Tuesday night politics roundup: Steve Benen once again makes the case for health care incrementalism. Bill Clinton makes the case for not losing. The Senate probably won't pass the Stupak amendment. Open Left, noting a PPP poll suggesting Olympia Snowe can't win a Republican primary in Maine, predicts she'll switch parties; Nicholas Beaudrot concurs and suggests a Mugwump caucus. Contrary to reports, the climate bill does not make Obama dictator. Paid sick leave is a good idea. The GOP is unlikely to take back the House in a context in which it draws all its support from the South. Why employment might not fully recover until 2013. How we can destroy the filibuster. Is Marxism relevant today?

Weirdest night ever: Former President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush will square off on the same stage at Radio City Music Hall in February as part of a series pitting liberal and conservative thinkers. Prediction? Pain.

I'm still Twittering, so I'll just say here that was pretty dynamite. We'll have to wait and see whether and how much it moves the needle, but it seems like a corner has been turned; Democrats in the chamber seemed ecstatic, Republicans angry and small. The Teddy Kennedy tribute, segueing into a explicit articulation of the moral duty for health care reform, was spellbinding, and, for some members, deeply shaming. Another historic speech from a guy who really makes it look easy.

Doing some liveblogging at Twitter.

My 4000th post on this blog—something like 9,500 since starting Backwards City in May 2004—is devoted to the president's upcoming speech on health care. Robert Reich says the trigger is bunk. Ed Kilgore says it isn't. Even-the-liberal New Republic's Jon Chait explains why centrism is bunk. Millionaire Rush Limbaugh says you don't even need insurance. An end to the gang of six? Tea leaves suggest Obama may finally be ready to go it alone. Schumer talks up reconciliation. President Clinton's health-care speech from 1993. Steve Benen on where things stand. Ezra Klein on where things stand. Excerpts from the speech.

Early morning Wednesday.

* We finally saw Up! tonight. All I can say is if the first ten minutes don't break your heart you have no soul.

* Blackwater founder Erik Prince has apparently been implicated in a huge swath of crimes by a former employee and a Marine working with the company, ranging from tax evasion and money laundering to weapons smuggling to obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence to crimes of war and even to the murder of federal informants. (See MetaFilter for more.) My now-incredibly-timely review of Master of War is getting bumped up accordingly and will probably be online (updated) at Independent Weekly in a day or so. This is all pretty shocking, even by Blackwater standards.

* In not-completely-frakked-up news, Bill Clinton did a good thing today, a win for just about everybody but infamous douchebag of liberty John Bolton.



* More on the Olbermann/O'Reilly saga from Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, and David Sirota. While I appreciate that he finds himself in a tough spot here, Olbermann is not doing himself any favors with his behavior; making one type of statement on-the-air and another off makes it very clear what is going on, and makes him look like a fool.

* The 100 Greatest Sci-Fi Movies. Outraged to see Galaxy Quest only squeaking by at #95. And 12 Monkeys quietly buried in the 80s? Nonsense.

* "In Which I Ruin Rashomon For Everyone, Forever."

* And your short pictorial history of robots.

Colbert reveals the startling truth behind the Clinton curse.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Clinton Curse
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

Bad advice from Alec Baldwin (via Kottke, who gets this wrong too):

Now is a wonderful opportunity to show the country what Democrats/liberals/progressives/unaligned learned from the Clinton era. Whatever personal problems that public officials deal with privately, leave them alone. This could happen to anyone, in any state, regardless of party. Why make the voters of South Carolina suffer while Sanford is skewered? If he wants to resign, so be it. If not, let him deal with it in private.

Kottke goes on to criticize Huffington Post and TPM for diving so wholeheartedly into the mud on this. And he's right—sex scandals are non-stories and should be treated as such. (Olbermann's glee, for instance, was actively painful to watch last night.) But that doesn't mean the Sanford story isn't important or that the man shouldn't resign. Though the media seems strangely uninterested in this fact, Sanford skipped town (skipped the whole country!) for a week without telling anyone where he was going, and in fact actively misled his staff about his whereabouts. There are powers that only governors can exercise; it's wildly irresponsible for him to pull a stunt like this no matter what's going on in his personal life, and if that's the level of judgment he exercises when dealing with the state's business he obviously needs to resign. Governing a state is serious business, and a serious responsibility; Sanford blew it off, and so he needs to resign or else be impeached. That's the only aspect of this story that's newsworthy and the only one we should be talking about, no matter how salacious the details or egregious the apparent hypocrisy.

UPDATE: But don't take my word for it; even "Chainsaw" Charles Krauthammer says Sanford has to go.

Nate Silver, who luckily for us has decided to keep blogging through electoral off-years, considers Obama's popularity and relative political capital against his predecessors'. The short version: Obama is remarkably popular, by most measures the most popular new president since Kennedy and heads above Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan.

The trend lines below represent the trajectory before Obama, which demonstrates the extent to which his high popularity (green) and low disapproval (red) buck historical trends.

Sorry I've been AWOL today—as I've said a few times the last few weeks, I've been busy suspended my blogging pending a resolution of the Wall Street crisis. Here's some links w/ commentary for the afternoon:

* Sarah Palin fielded questions at a press conference!

“Notice I wrote ‘fielded’ since she didn’t exactly answer them,” the reporter, Ken Vogel of Politico, wrote in his notes sent out to other reporters following the campaign.

There's a transcript at CNN.

* The polls don't seem to like people playing games with the debates. By the way, it looks like McCain will actually show up.

* The Keating Five Scandal in 97 Seconds. Expect to see references to this more and more as we head into October.

* Obama is reaping the benefits of his quiet decision to unshackle the 527s; these ads from MoveOn (on Phil Gramm, Rick Davis, and the economic crisis) and Brave New Pac/Democracy for America (on McCain's health) are both deadly effective.

* Voter registration efforts in Florida are overwhelming the state's ability to process them—a very good sign for those who still think we can take the state.

* It's a good thing John McCain is in DC solving the financial crisis, as his understanding of basic economics is unparalleled.

BARTIROMO: Sen. McCain, has Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cut interest rates aggressively enough?

Has Ben Bernanke cut interests rates aggressively enough?

McCAIN: I’m not…I’m not…I don’t have that kind of expertise to know exactly whether he has cut interest rates suffiently or not. I’m glad that whenever they cut interest rates. I wish interest rates were zero.

At least the plane trip will give him time to read the three-page Paulson plan. As of Tuesday, he hadn't yet. Really. (Three pages.)

* And Bill Clinton is still sort of a dick.

I'd just add that McCain voted -- twice -- to remove Clinton from office during the impeachment fiasco; McCain has publicly mocked Clinton's daughter for cheap laughs; and McCain repeatedly trashed Clinton's wife when he thought she would be the Democratic nominee.

But never mind all of that. This morning, McCain wanted to score a few points, grab a few headlines, and bolster his bipartisan bona fides, and Bill Clinton was anxious to give the Republican nominee a hand.

The former president is gracious to a fault, isn't he?

Tonight was the first night of the Democratic National Convention that was better in its entirety on C-SPAN than abbreviated on the networks. (Too bad I had to miss most of it.) Aside from the big, primetime speeches, the first two nights were fairly disappointing affairs—too much light, not enough heat—but tonight things at last began to come together. Clinton, Biden, and Kerry each in their own ways took the fight to McCain, and all three were extremely effective, and for the first time we finally look like a political party and not a Hatsfield/McCoy reunion.

After two weak nights, I'm feeling better.

Here's Clinton's speech. I'll try and put Biden and Kerry up as they appear on the blogs...



UPDATE: John Kerry—almost certainly the least-watched, but I loved the Senator McCain vs. Candidate McCain stuff. (He had definitely some fun with the "Talk about being for it before you were against it" line.)



It's almost cliché to ask of Kerry, "Where was this guy four years ago?" but seriously, where was he?

Hogan at Lawyers, Guns, and Money had a great comment yesterday summing up the last half-century of Democratic politics in America:

Roy Blount Jr once said that before Carter, assembling a national ticket and platform for the Democrats was always a matter of, "Well, we've baked this good nourishing pie here, but now we've got to put some shit in it, because otherwise the South won't eat it." Carter looked like a shit-free pie that the South would have to eat because that's where he was baked.

Clintonian triangulation is a weird inverse of that compulsion: the Republicans have convinced people to eat shit, so all we can do is try to put a little nourishment into that shit, rather than, say, convincing people that they don't have to keep eating shit.

Viva Obama. Via one of Matt Y.'s commenters.

A few politics links:

* Bill Clinton's got a crazy new argument.

"Right now, among all the primary states, believe it or not, Hillary's only 16 votes behind in pledged delegates," said Bill, "and she's gonna wind up with the lead in the popular vote in the primary states. She's gonna wind up with the lead in the delegates."

And if only you count states with four letters that voted in March she's winning by a ton...

* Leahy says the primary's over.

"There is no way that Senator Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination. She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama. Now, obviously that's a decision that only she can make frankly I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate."

Reality check, check. Vague moral threat, check. Quiet promise of a bribe, check. Too bad Clinton won't listen.

* Bob Casey jumps off the fence and endorses Barack. Richardson, Leahy, Casey, Pelosi: are the supers finally moving?

* Ezra has your definition of the day.

“National Greatness” is what results when unacknowledged feelings of sexual inadequacy manifest themselves as a theory of foreign policy.

“What,” Bill Clinton reportedly asked Richardson, “isn’t two Cabinet posts enough?” Bill places an angry call to the New Mexico governor. Is this the sound of the wheels coming off the Clinton Express?

The big news tonight is Maine, which is coming in unexpectedly strong for Obama. With 44% now 59% of the precincts reporting, it's Obama 57, Clinton 42.

...the numbers haven't been updated in nearly an hour, but the AP has called Maine for Obama. 5-0! Onward to Tuesday. Here's the Baltimore Sun endorsement.


... Obama 58, Clinton 41, now with 70% in. Another blowout.

--

Here's a neat Google map of the results that have already come in and their intensity of support either way.

As I mentioned earlier today, this was Clinton's best chance for a win before March, so this is very bad news for her.

There are a few other interesting stories tonight, as well. First is the news that Clinton's campaign manager has resigned. (More here.) There's also more buzz surrounding Edwards—Clinton met with him in Chapel Hill today and Obama is meeting with him tomorrow. (More.) Personally, I think Edwards waited too long and that now his endorsement won't have much impact; still, I'll be glad for Obama to have it. Anxiety over mandates or no, I see no way that Edwards can endorse Clinton and retain any credibility at all, so I really don't think he will.

Meanwhile, Obama has just won a Grammy award over former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Case Western Reserve Purple Monkey Dishwasher E. coli University Graduation Speaker '02 Maya Angelou. And Alan Alda. Next up, an Oscar, and after that a Nobel Peace Prize can't be far behind.

In the comments from last night's "Ugh" post, Mike Young makes a point I wanted to follow up on:

I'd vote Mccain before Clinton. A lot of my under 30 friends would probably vote an independent Ron Paul ticket or Bloomberg before Clinton. I've never met any passionate political participant who grew up in the 90s--liberal, conservative, religious, agnostic, blonde, or tall--who likes or even doesn't despise Hillary Clinton. She'd probably still win the general (they're the Clintons, dummy) but she'd do it by setting fire to the future of the Democratic Party.

I've think I may have met a few here and there, but it's definitely not the overwhelming sentiment. I was thinking about this today in connection with reports that even party bigwigs like Ted Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel are now calling on Bill to reign it in. Of course he won't. When has he ever been persuaded to reign any of his excess in?

I'm reminded of a pair of columns I wrote back as a undergrad for the student newspaper in January and February of 2001. The first one tried to come to peace with Clinton, with whom I always had a rocky love-hate relationship with while he was president. It starts, "I like Bill Clinton. I haven't always," and goes on to talk in generally pro-Clinton terms about my conflicted feelings about the Lewinsky scandal. Just two weeks later, I was moved to write this fiery excoriation after yet another indignity and betrayal—the pardon scandals, remember those? We'll get the mother of all replays exactly one year from today—from the man who was a master of the form:

Conservatives are falling over themselves to point out the “hypocrisy” in Democrats; you loved him while he was president, they ask, so why don’t you love him now? The answer is that this infraction is of a darker character than the other scandals — and the answer is also that this is the last straw. We could forgive the man for Whitewater, for Monica, for all the petty and insignificant scandals trumped-up by Clinton’s enemies in the right wing. We could forgive the man for causing embarrassment to the Democratic Party and to the country, for allowing his own personal foibles to overshadow the governing of a nation, and for failing to back up his acclaimed status as “Best Politician Ever” with substantive reforms and meaningful acts. We were content to look back with a wry smile on the Clinton years and wonder what might have been, as George Stephanopoulous does in his memoir, “if the President had been a better man.” Clinton may never have been remembered as a great president, but he probably could have been remembered as a good one.

The pardons change all that. The pardons are a parting shot at everyone who ever supported him during the trumped-up impeachment and years of Republican-sponsored scandals. The eleventh-hour abuse of the pardon power, for no reason that he could readily cite, to benefit a man who has indirectly pumped a significant sum of money into Clinton’s hands, is more than just the latest in a series of scandals; it is the definitive scandal. It is the final proof that William Jefferson Clinton cares about no one but himself and no thing but his own immediate advantage. It is the abuse of power for its own sake.

It’s over, Bill. Pack up your things, leave your key on the table, and get out of my house. I don’t want to see you anymore.

The possibility that the Clintons will return to the White House and inflict their narcissism and neuroses on the country and on the left for another 4-8 years is still too much to contemplate. It's honestly hard for me to say—and I say this as someone who more than once in the past has railed against not voting for the Democratic candidate, whoever it is—whether a return to Clintonism would really be better for the left in the long run than four years of McCain followed by the election of an actual progressive (Obama! Gore!) in 2012. Maybe I'm right and Obama is the Democratic Party's Reagan, but it's 1976, not 1980; maybe things still have to get even worse before people finally wise up.

At least there's only a few more weeks of this before I know whether or not I'm going to be knocking on doors or holding my nose come November.

A judge has ruled against the legal challenge to the Vegas strip at-large caucus precincts in the Nevada caucus this Saturday. This is good news for Obama, who of course has been endorsed by the Culinary Workers Union; the right call from the judge; and dirty pool from the Clintons, who have definitely earned the black eye they've received over this whole mess.

I'd thought I'd explicitly compared Obama to Reagan in this post on the morning of the Iowa caucus, but it turns out I merely referred obliquely to "the left's best chance for transformative political realignment in over a generation." But this is precisely what I've been talking about for the last month: what Obama (and to a much lesser extent Edwards) offer is the possibility of a political reconfiguation like the one that Reagan accomplished in 1980, only this time to the left. It can happen, but it can't happen with Hillary Clinton as our nominee, who is loathed by fully half the country and will be lucky if she's able to eke out a narrow victory in a three-way race.

I bring this up only because today Obama has finally made this case for his campaign directly:



(Here's the full video.)

Predictably, Clinton supporters are already falling over themselves in an effort to mischaracterize what he has said, in much the same way that people confuse the claim that a terrorist is brave with the assertion that a terrorist is morally good. Obama is saying here that Reagan radically altered the political landscape in this country in a way Clinton simply did not—and I don't any way in which that claim can possibly be debated. Obama supporters correctly see in Obama the chance for a similar swing back to the left—to not only reclaim the Reagan Democrats but create "Obama Republicans" from people who are not and will never be "Clinton Republicans"—and it is this singular opportunity that is at the core of my support for him.

I'm certain Americans are smart enough to see what Obama's saying here, despite what will surely be heroic efforts from the Clinton camp to muddy these waters.* I think it's a gutsy move, but one that will pay off.

By the way, he's just opened up a lead on Clinton in North Carolina, so that's a good sign...

--
* Note: I am not actually certain of this.

George Saunders interviews Bill Clinton.