WARNING:

This essay contains multiple usages of a six-letter racial epithet starting with “N,” all of which are found within quotes.

I was at home this evening calling people in Texas for the Barack Obama campaign.  (I stop a half-hour earlier than the campaign recommends, having gotten reamed out a few times by various people for the sin of calling past 8:30 p.m. when all good people have already gone to sleep; I waited to write this diary until then.)  I was finishing up a message on someone’s machine when my call waiting beeped: I was getting a call from an unfamiliar number.  Because I was expecting a call back from a coordinator with the Obama for Texas campaign, I rushed through the end of the message and picked up the call.

This is not really intended to foster a lot of discussion, although it’s great if it does.  I’m just depositing a little rudimentary social science research here for safe-keeping.  The dream of many social scientists is to be there taking notes right at the beginning of when a phenomenon begins.  I was reading some reports on the debate last night and the recent McCain stooge’s rally introduction, and suddenly it struck me that sooner or later people were going to hit on this phrase.  It turned out to be sooner — I’m about a month late to have spotted the start of the bud — but I still think this is worth noting here before the meme blossoms any further.

That meme is reference to this name: “Jesus Hussein Christ.”

I’m not even sure what it evokes, or what is intended to mean, and a review of the sources I cite below suggests that it can be positive, negative, or neutral to Obama, to Muslims, and maybe to Christians as well, and that has occurred to people with evident good senses of humor and those without.  But as of today it has occurred only 25 times, discounting repetitive entries, according to the Google, and if you look at the date stamps you can see it is going to be taking off, especially if Obama is nominated and even more so if he is then elected.

If it were purely absurdity, I’d find it merely witty.  But, of course, if you read the sources below — and I don’t recommend it, except for the funny bits from http://kinetic.seattle.wa.us, which is pretty good — you’ll see that this is also going to be used as a weapon against Obama.  I’m not sure what forearming this forewarning might offer, whether there’s a way to blunt the racism that some people appear to see and delight in it, but at least it’s here for our consideration.

The Academy Awards start in a few minutes.  While they can be treated as a political topic in many ways — even without commenting on the labor situation in the arts — that’s not my topic today.

This has been a slow year for prestige moviegoing on my part.  For the first time I can remember — maybe for the first time since I became a teenager — I have seen none of the films nominated for Best Picture.  Of them, I’m most inclined to see “Michael Clayton” to see how well its depiction of New York lawyering matches mine, and I’ll be pleased if it wins.  (I’d also be happy for Clooney to get an Oscar for Best Actor, though I hear that Daniel Day-Lewis is a lock; please don’t let it go to Johnny Depp for a performance that is so inferior to the classic Sweeney Todds of George Hearn and Len Cariou.)  But mostly, I don’t much care who wins.

Nor do I care about the face-off for the Best Documentary prize between No End in Sight and SiCKO; while I’ve only seen the latter, I’ve heard enough about the former to believe that both films deserve wide audiences and I’m not going to choose between the issues of Iraq and Health Care on the basis of importance.  I choose both.  I’ll root for a tie.

No, the award I care about is in a category where the winner is considered to be a foregone conclusion, and I am rooting loudly for the underdog.  I want to publish my thoughts for the record before the award ceremony begins — and the wrong film almost certainly wins.

The category is Best Animated Feature.  And now, for your consideration, a rant.

Hard positions have been staked out regarding what the Democratic superdelegates should do if they are mathematically able to determine who wins the nomination for President.  Obama supporters argue that if the popular will — presumably such a will that supports Obama, and putting aside for now the question of how clearly it can be ascertained — is overturned by superdelegates, they will leave the party forever.  More credibly and more importantly, they argue that the large number of new voters who appear to be energized by the Obama candidacy — young Democrats, independents, etc. — will not come out for Hillary.  Clinton supporters argue — here, if not as regards Florida and Michigan — that rules is rules, and that the superdelegates’ untrammeled right to choose the President they prefer cannot be taken away at this late date.

Full disclosure: I’ve been an Obama supporter since shortly after Edwards was held to 5% in Nevada.  I try to be fair about it when it comes to superdelegate voting ethics, though, and I think that there is some room for agreement between these sides.  While many argue that it simply won’t come to this, that superdelegates will not overturn the popular will, it certainly seems possible to me that it might.  I expect Clinton to pull back ahead in the delegate count, with the help of Ohio even without the help of Texas, by the time Pennsylvania’s votes are counted on April 22.  While I believe that Obama should do well enough in the primaries in May and June to finish with a delegate lead, it’s possible that it won’t happen, or certainly possible that that lead will be slight.

By considering what the different possibilities are, I think that we can at least narrow the debate.  We won’t find completely common ground, but we should find more than one would expect after watching this week’s news.  More below.

x-posted to BooMan Tribune

I stand by my pessimism that Hillary Clinton can be driven out of the race prior to substantial losses in the likes of North Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky in May.  I stand by my pessimism that the Clintons would be better positioned to twist arms in a brokered convention, and that Hillary would win in part by offering Obama the poisoned apple of the Vice-Presidency, which he will turn down.  But it has occurred to me that there is one way that Obama would be able to win over a brokered convention, and it would coincidentally lead to the best ticket and the best government we could rightfully expect.

He can convince Al Gore to become his Vice-President.

I’ve just finished about two hours of making phone calls for Obama in Washington state, ahead of tomorrow’s caucuses.  They are going to be a nightmare, and Hillary may win them because of it.  Be on guard for that.

More after the jump.

Here are some observations on yesterday’s vote.  (There will be more in the days to come now that I have some time back after making around 1000 calls for the Obama campaign.)

Talking about Hillary is the main course in this diary, but would you like to start with an appetizer?  Let’s talk about Huckabee.  The venerable NYT announces that Huckabee has been revived with a solid showing in the South.  This is stupid.  Why?  Well, let’s take a look at the GOP primary map.  Huckabee is running out of South!

See, the problem with winning mostly just one section of the country is that after that section has voted in its primaries — it doesn’t vote again.  (Michigan and Florida will, I predict, be exceptions to this rule, as the Democrats let them vote again in late May or early June, or perhaps hold caucuses or choose delegates at state conventions.)

So if you look at that map and try to find “South,” you’ll see that Huckabee has Louisiana coming up on Saturday (I predict he’ll win), Virginia (only semi-South these days) next Tuesday, Texas (again not fully South) on March 4, and Mississippi on March 11.  Even if he lasts that long, he won’t last long enough to see North Carolina, Kentucky, or (counting the bottom part of the state) Indiana vote in May.  So, Huckabee is not “revived” — he has, instead, “shot his wad,” although I don’t think the NYT would include that in a headline.  But they need a storyline, so there they go.  Romney will still finish second when push comes to shove.  I don’t think either one of them will be on the ticket, though: look to Govs. Pawlenty or Crist or (my dark horse, if Rudy can swallow it) Pataki for that.

Is anyone else running out of a precious electoral resource?  Why, yes!  Pretend you didn’t already read the title and look below the fold.

For the past two weeks, ever since it became clear that John Edwards was no longer viable, I have been a precinct captain for Barack Obama in the city of Brea, my current home in north Orange County.  I have two precincts, in fact; as the one next to mine was not spoken for, and I didn’t want to leave it uncovered.  So for much of the past two weeks, I’ve been on the phone, calling voters.  Two precincts is about as much as I could handle; in fact, I didn’t finish calling the last 50 voters in my second precinct.  (I may try to catch some of them tomorrow.)  Still, I called over 600 voters — some of which were wrong numbers, not home, etc. — and now it’s time to reap the benefits of having laid that groundwork.

I didn’t have time to canvass homes in person — I don’t think that my talking to people in my own precinct on their doorsteps would be more useful than leaving messages with a large group of other people in the neighboring one.  But now that we’ve identified supporters and undecided voters, I did have time to do a lit drop this evening — about 70 houses.  I made up my own flyer to include with the campaign literature; it explains what I’m thinking and why I think it’s important.

I don’t think that the issue differences between Obama and Clinton are that significant, frankly.  Take health care, for example.  Both of them are wrong: the way to cover everyone, as Atrios says, is to cover everyone: automatic enrollment, with premiums for the base level of coverage included in taxes.  We don’t need mandates, etc.: we need to make that problem go away.  But because whatever the President proposes is not going to be what Congress passes, and because I think either of them will sign a decent bill, their current difference on that issue doesn’t matter to me.

What matters to me is winning the White House.  And so I wrote this letter, which was slipped into the screen doors of our supporters and to undecided voters.  It represents my own views as a campaign volunteer, and was not paid for the campaign.