Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

The larger point the Clinton aides will make to superdelegates and voters in the next big primary state of Pennsylvania is that the Texas and Ohio results reflect what happens when the two candidates are compared side by side. Obama can give speeches and draw crowds, but when it comes to matching him against a competitor, as the general election will demand, Obama can't stand up to the comparison. Will any of the Clinton arguments work? We'll see in the coming days if hundreds of superdelegates allow the primary process to continue without continuing to move toward Obama. Clinton is pleading for time, arguing that voters should be allowed to have their say in future contests. But even in this she comes up against a contradiction posted by Obama's lead. Because she must rely on the superdelegates to beat back Obama's likely lead in the popular vote and among pledged delegates, she is essentially asking those superdelegates to listen to the people—but only long enough to be persauded to vote for her. Then she expects them to undo the will of the people by voting against Obama in Denver. Clinton has rescued her campaign from free-fall, but the ride from here to the nomination is still going to be very bumpy.

-- JOHN DICKERSON

Barack Obama has rested his campaign partly on the claim that he is the more electable of the Democratic presidential candidates, but the result of the March 4 primaries, as outlined in the initial exit polls, show that he could have as much trouble as Hillary Clinton in the fall.

If you look at the exit polls for Ohio, and to some extent, Texas and Rhode Island, they show the same pattern that occurred in the February 5 contests, but that was submerged in Obama's intervening victories. Hillary Clinton does better or much better than him among women, whites (particularly those who make less than $50,000 a year), Latinos, and older voters. He does better than her among the young, among African Americans, and among upscale voters.

-- JOHN B. JUDIS

Very, very few commentators have been as wrong as Hugh Hewitt has in this campaign. This was always going to be a Rudy-Romney fight? Heh. But give him this: he has finally read Obama's first book. That's a start. And now that the GOP has a nominee, Hewitt will, as always, find a way to propagandize on his behalf, even after he has trashed, maligned, and assailed said candidate for the entire campaign so far.

But his lack of judgment is on full display with his latest post on Obama. His talking points against Obama are Clinton's brilliant themes - ideology and experience:

But not so "hard left" as to add $32 trillion to the national debt and engage on a century-long nation-building project in the most divided "country" in the Arab Middle East. Not so "hard left" as to argue that the role of government is to act whenever anyone is "hurting." That kind of hard left politics we leave to Republicans, don't we? And inexperience.

This from a Bush champion - arguably the rookie who made the biggest military blunder in American foreign policy - and with far worse consequences - since the Bay of Pigs. Look: I made the same mistake. But at least I've dealt with it.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

It is cliché, not plagiarism, that is the problem with our stilted, room-temperature political discourse. It used to be that thinking people would say, with at least a shred of pride, that their own convictions would not shrink to fit on a label or on a bumper sticker. But now it seems that the more vapid and vacuous the logo, the more charm (or should that be "charisma"?) it exerts. Take "Yes We Can," for example. It's the sort of thing parents might chant encouragingly to a child slow on the potty-training uptake.

-- CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

So, the Canadian conservative prime minister [Stephen Harper] is calling Barack Obama two-faced on NAFTA at the exact same moment that John McCain is indicating that Canada might pull out its troops on Afghanistan if we make too much a stink about NAFTA? That strikes me as more than a little suspicious. In fact, it strikes me as a directly coordinated attack by McCain and Harper to neutralize McCain on trade during the general election. It wouldn't be the first time Harper and Republican leaders have coordinated, given that Harper uses Republican pollsters and the conservative movements in both countries are deeply intertwined.

-- CHRIS BOWERS

I'm about done with this "Hussein" controversy. This is one of those times when both the left and the right wing prove they can’t find a pundit between them with more than two brain cells to rub together. No one’s got it right: not the hysterical lefties who would like to make Barack Hussein Obama's middle name a matter of national (in)security, nor the ever-smug righties who think fear-mongering is an honest way to win elections.

Hussein is a beautiful name. Centuries before it became associated with a Ba'athist dictator, it was the name of a figure beloved by both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims: a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who died too young to generate any of the controversy his grandfather continues to do, a man who was killed in battle defending his family from an enemy whose forces hopelessly outnumbered his own. He was a mystic, a poet, a leader, and a soldier of tremendous courage; he was a man who said "Charity should be like a heavy rain, falling on the pious and the sinful alike" and who was known for his honesty and justice.

-- G. WILLOW WILSON

Cartoon by Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate