When the Onion is on, it’s on.

When I read Samantha Power’s little interview with The Scotsman, I literally assumed she must’ve been drunk, cursing and speaking in run-on sentences as she was:

“We f***** up in Ohio,” she admitted. “In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win.

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

Ms Power said of the Clinton campaign: “Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there, too.

“You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”

Ergh? For someone slated to be high up in the Obama administration, she comes off awfully unstateswomanlike. And for a former Pulitzer prize winning journalist, she doesn’t seem to have internalized enough paranoia about speaking to reporters.

The Clinton camp is predictably enough asking for her resignation. Though from all indications losing Power would be a huge blow for the Obama team, I for one would feel much better if Power was replaced. She’s the biggest reason I don’t feel comfortable with Obama’s foreign policy direction to date.

UPDATE: And there she goes!

As of last night, I was tired of the race. This morning, I’m as keen as ever. Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, brings the swagger:

“…If Sen. Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we’ll join that debate. We’ll do it on our terms and in our own way, but if she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and law firms and real estate deals and all that stuff issues, as I’ve said before, I don’t know why they’d want to go there, but I guess that’s where they’ll take the race.”

Excellent. I love a good bloodbath.

Obama has to learn how to wrangle the press better:

Toward the end of the press conference, the question of Goolsbee’s meeting was raised again. Obama answered curtly and then walked out after a staffer called last question. The press erupted with shouts, but Obama continued to walk out.

He paused only to say, “Come on guys; I answered like eight questions. We’re running late.”

On the flight from San Antonio to Dallas, Obama, unsurprisingly, did not wander back to make small talk with the traveling press corps.

This kind of story just looks really bad, especially that last detail. One thing you can definitely say for McCain, the man knows how to make the press corps eat out of his hand. He’d be in the back of the plane yukking it up no matter what happened at the presser earlier.

So true.

I don’t have a TV so I didn’t watch the debates last night, but all of the commentariat I read seemed to think this was the losing moment of the debate for Hillary.¹ Seeing the clip this morning, I wholeheartedly agree. Barry’s smackback is exceptionally cool and measured and makes Hillary look like she’s petty and frothing. How is it that we’ve not seen this kind of stuff in politics for the last twenty years?

EDIT: Here’s the entire exchange, courtesy of an outraged Josh Marshall:

The head of New York’s chapter of NOW becomes unhinged at Ted Kennedy for supporting Obama:

This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.’

This is embarrassing, juvenile stuff. Sullivan notes that she’s gone off the deep end before. Why does an organization keep such a person around? Surely they can see that she’s doing more damage than she’s worth!

It might be that I’m still sick today (and have been for almost a week now), but I found Maureen Dowd’s column today to be wonderfully savage. The object of her derision is no surprise: Hillary.

Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.”

…

She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite. All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?

Yeah, I have no love for Clinton either. But another detail in the piece did make me prick up my ears:

When Hillary hecklers yelled “Iron my shirt!” at her in Salem on Monday, it stirred sisterhood.

Not just sisterhood—that kind of shit gets even my cynical back up. Can you imagine hecklers at an Obama rally yelling “pick my cotton!” at him while he tries to speak? The truth of the matter is that nasty public sexism like that is tolerated whereas public displays of racism, at least at an Obama rally, would probably get the perpetrators properly beat up.

Though I’m not making an argument for electing Clinton based on her gender, I certainly can see more clearly why she might have seen an uptick in support in the last moments of the New Hampshire race.

Another nice contrarian anti-Obamamania zinger, along the Hitchens line of critique, from James Wolcott at Vanity Fair:

Watching middle-aged men reclaim their innocence and idealism is like having to retrace Kevin Costner’s steps through a field of dreams all over again—it was corny enough the first time.

I still hope Obama wins. Not because he’s a uniter, not because it’d be nice to have a black man lead the country, not because he’s got a better foreign policy staff than Hillary (he doesn’t). I like him because he’s clearly smart and charismatic, two characteristics I’m starved for with the current White House occupant. And she grates on my nerves terribly.

EDIT: A lawyer friend tells me Hillary failed the DC bar exam in the 1970s, which is arguably the easiest one in the country. I’m not saying she’s a dummy or anything… but she’s no Obama.

I’m a fan of Obama and am pleased he’s doing well. If nothing else, it’s pleasing to finally have a candidate in the race who’s thoughtful and intelligent. If the nation could elect Bush twice because they felt they could comfortably watch NASCAR with him, I’m glad that there’s a possibility that we might elect a president with whom I could watch The Wire.

That said, I loved Hitchens’ latest deflation of the national craze. The final sentence of the essay summarizes exquisitely:

The Iowa caucuses of 2008 were not the end of our long national nightmare about race, but another stage in our protracted national nightmare of piety, “uplift,” and deceptive optimistic windbaggery.

Ouch. It hurts because it’s true. Read the whole thing.

I sure hope he becomes president.