Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. "I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president," he said.

Hillary Clinton is going to win a crushing victory in West Virginia, possibly by a margin as large as 70-30 percent. All the cable networks will give it wall-to-wall coverage, and you'll hear more blather about Obama's inability to "connect" with white working class voters -- and to suggest that lack of connectivity is somehow all Obama's fault. But when Clinton's vote total is swelled by the likes of people like this, do you honestly think there's something that Obama could be saying or doing that would get their support?

-- WILL BUNCH

Hillary Clinton has every right to pursue her presidential candidacy, and score meaningless touchdowns in West Virginia and Kentucky even though she's losing by 40 points with 30 seconds left on the game clock. The real question is whether she plays out the string with dignity, or decides to yank the opponent's face mask on her way to defeat.

It looks like the latter.

-- DICK POLMAN

On Fox News Sunday, Howard Wolfson, the communications director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, dismissed talk of Clinton quitting the race and declared, "The voters are going to decide this."

But that's not the true stance of the Clinton campaign. Its plan, as the campaign acknowledged last week, is to persuade the superdelegates that Clinton would be the best candidate in the fall against John McCain. That is, its position is that the superdelegates ought to vote for Clinton no matter what the voters in the Democratic primaries and caucuses decide. And given that it's essentially a mathematical certainty that Obama will end up with more voter-determined delegates, this means that the Clinton camp is actually insisting that superdelegates, not voters, determine the winner.

-- DAVID CORN

Today was a good day for libertarians, as Bob Barr announced his presidential candidacy, and the L. A. Times ran a story about Ron Paul supporters’ plans to disrupt the Republican National Convention in Minnesota this September. It’s unclear to me what the Paul-ites can do inside the convention with only 14 delegates (19 if you accept the Boston Globe's count), but they can probably cause some disruptions in the streets of Minneapolis, if they’re so inclined. This could prove to be an unwelcome distraction for McCain.

My question is, what will the relationship be between the Barr and Paul forces after the Republican Convention is over? Will Paul throw his endorsement to Barr? If so, Barr could conceivably be a spoiler for Republicans in the same way that Nader was for Democrats in 2000. If not, I doubt much will come of all this.

-- DILLON

News reports say that Obama will be visiting Michigan on Wednesday--with a visit to the heart of Republican territory in Grand Rapids, and a visit to the home of the Reagan Democrats in Macomb County. I would say that's a pretty strong signal that the general election campaign started this week.

-- EMPTYWHEEL

I just saw the talking heads on Hardball state that one reason Hillary is staying in until the end is "in case something big happens to derail Obama."

I simply do not understand this logic at all. If Hillary drops out of the race, and something major is unearthed about Obama that would derail his candidacy (a videotape surfaces of him doing cocaine off the nipple of a teenage boy while Imams chant the Koran and organize a gun running organization for Hamas and Al Qaeda), who the hell does she think the delegates are going to turn to -- Edwards?

It is a simple no-brainer that "if something happened," Hillary would be the party candidate. She doesn't need to be in the race to get the nod in that situation.

Not saying she should get out, just saying that is a particularly silly argument.

-- JOHN COLE

Since the commentary is continuing on the apparent political damage that the Wright affair has had on the Obama campaign, let me add my own view. Obama's appeal to whites is based on his presentation as completely "safe" and unaggressive, the opposite of the feared "black militant" that still haunts white America's imagination. He overflows with nice in order to neutralize racial paranoia. And this is why his association with Rev. Wright has been so costly: it reignites subterranean white fears that Obama's political style takes such great pains to allay. Context is everything. (And the lack of a corresponding context is what makes McCain's association with frothing right wing ministers politically irrelevant.)

-- PETER DORMAN

History continues to unfold on many levels as the protracted Democratic Party primary race marches on, featuring the first woman and the first African-American with a real shot at winning the White House. Here's another first: the press's unique push to get a competitive White House hopeful to drop out of the race. It's unprecedented.

Looking back through modern U.S. campaigns, there’s simply no media model for so many members of the press to try to drive a competitive candidate from the field while the primary season is still unfolding . . .

-- ERIC BOELERT