The Libertarians nominated former Georgia Republican Representative, Bob Barr, as their nominee for President. It was a spirited nomination process; taking 6 ballots and involving three viable candidates: Bob Barr, Mary Ruwart, and Wayne Root. I was flipping around channels and caught some of the tail end of the process. At that point, Root was in 3rd place and had been eliminated and was allowed to take the podium. Excuse me for saying so, but he came off as kind of a spazz; punctuating his remarks with “BAM!” or something like that, as if he was channeling Emeril. In any event, he told his supporters to vote for Barr so that he could be the Vice Presidential nominee. After that, he was interviewed and suggested that he would appeal to millions of disaffected online gambling enthusiasts. I know that Libertarians are sort of a boutique political party, but that struck me as an especially limited demographic for a Presidential campaign.

In any event, Barr should be an interesting candidate. He should appeal to rabidly anti-Clinton Republicans in that he was a big mover and shaker in the Clinton impeachment. He’s developed some libertarian credentials over the past decade or so. And, I suppose he could cause some worries in Georgia, his home state. If Obama is turning out big numbers, particularly with the black vote in Georgia, and Barr is drawing off disaffected Georgia Republicans, that could potentially bring the state into play, I suppose.

Kos points out a huge flaw in the news media’s coverage of the Clinton/Obama race as demonstrated by the poll numbers out of Montana. Montana’s population is largely white and mostly not affluent. Therefore, according to the media narrative out of Kentucky and West Virginia to the effect that “Obama has problems with working class whites” should lead to another blowout in Montana. But, of course, Obama doesn’t have a problem among working class whites. To the extent he has a problem, it’s with Appalachian whites.

If the West Virginia/Kentucky narrative were accepted as true, however, the logical progression would be that working class whites are leaving Clinton in droves since Obama enjoys a lead in Montana of 52% to 35%. I suspect the talking heads will mostly just ignore what they said yesterday and spin a new narrative for the night of the Montana primary. Then, the day after, they’ll be back to wringing their hands about Obama’s working-class white problem, as if Montana (and the rest of the Western states) never happened. Because, as we know, the only states that matter are Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, Obama’s magic number is currently 52 while Clinton’s is 246 with a total of 290 available.

If only the Clinton campaign owed Purdue, I would be salivating over a collections opportunity. Apparently the Clinton campaign owes IU $55,000. But she’s totally still in it.

I was tempted to follow up with a flippant remark about how she’s “number one with a bullet” without further comment. But the whole Robert F. Kennedy remark just makes me uneasy. I can’t believe she meant anything unsavory by it; but still.

One of Obama’s great strengths is understanding how to frame an issue to make his argument stronger. Kos outlines an exchange between Obama and McCain over GI benefits. Obama expressed disbelief that McCain would think the bill Obama supported was too generous. McCain flew into a tizzy about Obama’s statement, calling him disrespectful. Obama responded in a way I thought framed things nicely by saying:

He should know that this is not about John McCain or Barack Obama – it’s about giving our veterans a real chance to afford four years of college without harming retention.

I expect Obama to repeat this sort of thing a lot, “Hey, it’s not about us; it’s about the American people.” This is one of the ways he will seek to deprive McCain of his biography and try to force him to run on his policies. McCain’s biography is all he has, but if Obama can make McCain look like he’s saying “ME ME ME ME ME” every time he seeks to use his biography, it could turn into a weakness. On the other hand, if McCain seeks to run on his policy ideas, McCain is screwed.

Obama won big in Oregon; Clinton won even bigger in Kentucky. We’ll see if the narrative changes. Obama did pretty well among working class whites in Oregon. So, it’s not really working-class whites who have a problem with him vis a vis Clinton. It’s Appalachian working-class whites. I don’t think it’s so much race as it is economics. Maybe it has something to do with people who have been ground down in an environment with little economic hope and a lot of competition for jobs along side racial tension.

Anyway, according to Democratic Convention Watch, Obama is now within 64 delegates of clinching the nomination. Clinton needs 246.

Jonathan Singer at MyDD has a post up that discusses Obama’s very effective frame for coming at Bush/McCain on their foreign policy positions: What are they so afraid of? It nicely poisons the fear well that Bush and McCain like to go to in order to market themselves as “tough.” Whenever they say something that implies that the American people ought to be afraid, it makes them look fearful as well. It leads to an inference that Bush and McCain went to war in Iraq because their fear made them overreact to the threat, such as it was, posed by Saddam Hussein.

There are things in this world of which it’s rational to be afraid, of course. But, we want a leader who reacts to those things in a rational way and does not overreact in an emotional way. The unthinking “tough guy” approach is an emotional approach. Keeping the lines of communication open to our enemies, even if we’re not prepared to concede to their demands to any appreciable extent, is a rational approach.

You darn appeasing appeasers. Chris Matthews presses a right wing blow hard holding forth on Barack Obama’s Chamberlain-like policy of appeasement to demonstrate even a nodding acquaintance with Chamberlain’s interaction with Hitler and the Sudetenland. All he could do was say variations of the word “appease” with increasing volume. Idiot.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo makes a pretty convincing argument that it’s not “working class white people” that Obama has trouble with; rather, it’s “Appalachian working class white people.” If you overlay a map of Appalachia with a map of counties in which Hillary Clinton has beaten Obama with a total of more than 65% of the vote, the parallels are pretty dramatic.

Let me offer a series of overlapping explanations. First, some basic demographics. It’s widely accepted that Hillary Clinton does better with older voters, less educated voters and white voters. These demographics perfectly match West Virginia — and, more loosely, the entire Appalachian region. A few key points from tonight’s exit polls demonstrate the point: 4 out of 10 voters were over 60 years of age. 7 out of 10 lacked a college degree — the highest proportion of any electorate in the country. And 95% of the electorate was white.

Basically you have a state that is made up almost exclusively of Clinton’s voters.

Marshall then goes on to discuss how Appalachia remains economically underdeveloped which has an associated consequence of less education for the population. That is coupled with a tradition of being both anti-slavery and anti-slave.

A couple of things – First, McCain isn’t Clinton, therefore, Obama could do better against him than he did against her in Appalachia and everywhere else; particularly as the Bush albatross hangs ever more heavily around McCain’s neck.

Second, unless something changes that offsets whatever dynamics have been going on in these special Congressional elections, McCain is going to have a tough time hanging on to even reliably Republican states.

Congressman and superdelegate Joe Donnelly (IN-02) is announcing his support for Obama. (per Blue Indiana and Brian Howey) Glad to see it. Politically, I think Donnelly gets more support from the Dean/Obama/50 State Strategy than the Clinton/DLC/microtargeting approach.

That leaves Visclosky and Ellsworth on the fence.