Wal-Mart makes Obama ‘Scream’

Sen. Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate, has lost the Pennsylvania primary to his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, after Obama called certain red-state voters “bitter” to a San Francisco audience. What can Obama do to mend relations with this demographic group? As he explains to Susannah, Bob has some ideas — which include visiting a certain blue-state nemesis — in the latest episode of “Running Gags”!

Hillary borrows from Lenin’s playbook

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not quitting the presidential election, and has one more primary victory to add to her total: Pennsylvania, which she won on Tuesday.

Once the star of the almost 800 superdelegates, Clinton’s hold over them may be diminishing as she can’t win convincingly enough to erase the lead of her rival, Sen. Barack Obama (Note: She still leads Obama in superdelegates who have declared their support, 259 to 236). But as calls mount for her departure, she doesn’t seem to be listening.

It was once said of Vladimir Lenin that he won debates by refusing to stop speaking until everyone, exhausted, conceded the argument. “Lenin scarcely noticed his defeat,” Robert K. Massie wrote in Nicholas and Alexandra. “A brilliant dialectician, prepared to argue all night, he gained ascendancy over his Bolshevik colleagues by sheer force of intellect and physical stamina.” Will Clinton’s similar steadfastness outlast Obama’s audacity?

Spring training — the political version

Hey there, all you snowbound New Englanders. Want something to take your mind off winter? Your Boston Red Sox are in spring training in Florida. Want something else to take your mind off winter? Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton are duelling it out in another warm-weather locale — Texas, site of Thursday’s debate. Bob and Susannah discuss these two different kinds of spring training — baseball vs. political — in a vacation-themed “Running Gags”!

Merci to my muse for the idea.

Hillary’s place in history

Hillary Clinton Cartoon, originally uploaded by oppositefields.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York “won” the Florida Democratic presidential primary, debated rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois on Thursday, and is now preparing for the Feb. 5 primaries. What is Clinton’s role in history as, potentially, our first female president? How greatly does her negative side affect Americans’ decisions on whether or not to vote for her? Susannah and Bob discuss in the latest “Running Gags”!

Merci to my muse for suggesting the background effect.

Kucinich ‘Wade’s Into Impeachment Issue

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, is showing courage — and echoes of past bravery by an Ohioan on Capitol Hill – by introducing articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.

In condemning Cheney for his bellicosity on Iraq and Iran, Kucinich is contributing to a healthy debate within his party and the country. He is representing the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party, whose voices mostly fell silent when President Bush began calling for war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2002. Unlike 2008 rivals Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards, Kucinich has been consistent as well as conscientious, voting against the 2002 Iraq War resolution in the House when it was politically dangerous to do so. (Clinton and Edwards both voted for the Senate legislation.)

In his policy we see reflections of the Radical Republicans who criticized President Lincoln for treading too gently against the Confederacy during the Civil War. Sen. Ben Wade of Ohio and Rep. Thad Stevens of Pennsylvania compelled Lincoln to address slavery when the Great Emancipator may have wished to ignore it. Likewise, Kucinich is proceeding with his impeachment articles despite the possible reluctance of fellow Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He said that ”as much as I admire the speaker, as much as I voted to support her, I feel that it’s my obligation as a member of Congress to introduce these articles of impeachment.”

Intra-party and intra-national tensions may sound harmful to a war effort, but in truth the dialogue between pragmatism and principle is too important to abandon, even — and especially — in wartime.

Give Peace (and Al Gore) a Chance

Former vice president Al Gore, who made headlines last year for his Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” has won the Nobel Peace Prize. My comic-strip characters, liberal Susannah and conservative Bob (plus a neutral cat), assess the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s choice in the latest episode of “Running Gags,” which I drew for the America Online Elections Blog from Oct. 2006 to Sept. 2007.

Edwards, Hillary and Iraq War lessons

How hard it must be to support legislation that steadily seems unpalatable.  That’s the case for John Edwards, former Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2004 and current presidential candidate. Edwards has been trying to absolve his sin of voting for the Bush Iraq Senate bill in 2002 as his party and his country turn against the Iraq War.

One of Edwards’ rivals for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, was in the Senate with him in 2002 and also voted for Bush’s Iraq bill. Hillary remains on Capitol Hill and holds more hawkish views than Edwards, who is reminding voters about her refusal to abandon such militaristic stances — as evidenced by her vote to call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

“Evidently, Senator Clinton and I learned two very different lessons from the Iraq war,” Edwards said on Wednesday. “I learned that if you give President Bush even an inch of authority, he will use it to sanction a war… While Senator Clinton tries to argue both sides of the issue, the truth is her vote opens the door for the president to attack Iran.”

Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of the Congressional decision to empower Bush to attack Iraq. The war he started shows no sign of ending, and now he wants this country to involve itself in another one. Edwards’ stance in 2002 seems less important than the public service he is providing now.

Obama and American flag pins

When you and I meet people, I’m guessing one of the last things we notice — if we bother to notice at all — is whether or not they’re wearing an American flag pin.

These pins tend to be small, and they’re not accompanied by eye-catching slogans. Yet Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic candidate for president in 2008, is making an issue over the pins — not over his wearing one, but over his decision against wearing one.

“The truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin,” Obama told an Iowa news station. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.”

Perhaps the senator was anticipating attacks from pro-Bush, pro-Iraq War Fox News, whose anchors have been criticized for wearing flag pins. Perhaps he was speaking out against the armchair patriots whose enthusiasm for this country stops at enlisting in the armed services, or at preventing current servicemembers from becoming casualties of unnecessary wars.

It seems silly for Obama to spark debate over such a tiny object, and yet the flag pin does symbolize one more step in all of our politicians taking the same predictable stances.

Obama has shown a desire to separate himself from the mainstream with reasoned positions, as evidenced here and in addressing a question of how he would respond to a 9/11-style attack in the future during a Democratic debate. “Obama, who was the first candidate to respond to the question, is widely thought to have flubbed his answer since, unlike rivals Sen Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, he focussed on an emergency response rather than a retaliatory attack,” the Baltimore Sun reported. Once again, however, Obama backed up his unconventional position with reasoning: “he noted that he would order a response to a terrorist attack in four steps: first, an emergency response to aid victims of the attack; second, an effort to identify and stop any other imminent attacks; third, an assessment to find out who was responsible for the attacks; and, finally, a retaliatory response.”

How appropriately American it would be for a candidate to renounce the simple sloganism of US flag pins and win a presidential election.