John McCain is riding high in the polls right now. As of right now, he seems to be on the inside track to win the Presidential nomination. He is one of the few candidates who is currently leading Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the general election polls. And yet, it turns out that the McCain Doctrine on Iraq is now unraveling.

John McCain, whose campaign was left for dead last summer, was able to revive in part by portraying himself as a heroic figure who stood up and challenged the Bush administration on Iraq and called out Donald Rumsfeld. He was therefore able to attract Republican critics of the war that might otherwise have gone to Ron Paul; he was able to attract them by showing how the war was allegedly mismanaged. But McCain is now a ticking time bomb who is in danger of imploding. He hitched his wagons to the Petraeus Surge so that when there was more stability in Iraq, he could turn around and say that he was right all along. Already, Mitt Romney is drawing even with McCain in the polls in Florida.

John McCain’s political fortunes in this race rise or fall with the success or failure of the “surge.” And given the stories below, it seems that it has not addressed the ongoing violence in Iraq. People may argue at this point that there is a lot more stability in Iraq than there was several months ago. But the current relative stability in Iraq has nothing to do with the so-called “surge.” But it turns out that the current stability, which could unravel at any time, was a result of deals that were brokered by Northern Ireland and South African negotiators and 16 of the main Iraqi political factions. So, even if there was stability, John McCain cannot justifiably claim credit for it in the first place.

Last month, NPR reported on Iraqis going out and shopping during the Eid Holiday. But this brief period of hope has given way to a grim situation in which Iraqis are going without fuel and electricity:

You can’t have one without the other, but with many of Iraq’s power plants shut and refineries stopped, Iraqis have neither fuel nor electricity.

Iraq’s Electricity Ministry is blaming the Oil Ministry for cutting fuel supplies and Turkey for ending electricity imports.

The Oil Ministry says continuous power to its refineries will lead to continuous supplies of fuel.

“We hear a lot of promises but we see nothing,” Baghdad resident Amjad Kazim told Gulf News. Blackouts and long lines at the fuel stations are increasing as subsidized, state-controlled supplies run dry and the black market boosts prices.

In Baghdad’s neighborhoods, black market auto fuel prices have jumped by nearly 20 percent in the past week, according to IraqSlogger.com.

There is now only two hours of power a day in Iraq in most parts of the country, thanks to suppliers cutting exports to Iraq. And the fact that Iraq is an importer of oil and not an exporter of oil is significant — that means that the instability is still at the point where it is too risky to try to export oil to sell on the foreign markets. Back when we first invaded and occupied Iraq, we were told that we would have cheap oil. But now, not only are gas prices at record levels, Iraq is now an importer of oil rather than an exporter.

The shortage of fuel and energy in Iraq has led to massive displacement of people above and beyond the current refugee crisis. The article notes that there are homes where 20 people are taking refuge because they do not have electricity at their own homes.

And for all the claims that the McCain Doctrine has provided peace and stability in Iraq, it turns out that the McCain Doctrine cannot even provide basic security for oil installations:

Last week attackers showed their continued success, taking out towers and stations in Baghdad, Baiji and Kirkuk, which cut power from Baghdad and other areas to the north and west.

“Pylons and lines damaged in these areas cannot be repaired,” Sultan told the Azzaman newspaper, because it’s not safe enough for workers, long a target of insurgents, to enter the areas needing to be fixed. Sultan called on the United States to provide better security.

So, it seems that rather than the surge working, it seems that the people who are actively fighting our occupation have simply changed tactics. Rather than targeting ethnic neighborhoods or vanished into the night, it seems that they have adapted by hitting the Iraqi puppet government where they are the least secure — oil pipelines and infrastructure. As a result, foreign companies that were exporting oil to Iraq have decided that it is not worth their while to try to keep exporting oil, knowing that it is just a financial black hole.

And not only is Iraq as unstable as always, it seems that the Bush administration can’t even get their numbers to add up to see if the main benchmarks of the McCain Doctrine are working:

The White House says Iraq’s central government improved its capital budget spending to 24 percent through the first 6.5 months of 2007; the ministries of Oil and Electricity spent 21 percent and 26 percent of its capital budget, respectively.

But Finance Ministry figures passed on by the U.S. Treasury Department say spending has decreased, not increased, to 0.01 percent for the Oil Ministry and 0.004 percent for Electricity Ministry, according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The report, intending to look at progress in capital spending from 2006 to 2007, concluded the varying data prevented it from determining any success.

The McCain Doctrine, in a nutshell, was designed to buy time for the Iraqi political factions to come together and form a more perfect union. But that is not happening:

New military operations in Diyala province north of Baghdad have exacerbated a growing conflict between U.S.-backed Sunni fighters on the one hand and Iraqi army and police forces on the other.

The U.S. military commenced a large military operation Jan. 8 in the volatile Diyala province. Seven U.S. battalions led an offensive to push out fighters affiliated with ‘Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia’ from the area.

In the current operation, U.S., Iraqi, and local fighters have faced no serious resistance. U.S. military commanders admitted shortly after operations began that anti-occupation fighters were likely tipped off, and fled the area. But the operation has thrown up conflicts within the ranks.

“The military forces comprise the coalition forces, Iraqi police and army, and the popular forces (commonly called Kataib),” political analyst Akram Sabri told IPS in Baquba, capital of Diyala province. “It was found that the local forces are more truculent fighters who can always be relied on. This has made the coalition forces increasingly reliant upon these fighters to the extent that they will one day likely be joined to Iraqi police and army.”

The Kataib Sabri speaks of are what the U.S. military calls “concerned local citizens.” Most are former resistance fighters, now being paid 300 dollars a month to stop attacking occupation forces and to back them instead.

“The new prestige that Kataib enjoy has enraged the Iraqi police and army,” an officer in the directorate-general of police, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “In one operation in a village near Khalis city 15 km west of Baquba, the directorate-general of police contributed just 20 men, while the Kataib fighters numbered 450. This shows how the Americans now rely more on the Kataib than on us.”

The problem is that the so-called Iraqi “government” will never recognize the Kataib Sabri as part of their army. All the Bush administration is doing is fueling the Civil War that is already taking place and that is responsible for much of the violence there. And there is another question that is begging to be asked — what will happen when all of the financial support for the Kataib Sabri dries up? Will their fighters continue to be loyal? Or will they attack our forces again?

And part of the McCain Doctrine involves the invasion of Iran as well as Iraq. This is simply more of the same old politics as usual from that crowd — always refight the battles of the past; if Iraq and Vietnam were such failures, why not attack another country and maybe we will have more resolve this time and exorcise the demons of the past? Except that the latest case for attacking Iran is unraveling:

Although nukes and Iraq have been the main focus of the Bush Administration’s pressure campaign against Iran, US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush’s latest tactic is to play up a thirteen-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city’s Jewish Community Center, known as AMIA, killing eighty-six and injuring 300, in 1994. Unnamed senior Administration officials told the Wall Street Journal January 15 that the bombing in Argentina “serves as a model for how Tehran has used its overseas embassies and relationship with foreign militant groups, in particular Hezbollah, to strike at its enemies.”

This propaganda campaign depends heavily on a decision last November by the General Assembly of Interpol, which voted to put five former Iranian officials and a Hezbollah leader on the international police organization’s “red list” for allegedly having planned the July 1994 bombing. But the Wall Street Journal reports that it was pressure from the Bush Administration, along with Israeli and Argentine diplomats, that secured the Interpol vote. In fact, the Bush Administration’s manipulation of the Argentine bombing case is perfectly in line with its long practice of using distorting and manufactured evidence to build a case against its geopolitical enemies.

After spending several months interviewing officials at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires familiar with the Argentine investigation, the head of the FBI team that assisted it and the most knowledgeable independent Argentine investigator of the case, I found that no real evidence has ever been found to implicate Iran in the bombing. Based on these interviews and the documentary record of the investigation, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the case against Iran over the AMIA bombing has been driven from the beginning by US enmity toward Iran, not by a desire to find the real perpetrators.

So, it seems that the McCain Doctrine is in shambles — the “surge” is doing nothing to contribute to the peace and stability of Iraq, while that country is going without most basic services once again. Our main challenge should be to get the word out so that people can see that McCain Doctrine for the charade that it is.

I think we can all agree that race baiting, whatever its origin in each individual case, is poisoning the well in the Democratic primary. It’s the issue that just won’t die; the one that needs a stake through its heart – ASAP, please.

Consider this quote from a TIME.com piece:

Obama’s impressive win meant all the more given the nature of politics in South Carolina, a state whose history is fraught with race and class. Some observers wondered if the state’s voters were becoming more racially polarized in the final days before the primary. That speculation was fueled by one late McClatchy/MSNBC survey that suggested Obama could expect to receive no more than 10% of the white vote, half of what the same poll had shown only a week before. But Obama instead won about a quarter of the white vote overall, and around half of young white voters, on his way to a commanding 55% of the total vote (Clinton finished second with roughly 27% and Edwards came in third with 18%). The excitement around Obama’s candidacy pushed turnout to record levels – a kind of surge, says Obama strategist Cornell Belcher, that “is something only Barack Obama is capable of bringing to the table.”

But that’s not the cute part.

The “cute part” was the title of the piece, which has been changed.

This link shows you a screenshot of the piece as originally titled.

In the current environment, you cannot tell me that that is an accident.

Well, you could tell me that….but I’d ask you what you were smoking.

Contact: [email protected]

‘Cuz I’m gonna.

Enough of this crap.

For the past week or so, the Clintons have demonstrated what a continuation of dynastic politics would be like in our federal government …a continuation of the divisive politics that has so characterized the past twenty years …Bush senior; Bill; W; and now, God forbid, Hill. America, the world cannot withstand another eight years of this type of politics. Nor can America live the next eight years in a foxhole as the Republicans, especially John McCain, would have us do. It is time for America to lift its sites, return to the time when America was indeed, the shinning light on the hill. America, as represented by our government, has a responsibility to its people and to the people of the world to rise above the fray and lead the world into the future. We cannot be that nation if we lower our sights to defending out of the Republican foxhole or bumbling along with stale ideas, ill-conceived policies, misspeaking and misunderstood presided-over by a two-headed leadership team. This country needs a singular voice to rally-around, who is responsible and capable of leading us into the future, mindful of the past but not constrained by its failures …a leader who is capable of bringing us along in quest of a higher vision for America and who accepts accountability for getting us there. The only acceptable choices are John Edwards and Barack Obama.

John Edwards has a certain appeal, it is inward focused and reparative …

…a boy who came from humble beginnings in Seneca [South Carolina] can grow up to run for president, then anything is possible. I know we can work together-rich and poor, urban and rural-to build one America, where everyone who works hard has a chance to achieve the American dream.

but, it is not transcending. Edwards’ vision is that everyone, no matter their beginnings, will have the opportunity to be a candidate, “…to run for president….” In America, we need more, we need a president with his sights set on a higher calling …a calling for our nation and not just a personal one. One that summons all of us to strive even higher so that our nation will overcome the failures in our spirit, in our economy, in our world-view, in our national and world leadership …a vision with the leadership needed to help us reacquire our place in the sun. Obama seems best suited to salve this crying need of America. We need to become what our collective imagination holds for America. A transformative administration is the only logical and intelligent choice. Obama says it best.

The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders.  It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.

It’s about the past versus the future.

Will America rise above the petty, divisive politics of the past generations [from whence I and a majority of Americans have resided] and move to a future of inclusiveness and the politics of the possible? Only time will tell. We have a choice. Will America grasp for the brass ring of an even greater future or, will we fall back into the past, dig our foxholes even deeper, ward off the world and shrivel into another failed society? Societies come and go, few have been able to transcend the obstacles placed before them and move their people into a brighter future. America has an earth changing choice in this election. I, fervently, hope that we do not miss the opportunity to better secure our future.

UPDATE: On FTN today, Hillary Clinton indicated that she is OK with Bill’s approach to supporting her candidacy. Apparently, the only way to differentiate in a campaign is to disparage the other fellow.

Cross-posted at: The Big Orange.  

This is an Open Thread: There is no time limit

Sunday’s Headlines: At Florida Polls, Touch Screens and Crossed Fingers: Pundits in early rush to judge Bush’s legacy: Dozens die in Kenyan riots: A rough guide to Hebron: The world’s strangest guided tour highlights the abuse of Palestinians: Margaret Thatcher told navy to raid Swedish coast: Top agents in secret trip to Pakistan

Obama Wins South Carolina Primary

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Senator Barack Obama won a commanding victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, drawing a wide majority of black support and one-quarter of white voters in a contest that sets the stage for a multistate fight for the party’s presidential nomination.

In a bitter campaign here infused with discussions of race, Mr. Obama’s convincing victory puts him on equal footing with Mrs. Clinton – with two wins each in early-voting states – and gives him fresh momentum as the contest plunges into a nationwide battle over the next 10 days.

USA

At Florida Polls, Touch Screens and Crossed Fingers

MIAMI — There will be no “hanging chads” this time around in Florida. The punch-card voting that plagued the 2000 presidential election in the state is long gone.

But with Florida’s primary on Tuesday, some in the state are bracing for more potential ballot trouble because the new electronic touch-screen machines in much of the state have aroused doubts of their own.

Florida legislators voted essentially to ban them earlier this year, after confusion in a 2006 congressional contest in Sarasota wound up in court. But the next set of machines will not be ready until the general election in November, forcing election officials to press the controversial machines back into use one more time.

Pundits in early rush to judge Bush’s legacy

Paul Harris

Sunday January 27, 2008

The Observer

Being ignored is bad enough for anyone. But when you are President of the United States it must be doubling humiliating. Yet Democrats are too busy fighting each other to mention him and Republicans fear to be associated with his record.

Now George W Bush – whose successor won’t take office until January 2009 – is also suffering the indignity of having his historical legacy unfavourably examined while still having almost a year left of his second term. A slew of books and a planned major film are all starting to judge Bush’s place in history even as he keeps the seat warm in the Oval Office.

Africa

Dozens die in Kenyan riots

Kofi Annan calls for probe into civil rights abuses as machete gangs and arsonists settle old scores, reports Tracy McVeigh

Kenyan police were yesterday fighting to control gangs who have killed at least 27 people over three days of chaotic violence in the town of Nakuru, capital of the Rift Valley region.

Burnt bodies were being removed from the streets and more than 100 people were in hospital suffering injuries from burns to machete and arrow wounds. Hundreds more were forced to shelter in local churches after homes were set on fire by mobs settling tribal scores. The town, in western Kenya, had previously been spared the scenes that erupted across the country after December’s deeply flawed presidential re-election that left some 700 people dead. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has joined efforts to resolve weeks of unrest and yesterday he called for an investigation into ‘gross and systematic’ rights abuses in Kenya.

Mugabe sets election date

President Robert Mugabe said yesterday that Zimbabwe will hold general elections on 29 March, but the opposition denounced the date as a snub to regional mediation efforts to guarantee a fair vote.

The 83-year old leader, who has ruled the country since independence in 1980 and is running for another five-year term, said parliament would be dissolved the day before Zimbabweans vote in presidential and parliamentary elections.

Middle East

Gaza’s falling wall changes Middle East map for ever

The tide of humans pouring over the frontier from Gaza into Egypt for days has now become a vast convoy of carts, cars and lorries. Peter Beaumont joined the jubilant throng who watched as the borders of a conflict that has lasted for generations were crossed

They came and went in lorries and gas tankers, in flatbed trucks loaded with cattle and sheep, in coaches and mini-buses, loaded by the dozen in the backs of trucks, all shuttling across Gaza’s southern border. Four days ago they went on foot like refugees, but yesterday for the first time the trucks drove through and it felt like an unstoppable momentum had been reached.

They carried generators and goats, diesel and huge piles of carrots and cabbages. But most of all they carried the message that Israel’s long blockade of Gaza is over. ‘I want to get some cheese,’ says Ameera Ahmad, after crossing the border from Gaza into Egypt yesterday. ‘And honey. Look, crisps! I haven’t seen a bag of crisps for months.’

A rough guide to Hebron: The world’s strangest guided tour highlights the abuse of Palestinians

Yehuda Shaul is a religious Israeli who served in the army. Now he runs guided tours highlighting the abuse of Palestinians. It’s controversial and dangerous work – so hy does he do it? Donald MacIntyre finds out on a unique tragical history tour

Close to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the site holy to both Muslims and Jews in Hebron’s city centre, Yehuda Shaul, a religious Israeli who served in an elite Army combat unit in the city during the worst of the Palestinian uprising, is trying to guide a tour round four Jewish settlements in the heart of an overwhelmingly Arab city.

It starts in Shuhada Street, which runs through what is now the settlers’ security zone, the rows of empty Palestinian shops and houses boarded up with steel shutters, many daubed with Stars of David to show who is in charge here. The only permitted vehicles are those of the settlers and the Israeli military.

Europe

Rogue trader Jerome Kerviel held by police

THE rogue trader accused of single-handedly orchestrating the world’s biggest investment bank fraud was being questioned by French police last night about whether he had an accomplice.

Jérôme Kerviel was taken into custody after police searched his home and his office at Société Générale. The bank claims that unauthorised trading by the 31-year-old cost it £3.7 billion. Daniel Bouton, the beleaguered chairman, insisted yesterday that the trader had acted alone, like an “arsonist” who “burnt down a big factory”.

Margaret Thatcher told navy to raid Swedish coast

MARGARET THATCHER ordered the Royal Navy to land Special Boat Service (SBS) frogmen on the coast of Sweden from British submarines pretending to be Soviet vessels, a new book has claimed.

The deception involved numerous incursions by British forces into Swedish territorial waters in the 1980s and early 1990s, designed to heighten the impression around the world of the Soviet Union as an aggressive superpower.

Sometimes the boats landed commandos, but often their job was to fool the Swedes by mimicking the sonar signals given off by the Soviet vessels that stalked the same waters.

Latin America

Mexico: Arrest in cardinal’s 1993 murder

TIJUANA, Mexico – An alleged drug cartel hit man who is among the suspects in the 1993 slaying of a Mexican cardinal was arrested in the border city of Tijuana, authorities announced on Saturday.

Alfredo Araujo Avila, also known as “Popeye,” allegedly worked for the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel for more than two decades, Gen. German Redondo, commander of the local army base, told reporters.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was riddled with bullets on May 24, 1993, while he was sitting in his car at the airport in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city.

Asia

Top agents in secret trip to Pakistan

WASHINGTON – The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from President Pervez Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border, a senior U.S. official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity given the secret nature of the talks, declined to disclose what was said, but Musharraf was quoted two days after the Jan. 9 meeting as saying U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt al-Qaida militants.

Disgraced and vilified, Suharto dies aged 86

Indonesia’s former dictator Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia’s communist movement and pushed aside the country’s founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died today. He was 86.

“He has died,” Dr Christian Johannes said that he died at 1.10pm local time.

Finally toppled by mass street protests in 1998, the US Cold War ally’s departure opened the way for democracy in this predominantly Muslim nation of 235 million people and he withdrew from public life, rarely venturing from his comfortable villa on a leafy lane in the capital.

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

Abraham got up off of the grass and started walking, he had no reason to, and saw no purpose in, ever stopping.

Tears were streaming down his face and he could not remember ever feeling so sorry for himself. And he could not remember ever acknowledging that he felt sorry for himself…while feeling sorry for himself. That’s how sorry for himself he felt.

His mind wandered even more than his body, but the landscape their was decidedly uglier. He was walking through waist high yellowgreen prairie grass, his eyes nominally on the red sandstone horizon and his auto-pilot presumably taking him towards some distant point. He flushed a mother fox and her two kits. The mother looked up at him with a look of pity. The kits ran playfully into the tall grass, unaware that a vast and complex human drama was playing out in their vicinity.

All his life….all his FUCKING life, it seemed like, people had had a use for him, manipulated him, wanted to train him and point him like some machine. All his life, and now he was fucking dead and here he was with some English gentleman wannabe with a bad Indian accent and Ghandi glasses telling him that even in death there was no peace, that even now the struggle continued, that the fight was endless…and so….unwinable.

Then a raven crapped on his shoulder.

And he just kept walking.

No way was he going back, no way was he going to serve another master, no way was he going to kill any longer on command. Fuck it, what could they do, kill him?

Night fell and he kept walking as a full moon rose over the lip of the sandstone cliffs. He reached the base of them and sat down next to a mesquite bush. Before he really knew it he had assembled the makings of a fire from twigs and branches. He instinctively patted his clothes where his lwindproof lighter would be if he  was still wearing his Center issued chamo suit. When he became truly conscious of what he was doing, it made a lump of feeling come up inside him like a meal of bad pork. He let it rise, when he normally would have fought it. And he sat in the dark by his unlit fir and as yet another wave of emotion rose within him and as he just sat there and bawled like a little baby …again… a-fucking-gain. He had to get a grip. This was NOT who he was.

He was a warrior dammit. One of the best of the best. he didn’t know if he could walk out of this place, he would find that out in the morning. But he had been through The Center’s survival school, which was of course, the best on earth.

Of course, he supposed that he wasn’t actually technically ON earth anymore. But there was game and fuel for cooking and water and he was DAMNED if he was going to toe another line and just give in again and do the bidding of some master. He was through with that shit for good. And if worst came to worst he would be very happy to just follow the example of the hero of his fighting arts instructor back at The Center, Bhodidharma. He would sit down in front of a sandstone wall and meditate until he either wasted away or…..something happened.

That would teach them.

An old salty Irishman, half Pagan, half Catholic, a bootlegger by night and a blue collar man by day…he’d take me for drives in his K-Car or Escort wreaking of stale cigarettes and Old Spice.  The car would round a special bend that reminded him of his homeland and he’d give me wink and say “This here is God’s Country”.  That phrase meant a lot to me because I knew my grandfather was very serious about his religion…he crossed himself every time he drove by a Church…so I figured he had a special in with The Lord for doing all of that heavy lifting down here on Earth.  Well grandpa…I finally finished the chain that you started when setting foot aboard that ship so many years ago.  I have me a piece of God’s Country and I’m bound and determined to make it work.  My life is half gone, the first half wasn’t special by anyone’s measuring stick, but maybe this last half was what I was meant for.

The horses are fed and bedded down for the night the dishes are done, the barn cats and birds are fed as well.  The dog has been walked he’s passed out at my side.  He loves the horses, gave them both kisses on their first meeting.  It’s snowing just a bit, making the light reflect off the snow.  The house is small but cozy, needs some work but don’t we all.  Hey they got intertubez in God’s Country by the way, just gotta use some of that satellite love to do it.  I’m sure the Holy Rollers will be pleased to hear that.  Found some tapes left behind from the previous owner…now I know who buys soundtrack recordings of pop movies…and yes Celine Dion was in the mix.  

I’m fading fast,  g’night Grandpa.

Tonight’s victory of Barack Obama was a lot bigger than anyone expected. Most pollsters expected a victory of around 10 points; only one predicted a victory of 20 points. While they correctly predicted the uptick in support for Edwards, they did not predict the huge margin of victory that Obama would take.

The X Factor in this race was the attacks of Bill Clinton on Obama this week. However, it turned out that these attacks created a huge backlash against Hillary and led to Obama’s unexpectedly wide margin. Obama’s victory will undoubtedly give him momentum going into the next race; however, the big question is how much?

The reason that I ask this question is because the next battle will be totally different than the four battles that came before it. In the previous four battles, the winner was the candidate who could do the best at practicing retail politics — this was a turf that clearly favored Obama. With his huge gift for oratory and his ability to draw some of the largest crowds ever for political campaigns, Barack Obama was able to generate the kind of grassroots support that propelled him to convincing wins in Iowa and South Carolina, a narrow loss in New Hampshire, and a tie in Nevada.

But this will be a totally different battle than the one before it, because it will be decided on the airwaves. Stump speeches will be important, but the candidates will have to try to appeal to audiences much bigger than the small audiences that they appealed to before. The battle will be won and lost based on who can create the best commercials that appeal to voters. So, if Obama cannot give people flashes of his oratorical skills in 30 seconds, then he will be in even more hot water than he is already — he trails by double digits in the all-important state of California. And that is on top of the fact that he is still trailing the delegate count to Hillary.

There is also the matter of the race card. Bill Clinton is already pointing to the fact that Jesse Jackson won handily in South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. The pundits are already trying to portray this as a venus fly trap for Obama — a victory in South Carolina would be seen as a victory for the Black Candidate, while White and Latino voters would reject the lead of Iowans and vote for Hillary. Obama has already pushed back against this meme in his victory speech tonight by portraying his campaign as one of the most diverse in history and one which is about all Americans whether they are Black or White or Latino or whatever. And not only that, he has sought to address his weaknesses among Latino voters, a group that went 3-1 for Hillary in the Nevada caucuses, talking about his union work with Latinos in Chicago.

But the next question is, who benefits if Clinton makes this an issue about race? There was an interesting statistic from the South Carolina results — the winner of the White vote was not Hillary, but John Edwards. John Edwards is already rising in some of the Super Tuesday polls around the country — he is second in Missouri now in addition to Oklahoma; people who are fed up with the mudslinging between the Hillary and Obama camps are turning to him. So, if Hillary and Bill continue to try to make their strategy about race instead of the issues, then based on the numbers out of South Carolina, that would give Edwards traction to gain delegates and votes in Super Tuesday. Edwards has already seen a spike in interest in his campaign since his strong showing in the Tuesday debates, getting record contributions, although it still does not match the eye-popping contributions that Hillary and Obama are getting. However, the fact that he is short of money compared to the other two, in addition to the fact that he is hampered even more due to his shortage of money due to the larger stage means that the larger field will be a grave disadvantage for him. So, he will likely do well enough to get delegates in this race; however, his most likely role will be as kingmaker in this race. Both Clinton and Obama treated Edwards with kid gloves in the last debate because they knew that Edwards might be able to tip the nomination to one of them.

For Obama to win, he must be able to build on his South Carolina speech and be able to portray himself as a uniter who can heal the partisan divide in this country. In order to do so, he must be able to define himself and not let the Clintons define him. For his approach to work, he must be able to portray himself as a candidate who is above the fray. Yet the challenge here is for him to be able to do it without ignoring the attacks that the Clintons are likely to launch. There is another way that he might try to win — he could go into the gutter with Hillary, try to drive her negatives so high that Edwards wins up doing much better than expected, and knock her out of the race; after all, Edwards came in fairly close in third place. Then, he could turn around and try to knock out Edwards by virtue of his superior cash.

John Edwards is an extreme longshot to win the nomination at this point. However, he could do it the same way that Russ Feingold did — Feingold won the 1992 Democratic nomination because his two better-known opponents were so busy slinging mud at each other that Russ was able to make an issue out of it and win. We are already seeking an uptick in Edwards’ numbers — he did better in NH than he did four years ago, and he jumped in the polls in the last week in SC. The more Hillary gets into the gutter with Obama, the more that people might get disgusted by both of them and turn to the candidate who is above the fray — John Edwards.