Hillary has to disembowel Obama

By Rick Morris

With the final Democratic presidential debate before the big March 4 primaries looming next Tuesday, the dilemma facing Hillary Clinton is very stark indeed. Ever since she lost Iowa to Barack Obama and launched Obama-mania, she has been trapped in circumstances that have only grown more dire over time. Because he is an appealing candidate in a way that she will never be, she needs to absolutely destroy him in order to win the nomination (hence her black vs. brown strategy). However, the nomination won’t mean anything if she wins because she’ll have completely embittered the base by doing what was necessary to win it.

It’s clear that Hillary and her inner circle realized the full extent of the crisis even during their only upswing of the election season. The insane momentum realized by Obama after the Hawkeye state win set in motion a dynamic that even Hillary’s shocking comeback win in New Hampshire and her victory in Nevada couldn’t change. In retrospect, that’s clearly why Bill Clinton played the race card so ham-handedly in South Carolina; the only way out of the box for Hillary was to polarize the electorate along racial lines, hoping that whites would rally to the Clinton name once blacks rallied around their own candidate fiercely. But the Clintons’ efforts in South Carolina were so transparent that they painted her with a coat of desperation she’s never been able to shake – and that aura was only enhanced by her pathetic trumpeting of a “victory” in Florida when the candidates had originally promised not to contest that state due to their violation of DNC guidelines regarding primary scheduling.

Hillary’s attempt to come off graceful at the end of the Texas debate Thursday night was startling, not least of which because “graceful” is a term rarely applied to the political efforts of the Clintons. But it was also intriguing because it showed the first signs (accurately or inaccurately) of Hillary coming to grips with her situation and deciding to bow out gracefully. Ever since January 3, she’s been traveling a road that leads to one of two options. Door #1 contains every vicious attack and smear that the Clinton War Machine can conjure up in an attempt to render Obama helpless enough for her to jam a stiletto heel into his heart on the way to the nomination. Door #2 contains a meek surrender course that will be disguised as a noble decision to “listen to the will of the people.” If she fully embraces the options behind the first door, she’ll split the base and infuriate blacks everywhere, setting herself up to get annihilated by John McCain even if she did limp away with the nomination in Denver. If she chooses the second path, she’ll at least maintain some small claim on the future should Obama somehow fail in November. The choice is hers and we may well get some glimpse of the path she chooses Tuesday night in Cleveland.

Florida primary predictions

By Rick Morris

For the donkeys, in a yawner, Hillary will top 50% in what would have to be called the dubiously-named beauty pageant. That designation comes from political pundits looking for some way to offer some context to a glorified straw poll, since the Democratic National Committee yanked all the delegates away from the Sunshine State for moving its primary up without authorization. This victory will not, and should not, be taken as any time of substantive refutation for the mighty hiney-whooping she took in South Carolina over the weekend, but the shameless Clintonian spin machine will try to push that garbage anyway.

On the Republican side, the toughest prediction of any of the contests to date looms. John McCain and Mittens are running neck-in-neck continuously in the polls. Based on the very little I can discern from the polls in recent days, I give the slightest of edges to McCain based on apparent momentum coming from the endorsement of Governor Charlie Crist and the fact that he is trending better on Intrade at the moment. "America's Mayor Rudy" will be a distant third, a prelude to his coming withdrawal from the race, and The Huck's slide will culminate in a fourth-place plummet.

South Carolina/Nevada results preview

By Rick Morris

In a result that barely merits mention, the Romney campaign will rack up a sizable win by default in Nevada because the attention of all other campaigns will be diverted elsewhere – shades of Wyoming. Look for a Mittens victory dance anyway. McCain, Huckabee, Thompson and Giuliani will follow in that order.

Over in South Carolina, where everyone’s focus has been for most of the week, McCain will avenge his devastating loss to Dubya in 2000 by besting Huckabee by about four percentage points. Thompson will be a distant third, followed narrowly by Romney. The toughest dynamic for me to compute in either Nevada or South Carolina was the battle for third place in the Palmetto State. Romney is basically conceding that he will finish fourth, which, given the massive intellectual dishonesty of his campaign, naturally makes me wonder if he secretly has sound reason to believe he will finish ahead of Thompson and is anticipating another of his patented cheesy “I beat the expectations” moments. But the fact that he is tanking in the latest major poll released makes me believe that his fade is for real. Unfortunately for America, this finish could still be quite damaging if not a mortal blow to the best candidate in the race, Fred Dalton Thompson.

The Nevada Democrats appear poised to throw another curveball into what has already been a chaotic election process this year. Hillary is leading Obama in most of the major polls, and appears able to survive the endorsement momentum the Illinois senator received from major Nevada unions. Look for Clinton to win by about four points, with Edwards a noisy irrelevancy back in the high teens.

Mittens' Say-Anything Campaign

By Rick Morris

Answer the question honestly. With the amount of mud already slung by the Mitt Romney campaign, aren't you expecting to hear any minute that his operatives have been push-polling asking South Carolina voters if they're comfortable knowing that John McCain fathered an illegitimate black baby?

Team Mittens can deny all they want that they've been behind the vicious smears attacking McCain in South Carolina this time around, many of which echo directly those working "on behalf of" George W. Bush eight years ago. Those fevered-pitch denials would carry a lot more weight if not for the millions of dollars of distorting negative ads out of Daddy's Fortune that the Flip-Flopper-in-Chief hadn't dumped on his opponents in the first few presidential contests of this election cycle. And yet the Trust Fund Baby is crying in his creme brulee about a McCain mailer that accurately represents the Reprehensible Romney Record in Massachusetts.

Don't buy the distractions, the claims of the high moral road or anything else that Willard Mitt's crew of Establishment Puppetmasters are putting out at the eleventh hour. When it comes to sleazy, morally bankrupt attacks being run from the shadows in this campaign, the Romney record suggests that he should be considered guilty until proven innocent.

Revisiting the Clintons and race

By Rick Morris

As I previously indicated here, I have been feeling some glee at seeing the Clintons suffer accusations of racism during the presidential campaign, since they have been poisoning the political discourse of our country for decades by lightly accusing political opponents of the same sin. But after discussing this matter on last night's FDH Lounge program, I found myself examining more angles still regarding this controversy.

One of The FDH Lounge Dignitaries, Chris Galloway, pointed out that there is a chance that the Clintons are asking to be thrown into the proverbial briar patch here -- that is, the Clintons know that the racial angle is a short-term loser with the South Carolina primary looming, but it will be a long-term winner in the events to follow. Ultimately, no matter how many black voters turn out, a black vs. white dynamic is a loser for a black candidate even in a Democratic primary. Interesting thought, and you certainly can't disbelieve it on the grounds that the Clintons aren't sufficiently cynical to perpetuate it.

Also, we got a call during the program from Andy from Toledo, one of the most faithful callers to our show during our first year. As a black man who supports Barack Obama and is significantly to the left of the Clintons, Andy had an interesting point to make. Since Bill Clinton was the greatest president ever in the morally dubious category of "Speaking In Words That Must Be Constantly Parsed," he knew exactly what he was saying when he branded Obama's campaign and life story a "fairy tale" -- moreover, black voters know this. With the coordinated points of attack emanating from the good old Clinton War Room (the "fairy tale," Obama and MLK being phony speech-givers, Bob Johnson's not-so-subtle about Obama's past weed and coke habits), black voters see the Clintons turning their "By All Means Necessary" mode of attack on one of their own -- and they don't like it.

There are signs now that the Clintons may be seeking a racial cease-fire with the Obama campaign, and while I would have previously thought it would have been because they were dealing from a position of weakness, I'm now rethinking that. Perhaps Chris is right and they want to move on because they've already accomplished their purpose: planting in the minds of white voters on Super Tuesday that angry black voters are out to take over the party and the country.

All that we can tell for certain right now is that events are going to get much more divisive and interesting before they settle down -- and as an emphatic non-Democrat, I am gleefully enjoying the show.