Shenanigans in Texas.

“The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions.” In their training materials for Texas caucus participants, the Clinton campaign requests that supporters game the system. Classy, as always. And, since Camp Clinton can’t seem to stop acting like Republicans at the moment, why not some of the real thing? Rush Limbaugh encourages his listeners to vote Clinton in Texas and Ohio (as do other GOPers), to keep the Dem party divided against itself for as long as possible.

Oof. I really hope this ends on Tuesday night. Mathematically, that would seem a certainty, given the huge margins Clinton needs in both Texas and Ohio to stay viable. Still, an unmistakable knockout blow, for those non-number-crunching folk among us, would be nice.

Lakoff on the Dem Divide.

There is a reason that Obama recently spoke of Reagan. Reagan understood that you win elections by drawing support from independents and the opposite side. He understood what unified the country so that he could lead it according to his vision.

Obama understands the importance of values, connection, authenticity, trust, and identity.

But his vision is deeply progressive. He proposes to lead in a very different direction than Reagan. Crucially, he adds to that vision a streetwise pragmatism: his policies have to do more than look good on paper; they have to bring concrete material results to millions of struggling Americans in the lower and middle classes. They have to meet the criteria of a community organizer.

The Clintonian policy wonks don’t seem to understand any of this. They have trivialized Reagan’s political acumen as an illegitimate triumph of personality over policy. They confuse values with programs. They have underestimated authenticity and trust…

This nomination campaign is about much more than the candidates. It about a major split within the Democratic party. The candidates are reflecting that split. Here are three of the major “issues” dividing Democrats.

First, triangulation: moving to the right — adopting right-wing positions — to get more votes. Bill Clinton did it and Hillary believes in it. It is what she means by “bipartisanship.” Obama means the opposite by “bipartisanship.” To Obama, it is a recognition that central progressive moral principles are fundamental American principles. For him, bipartisanship means finding people who call themselves “conservatives” or “independents,” but who share those central American values with progressives. Obama thus doesn’t have to surrender or dilute his principles for the sake of “bipartisanship.”

The second is incrementalism: Hillary believes in getting lots of small carefully crafted policies through, one at a time, step by small step, real but almost unnoticed. Obama believes in bold moves and the building of a movement in which the bold moves are demanded by the people and celebrated when they happen. This is the reason why Hillary talks about “I,” I,” “I” (the crafter of the policy) and Obama talks about “you” and “we” (the people who demand it and who jointly carry it out).

The third is interest group politics: Hillary looks at politics through interests and interest groups, seeking policies that satisfy the interests of such groups. Obama’s thinking emphasizes empathy over interest groups. He also sees empathy as central to the very idea of America. The result is a positive politics grounded in empathy and caring that is also patriotic and uplifting.

For a great many Democrats, these are the real issues. These real differences between the candidates reflect real differences within the party. Whoever gets the nomination, these differences will remain.

It is time for the press, the pundits, the pollsters, and the political scientists to take these issues seriously.

Linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff — also the recent author of Don’t Think of an Elephant — attempts to explain what he sees as the crucial differences between Clinton and Obama.

The Clintons try to Cheat on Delegates (Again).

It’s getting hard to keep up with the Clinton outrages these days. (I’ll leave Bill Clinton deciding to praise Obama as ‘articulate’ alone for now, as — perhaps — that was just a poor choice of words.) As telegraphed by their moves after Michigan, the Clinton campaign is now explicitly trying to change the rules and get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated (a move which has brought Bill Nelson into the Clinton camp.) Says TPM’s Josh Marshall: “[Y]ou don’t change the rules in midstream to favor one candidate or another. This is no more than a replay, with different factual particulars, of the attempt to outlaw the at-large caucuses in Nevada after the Culinary Union endorsement made it appear they would help Barack Obama.” Adds the Prospect‘s Ezra Klein: “This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart.”

Lies, Damned Lies, and “Dunce-Cap Dems.”

While the NYT, in venerable (and dismaying) establishment form, swung behind Senator Clinton (and John McCain) — despite contradicting their 2006 endorsement — this morning, others in the commentariat are not so sanguine about the prospect of a Clinton restoration:

“Obama’s best hope is that Democratic voters aren’t as dumb as Hillary and Bill Clinton think they are.” Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter decries the Clintons’ cynical strategy of misinformation. “Obama is stronger among well-educated Democrats, according to polls. So the Clintons figure that maybe their base among less educated white Democrats might be receptive to an argument that assumes they’re dumb. Less well-educated equals gullible in the face of bogus attack ads. That’s the logic, and the Clintons are testing it in South Carolina before trying it in Super Tuesday states. They are also road-testing major distortions of Obama’s positions on abortion, Social Security and the minimum wage.“

USA Today experiences Clinton fatigue. “[H]is famous lack of discipline, angry outbursts on the campaign trail and habit of drawing attention to himself all suggest that voters have every right to wonder how this would actually work.“

But the NYT‘s Matthew Continetti senses a pattern, and calls shenanigans on red-faced Bill’s recent (and conveniently timed) public screeds. “It’s been said that Mr. Clinton’s recent feistiness has revealed a side of him previously unknown to most Americans. But this is incorrect: he is rather a master of what one might call ‘strategic emotion,’ the use of tears or anger to comfort voters or intimidate the press.“

Claiming “‘if Obama is a Reaganite, then I am a salamander,’ E.J. Dionne remembers when Clinton loved Reagan. “His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to ‘set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan.’ Clinton’s ‘readiness to defy his party’s prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it,’ the paper wrote, ‘is one reason he’s a candidate to watch.’“

And, despite having written Primary Colors, TIME‘s Joe Klein just can’t wrap his mind around it all: “Let me get this straight: Obama wins Iowa. In a desperate move — unprecedented for an ex-President in American politics — Bill Clinton decides to impede Obama’s momentum by inserting himself into the campaign. He attacks Obama on an almost daily basis, sometimes falsely. He makes a spectacle of himself. And then he blames the press for not covering the substance of the campaign?”

Update: Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has had enough: “I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a ‘fairy tale’) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it…we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.“

The Running Mate.

Speaking of the Palmetto State, while Senator Clinton concentrates on Feb. 5 contests, she’s currently relying on her husband to try to hold down South Carolina “Along the way, he often sounds as if he’s campaigning for a third term. Here in Aiken, he tried mightily to talk about Hillary, but he kept lapsing into the first person: ‘My position on that is simple…When I was in law school…When I was president…When I was governor of Arkansas…When I started this schools program…I made the governor of South Carolina secretary of education…I got a Mercury mini-SUV.’…With varying degrees of accuracy, Clinton has made Obama look as if he were an ally of President Bush, a fan of Ronald Reagan, a supporter of the Iraq war and a practitioner of electoral dirty tricks.“

Like all too many Democratic observers, I’m thoroughly disgusted with the former president right now. It looks like that vaunted “Bridge to the 21st Century” runs in both directions. Update: They’re lying again.

Update 2: “The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four more years. The thought makes me queasy.” The Nation‘s William Greider comments on recent events.

The Gloves Come Off.

“I understand that most viewers want to know, how am I going to get helped in terms of paying my health care? How am I going to get help being able to go to college? All those things are important. But what’s also important that people are not just willing to say anything to get elected. And that’s what I have tried to do in this campaign, is try to maintain a certain credibility.I don’t mind having policy debates with Senator Clinton or Senator Edwards. But what I don’t enjoy is spending the week or two weeks or the last month having to answer to these kinds of criticisms that are not factually accurate.“

The faux bonhomie of Nevada’s roundtable well behind them, the Democratic candidates started throwing haymakers in tonight’s lively South Carolina debate. [Transcript.] Unlike the last two meetings, I’m not going spend a lot of time on a full-fledged summary, since — when it gets this heated onstage — I don’t think it’s particularly useful. Judging from the comment threads at the various political sites, people will see what they want to see. Clinton supporters are coming out of the woodwork to say she won the night. Well, that was definitely not my impression.

For my part, I was glad to see Barack Obama strongly counter Clinton’s continued distortions in the first hour, and finally push back on Clinton’s dubious “35 years of change” line (including, as it does, twelve years at the Rose Law Firm, which has been billed as Arkansas’ “ultimate establishment law firm.”) And he did a great job in the seated second hour of reasserting his positives — the funny and gracious “first black president” answer, for example — while staying on message.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was at her evasive, misleading, Rovian worst. She did ok on the first question, about the economic stimulus package, but went rapidly downhill thereafter. Rather than running on her own record, She repeated her distortions about Reagan. She repeated her husband’s distortions about Obama’s stance on Iraq. She tried (and failed) to turn Obama’s present votes in the Illinois Senate into a vote for sexual abuse. And she like her husband — basically accused Obama (wrongly) of being Clintonian. (“[I]t is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.“)

Clinton also tried to inject the Rezko story into the debate. For those not following, Tony Rezko is a clearly shady Chicago businessmen with whom Obama had dealings with as a state legislator, and an iffy-looking land deal thereafter. An error in judgment, to be sure, and one he’s apologized for (even though it looks like there’s no there there.) Now it’s a fair thing to bring up, as Obama himself admitted. But,to be honest, Rezko is really not a road Hillary Clinton wants to go down. For one, you’d think the Clintons — of all people — would try to avoid insinuating corruption-by-association when it comes to land deals. For another, do Norman Hsu, Marc Rich, and Johnny Chung ring a bell? Shady operators in the margins are and have been the Clintons’ forte.

But I digress. Once the fur started to fly, John Edwards got plugged into the “above the fray” role by default, which may have helped him out among undecideds, I guess. Still, I was glad to see he directed attacks at both Obama and Clinton as he felt warranted, which should prevent another embarrassing post-debate spin along the lines of “the men were picking on me.” But you never know. After all the outrageous displays of intellectual dishonesty from the Clinton camp, both tonight and over the past few weeks, I’d put nothing past them at this point.

Rove Like Us.

“The hardball tactics of Rove have defined American political life for a long time. The Clintons have now shown they have learnt from the master. The question for the Democrats is whether they want a candidate who can play the Rove game as cynically and as brutally as the Republicans. Or whether they want a new start and a new politics. That’s what is at stake now in the Democratic race. And one side has shown its true colours.” Reviewing the Democratic primary campaign so far, Andrew Sullivan also sees the Clintons using the Karl Rove playbook. “Ever since the Clintons’ near-death experience in the Iowa vote, their campaign has been playing a very Rovian game. The use of the politics of fear is just the start. In fact classic Rovian tactics are now at the heart of the Clinton campaign.”

Simmer Down Now.

“‘This is excruciating,’ says a member of the Clintons’ circle, who asked for anonymity. ‘But the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s worth it to tarnish himself a bit now to win the presidency.’” Word from Jonathan Alter’s inside sources is that top Dems, including Ted Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel, have angrily told Bill Clinton to put a sock in it. “When the former president called Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat gave Clinton an earful, telling him that he bore some blame for the injection of race into the contest…The Clinton camp now fears that Kennedy is leaning toward Obama.” For his part, Clinton is unrepentant, so expect more embarrassing shenanigans from the ex-prez in due course. “‘History will judge the impact on the Clinton legacy, not daily or weekly political reporters,’ says Matt McKenna, Bill Clinton’s press secretary.“

Update: “She’s got a record that she can run on. But I think it’s important that we try to maintain some — you know, level of honesty and candor during the course of the campaign. If we don’t, then we feed the cynicism that has led so many Americans to be turned off to politics.” On ABC’s Good Morning America, Senator Obama pushes back. “You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling. He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts — whether it’s about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas. This has become a habit, and one of the things that we’re going to have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he’s making statements that are not factually accurate.“

Update 2: The Clinton campaign claims that noting that Bill Clinton distorts the truth is a “right-wing talking point.”. It’s also a fact. Is even the reality-based community “right-wing” these days?

Update 3: He has a dream…Now, Clinton is falling asleep in public.

Nevada: The House Wins…or does it?

CNN projects that Hillary Clinton has won the Nevada caucus. (At 90% and counting, we’re at Clinton 51%, Obama 45%, Edwards 4%(!))

Sigh. Well, to be honest, I don’t feel all that bad about this loss. I mean, Nevada would have been a great pick-up for Obama, but if he wins my home state of South Carolina next weekend — which is favorable terrain — we’re still going into February 5 with a 2-2 split. And given that things seem to have been shaking this way in past days, I’m heartened to see Obama managed to keep it relatively close against Clinton. Besides, while Senator Obama was apparently a star in Reno (Obama 46% — Clinton 31%), he lost big in heavily-populated Clark County (Clinton 55% — Obama 35%), which is usually most people’s experience in Vegas. So be it.

The biggest surprise here, frankly, is the Edwards collapse. Less than 5%? Still, I wouldn’t expect him to make any big moves until after South Carolina, if at all.

Looking at the CNN entrance poll numbers, the demographic breakdown remains very troubling. For one, the gender gap continues (Women: Clinton 52%, Obama 35%; White Women: Clinton 57%, Obama 28%.) For another, it looks like the Clinton-Obama generation gap has grown even worse. Note these dismaying stats:

Voters 18-29: Obama 57%, Clinton 30%
Voters 30-44: Obama 42%, Clinton 37%
Voters 45-59: Clinton 46%, Obama 39%
Voters 60+: Clinton 61%, Obama 28%

Voters under 45: Obama 48%, Clinton 34%
Voters over 45: Clinton 54%, Obama 33%

The affiliations:

Democrats: Clinton 51%, Obama 36%
Independents: Obama 46%, Clinton 35%

And then you get the race breakdown:

Whites: Clinton 52%, Obama 31%
African Americans: Obama 79%, Clinton 16%
Hispanics: Clinton 64%, Obama 23%

So — right now — it looks to be young people, independents, and African-Americans for Obama, with old people, Latinos, and white women for Clinton. Perhaps most notably, voters under 30 are breaking 2-1 for Obama, while voters over 60 are breaking 2-1 for Clinton. If that dynamic holds, it obviously favors Clinton in this primary season. (Although, if and when those young voters justifiably decide to turn against the process and stay home should Clinton win, given her campaign’s scummy tactics, it’s all around bad for the Democrats.)

Speaking of which, whatever the demographic breakdown, I have to think the Clinton campaign’s lowball maneuvering will redound badly against them as we move forward. Even notwithstanding last weeks’ race card wallowing and Giuliani-ish grandstanding, we now have attempts at voter suppression, more false mailers, blatant lying about Obama’s record, Yucca and otherwise, union-busting rhetoric, and even anti-Obama robo-calls. If we Dems aren’t going to take a stand against this sort of Rovian garbage within our own party, then we’ve absolutely no business bitching about similar behavior by the GOP.

On to South Carolina.

Update: Hmm, well that‘s interesting. After all is said and done, it seems Barack Obama actually won the Nevada delegate count, 13-12. “The math turns out to be a bit confusing, but the shorthand is this: The more populous Clark County, which Clinton won, awarded a even number of delegates, and Clinton and Obama split those down the middle. Meanwhile, the more rural areas, which Obama won, awarded an odd number of delegates, which gave Obama the edge. ‘We showed real strength statewide,’ campaign manager David Plouffe said in the call.” Well, ok then. That’s a nice gift, but the demographic concerns remain.

Update 2: How bad was the situation on the ground? Bad enough that Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is going on the record about it. At this point, widespread malfeasance by the Clinton campaign sounds eminently plausible.(And what the heck was Bill doing?)

“They think they’re better than you are.”

“Of course, Hillary and Bill aren’t suggesting that the 6 million members of unions endorsing Hillary should be independent. Union members should still vote for Hillary when union leaders say they should, but they also should vote for Hillary when the union says they shouldn’t. That’s the kind of independent thinking the Clintons want.” Ronald Cass examines the new tactic the Clintons have taken to in Nevada: union-busting. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton remains on a roll, and argues he and Chelsea personally witnessed voter intimidation at a Las Vegas casino, claims that would appear to be “technically impossible.”

Did I mention it’s been 10 years since Monicagate? (I wouldn’t expect a 10th-anniversary edition of And the Horse He Rode in On.)