via MAL Contends

Madison, Wisconsin - Salon has a piece by Mike Madden explaining the importance of Wisconsin's primary and probing why this perfectly composed demographic state for Hillary handed her a 17-point thrashing on Feb. 19.

Why did Obama do so well with Wisconsin's white working class, but not with Ohio and Pennsylvania's?

So well-received was Obama's victory here that many secular progressives were smitten with whimsical rumination of metaphysics. But Madden reasonably attributes the win to Wisconsin's progressive history.

Writes Madden:

... 'I think Democrats do have questions about whether or not [Obama] is going to be able to reach out and successfully win over the kind of blue-collar voters that Democrats need to win in order to take the White House back in November," Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson reiterated on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday.

via MAL Contends

When an American politician in the presidential general election campaign says his/her opponent is out-of-the-mainstream, it's a lie.

The losing opponent will garner at least some 45 percent of the vote, disconfirming out-of-the-mainstream status, though election votes are imprecise indicators of public opinion.

The complex reality of the American political culture sees support for universal health care, social security for our seniors, full employment, as well as a mass base for fascism, racist policies at home, a decided antipathy to civil liberties, and near-genocidal wars of aggression abroad, amid what can most accurately be described as a depoliticized electorate.

But the he's-not-like-us charge is aimed at the person; a personal attack that the opponent is somehow alien, out-of-touch, different, elitist, not-of-this-culture, even malicious and the related charge that he/she is dangerous and unpredictable.

Hillary is the big, yucky snowbank outside that is melting fast.

Hillary's divide-and-conquer brand of politics is becoming untenable in the Democratic presidential primary.

Melissa Schroeder, Wisconsin’s 7th District Democratic Party Secretary and superdelegate, goes to Obama. From the Obama campaign:

Today Wisconsin superdelegate Melissa Schroeder endorsed Barack Obama for president, citing his unique ability to stand up to the special interests and unite all Americans to bring about real, meaningful change. 

Melissa Schroeder said: “After much consideration, I have decided to endorse Senator Barack Obama. My decision came down to electability and who I felt would do a better job of unifying this country for a common purpose. Obama's message of hope and change has touched millions of voters in a way that I haven't seen since the late 1960's.  People from every walk of life, young and the not so young, Democrats, Independents and some Republicans, are all rallying around a belief that change can happen if we want it bad enough.  With Obama as our nominee, I am confident that this November we will increase our majority in the House and Senate and elect a Democrat to the White House.”

Update: BREAKING NEWS: NBC News confirms Geraldine Ferraro leaving Clinton campaign

Keith Olbermann on Hillary and Geraldine Ferraro's appeals to racism. See:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/23601329#23601329

via MAL Contends

Hillary Clinton's evolving attacks to define and brand Barack Obama involve what advertising and marketing professionals call impressions—the projection of one image (in this case Barack Obama) onto one human brain (a voter).

Designing and managing Obama’s brand by generating impressions for the benefit of Hillary running in the primary, it is necessary to merge negative (ostensibly plausible) aspects of Obama onto the consciousness of key voting demographics susceptible to certain appeals based on fear and xenophobia.

The more frequent and emotionally potent the impression, the greater is the political impact.

Update: John Nichols: A Baldwin shift to Obama could send crucial message

Voters in US Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s 2nd congressional district in Wisconsin on Feb. 19 delivered a resounding victory to Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton—65 to 34 percent.

As a superdelegate, Rep. Baldwin has pledged her support behind Hillary Clinton.

Now Clinton has engaged in unrelenting negative attacks on Obama using the Republican tactics of personal destruction, dubbed the “kitchen sink” strategy. [See Dear Hillary, We're Breaking Up for an instructive overview.]

In this despicable enterprise, Clinton is destined to fail, but not without first doing a lot of harm.

See Ohio Buckeye State Blog for updates on Ohio.

For Texas updates, see Texas Burnt Orange Report.

Better than what you can get from CNN or MSNBC. 

Obama advocates (especially voters in Wisconsin prideful that their state is the turning point in the destruction of Hillary’s Democratic coalition) concerned about the recent pro-McCain coverage on CNN and MSNBC as a precursor of biased media treatment to come can relax.

McCain is a fatally weak GOP candidate to face Obama, and it’s likely that many GOP movement wingers see him as a 2008 sacrificial sheep happily slaughtered to the 2012-2016 gods.

There's no open talk from GOP insiders of course, but there is a secret let-McCain-fall program: Call it McCainCon [a play on the secret EComCon conspiracy from the Seven Days in May movie based on the Fletcher Knebel- Charles W. Bailey II book].

I'm suggesting a plot by conservative movement officers to sabotage the GOP nominee for president of the United States.

And conservatives need only participate with faint energy in the campaign to add their support to this McCainCon conspiracy, watching a man they dislike take the fall in a Goldwateresque election for the GOP.

Consider some structural election facts and Democratic capabilities.

Wisconsin knows a lot about political reformers and we're always looking for a reformer to run for president. And John McCain, you ain't it!

Update II: Cap Times: Apply McCain Standard to McCain

Update: See also: McCain's Character Is Now Fair Game for Reporters and Blogs

Suppose that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the Chair of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee.

Suppose further that this hypothetical Committee Chair:

Facing days of attacks made by Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign, voters in Wisconsin today are poised to deliver a rebuke to the politics of negativity and distortion, in favor of Sen. Barack Obama’s politics of hope and change.

Gov. Jim Doyle said that Clinton has engaged in “"fear mongering," and for days had nothing on the air except negative ads.

Hillary is desperate, as Wisconsin can send her campaign reeling into Texas and Ohio with an apparently broken message.

So rather than speak about her vision and position, her campaign dumps everything on her opponent from sleazy innuendo to outright lies.

At the same time Clinton seeks to change the rules of the Democratic primary in the middle of the game that she is losing.

As America has learned from experience this last seven years, a campaign that functions with such disdain for the people and the democratic process, governs even worse.

Prediction is Obama by six to eight points; likely garnering a double figure pledged delegate win.

That's assuming that Obama’s people stay motivated and hit the field hard, a fair assumption.

Good analysis on Kos by Ben Masel.

Update III: Polls: Obama Holds Edge In Wisconsin, Madison-Milwaukee Turn-out Decisive

Update II: TNR: WI, Ohio, Texas Polls Underreporting Obama Strength

Update: Woman flies from LA to Madison to make history and support Obama

Update: CQ Politics’ Four Questions About Wisconsin’s Feb. 19 Primaries