Columns, pieces and posts
An overview: From the first voting in Iowa on Jan. 3 she had to prove that Clintons Are Magic. She wound up losing 11 in a row. Meaning Clintons aren’t magic. He had to take her out in New Hampshire, on Super Tuesday or Junior Tuesday. He didn’t. Meaning Obama isn’t magic. Two nonmagical beings […]
He was sui generis, wasn’t he? The complete American original, a national treasure, a man whose energy was a kind of optimism, and whose attitude toward life, even when things seemed to others bleak, was summed up in something he said to a friend: “Despair is a mortal sin.” I am not sure conservatives feel […]
Barack Obama’s biggest draw is not his eloquence. When you watch an Obama speech, you lean forward and listen and think, That’s good. He’s compelling, I like the way he speaks. And afterward all the commentators call him “impossibly eloquent” and say “he gave me thrills and chills.” But, in fact, when you go on […]
“This is death by a thousand cuts.” That’s what they keep saying about Hillary Clinton. Think of what this week was for her. She awoke each day having to absorb new sentences in a paragraph of woe: Three more primary losses, not even close. Now it’s eight in a row. A slide in the national […]
If Hillary Clinton loses, does she know how to lose? What will that be, if she loses? Will she just say, “I concede” and go on vacation at a friend’s house on an island, and then go back to the Senate and wait? Is it possible she could be so normal? Politicians lose battles, it’s […]
In the most exciting and confounding election cycle of my lifetime, Rudy Giuliani, the Prince of the City, is out because he was about to lose New York, John Edwards is out, the Clintons are fighting for their historical reputations, and the stalwart conservative New York Post has come out strong and stinging for Barack […]
We begin, as one always must now, again, with Bill Clinton. The past week he has traveled South Carolina, leaving discord in his wake. Barack Obama, that “fairytale,” is low, sneaky. “He put out a hit job on me.” The press is cruelly carrying Mr. Obama’s counter-jabs. “You live for it.” In Dillon, S.C., according […]
One way to see what happened Tuesday is that it was an anti-coronation backlash. Iowa said: We are not here to crown Queen Hillary. New Hampshire said: We’re not here to crown King Barack. The polls said they would. People don’t like to be told what they’re going to do. Other ways to see it: […]
And so it begins. We wanted exciting, we got exciting. As this is written, late on the night of the caucuses, the outlines of the decisions seem clear: Barack Obama won. Hillary Clinton, the inevitable, the avatar of the machine, lost. It’s huge. Even though people have been talking about this possibility for six weeks […]
By next week politically active Iowans will have met and tallied their votes. Their decision this year will have a huge impact on the 2008 election, and a decisive impact on various candidacies. Some will be done in. Some will be made. Some will land just right or wrong and wake up the next day […]