"Obama is the last Democrat who won Wisconsin with more than 50 percent of the vote...."

"It’s Obama who has the potential to persuade Wisconsin voters.... Obama gets Wisconsin. He has always maintained a strategic sense about how to campaign in the state.... In 2008 and 2012, he did the usual outreach to urban voters in Milwaukee and Madison. But he also paid attention to smaller cities, such as Green Bay, Racine, Kenosha, Janesville, Wausau, La Crosse, and Eau Claire, where he showed up and spoke, a lot, about renewing manufacturing and increasing support for rural regions of the state. He also talked about the cost of bloated military budgets and unnecessary wars.... [I]t would be wise for [Kamala Harris] to recognize that a stronger stance in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza—and for restrictions on US military aid to Israel—would attract far more support in Wisconsin than an appearance with a neoconservative militarist like Liz Cheney....."

Writes John Nichols, in "Recipe for a Harris Win: More Obama, Less Cheney/Embracing right-wing Republicans won’t excite undecided voters. Associating with a popular Democrat who understands battleground states like Wisconsin will" (The Nation).

ADDED: Here's something Obama put up 45 minutes ago, making his pitch for Kamala Harris:

.@KamalaHarris has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a chance – and she's going to keep fighting for you. That's the kind of person I'm proud to vote for and that's the kind of president that we need. pic.twitter.com/IGbZfR5TJA

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 17, 2024

ADDED: I have never understood the argument that Trump "only cares about himself." Democrats say it over and over, but I don't see it at all. 

"Biden... was put on the ticket to balance the ticket, not to enhance it. Barack was against the Iraq War, he was for the Iraq War. Barack was against the crime bill, he was for the crime bill."

Said Jesse Jackson, endorsing Bernie Sanders (Real Clear Politics).

For the annals of "Unexpectedly": "For Obama, an Unexpected Legacy of Two Full Terms at War."

Remember, as you listen, week after week, to predictions about what's going to happen next fall and in the coming 4 years: All the erstwhile seers are going to be calling everything "unexpected." I mean, if a Democrat wins, they'll be calling each bad thing unexpected, and if a Republican wins they call each good thing unexpected. That's me posing as a seer. If I'm wrong, it will be unexpectedly.

The headline quoted in the post title appears in — can you guess? — The New York Times. From the text:

[Obama] has now been at war longer than Mr. Bush, or any other American president.

And — unless he shuts down all war by November or we amend the Constitution — no one can ever beat his record.

Mr. Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009....

They might want to avoid that advance Peace Prize move in the future... unless they want to promote war. (But, of course, Obama wasn't given the Peace Prize because they'd predicted he'd end Bush's wars. He was given the Peace Prize because he'd caused America to progress from what the Norwegians saw as our benighted racist ways and to elect a black President.)

The NYT portrays Obama's war legacy in a golden light:

His closest advisers say he has relied so heavily on limited covert operations and drone strikes because he is mindful of the dangers of escalation and has long been skeptical that American military interventions work.

He is mindful... A GOP President is lucky to get credit for thinking at all. Did the NYT ever call GWB "mindful"? Will it call President Trump "mindful"? Yes, I'm predicting that Trump will win. It's an "unexpectedly" kind of year.

I happened to glance at the comments at the NYT. The newest one at the moment says: "The opening sentence reveals the republican slant making the rest of the article invalid." Ah! Poor NYT! Here I am writing about its Democratic Party slant and some reader is bashing it from the other side. The NYT has reason to think we are getting this just right. 

I don't think the White House Correspondents Dinner people enjoyed Larry Wilmore very much.

Everyone looks so uncomfortable. Which is a good thing, right? Why should he make these people comfortable? Here's the transcript. I'll try to excerpt what I think this crowd may have disliked the most:

And I have to admit it’s not easy to follow the president, man. You got some jokes. Mr. President. The president’s funny. Stay in your lane, man. You don’t seem me going around president-ing all the time, right? I don’t go around passing health care, and signing executive orders, pardoning turkeys … not closing Guantanamo. Oh wait, maybe I did do that.

But I have to say, it’s great, it looks like you’re really enjoying your last year of the presidency. Saw you hanging out with NBA players like Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors. That was cool. That was cool, yeah. You know it kinda makes sense, too, because both of you like raining down bombs on people from long distances, right? What? Am I wrong?

Speaking of drones, how is Wolf Blitzer still on television? Ask a follow-up question. Hey, Wolf, I’m ready to project tonight’s winner: Anyone that isn’t watching “The Situation Room.”...

But I have to say, about the first lady, it’s so nice to have dinner with you. She is the epitome of grace, class and poise, isn’t she? She really is. Not to be confused with future first gentleman Bill Clinton, whose three favorite strippers are named Grace, Class and Poise....

I’m impressed with the people in this room. There are so many rich, powerful people in this room. You know, it’s nice to finally match the names to the faces in the Panama Papers. It’s very nice....
MSNBC — MSNBC here tonight? No? Which actually now stands for “Missing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents.” Am I wrong? They like fired Melissa Harris-Perry, they canceled Joy Reid, they booted Touré. I heard they put Chris Hayes on probation because they thought he was related to Isaac Hayes.... MSNBC got rid of so many black people I thought Boko Haram was running that network. What was going on…?

You know, I should say some of America’s finest black journalists are here tonight. Don Lemon’s here, too. Hey, Don, how’s it going? Alleged journalist Don Lemon, everybody.

The camera shows Don Lemon giving him the finger.

I'll bet the audience was expecting more and harsher focus on Donald Trump. There was a reference to "his genitalia" — which took a shot at a Democrat (calling it "his President Johnson") —  to his "little baby hands" — the reason "everyone treats Donald Trump with kid gloves" — and an attack on "Morning Joe" for giving him so much favorable TV time — "Morning Joe: has their head so far up Trump’s ass they bumped into Chris Christie." But Wilmore delivered more pain to Democrats — politicians and the press.

There were also the transgressive racial words, from the beginning middle and end of the speech: 1. "negro" ("Well, welcome to 'Negro Night' here at the Washington Hilton, or as Fox News will report, 'Two thugs disrupt elegant dinner in D.C.'"), 2. "jigaboo" ("Ben Carson... praised Jackson... From the grave, Andrew Jackson replied, 'What did that jigaboo say?'"), and 3. "nigga" ("So, Mr. President, if I’m going to keep it 100: Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga. You did it.").

Obama did a great job of laughing and looking like he had a sense of humor about everything. Why shouldn't he? He had his speech too, and it was already done and — probably most people would say — funnier and better delivered. Check it out:

"There is no political architecture that will convince any Sunni over the age of 3 that he or she has a future with the Iraqi state."

"The administration is trying to use a limited military weapon to defeat an adversary that only a political offensive can overcome, and we’re not willing or able to make that effort."

Said Ryan C. Crocker, a former American ambassador to Iraq, quoted in "Sunni Resentment Muddles Prospect of Reunifying Iraq After ISIS" (in the NYT).

Kenneth M. Pollack, an Iraq expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, worried that military gains in Iraq without political overhauls would be counterproductive. “At some point, they make things worse,” he said....

Mr. Crocker... said he had given up hope that the Obama administration would become more deeply engaged in seeking a political accommodation between Iraq’s factions. But he and Mr. Pollack, along with other experts on Iraq, have joined a task force organized by the Atlantic Council, a research organization based in Washington, that will make policy proposals on Iraq to the next administration.

“Unfortunately, that’s 11 months away,” he said. “The Islamic State rose because of a political vacuum,” he noted. “It wasn’t a military success but a political failure that allowed it to take hold.”

Ramadi, retaken... in ruins.

"The retaking of Ramadi by Iraqi security forces last week has been hailed as a major blow to the Islamic State and as a vindication of the Obama administration’s strategy to fight the group by backing local ground forces with intensive airstrikes. But the widespread destruction of Ramadi bears testament to the tremendous costs of dislodging a group that stitches itself into the urban fabric of communities it seizes by occupying homes, digging tunnels and laying extensive explosives...."

Put on the spot by a question at a town hall, Hillary Clinton calls what is happening to Christians in the Middle East "genocide."

A member of the audience asked (and I'm assuming this wasn't a plant): "Will you join those leaders, faith leaders and secular leaders and political leaders from both the right and the left, in calling what is happening by its proper name: Genocide?"

Hillary said: "I will because we now have enough evidence."

It's clear, Clinton said, that there is a brutally violent campaign "deliberately aimed at destroying not only the lives, but wiping out the existence of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East in territory controlled by ISIS."...

The State Department has spent months debating whether to label the Islamic State’s attacks against members of a different religious minority, the Yazidis, a "genocide," a designation that carries significant legal, political and historical implications. Christian groups and Republicans have urged Secretary of State John Kerry to include Iraqi and Syrian Christians as well.

It's more than a year until the next President takes office. If this is genocide, President Obama should be acting now. It's not enough for Hillary Clinton to use the word. She must criticize him, actively, and she must take responsibility for what she did as Secretary of State that led to what she now concedes is genocide.

If Obama gets serious about the war against ISIS... what does that do to campaign politics?

I'm reading this in The Washington Post:

American-led airstrikes killed at least 180 Islamic State fighters as local Kurdish forces­ scrambled to repel a bold, multi-pronged assault by the militants, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.... The fighting in northern Iraq comes as President Obama struggles to defend his policy — called feeble by some critics in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. — and his handling of the war in Syria, where Russia’s new air campaign has added to the complexity of an already tangled conflict.

I have no idea what Obama should or will do in Iraq in the next 11 months. I just want to observe that he's in a position to manipulate presidential politics. Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that he would be willing to corrupt his military decisionmaking with calculations about what will help his party in the 2016 election.

And resist the sarcastic commentary on the assumption. Everyone can see that side road. Don't waste your time going over there. The scenic road is up ahead: Could Obama undercut the GOP candidates (some/all of them) by going big in an effort to defeat ISIS? Ted Cruz has said he wants to "carpet bomb" and Donald Trump has said he would "bomb the shit out of them." What if Obama beats them to it? Who benefits?

Help me puzzle through this. I'm thinking: First, Hillary needs to get the nomination. That must be locked in, but after that, Hillary is free to be the hawk that is one of her multiple personas. She can play that well, I think. But she'll lose some Democrats. Sanders could become a third party candidate. He only recently joined the Democratic Party, and he's already the candidate of the Working Families Party. There's some risk, but the GOP candidates will lose some of their foundation if Obama shifts into warrior mode.

What if it becomes an argument about who can best continue Obama's vigorous, popular war on ISIS? Republicans can talk about how Obama squandered what had been a Bush victory in Iraq and allowed ISIS to flourish and force us into this new war, and so a GOP President is more trustworthy. But which GOP candidate will be the one making this argument? Hillary will argue for continuity and Obama-style smartness, as opposed to the carpet-and-shit bombing from The Stupid Party.

There are many unmentioned permutations. I'm trying to start a discussion. The topic is: How can Obama stymie the Trump-and-Cruz Party by going big against ISIS?

"Chris Wallace Presses Cheney on Iran: Didn’t You ‘Leave President Obama with a Mess’?"

"Why no, no he didn’t. In fact, things were going so well as late as 2010 that the Obama Administration was bragging about Iraq as one of its big foreign policy successes.... Obama blew it in Iraq, which is in chaos, and in Syria, which is in chaos, and in Libya, which is in chaos."

"We don’t yet have a complete strategy," but Obama about to send 500 more troops into Iraq.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Barack Obama is poised to send hundreds more American military advisers to a new base in a strategic Iraqi region to help devise a counterattack against marauding Islamic State militants, U.S. officials said Tuesday, a shift that underscores American concern over recent battlefield losses....

"Presuming ISIS is ever defeated, no peace can be sustained if Iraqis aren’t committed to preserving it."

Key line in a NYT editorial.

I think it means: There's no point in defeating ISIS.

Bob Woodward: Bush did not lie about WMD in Iraq.

Today, on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Bob Woodward about the questions the GOP candidates have been getting about Iraq: Was the 2003 invasion a mistake? Woodward answered:

[Y]ou certainly can make a persuasive argument it was a mistake. But there is a time that line going along that Bush and the other people lied about this. I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq. And lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don't let anyone stretch the case on WMD. And he was the one who was skeptical. And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, hey, look, it will only take a week or two. And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months. And so Bush pulled the trigger. A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence. But there was no lying in this that I could find.

Woodward was also asked if it was a mistake to withdraw in 2011. Wallace points out that Obama has said that he tried to negotiate a status of forces agreement but did not succeed, but "A lot of people think he really didn't want to keep any troops there." Woodward agrees that Obama didn't want to keep troops there and elaborates:

"Is David Letterman a nihilist? Or just Midwestern?/Why Rubio wouldn’t have a lock on the Hispanic vote..."

"Will Bill drag Hill down?/Bob: We’ve played right into ISIS’s recruiting narrative/Did Obama bungle Iraq and Syria?Ann and Bob debate the merits of Twitter."

That's the official listing of the topics — not exactly how I would put it — in this diavlog I did with Bob Wright yesterday.



That's the whole hour. I'm about to watch it, and I'll try to find some good, short snippets to entertain the video-averse among you. It's actually one of the topics in there: How people don't really want to watch video of any length!

ADDED: The argument that Rubio isn't the right kind of Hispanic:

"The fact is that by the end of Bush’s tenure the war had been won. You can argue that the price of that victory was too high. Fine."

"We can debate that until the end of time. But what is not debatable is that it was a victory. Bush bequeathed to Obama a success. By whose measure? By Obama’s. As he told the troops at Fort Bragg on Dec. 14, 2011, 'We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.' This was, said the president, a 'moment of success.' Which Obama proceeded to fully squander. With the 2012 election approaching, he chose to liquidate our military presence in Iraq. We didn’t just withdraw our forces. We abandoned, destroyed or turned over our equipment, stores, installations and bases. We surrendered our most valuable strategic assets, such as control of Iraqi airspace, soon to become the indispensable conduit for Iran to supply and sustain the Assad regime in Syria and cement its influence all the way to the Mediterranean. And, most relevant to the fall of Ramadi, we abandoned the vast intelligence network we had so painstakingly constructed in Anbar province, without which our current patchwork operations there are largely blind and correspondingly feeble. The current collapse was not predetermined in 2003 but in 2011. Isn’t that what should be asked of Hillary Clinton? We know you think the invasion of 2003 was a mistake. But what about the abandonment of 2011? Was that not a mistake?"

Writes Charles Krauthammer.

"Residents — supporters and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad — described officers fleeing, leaving civilians and lowly conscript soldiers to fend for themselves."

"One business owner said he watched pro-government militiamen run helter-skelter into orchards, not sure where to retreat. 'Treason,' he called it. But most of all, they said, they had lost any sense that the government could provide safety even to its loyalists. On Thursday, after the militants had taken over the city and begun executing people they deemed close to the government, many residents cowered in their houses and basements, terrified of militants in the streets and of government shelling and airstrikes from the sky. Some found it ominous that the state news media had incorrectly declared that most civilians had been evacuated, perhaps an excuse to increase airstrikes."

From "Frantic Message as Palmyra, Syria, Fell: 'We're Finished'" (NYT).

Elsewhere in the NYT (on the same day, May 21st): "Defending ISIS Policy, Obama Acknowledges Flaws in Effort So Far."

"There’s no doubt that in the Sunni areas, we’re going to have to ramp up not just training but also commitment, and we better get Sunni tribes more activated than they currently have been," Mr. Obama said. "So it is a source of concern."

"Many questions will now be asked in Damascus and Baghdad — and above all in Washington..."

"... about how the militants have managed to score major advances in both Iraq and Syria this week despite all the efforts to stop them. IS was supposed to be on the defensive in Iraq, where the prime minister announced weeks ago the launching of a campaign to drive the militants out of Anbar province. Now he's lost its capital, Ramadi, just days before they took Palmyra in Syria. The western coalition's bombing campaign has clearly hurt IS where it could. But it could never compensate for ground forces which are not competent, equipped or motivated enough to stand firm and hit back. nly the Kurds in the north of both countries (most recently in north-eastern Syria) have proven able to do that."

From the BBC report "Islamic State seizes Syria's ancient Palmyra."

"American warplanes began airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Tikrit late Wednesday..."

"... entering a struggling Iraqi offensive to retake the city for the first time after more than three weeks of remaining on the sidelines."

Even as some Iraqi security officials began worrying about the absence of airstrikes, Hadi al-Ameri, the prominent leader of the group of Shiite militias known here as popular mobilization committees, criticized any outreach toward the United States.

“Some of the weaklings in the army say that we need the Americans, but we say we do not need the Americans,” Mr. Ameri said.

The answer to the question I had that was the reason why I was refraining from writing about that Tom Cotton Iran letter.

I couldn't understand the nature of the controversy without knowing whether the letter was actually sent to Iran, and I read a bunch of articles about the letter without seeing an answer. Finally, this National Review headline popped up: "The Cotton Letter Was Not Sent Anywhere, Especially Not to Iran."

It was just an essay in the familiar (if not trite) form of an "open letter." It's a rhetorical device that assumes a point of view, as if X is talking to Y. We can criticize the form and the content.

As content, it undercuts (or seems to undercut) what the President seems to be trying to do. I don't know what the President is really doing with respect to Iran, but I am observing what Iran is doing (being allowed/encouraged to do?) in Iraq. Members of Congress undercut the President sometimes, and having lived through the Vietnam era, I'm no going to say they should shut up entirely, but there is a line and we could argue about when it is crossed. I'd say Harry Reid went too far when he said "This war is lost."

But let's talk about the form. The form was great at getting attention, possibly too much attention. And speaking of attention, I don't think the letter is too well-written. The word "attention" is repeated in the first 2 sentences, and not in a good way. In an inattentive way. "It has come to our attention... we are writing to bring to your attention...." That comes across as pompous officialese, like something from a bill collector or from a lawyer who's trying to scare you into ceasing and desisting from something or other.

The letter proceeds to offer legal advice in an oversimplified and puzzling way. An executive agreement is only an executive agreement and will be regarded as an executive agreement. Yes, and? It's something the next president can "revoke... with a stroke of the pen." Style note: Get rid of any unintentional rhymes, especially when you're trying to sound all official and pompous.

The closing sentence features pretty words — "We hope this letter enriches your knowledge... and promotes mutual understanding and clarity...." Hope, knowledge, understanding, and clarity. Isn't this the standard move in letters from bill collectors and lawyers? End with a few nice words about going forward in a positive way?

I hope this blog post has enriched your knowledge and understanding as we move forward into the future.

"In some ways, Hagel was the President’s Republican doppelgänger: skeptical of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan..."

"... eager to bring home U.S. troops, and reluctant to get the United States embroiled militarily elsewhere in the Middle East," writes John Cassidy in The New Yorker.

If the primary goal was to complete Obama’s agenda of disengaging from Iraq and Afghanistan, then having Hagel at the Pentagon seemed to make sense. In the past year or so, though, the policy of disengagement has been superseded.... There is no suggestion that Hagel opposed either of these policy changes. Indeed, he was one of the first senior U.S. officials to warn that ISIS represented a serious danger to American interests, which was said to have irked Obama’s aides at the time...

... President Obama appears to have decided that, with the U.S. stepping up its military involvement in various parts of the world, he needed a more hands-on, and on-message, figure at the Pentagon. That’s understandable. But so is the widespread skepticism about the official version of Hagel’s departure, including Republicans’ eagerness to make hay of it. “Secretary Hagel did not believe that the foreign policy is working or is going to work,” Republican congressman Peter King, of New York, told CNN.

That statement reeks of overstatement, which is typical of King. But it underscores that Obama, having just enjoyed his best few weeks as President in a long time, has just refocussed attention on an area, foreign policy, where his enemies sense vulnerability.

"His enemies"? That confused me. I'm pretty sure what Cassidy means by "his enemies" is Republicans. But he was just talking about ISIS, an actual military enemy. That shift in focus was abrupt and telling, especially following the acknowledgment that Hagel had been useful because he was a Republican.

By the way, the picture at the link is just perfect.

"Sen. Paul Releases Declaration of War Against Islamic State."

Press release, received by email this morning:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Rand Paul today released a draft Declaration of War resolution against Islamic State (also known as ISIS) that he intends on introducing when Congress comes back into session in December.

As the New York Times reported today, Sen. Paul plans to introduce a resolution to declare war against the Islamic State, terminate the authority under the 2002 Iraq AUMF, and set a date for expiration of the 2001 Afghanistan AUMF.

“When Congress comes back into session in December, I will introduce a resolution to declare war against ISIS. I believe the President must come to Congress to begin a war and that Congress has a duty to act. Right now, this war is illegal until Congress acts pursuant to the Constitution and authorizes it,“ Sen. Paul said.