the media has gotten obama to denounce the last uppity black man in his life. now maybe they’ll be satisfied and move on to things of consequence.

like, say, health care, the economy, the middle east, iraq, and iran.

i’ve wailed and moaned for obama to get tougher. it seems that he has.

the last couple of news cycles have seen a steady ramp-up of stories about how hillary clinton outright lied “misspoke” about her trip to bosnia with sinbad and sheryl crow.

a clinton obfuscating a prevarication? who knew?

nice to note that the obama campaign pushed this story, and the press picked up on it, and there’s no blowback to the obama campaign itself. nice to note also that hillary was at no point in any danger, despite her protestations to the contrary. we gotta keep her safe, so obama can ignore her for the v.p. slot but use her strategically to get out the fall vote.

now that’s how you get elected.

way too many people are going off the reservation in the obama campaign.

we’ve had the guy talking to the canadians about nafta. hillary, of course, did the same thing, but that’s not my concern here.

then this samantha power person called hillary a monster and had to resign.

now we find out that she told the bbc that obama might waffle on the troop withdrawals:

He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator…. You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009…

good lord.

say what you want about hillary (and most of what i say is bad), but at least she and all of her people are rigidly disciplined, on message, and on the same page. even if what they have to say is odious, at least it is coordinated.

obama himself may have pretty good message discipline, but his people are all over the map.

his campaign is starting to look like amateur hour, coinciding with the first real pressure he’s faced as a candidate.

they need to get professional, and fast.

update: mark halperin at time magazine addresses this very subject.

watched the second half of the final debate last night.

didn’t watch the first half, except in stutters, with constant “buffering…please wait” messages flashing across my screen. it’s not my internet access — cnn streamed their two debates to me without a hitch. and when i finally abandoned all hope and went to wonkette.com to read a liveblog of the debate, i found that everyone else in the comment strings was having the same problem.

and the commenters recommended cleveland.com as an alternative, which worked perfectly, and i watched the second half with no hiccups whatsoever.

and as a capper, each time i reloaded msnbc.com’s feed, the prestitial commercial streamed perfectly and then the live coverage didn’t work.

good job there, people. if you are going to heavily promote accessibility to your debates, then make sure you have the bandwidth to do the job. failing that, at least make sure that the audio streams continuously, even if the video drops frames. last night’s feed just froze constantly. it’s always encouraging when the national network is outplanned by the local affiliate. but thanks for all of the commercials. i’ll run out and buy some preparation h, or whatever.

not that the msnbc debate was well-planned anyway. brian williams, and especially tim russert, asked inane and poorly formed questions, and repeatedly got in the way of the candidates and made the event about themselves, and not about the candidates and the issues. here’s how to run a debate: ask a well-thought out question, and shut up while people answer it. at some points, i thought the debate was between tim russert and hillary clinton, or tim russert and barack obama.

and, can we cue up the right video, please? jeebus. that was so unfair to hillary clinton, but both candidates handled it gracefully.

in general, i found clinton to be grating and overly aggressive to no apparent positive point. perhaps her (to me) off-key performance was prompted by the out-of-bounds questioning, but barack seemed to handle the same aggressive questioning with aplomb. that tells me whose cool demeanor i want sitting across the negotiating table from tinpot nutbag dictators.

i keep asking myself if i am watching these debates with a view askew, slanted toward the candidate i am supporting. but every time i approach her with an open mind, clinton just disappoints.

obama is just a cool customer. to me his vision and demeanor trumps purported “experience”.

watched the debate last night, the same way we did last time, since we have no cable tv.

like last time, i liked hillary. she’s intelligent, measured, informed, and projects enthusiasm, power, and competence.

problem for her is, so does obama. two great candidates. and what i’m reminded of is the cycle i went through after the last debate — she impressed me then as well.

and then her campaign kicked in, with all her (to plagiarize a phrase) silly politics. obama plagiarized his speeches, and his wife michelle doesn’t love america, and we’re going to steal his pledged delegates, and what not.

silly.

i liked her a lot after the last debate, and then she (or more accurately, her minions) completely turned me off. if she can’t control her message and campaign in a disciplined and effective manner, why should i believe that her governance will be any better?

ready on day one, indeed. she’s not even ready now to run an organized campaign, after two years of running for this office.

it’s too bad that the discourse of her campaign doesn’t match the level of her personal discourse.

if the republicans have any real nasty, smoking gun-type dirt on barack obama, why would they save it for a general election? why wouldn’t they get it out there now in hopes of knocking out obama in favor of hillary?

hillary, about whom they have warehouses of dirt to unload. and you know they’d rather run mccain against hillary, who they can (and would) beat, rather than run mccain against obama.

i don’t think there’s a lot of real dirt out there to be had. i think that obama smartly has gotten out ahead of any real nasty revelations. the drugs, the rezko thing, and all.

at least i hope so.

from kos, a great snapshot of where obama stands, how he got there, where the race is probably going, and why we should take a deep breath and appreciate the race lasting a bit longer.

from the article:

Now I know people will be calling for her to quit the race, but I hope she rides it out through Ohio and Texas. I think Ohio needs a good dose of infrastructure building, and this primary will help make that happen. Same with Texas, where a solid ground operation can pave the way for some serious people-powered action in the Senate race with our man Rick Noriega.

It would be great if this thing went to Pennsylvania for the same reason, but I doubt it’ll get that far. I’ll call it right now — baring a major gaffe or disaster, Obama will win both Texas and Ohio and that will be that.

from his lips to god’s ears.

this can’t be coming from the campaign, right? still, don’t these people know they are hurting her far more than they are helping her?

is this hillary’s attempt at mobilizing young voters via viral video?

if so, it’s hard to imagine a more tone-deaf attempt.

if not, the campaign should have had the foresight to not let a camera anywhere near this spectacle. or, indeed, not produce the spectacle in the first place.