A Judge Makes an Irrelevant Ruling on a Minor Part of Michigan's Primary Law -- and Clinton Starts Spinning

Let's just dispose of this quickly, and move on:

A federal judge in Michigan has just ruled that a minor part of Michigan’s primary law is unconstitutional. That ruling says that either everyone is entitled to see voter records (not just the two major parties), or no one is. It’s a correct ruling, but totally irrelevant to the question of whether, and how, Michigan’s and Florida’s delegates should be seated at the National Convention. (Background here; more reports on the ruling here, here; blogs sane and otherwise here, here, here, here, here.)

Yet within minutes, the Clinton campaign issued a press release calling again for Michigan’s current delegates to be seated (even though Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot), or for a revote (which, with the Michigan Legislature on recess, is now an impossibility).

Let’s be clear: it bites that Michigan and Florida moved their primaries up. It bites that the Democratic National Committee – including fervent Clinton supporter and advisor Harold Ickes – decided unanimously to disenfranchise their voters as a result. But none of that is Barack Obama’s fault.

Now may we all please go back to copying and faxing Sen. Clinton copies of our (redacted) tax returns, to encourage her to make her own 2000 through 2006 returns public the way Obama has?

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Edwards: Economy and War Aren't Separable

This is good news for Obama, both because it may suggest an Edwards endorsement is coming soon, and because it tosses a great new meme into the Obama/Clinton fight, especially in Ohio (update: now Pennsylvania). Here's why: Obama has opposed the Iraq War from the start; Clinton voted for it and has never reneged. (She didn't even start talking about withdrawing troops until halfway into the primaries, when she realized how important it was to Democratic voters.) So Obama is winning the votes of folks who consider the war their most important issue. (And, incidentally, his position on the war is why he's more likely to win against McCain in November -- 2/3 of Americans now are against the war, and even when he's trying to sound more dovish, McCain still admits seeing American troops in Iraq "for decades.")

Meanwhile, though, the economy is starting to tank, and Hillary has been pretending that she somehow played a role in the good economy of the Bill Clinton presidency -- which isn't true, but hey. The economy is an especially important issue in the two states critical to Clinton's chances, Ohio Pennsylvania (with an uncertain industrial base) and Texas (with one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the nation). So Clinton's been winning (barely) the votes of people who think the economy's the most important issue, and has been banking on that to help her win Texas and Ohio.

Now Edwards comes along and points out the obvious fact that a war that's cost $3 trillion (all funded by debt) is having a tremendously deleterious effect on the economy and is hampering our ability to buffer any recession. (If we don't have the money to give lower- and middle-class tax breaks, start new government projects that create jobs, etc., because we've blown it all in Iraq, we're in trouble.)

And if people in Ohio and Texas Pennsylvania catch on to this truth, Hillary is toast -- and it will be her own hubris and lack of integrity, for supporting the war solely in the triangulationist belief that doing so would help her win the Presidency in the general election, that will have done her in. Classic Shakespearian tragedy, when the powerful fall due to their own fatal flaw. Good for Edwards for making himself meaningful again.
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