "[M]any conventioneers are likely to notice a shortness of breath," cautions the Denver Post. "A few may suffer, for reasons researchers still don't quite understand, throbbing headaches. A fraction might get hit with what can feel like a no-booze hangover—headaches along with nausea and lethargy." (Others warn that the some-booze hangover is even worse; supposedly, rarefied air does a real number on one’s alcohol tolerance.)
The medical term for this is called cerebral hypoxia, and NIH advises us that "symptoms can include inattentiveness, poor judgment, and uncoordinated movement." So one can’t help but wonder: Will the mile-high altitudes of Denver make Obama supporters even crazier than usual?
Literature and psychology are of some guide here. In Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, protagonist Hans Castorp experiences some of this emotional bewilderment while holed up in a sanitorium high in the Alps. As quoted in this 1994 study on emotional contagion, Castorp thinks: "But when the heart palpitates by itself, without any reason, senselessly, of its own accord, so to speak, I feel that’s uncanny. … You keep trying to find an explanation for them, an emotion to account for them, a feeling of joy or pain, which would, so to speak, justify them."
Four decades later, psychologists Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer studied the conflux of physical arousal and emotions experimentally by injecting subjects with adrenaline. They found that those subjects who received the adrenaline were highly emotionally suggestible and would often interpret the physical arousal of the drug as a symptom of a heightened emotional state.
Subsequent studies have qualified and questioned Schachter and Singer’s results. More direct attempts to measure the effect of altitude on emotions have not found strong correlations; a 2005 study found that small groups of men exposed to simulated altitudes of up to 4,500 meters did not exhibit significantly different mental capacities compared with the control group. The FAA’s brochure on hypoxia (PDF), on the other hand, tells us that "some people in an oxygen deficient environment actually experience a sense of euphoria—a feeling of increased well-being." And a series of letters in the Financial Times recently pondered the possibility that flying at high altitudes makes one more likely to cry at cheesy movies. (This guy cried during The Game Plan, featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.)
Obamamania resists quantification, so it’s a bit hard to experimentally determine the effects of the thin air here. (Though my colleague Jim Ledbetter suggests a massive data-mining project to measure voting patterns as a function of altitude.) But in an election that could be decided by a hair, I don’t think John McCain should cede this advantage. It’s not too late for the RNC to relocate their convention to Albuquerque, N.M., elevation 5,300 feet. Plus, New Mexico’s a swing state.
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Stand outside any campaign event and you'll see profiteers hocking their wares. Bumper stickers, playing cards, pins, posters, T-shirts, even pet-wear—if it's got Obama's face on it, chances are someone will pay for it. But will this merchandise be worth anything after Election Day?
If the recent past is any indication, no. Representatives from Sotheby's and Christie's I spoke with couldn't recall auctioning off contemporary campaign memorabilia recently. In 1991, Sotheby's did offer up a collection of 20,000 election mementos that had been estimated to sell for $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Nobody made a single bid.
But this election could be different. Daryle Lambert of Illinois, an antiques and collectibles dealer for the past 45 years and author of the book 31 Steps to your Millions in Antiques & Collectibles, believes items collected during this campaign season will yield sky-high returns because of the historic significance of the candidates. "This election by far has more appeal to the collector than any in my lifetime," said the 67-year-old collector, who offers advice on collecting items on his blog. Lambert said that if he were attending the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, he would take home memorabilia by the truckload. But if space is limited, the savvy collector should look for the following items.
1. Autographs: Anything signed by the candidates will start to appreciate immediately, Lambert says. He just bought a signed photo of Ronald Reagan for $300 and estimates its worth to be closer to $800; and his company is currently selling a land grant signed by Patrick Henry in the 18th century for an asking price of $4,850. So if you find a cancelled check signed by Obama or McCain's high-school yearbook, hold on to it.
2. Artwork: A standard-issue campaign button doesn't command much in the current marketplace. (Bids on eBay start at 99 cents.) But a hand-crafted pin could be valuable. Massachusetts-based artist Brian Campbell paints campaign pins with pop-culture allusions to the candidates and their spouses, such as a Beatles-themed Michelle Obama pin, an Indiana Jones-themed McCain one titled "Arizona John," and the Barack Obama one shown above. Some of these sell on eBay with starting bids around $60. A Hillary Clinton pin based on Eugène Delacroix's 19th-century painting Liberty Leading the People sold at auction for $1,149 through political memorabilia dealer Anderson Auction.
3. Personal items: If you see McCain drop a handkerchief or Obama lose a flag lapel pin, snag it like it's a home-run ball at the World Series. "The closer it is to the source, the quicker the value will appreciate," said Lambert.
4. Scandal souvenirs: "The things that become collectible are the things that destroy campaigns," Lambert said, citing as examples anything connected to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who threw a wrench in John Kerry's 2004 campaign; or former candidate John Edwards, in light of the recent revelation of his affair with Rielle Hunter. So if something goes horribly wrong in Denver or St. Paul, Minn., try to get some physical remembrance of the wreckage.
Keep in mind, though, that the majority of campaign memorabilia on eBay starts at $20 or less. So collecting election merchandise for the purpose of reselling it might not be the best use of your time. Those willing to pay large sums of money for presidential memorabilia tend to prefer that of presidents like Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington, according to Christie's. Plus, there's no telling how much something will be worth. Sure, this fall's campaign junk could eventually sell for thousands at an auction—or for pennies at your next yard sale.
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As we mentioned yesterday, thousands of people every month are visiting Obama.com expecting to find Barack Obama's campaign website. Instead, they find a Japanese site full of links for loans and hair transplants.
Thanks to the Web analytics firm Compete, we can begin to get an idea of how many eyeballs this is costing the Obama campaign. Compete provided Slate with "downstream" data--where people went after visiting Obama.com--for the 100,000-plus people who visited the site in June of the year:
- 21 percent went directly BarackObama.com.
- 40 percent went to a search engine.
- 17 percent tried another incorrect URL for Obama's site.
- 22 percent gave up and went elsewhere.
Of those 17 percent who took a second guess and failed, barakobama.com and barrackobama.com were the biggest attractions, both of which redirect to a Google search for the correct spelling of Obama's name. Obama.org and Obamma.com also show up.
As Slate's Paul Boutin has written before, Web analytics data is fungible. (Just ask Google.) But we can safely assume from these numbers that a failure to proactively register a wide variety of misspellings and alternate URLs is costing the campaign tens of thousands of page views a month. I presume that neither campaign needs my advice that every page view counts.
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It’s still a reasonable assumption that a major organization’s Web site should be its name followed by .com or another relevant suffix. It’s true enough, anyway, that one can usually skip the search engine and guess a big company’s Web site on the first attempt.
Not so for anyone who goes to www.obama.com expecting a dose of change he or she can believe in. My colleague Andy Bouvé at Slate V noticed yesterday that this domain directs the user to a Japanese site registered to a Satoru Obama in Fukuoka, which is in southwest Japan. (The registration actually lists both "Satoru Obama" and "Obama Satoru.")
An auto-translation of the site strongly suggests it’s just a generic default page, with advertisements for loans, insurance, and hair transplants. Saturo has not responded to my email asking whether the Obama campaign has attempted to buy the domain name.
This would be nothing more than novelty but for the fact that, according the Web analytics company Compete.com, nearly 140,000 people visited Obama.com in February. After a dropoff in traffic in the spring, Obama.com rebounded with over 100,000 visitors last month.
By way of comparison, that makes Obama.com more popular than my hometown newspaper, the Daily Progress.
It doesn’t help the Obama campaign that commenters on online forums frequently implore fellow readers to "Go to Obama.com" to read more about the candidate. Sure, no one is going to mistake this site for official Obama campaign content. But how many of those 140,000 people had planned to donate $25 but got confused by their browser’s mangling of the Kanji font? It may not be insignificant.
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When Slate launched the "Choose Your Own Running Mate" game two weeks ago, we invited readers to nominate their favorite candidates and write a few sentences about why they felt their pick would be an ideal campaign-trail companion for John McCain or Barack Obama.
Below, the thousand-plus reader comments are arranged as tag clouds, with the size of the word proportional to the frequency with which readers used them to describe their ideal running mate.
While words like experience and American cropped up frequently in both Democratic and Republican nominations, readers tended to focus their choices on people with qualities complementary to Obama and McCain.
Words that derive from the same stem—economic and economy, for example—are combined here. In the case of white, the word was referencing the White House in 25 of the 89 uses for Obama's recommended running mate and seven of the 14 uses for McCain's.
Barack Obama's Running Mate
John McCain's Running Mate
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Barack Obama has always acted suspicious of his own popularity, as though he suspects that the ability to inspire adolescent worship is not, shall we say, presidential. He has a special word for the way he feels about himself when he sees thousands of otherwise dignified adults melting in real time: imperfect.
“Ultimately I am an imperfect vessel for your hopes and dreams,” Obama told a crowd in Ames, Iowa, exactly one day after announcing his candidacy. And again, in a Father’s Day speech yesterday at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago: “I say this knowing that I have been an imperfect father—knowing that I have made mistakes and will continue to make more.”
To be clear, Obama does not think he’s Mr. Perfect.
Of all the adjectives Obama could have tapped to summarizing his humility, imperfect falls on the flattering end. It’s much more “I am human” or “I am mortal” than “I make a lot of errors” or “I have flaws.” And it has strong constitutional credentials; the phrase “a more perfect Union” falls 12 words into the Preamble and shows up in the Federalist Papers. If you don’t buy this allusion, please refer yourself to Obama’s highly regarded speech on race relations, titled “A More Perfect Union.”
In that speech, Obama bestowed the highest possible praise on his former pastor Jeremiah Wright: “As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.” A few minutes later, he turns the word back on himself: “I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy—particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”
Again, at a “Compassion Forum” on April 13: “And, you know, pastors are imperfect. Certainly, the membership is imperfect. I, as somebody who is sitting in the pews as a sinner, is imperfect.” The Obama is not without original sin.
Michelle Obama picked up the baton a few days later at a Women for Obama event: “Barack, as I tease, he’s a wonderful man, he’s a gifted man, but in the end, he is just a man. He is an imperfect vessel and I love him dearly.”
In one word, the wordsmith in chief has neatly compressed the combined brand of his candidacy: He is extraordinary but humble, messianic but human, imperfect but constitutional.
I, for one, would like to see Obama supporters embrace this emblem. Rather than pollute flat surfaces with “Hope” and “Change,” let’s see them fill a room with signs that all read “Imperfect.” The rest of us should forgive Obama all his shortcomings. No one’s perfect.
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Hillary Clinton will declare victory in the West Virginia primary tonight against a senator who no longer even considers himself her opponent. While Clinton is scheduled to be in Charleston, W.Va., for Election Night celebrations, Barack Obama will be in Missouri, a state that held its primary more than three months ago. His message couldn’t be clearer: He is now campaigning against John McCain.
This seems extraordinarily unwise. While one can argue the merits of downplaying an unwinnable battle against an opponent who can’t win the war, Obama stands the risk of alienating Democrats who do not yet support him. It resembles the familiar architecture of college rivalries; in order to belittle its counterpart, one school inevitably acts like it’s too good to even compete.
Here’s the speech Obama should be delivering tonight somewhere in West Virginia—say, Morgantown, where there’s a big university.
Some of you may be surprised to see me here tonight. For the past several weeks, it has been clear that Senator Clinton held a commanding lead in West Virginia, and I congratulate her on her victory tonight.
You know, a lot of the senior advisers in my campaign recommended that I skip West Virginia altogether. In fact, ever since we won North Carolina last week and fought to nearly a tie in Indiana, many people have advised that we shift the focus of the campaign to Senator McCain and the general election.
Now, I don’t mean to belittle the advice of the extraordinarily talented strategists on my campaign. Without them, we would not be here today. But let me be very clear: It would be a disservice to Senator Clinton and a disservice to the Democratic Party if we did not continue to compete in this primary as long as there are two strong candidates for the nomination.
In that spirit, I have come here tonight to thank those West Virginians who did vote for me and to say this to those who did not: In the event that I am the nominee for president in the fall, I would be honored to have your vote. I believe it is this preference for robust options in candidates that gave me the opportunity to succeed in this election, and I will not forget that.
Senator McCain will be a formidable opponent in the fall, and I understand the temptation to rev up the general election campaign as soon as possible. But charging into this important contest when the Democratic Party has yet to rally behind one candidate is, I think, unwise. So let me say it again: So long as there are two candidates, you will see me fighting for every vote in the remaining contests.
Idealistic and a tad sappy? Absolutely. To which I respond: When has that ever stopped him before? And as my fellow Trailheader Christopher Beam pointed out to me over by the coffee maker this morning, such a message from Obama might—just might—give Clinton a graceful note to end on.
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Even as Hillary Clinton trails Barack Obama in pledged delegates, the popular vote, and number of states won, she has made it clear that she plans to stay in the race for the nomination. All of which brings me to this logical conclusion: It is time for Barack Obama to drop out.
If Clinton had the good of the Democratic Party in mind, she would have given up her bid the day after the Mississippi primary, which Obama won by 25 points. The delegate math was as dismal for her campaign then as it is now, even after Pennsylvania, and she was facing down a six-week gulf before the next election.
But Hillary Clinton isn’t going to drop out. There simply isn’t a function in her assembly code for throwing in the towel.
Obama, on the other hand, is fully capable of it. And if he’s really serious about representing a new kind of politics, now is the time for him to prove it in the only meaningful way left. Moreover, were he to play it right, dropping out now nearly guarantees that he’ll be elected president in 2012. Here’s the roadmap:
Obama drops out next week, stating that although he could almost certainly win the nomination by fighting it out until the convention in August, he is simply not willing to drag the party through a battle that will cripple its chances against John McCain. He then pledges to help support Sen. Clinton in her bid—with full knowledge that she will not take him up on the offer.
In one stroke, Obama will regain his messiah creds by making the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the party. His followers will be furious. The mere mention of Clinton’s name will provoke unspeakable acts. They will abandon Clinton in numbers sufficient to hand McCain the election in November.
Losing the presidency again after eight years of Bush will ruin the Democratic Party. It will become obvious that Clinton’s decision to stay in the race was the turning point in the election. The base will turn its wrath on party leaders like Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi, who failed to push Clinton out. Obama, as the de facto head of the party, will broker negotiations to install new leaders loyal to him.
McCain will be eminently more beatable in 2012. Demographics will continue to shift in Obama’s favor as his 14- to 17-year-old supporters come of voting age. Anyone foolish enough to challenge Obama for the nomination—and don’t rule out Clinton—will go nowhere. Obama’s utopian vision for a Democratic party unified around him will be complete. QED.
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It’s probably too late for this publication—we who brought you the Encyclopedia Baracktannica—to start condemning others for abusive permutations of Barack Obama’s name. There is one word, however, that you will never find in our Encyclopedia, no matter how many editions it goes through: Omentum.
Long before this word got tossed around the blogosphere and casually dropped on Sunday morning shows, it referred to “[a] sheet of fat … attached to the bottom edge of the stomach,” as defined on MedicineNet.com. This was first brought to our attention by alert reader Dr. James Peykanu of Morgantown, W.Va., an Obama supporter who implored us not to associate the word with his candidate. Peykanu describes the omentum in detail:
The Omentum (there are two, the greater and lesser) is a big membrane in the belly that serves as the root by which the blood to the intestines flows. Incidentally, in most people, it is HEAVILY impregnated with fat and is a pretty disgusting thing to look at or surgically manipulate, no matter how great a function the thing serves (it is very useful in walling off infections, for example).
Sadly, the best picture we can find features Oprah—an Obama supporter—holding one under the headline “The Biology of Blubber.”
Perhaps Obama’s detractors should latch onto the analogy. As Oprah tells us, “A healthy omentum, like the one Oprah's holding, should be ‘lacy, like stockings. …The omentum, you'll notice, is transparent and thin.’”
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Barack Obama’s win in Virginia is a small victory for Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, who was the second governor in the country to endorse Obama. Kaine announced his support for Obama nearly a year ago, when the junior senator from Illinois gave the keynote address at the state party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Va.
The two men are fond of pointing out their odd similarities. Both went to Harvard Law School—as did both of their wives—though the two men missed each other by five years. On a stranger note, both of their mothers hail from El Dorado, Kan., population 12,000. Obama also campaigned for Kaine in his 2005 gubernatorial bid.
This win gives endorsing governors a nine-and-four record in the Democratic primary, according to the tally of superdelegates at the Democratic Convention Watch. (Our count does not include Iowa Gov. Chet Culver’s endorsement of Obama, which he announced after the caucuses.) Should Obama win Maryland tonight, as he is expected to do, this would make governors nine-and-five, as Martin O’Malley has endorsed Clinton.
Virginia used to be overlooked in presidential elections—one of those states that the cable news stations would color in red the moment the polls closed. But the last three statewide elections have gone to Democrats, and Kaine insists that the state will be in play for the Democrats in the general election whether Obama is the nominee or not.