A nasty little gaffe by John McCain highlight’s the fact that, despite a military resume and a lot of time in the Senate, his grasp on foreign policy isn’t demonstrably better than that of his opponents:

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

Now, the schism between Sunnis and Shiites is a mere 14 centuries old, so maybe McCain’s misunderstanding is to be expected.

Update And Obama capitalizes on McCain’s confusion:

Now we know what we’ll hear from those like John McCain who support open-ended war. They will argue that leaving Iraq is surrender. That we are emboldening the enemy. These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer. Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.

My god, that’s an articulate black man. Clean too. Seriously though, I just read Obama’s speech as reprinted at the New York Times. It is incredibly good, and it does a lot of things. First and foremost, I think it takes the energy generated by the Jeremiah Wright story, and uses it for his own purposes. Sort of a judo move. He uses it to wax eloquent about his religion — talking about how his church taught him to identify the stories of ordinary black people with “the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope” became their stories.

This isn’t particularly impressive to me as a person who isn’t religious. But it strikes me as powerful language for those who want a leader with a Christian faith. It jams up the assholes who, for political gain, want to perpetuate the idea that Obama is a Muslim. Then, while unequivocally rejecting the crackpot stuff that came from pastor Wright, he describes the good and the bad of the man and the Church. Unsurprisingly, the man is more complicated than the caricature painted by right wing commentators and cable news. The Church and the pastor are like family; and family is complicated — you don’t disown family, even when they say crazy or offensive stuff.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

From there, he goes on to speak insightfully about the current state of race in America, as viewed by black and white; how we got here; and the effect the past has on the present.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

Obama is using the energy ginned up by this controversy and turning it against those who gain most by stoking it. He does this by identifying the gamesmen playing gotcha politics, never rising above horse race political commentary, and substituting one irrelevant spectacle after another for substantive political discussion as primary obstructions to fixing the things everyone knows are broken. And, most effectively, he does this by illustrating the substantive problems rather than simply complaining about the content-free punditry.

I encourage you to read the whole thing. To some extent, I’ve done what Obama warns against — summarizing the speech in terms of the ebb and flow of the political campaign, rather than capturing his larger point about the vast potential this country has. However, in my defense, he makes his point far better than I could.

Update Video of the speech:

Kos has some good thoughts on Clinton v. Obama. First of all, he addresses the point of why left-leaning bloggers were unhappy with the Democratic Party prior to 2003. It’s not because the party wasn’t liberal enough, it’s because it was too anemic. When the Republicans had bad ideas, the Democrats wouldn’t fight. I think that’s what appealed to the Democratic blogosphere about Howard Dean. Not that he was far to the left — any review of his time as Governor of Vermont reveals that he really wasn’t — but that he was unapologetic about his politics. The Democratic Leadership Council seemed to be enemy #1 in terms of capitulating to the Republicans.

With that in mind, discussing Clinton v. Obama:

Clinton isn’t just a member of the DLC, she’s in their leadership. Obama, by the way, repudiated the organization three times (it’s a great story, which I tell in my forthcoming book).

Clinton hasn’t just rejected a 50-state strategy, she has openly attacked it.

. . .

“As [former Virginia Gov. Mark] Warner asks, how many more times will the Democrats run presidential campaigns where they abandon thirty-three southern and western states and “launch a national campaign that goes after sixteen states and then hope that we can hit a triple bank shot to get to that seventeenth state?“” Well, given Obama’s map-changing 50-state mindset, it’s clear that the answer to Warner’s question is “one more time” if Clinton is the nominee, and “never again” if Obama is the nominee.

Clinton didn’t just vote for the Iraq war and refuse to apologize for it, she voted to give Bush the same authority on Iran.

Kos goes on to state that Clinton’s only path to victory in the primary is “coup by superdelegate” in a way guaranteed to foment civil war in the Party, and she doesn’t care.

That’s why she has earned my enmity and that of so many others. That’s why she is bleeding super delegates. That’s why she’s even bleeding her own caucus delegates (remember, she lost a delegate in Iowa on Saturday). That’s why Keith Olbermann finally broke his neutrality. That’s why Nancy Pelosi essentially cast her lot with Obama. That’s why Democrats outside of the Beltway are hoping for the unifying Obama at the top of the ticket, and not a Clinton so divisive, she is actually working to split her own party.

A mere 19 years after I left town, Bill Clinton is going to be in Richmond. In addition, he will be campaigning in Lawrenceburg and Fort Wayne on behalf of his wife, Hillary Clinton. She will be campaigning in the state on Thursday with stops planned in Terre Haute and Anderson.

I don’t have a good sense for how Indiana is going to go in the Presidential campaign. I haven’t seen any polling. I suppose, based on the previous contests, things should look fairly good for Clinton. Broadly speaking (and therefore inaccurately in a lot of cases), our white population has a lot in common with our southern cousins. (Though, I’m not sure how much this applies to the Democratic subset of the population). So far, Obama has probably done the worst in states where there are relatively hard economic conditions in areas with working class whites in close competition with working class minorities for jobs. I was about to write that Clinton will do pretty well in the traditionally Democratic strongholds in the northern part of the state — having South Bend in mind — but then it occurred to me that the large black populations in the Region might make Obama competitive up there (if racial voting patterns in past states hold true.) Then there is the fact that Obama is an Illinois politician, also making him competitive, particularly up around Chicago. So, this is a long rambling way of me saying, I don’t know what the hell is going to happen.

I’ll predict that Clinton does well in the old North Central Conference cities, Richmond, Muncie, Anderson, Logansport, etc. Obama will do well in the Region. I think Obama will do fairly well in Indianapolis. Southern Indiana is a mystery to me.

Remember when it was a big deal that John Edwards had a big house? Or that John Kerry’s big house was owned by his wife? Such things are apparently not big deals if you are John McCain, whose wife is the owner of a luxurious second home variously described by the media as “cabin” or “rustic cabin” or “weekend cabin.” This “rustic cabin” has a guest house and a pool. (h/t Reverent & Free.)

None of this would be an issue at all, but for the double standard. What’s the message I’m supposed to take away from this? “Republicans promote the rich and screw the poor. Of course they have nice stuff. Why would we dwell on it or even accurately describe the nice stuff? It’s too insignificant for our liberally biased liberalism”

Obama came to Plainfield today. My T-shirt in the race today had “Obama” on it. Someone who was passing me with a Mary Sullivan t-shirt asked, “Did you get tickets for Plainfield.” Regrettably, no. (Sullivan is vying to take the seat currently held by Jon Elrod in the General Assembly.) The Plainfield tickets were gone in about a 1/2 hour. As a friend of mine suggested, if he can sell out Plainfield in a half hour, he should be at Conseco Fieldhouse or something.

Recently, I heard that Obama’s pastor made inflammatory comments at some point. And I’m supposed to care, why? Because I’m supposed to suspend my disbelief and assume that Obama’s an America-hating Black Panther or something? Is it now fair game to attribute to McCain anything that shows up in a sermon of any minister whose support McCain seeks?

I just wonder how many mouth breathers out there will simultaneously believe that Obama is a closet Muslim and that his Christian pastor is a dangerous influence on Obama.

Update Lynn Sweet has an article on the Plainfield rally. Obama specifically rejected the secular commentary of his pastor while stating that the pastor taught him about Jesus.

“I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment, where we cannot forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. I don’t want us to forget them.

“We have to acknowledge them and lift them up and when people say things like my former pastor said, you know, you have to speak out forcefully against them. But what you also have to do is remember what Bobby Kennedy said. That it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America. And that we have to do not just so that our children live in a more peaceful country and a more peaceful world, but that is the only way that we are going to deliver on the big issues that we’re facing in this country.

Update 2 Oh, and Obama increases his delegate lead over Clinton by 6 more after the Iowa county conventions. Basically, 8 of the delegates previously alloted to Edwards defected – Obama took 7 of them while Clinton took only 1 of them. In terms of pledged delegates, Obama now has 1,407 to Clinton’s 1,252. With superdelegates, the total delegate count is estimated at 1,624 to Clinton’s 1,505. Obama needs about 400 more for the nomination. There are 683 up for grabs.

Update 3 Niki Kelly has a good article on Obama’s visit in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. He spent 45 minutes answering questions from the audience and was apparently fairly detailed in his responses. Mary Beth Schneider also has a report for the Indy Star.

For all the talk of Hillary Clinton winning Texas, it looks like Obama actually won more delegates which was, after all, the point of the exercise. Texas has an oddly bifurcated primary system where part of the delegates are allocated based on an ordinary primary vote and part are allocated based on a caucus. Clinton outperformed Obama in part 1 but Obama outperformed Clinton in part 2 by such a margin that he will wind up with more delegates than Clinton which, in a race for delegates, is the definition of victory. The final results aren’t in, but it looks like Obama will take 98 Texas delegates compared to 95 for Clinton. Obama also just won Wyoming in a 23% blowout, netting him 7 delegates to Clinton’s 5.

So, with Clinton’s net gain of 9 delegates in Ohio, it looks like her performance for the week is a net gain of 4 delegates. With Obama leading by over 100 delegates, that’s a pretty anemic performance for Hillary Clinton, all of the media sound and fury notwithstanding. At this point, her only path to the nomination is to slag Obama with a storm of negativity for the next 5 months and hope to engineer a coup at the national convention. Good luck with that if that’s the route you want to go.

She has one big victory left in the tank – Pennsylvania. I doubt she can win by a big enough margin to net enough delegates to make any kind of moral claim to the nomination. After that, the big day is in May when North Carolina and Indiana go to the polls. I don’t think we’ll make a big difference in the dynamics of the race, but it will be nice to have our vote courted for a change.

Update Just in case anyone cares, here is the remaining primary schedule:
3/11 – Mississippi (40 delegates)
4/22 – Pennsylvania (188 delegates)
5/3 – Guam (3 delegates)
5/6 – Indiana (84 delegates); North Carolina (134 delegates)
5/13 – West Virginia (39 delegates)
5/20 – Kentucky (60 delegates); Oregon (65 delegates)
6/1 – Puerto Rico (63 delegates)
6/3 – Montana (24 delegates); South Dakota (23 delegates).

It remains to be seen whether Michigan or Florida will make arrangements to have legitimate primaries.

This is funny.

Moderator: Ah-ha, you denounce Farrakhan, but do you reject his endorsement?

Obama: Well I can’t stop anyone hating me less than other candidates…

Moderator: But do you reject him, Senator?

Obama: Yes, I reject him.

Moderator: OK, so you reject him, but is that repudiation? Do you repudiate him?

Obama: Doesn’t that count as a repudiation?

Moderator: You repudiate, but do you eschew him? Perhaps I should remind the audience that in 1963, Louis Farrakhan said he wished “to stick forks in the eyes of rabbis” and that he once tried to distract people on Yom Kippur by coughing loudly for the whole day?

Obama: Yes, I am aware of what he said, as are we all, and I have on many occasions…

Moderator: So do you eschew him?

Moderator 2: If you saw Farrakhan, in front of you, right now, would you spit in his face? Would you spit right in his face, Senator?

And it gets better.

I still have not gotten a clear idea of the criteria by which I am supposed to judge Sen. Clinton’s pre-Senate experience. She was First Lady. In that role, it’s very difficult to tell if and when she was an active participant in policy matters and when she was more or less a bystander. Oliver Willis has a post up suggesting that Clinton is attempting to take credit for stuff in which she had no significant role; peace negotiations in Northern Ireland in particular.

Apparently the Clinton campaign has stressed Northern Ireland as an example of her supposedly superior foreign policy experience. The former first minister of the province called her claims “a wee bit silly.”

More on the suggestion that the Clinton campaign’s darkening of Obama for one of its ads was an accident. And a nice retort by a Kos diarist: