EVENING UPDATE,  FEBRUARY 11, 2008

•   The Evening Update is being posted a bit early today, as I'm heading to the Power Line dinner in New York, honoring Norman Podhoretz.

•   Bill Kristol, in today's New York Times, has a clear-headed analysis of the Democratic race, and sees the decision going to Obama.  Key quote:

On Tuesday Obama is expected to prevail in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. So around 9 p.m. Tuesday night, television networks probably will be announcing, for the first time, that Barack Obama holds an unambiguous delegate lead.

His lead in votes — which is already in the neighborhood of 200,000 — will probably have widened. And Obama should be able to increase those delegate and popular vote totals on Feb. 19, when Wisconsin and Hawaii go to the polls.

Next comes March 4, when Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island vote. Clinton’s campaign believes Ohio and Texas will constitute her firewall. Will it hold?

I suspect not. Obama will have momentum. He will likely have more money than Clinton for advertising. His ballot performance among Hispanics and working-class whites has generally been improving as the primary season has gone on. He intends to push a more robust economic message that could help him further narrow the gap among lower-income voters.

I think Kristol is persuasive.  I've written here before that Texas and Ohio are the twin keys for Clinton, but the psychology is now clearly with Obama, and those two states might well be in contention.  If they go, it's over for Hillary. 

But look, you never know.  Something can come out about Obama, or Clinton can do somethng brilliant (unlikely).  There could be a foreign incident.  As of now, though, the money is on an eventual Obama victory for the nomination.

Also - I think it's time that conservatives freed themselves of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.  There's so much joy in knifing Clinton that people forget there's an election in November.  Every poll shows Obama to be the stronger candidate.  African-American voting will be the highest in history.  Today's derivative of the sixties crowd, trained in the schools and colleges that have grown up since then, will be out in force.  John McCain can (must!) win, but it will be a fight.

And, believe me, the race card will be played, early and often.  It will be subtle and un-.  Americans will be made to fee guilty if we don't vote for Obama.  This may not be Obama's way, but it will be the way of other operatives.  And it may work.  ("How do you think the third world will feel about us the next day if we reject this man?") 

The press has always liked John McCain, but will be with Obama.  Get ready fto battle for this country's future.

•   Well, at least they're thinking over there.  A British columnist, Tim Hames, proposes a GOP ticket of John McCain and General David Petraeus.  And, you know, that's not a bad thought.  His reasoning:

America has a long tradition of looking to military leaders in times of turmoil. This has stretched through Washington to Grant to Eisenhower and might have placed Colin Powell in the Oval Office in 1996 if he had been prepared to stand. General Petraeus, who holds a doctorate from Princeton University, is the greatest military thinker of his generation. He has managed to take a vast army that was effective at conventional fighting but close to useless when confronted with a guerrilla enemy and turn it into an organisation that can today do counter-insurgency superbly. This is an achievement that makes turning a supertanker around on the high seas during inclement weather look as easy as clicking one's fingers. General Petraeus is a genius.

A McCain-Petraeus combination would be a team almost above politics. It would be sensational. It would win.

Hames goes on to concede that he thinks such a ticket is unlikely.  But Petraeus is a remarkable man, and, if he had to step into the presidency, the country would probably be well served.

•  Underlining the general's accomplishment, Al-Qaeda in Iraq appears to be crumbling, and it's admitting it.  The quote:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.

The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.

Remember that, after the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese admitted that they'd been losing, and badly, in the late sixties.  Yet, they eventually won.  They won because the Democratic Party in the United States, combined with the far-left "anti-war" movement, allowed them to win by unercutting our effort.  Sound familiar? 

•   There apparently is some reappraisal going on in UK sports .  We reported here earlier that British Olympic officials were giving a gag order to athletes traveling to China for the 2008 games:  No criticism of China, or you're sent home.

Well, although it's buried in this story, there's some, ahem, reconsideration, following an uproar: 

Following widespread anger, the British Olympic Association (BOA) backed down Sunday on its plan to prevent British competitors from commenting on "politically sensitive issues" surrounding the August 8-24 Summer Games.

And then:

Following the uproar in Britain, the BOA said it would have another look at the wording of the controversial clause.

BOA chief executive Simon Clegg said on Sunday the "interpretation of one part of the draft BOA's Team Members' Agreement appears to have gone beyond the provision of the Olympic Charter."

Though some countries are known to have told their athletes to respect the charter while in Beijing, none appear to have gone as far as the BOA.

Several national Olympic committees contacted by AFP on Monday said they had no agreements limiting free speech and denied there was any pressure from China to do so.

"Maybe the British are very different and they speak out more," said Chris Chan, secretary general of the Singapore National Olympic Council.

Speak Brits, speak.

•   The Wall Street Journal runs a powerful piece by Israeli human-rights crusader Natan Sharansky and Palestinian human-rights crusader (I'm not kidding) Bassem Eid.  They disagree on much.  On this they agree:

Unfortunately, encouraged by short-sighted Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the Bush administration, now entering its final year in office, has resuscitated the failed policies of the past that have brought nothing but tragedy, terror and war and that have only pushed peace further away. 

No doubt.  This is what happens when you put the State Department in charge of diplomacy.  In his first term, Bush ran things, and it was the real Bush.  Now Condi's in charge, and she's a prisoner of the bureaucracy. 

Can you imagine how much worse it will be under President Obama? 

The authors go on:

The real breakthrough of Mr. Bush's vision five-and-a-half years ago was not his call for a two-state solution or even the call for Palestinians to "choose leaders not compromised by terror." Rather, the breakthrough was in making peace conditional on a fundamental transformation of Palestinian society: "I call upon [Palestinians] to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. . . . A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism."

A great vision, now gone.  Since Mr. Obama has said he'll sit down unconditionally with any international John Dillinger, can we see any light at the end of this tunnel?

Yes.  We can see McCain

Posted on February 11, 2008.