EVENING UPDATE - SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2008

•  Evan Thomas, who can be a rational an thoughtful writer, loses it in his current Newsweek piece, "In The Shadow of Bush," a kind of political obituary, and a warning to the GOP.  We find, if we make it beyond the first few paragraphs, this gem about the president:

Other crises, like Hurricane Katrina and more recently the sinking economy, seemed to catch him by surprise.

Right.  I mean, who can't predict a hurricane?  Who can't predict that a breathtakingly incompetent governor of Louisiana and equally clownish mayor of New Orleans would botch just about everything?  Why, the way Nancy Pelosi predicted these things and was ready for the storm!  Hey, don't you remember?

I'm beginning to feel that some of the liberal writers are getting edgy.  The Dems aren't following the Animal Farm script.  They're not singing in unison.  They're at war.  The GOP isn't following the script.  It's not dying.  McCain and Clinton were about tied in a recent poll.  How could it be that the electorate is thinking for itself?  When did this start?  Well, there they go again.  Maybe it was 1980 when the Democratic Party, the Saint James version, was ousted by that (it's a slightly high cackle), that movie actor.

I've noticed in the past week or so that the liberal writers are becoming increasingly strident.  Iraq is still a failure, they're telling us.  Bush is doomed.  Don't you see?  Don't you want to be on the progressive side?  I think they sense 2008 may not work out the way they wish.  These are the writers they choose to lecture in journalism schools.

•  Katherine Q. Seelye, in The New York Times, has a perfectly reasonable piece about John McCain's new status as GOP front-runner.  But she includes this:

Mr. McCain’s wins are no guarantee that he will remain a front-runner. He is still short on cash, he is on the wrong side of his party on the issue of illegal immigration, he is still the candidate of foreign policy while the country seems to be moving on to the economy, and he isn’t getting any younger.

I would deeply appreciate our Urgent Agenda readers e-mailing us with a list of candidates who are getting younger.  Please include some evidence, such as an officially altered driver's license, a revised birth certificate, or some such document.  If these aren't available, a convincing physical description will do.   

Some clichés should be retired.

McCain is coming back to the lead he enjoyed earlier in the year.  Two weeks from Tuesday is Super Tuesday.  He could be anointed that day, or we may be starting a new phase of the race. 

Note for my fellow protectors of the language:  Please observe that I put the hyphen in front-runner.  I was quoting a Times writer, and I'm assuming that's Times style.  My online New Oxford American Dictionary does not accept the hyphen, preferring front runner.  However, another authoritative source on American usage, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, does accept it.  Either is fine.    

•  Drudge is reporting that Barack Obama launches a major verbal attack on the Clintons on tomorrow's "Good Morning America" (ABC), charging that he feels he's running against both Clintons.  This may be trouble for Obama, who seems to be slipping back.  Playing the victim of racial insensitivity didn't help him in Nevada.  Playing the victim of Bill Clinton sounds equally weak.  What did he expect in this campaign?  You can hear the replies coming from the whisperers in the Clinton camp:  "This is the man who'll take on Osama bin Laden?"

Also, Obama's very impressive wife, Michelle, is out on the campaign trail constantly.  Does fairness require that she be shut down?

This is the crunch, and Obama's campaign team may not be up to a rough national contest.  He is at his best when he's a transcending candidate.  He's losing that status.  Unless this bitterness is healed, the Dems will be running 1968, the remake, when Dem stay-at-homes put Richard Nixon in the White House.  

We'll be back tomorrow. 

Posted on January 20, 2008.