John_Schwada's Blog

After a couple of hours hanging around LA school district headquarters on Tuesday I came away with a deep sadness....but confident that ex-U.S. Navy admiral David Brewer's career as superintendent at LA Unified is taking on water faster than the Titanic.

Unlike the Titanic tale/legend, however, in which Capt. Edw. Smith went down with his ship, Brewer is unlikely to go down with LAUSD. No. He'll probably get a bail-out package. As he sails into the sunset, in his taxpayer-funded lifeboat, we will - if we're lucky - get one last picture-perfect view of him waving amiably to us and the children on board...the Titanic.

It's easy to bag on LA Unified...consider the following exhibits gathered while cruising the school district hallways.

Exhibit #1:
A woman, nearly tearful, approaches me outside the locked doors of the LA School Board meeting room. She's holding a drawing of a horse, part of an assignment given to her daughter, a kindergarten student. Her daughter's assignment, the woman told me, was to color the horse. The child colored the body of the horse brown, the mane, tail and hooves blue. Next to the brightly-colored horse (the child dutifully did not color outside the lines) was the teacher's comment in red ink. "Use realistic colors."

Apparently there's a problem in LA Unified-Land with five-year-old girls coloring the tails, manes and hooves of their horses blue. A problem with imagination? With having fun?

The mother was livid over the teacher's remark. It was, she told me, thoughtless, unhelpful, even cruel. But there's more. When she confronted the teacher about this, she was escorted out to the playground for a little heart-to-heart. 'You're not going to win this one,' the veteran teacher told the mother. And, by the way, the teacher advised, 'If I were in your shoes I wouldn't have my own children in any school in LA Unified unless it's a magnet school.'

Great. Let's hire this teacher 1) to do sensitivity-training and 2) to handle district public relations. On the other hand, should we really expect more from teachers who are basically caste-less creatures in our society, looked down upon and ill-paid, battered by mandates....we could go on forever playing this screeching violin of misery, of pity....of bathos?

Exhibit #2:
Also while loitering at the school board headquarters, I ran into a hundred plus folks protesting...their leader Caprice Young, a former school board member who is now trying to reform LA Unified from the outside (perhaps after having despaired of being able to accomplish much working inside the "belly of the beast" to quote Jose Marti). Young is now the president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a group hell-bent on "subverting" our traditional public school system by setting up charter schools organized around the principle of self-governance....

This group of protesters - according to Young - was upset that the school district had reneged on an agreement to provide classroom space to a half-dozen charter schools in existing, unusedLA Unified facilities.

"These are teachers, parents and some students who are protesting because they have been refused facilities," Caprice said. "The law is that LA Unified is required to provide facilities for all public school students - and charter students are public school students. So we're here today to remind the board that they agreed to provide us with facilities, they offered them to us on April 1 (2008), and now these offers were rescinded. We know they have the space. Our (charter school) principals have walked the space, seen the classrooms. And now our kids are told they have to stay on the street. That's not fair."

On the street?

"Well," Young continued, "several hundred (of 2000 affected, 'homeless' charter school students) have no space and the ones that do have had to lease space (at something approaching market rate rents), paying for it out of the money that's supposed to go for books, instruction and teachers."

To add insult to injury, Young said, the school board was NOT going to let the charter school community tell its story at the board meeting.

Exhibit #3:
I asked Brewer, as he walked into the board meeting, if he still believed the school district was manageable after a year and half at the helm. Brewer insisted he is getting a grip on things now that he has finally hired Ray Cortines, the septugenarian educational Duracell Bunny Rabbit. Cortines was brought on board a month ago as Brewer's top lieutenant, apparently to keep the Visigoths from the school district's doors, plug up the sex scandals, tamp down the interracial riots, fix the screw-ups, foul-ups and missteps...perhaps even educate the kids.

Here's what Brewer told me, on camera:

"I was struggling trying to get results, and so I brought in Ray Cortines as my number two - and a strong number two to get results. And he's shaking things up and I'm sure he's making some people mad, because that's what I want...."

Should we be relieved to learn that t's taken Brewer, by his own admission, nearly a year and half to figure out that he wasn't in control of the district? That Cortines has now got us covered, got our back, that we can all breath a sigh of relief? Why do we need Brewer if that's the case?

And really what evidence is there - after a mere month of Cortin-ization - that Cortines is going to turn this giant district around, pump out the seawater that's rushing in, plug the holes, fix leaks, repair the shattered bulkhead, etc.? Who says Cortines is a miracle-worker?

Doesn't everyone know by now that just about the only miracles happening in LA Unified are the hopeful five-year-old girls who color their horses' tails, manes and hooves blue?

Is it possible our nation's longest running political soap-opera is over? Tell me it ain't so!

What are we going to do with our lives if the Barack and Hillary show is really over. Take up knitting, kick-boxing? Join the ladies auxiliary club or an Irish drinking society? Stop e-mailing the latest dish on Hillary or Barack? Go cold turkey on surfing the web for the latest You-Tube video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Noooooo! We want our conflict, deceit, explosive revelations, videos from the past, constant do-or-die moments, hail-Mary passes, the possibilities for endless speculation and rumination, blogging and flogging the blogs!

But let's face it. The time for kindly fortune or hoary providence to come sailing in from the sky to save the day for Hillary is over...North Carolina and Indiana ended it. It's been great folks - now it's time to return to earth. There is no saving deus ex machina to pull her irons out of the fire.

Even Democrats, after all this agony, excitement, ecstasy must be having post-partum blues after Tuesday's results that left the cyborg Hillary with an impossible mission of trying to patch her political fortunes back together again.

Of course, you must guess my secret ploy here.

Every time the pundits, the bloggers, the guy slumped at the bar, the editorialist and the guy next door have pronounced this contest over, it has acted like a contrarian tonic, an elixir of life, that has caused the dying patient, the flagging contest, to sit up and amaze us with his, her or its latest irrepressible, miraculous sign of vigor...or flirtation with disaster. And how much better is this than Lindsey and Brittney, Oprah and Mylie? How much better is this food - for our brains, our civic muscles?

So let us all join hands and pronounce our dearly beloved dead, with a wink, knowing it will only jinx the inevitable, humiliate our predictions, confound the gods.

Urban legend or what? A friend tells me the word around the water-cooler is that taxpayers are getting automated, telemarketing phone calls from President Bush. About the tax rebates. It’s a pretty sophisticated campaign. According to my sources, you get a recorded message from Bush that goes something like this:

“Hey pardner. How’s it hanging. Hehehe. So listen, I just wanted to have a word with you about that tax rebate that’s headed you way, comin’ in the mail any day now. Now, I know you’re not over in Iraq, fighting the Taliban – or is that Afghanistan? Whatever.

“But you too can be a soldier of sorts – fighting the economic slow-down - by taking that rebate check right down to the mall and going on a little buying spree. You know, if your wife is anything like Laura, my little first lady, she could probably use a few more useless gadgets and dust-gatherers – made of shoddy materials built by child-labor in some third world country.

“And if your really strapped for ideas – check out the Sky-Mall catalogue, you know the ones on the airplanes. They got some great products: you know that device that translates your dog’s barks into English, or that radio that works in the shower. Or how about that tool for zapping spiders with an electric beam? Jesus H. Christ, son. Get out there and buy.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have enough room in your house to squeeze in one more flat-screen TV. And I sure as hell don’t want to hear you bellyaching that you can’t fit any more gadgets in your bathroom. It don’t matter! That hasn’t stopped millions and gazillions of good solid, law-abiding, God-fearing Americans from going the public storage route. Hell, Laura and I own a whole damned public storage facility to hold our junk. On a rainy winter afternoon, the two of us go over to public storage and visit our stuff – it’s all in numbered boxes. I mean, it’s heartwarming to sit there and pull out, say, box 410, and find six ceramic cows that the Malaysian ambassador gave us or a ceremonial sword or two that I picked up on a trip to Moldovia. Kind of like Christmas. A surprise in every storage box.

“Think of it this way, pardner. You’re being an Al Quada suck-up if you put that treasury check in a sock and hide it under your bed. Spend it for God’s sakes! It’s your patriotic duty.

“And listen if you like what I’ve been doin’ over the last eight years then here’s another little idea – invest in John McCain! Buy a little piece of a good Republican. Send him a contribution. I understand he’s having trouble raising money. Unlike those Democrats, Obama and Hillary. He could sure use your help.

“Well, that’s about it from me. I’ll let you go. I know you’re probably working ten-hour days to pay for $4 gas, the kid’s kidney bypass operation and your subprime house loan from Countrywide…So carry on and enjoy. God bless you.”

Now I haven't got that call yet from the President but I have been thinking about his message and trying to figure out what to do with my rebate.

So what are you going to spend yours on?

More ulcers for the Democratic Party’s superdelegates. A new calculation shows that Clinton, after Pennsylvania’s primary results, has received more votes (as opposed to delegates) than Barack Obama in both the caucuses and primaries. So much for Obama’s popular vote bragging rights – at least for the time being (he still leads Clinton by about 125 delegates). 

According to veteran political analyst Michael Barone, reporting Saturday in his Rasmussen Reports column, Clinton now has:

“won the votes, in primaries and caucuses, of 15,112,000 Americans, compared to 14,993,000 for Obama (Schwada’s note: roughly a lead of 120,000 votes, or 4/10ths of one percent of all votes cast). If you add in the votes, as estimated by the folks at realclearpolitics.com, in the Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine caucuses, where state Democratic parties did not count the number of caucus-attenders, Clinton still has a lead of 12,000 votes (Schwada’s note: or a lead of 4/100ths of one percent)."

News like this only prolongs the agony for undecided Democratic superdelegates, desperately looking for some sign, fact, index, trend (have they tried chicken entrails and tarot cards?) to guide them out of the party’s political maze. Imagine the soul-searching too among any Democrats, from the Obama camp, who might have claimed George Bush’s 2000 election victory was a joke – in part because he lost the popular vote. What are they to say now? That the popular vote doesn’t matter?

The super-delegates must also be keeping an eye on the polls….in fact, the pollsters could become the 800-lb gorillas in the Democratic Party’s nomination-kitchen.

For example, what if the polls started to consistently show that one candidate would do a much better job in a matchup against McCain? That’s an electability question that the super-delegates have got to consider.

At this time, by this measure, Obama and McCain are running neck-and-neck. When realpolitics.com looked at six separate polls, the average showed showed Obama doing BETTER against McCain than Clinton - at this point in time. Obama, on average, is currently enjoying a 1.6 percentage point advantage over McCain. In a Clinton vs. McCain matchup, the spread is 1.2 percentage points, in favor of Clinton. But the differences here are unremarkable, statistically insignificant. These kinds of numbers don't provide much help tor the super-delegates.

Another polling measure for the super-delegates to consider: how Democrats nationwide view the two candidatesl, Over time, these polls have seen Obama overcome and then surpass Clinton. Currently, by this measure (again I’m relying on realpolitics.com’s average of six polls), the spread between Obama and Clinton is 6.2% - advantage Obama.. But the latest numbers also hint at a closing of the gap; the spread was nearly 10% a few weeks ago.

There are plenty of other factors to consider – but the polls, delegate totals and popular vote are key to the nomination math, and as of today, the lead changed hands in the popular vote totals. Advantage Clinton.

John McCain’s got a problem: No one knows he exists. No media. No attention. No debates. No one to talk to but blue-haired ladies in Dubuque. It's like the old philosophy puzzle: If a McCain falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?

Do you really think the Fourth Estate’s sharpest, toughest newshounds are dogging McCain’s footsteps, double-checking his every claim, mussing up his hair, poking him in the ribs? No way. That’s a JV-media job – at least for now. So McCain is playing against the second team, in the wilderness.

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad. After all, McCain’s poll numbers are holding up, in a one-on-one with either Democrat. But what’s going to happen when the Dems finally settle their family feud?

McCain will be facing a very battle-tested rival – whether it’s Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. The Arizona senator is going to be fumbling over his notes or reading a script, badly, while his Democratic opponent will be looking right in the camera eye and smoothly delivering a rap – on just about any topic, in neat digestible sound-bites.

Practice makes perfect. Playing against the varsity-media helps. Obama and Clinton are getting a huge amount of practice selling themselves, defending themselves, getting their message across, in all sorts of formats. After 21 debates and countless news conferences, interviews and rallies, they’ve got it together.

Like it or not, if you can’t hold the public’s attention or the media’s then you slip into the Bob Dole syndrome…you may be likeable but who wants to listen to your tired legislative gobbledygook?

And that situation is particularly troublesome for McCain, who has admitted he can’t come anywhere near matching the fund-raising prowess of Clinton or Obama. Without a competitive paid-advertizing strategy, the McCain team is talking about having to get its message across through the news media – that means standing on a stage somewhere, making news….Good luck.

Did you hear the one about the Democratic Party suicide bomber who walked into a bar to have a final drink with his fellow Democrats, got so drunk he forgot to turn off the timer?

Sounds like Jimmy Carter, our former president.

A lot of people see Carter as a ticking time bomb of incompetence and gullibility, masquerading as idealism. Kind of a Neville “Hitler’s Not-so-bad” Chamberlain, without the bowler hat and umbrella.

And that’s exactly why both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were trying Monday to keep their distance from Carter’s latest, awkward peace-making foray in the Middle East - this being his meetings with Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza strip, is allied with Iran and has pledged to destroy Israel.

Carter, who helped grease the skids for the rise of Aytollah Khomeni in Iran and oversaw the U.S. humiliation over the Iranian hostage crisis, returned from his meetings with Hamas full of optimism about the group’s reasonableness. Hamas, Carter asserted, was ready to accept a Palestinian state, with pre-1967 borders, if the deal were approved by Palestinian voters, in a referendum.

One problem: the same people who Carter found to be so reasonable, only hours later disavowed much of what they allegedly told the former president. Were they just humoring Carter, playing him for an old fool?

You’ve got to hand it to Carter – his timing is impeccable for reminding some key voting blocs why they are suspicious of Democrats, especially Obama-style Democrats.

Obama was quick to spot Carter as an unexploded bomb and told reporters Monday he did NOT approve of the ex-president’s talks with Hamas, saying instead he favored talks – like those now endorsed by the Bush administration – between Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president, and Israel.

For her part, Clinton feigned not to know anything about Carter’s trip.

It would not be surprising for Clinton to soon draw some cheap parallels between Carter and Obama, a comparison made easier because Obama once said he wanted to sit down and reason with the leaders of nations like Iran, Korea, Cuba, etc. about their differences with the U.S. Clinton has already condemned Obama’s ideas as soft-headed.

In her election night victory speech in Pennsylvania, one of Clinton’s biggest applause lines was that Americans aren’t quitters and they deserve a president who is not a quitter – but a fighter. Her final TV ad also hammered home the point that she had what it takes to deal with Osama bin Laden and other national security threats.

Obama Democrats continue to be surprised Clinton is still not only standing but also moving – forward.

But what they forget is that Clinton, in her pursuit of voters and superdelegates, is playing a strong card when she lets everyone know she’s not going to be a Democrat who can be pushed around by tough guys, whether they’re Republican presumptive nominee John McCain or Hamas.

Clinton is on to something when she distances herself from Michael “Milquetoast” Dukakis, John Kerry or Jimmy Carter. These three failed to bond with blue-collar, lunch-pail Democrats, the Reagan Democrats, who were – and are - looking for a candidate with spine.

It was just those voters that exit polls showed gave Clinton her double-digit victory Tuesday in Pennsylvania. Now the questions are: will these same voters continue to make their voices heard in the remaining half-dozen primaries and will the superdelegates be listening?

What’s John McCain smoking? Let’s give everyone a federal gas-tax holiday this summer? What’s that all about?

What we need is a presidential candidate driving a moped, to and from the White House, up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. A president who rides a bike, walks. A presidential candidate who waters his or her own lawn, cleans up after their kids, takes out the trash (that would include, big boy, separating the banana peels from the beer bottles ) spends less time hobnobbing with hedge fund campaign contributors and oil industry executives…

I’m doing the math on how to pick a candidate for president. It’s called Schwada algebra. The first formula is this: 4 minus 3 = 1. Four is the number of people who will be hot-bedding in our house this summer: my wife, myself (if I’m lucky after writing this blog) and two strapping boys – each capable of knocking off a small steer for dinner each evening (both wrestling it to the ground and eating it). Each of them, hopefully, will be employed this summer and out of the house for at least ten hours a day.

Okay, now three is the number of cars in the house. So we got this deficit of one car.

The consensus among the voters in my household is that I should buy a 4th car.

Good luck! I’m getting a Vespa – you know one of those little motor scooters so popular with Euro-bohemian-wanna-be’s. No more large hunks of metal in my driveway.

Every time I look at my rather modest Passat VW 2005 (is this ruining your image of high-flying TV newscasters racing around in little Porsches and do you think I really give a damn?) and I see large numbers of half-naked third-world men (don’t get any ideas!) clambering around in a mining pit digging steel out of the earth with their bare-hands, breaking their fingernails in the effort….(sorry that last clause was meant to be sarcastic). Anyway, the whole scene is like something out of Pieter Breughels (the Elder of course), Hieronymus Bosch or a photo by Sebastio Salgado Jr. (see below - Breughels painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels).
Anyway, the whole damned image is very exotic and interesting but morally depressing. It makes you want to start eating your own flesh.

So it’s a Vespa for me. My wife says I’m crazy. She has evidence too, and it’s not Joe McCarthy-Swiss cheese evidence. It’s Irrefutable. Perry Mason couldn’t bust her case. The last time I road a two-wheeled vehicle was on an island off the Washington coast. That was like two years ago. Within minutes, I was pinned under this defiant little machine, looking sheepish and sullen. The time before that was on Jimmy Fields’ Yamaha. Again the outcome lacked grace and finesse. But it made up for these missing ingredients with hilarity. Like how funny is it to crash-land in your girl-friend’s front-yard when you’re trying to convince her mom you’re a safe 16-year-old driver?

Unfortunately, I shared this mishap misadventure story with my wife, and women, as you know, are like elephants - they never forget.

But I’m ready for the naysayers. Ready to take a few lessons on two-wheeled driving. Ready to take a DMV test to get the M2 license, get another insurance policy, a helmet…maybe a suit made of bubble wrap.

Now all I need are presidential candidates who’ll get out of their Lincoln Towncars, their Cadillac Escalades, stop talking about gas-tax holidays and start preaching two-wheelers, self-denial, self-reliance…conservation? Who'll get my family off my back - make my Vespa decision look politically-inspired not hare-brained. Am I crazy?

Gosh, I just don't know how to vote. Hillary, Barack, maybe McCain. I can barely get to sleep thinking about it.

Last night, I was tossing and turning as I tried to review their respective positions on Iraq and doing a little mental calculus on super-delegate strategies. And then I thought about Obama girl. Anyway, I couldn't get to sleep so I got up, and nearly broke my neck stumbling over the duvet.

What's wrong," my wife muttered from under the covers. Can't sleep, I mumbled. "Just don't wake Jack. Or the dog," she mumbled back. Yes, dear. Too late, the dog growled at me as I tiptoed past his cozy little bed, custom-made for him at Le Canny-Canine Shoppe there on Montana Avenue. Oh well, maybe he's still a little cranky after that $1,500 operation to have his bladder stones removed.

In the family room, the youngest son was watching Spike TV. Uh, couldn't sleep, I said by way of announcing my presence to #2 son who was sprawled across the sofa, baggy jeans and no shirt. He looked up from taking a swig from a soda, and said: "Don't just stand there, you're making me nervous." Okay, okay. I thought I'd try to catch up on my reading, maybe watch a little news. "Hey," #2 son said. "I got dibs on the TV - you got to see Suspenders Man (editor's note: that would be the venerable Larry King) interview that antique (editor's note: Harrison Ford, a fellow Boomer) so don't get any ideas."

Don't you have some studying to do, I ask. "Nahh," says #2. "Got community service tomorrow. Going to make phone calls for Obama during my free periods. By the way, did you pay my cell phone bill? I'm getting text messages from Sprint saying I'm overdue. Get on it will you, Dad." I thought I paid the bill last week, I said, as I poked around in the bookcase looking for a "sleeper" novel.

That's when the phone rang: I rushed to pick it up before it awakened my wife or the dog (both are very temperamental sleepers).

"Dad, glad you're up." It was son #1 calling from school. Everything alright, I ask. "Yeah," he said. "I was just up talking to friends about the election. We're going to Philly tomorrow - hook up with some girls from Bryn Mawr and protest a Hillary event." Hmmmm. "Did you see the latest Obama You-Tube spot?" No.

"Take a look," said #1 son. "He's so cool. Like a movie-star or something. And the war sucks, and so does Hillary. She's like a librarian or something. A lying librarian. Me and Brent and Greg are going to the multi-media lab Thursday and work on our own You-Tube ad for Obama. It'd be like "Family Guy" with Stewie going to the library to check out a book on sex and Hillary is the librarian. You know what I mean?" Hmmmm. I have no idea what he means. Isn't Stewie that guy that looks like a Frisbee with legs? "Uhhh, you got it Dad."

"Dad, get on board with Obama," son #1 continues. "Don't be an old fogy. He's young, he's cool, he's not bi-partisan." Not partisan, I correct him. (Is this what I get after paying a fortune for this kid to go to an elite private school back East?). "Right. But Dad, grammar, punctuation and syntax aside, the guy's going to end the war and clean up that sewer in Washington. He's got integrity. Don't be old school, Dad." Okay, I promise. I'll think about it.

"It'd be cool to have a black man in the White House, instead of that stupid Texan or the dinosaur from Arizona. Sort of like Miles Davis." Miles Davis? "Hey, gotta go. A couple guys coming over now." But isn't it 2 in the morning there? "Yeah, and your point is?" Nothing, I sighed. "We're just so up for this Obama thing, can't sleep. So long." Click.

Anyway, I did get to sleep last night. Awakened at 3:17 am, in the armchair, the TV still going. I picked up the empty soda cans, potato chip bags, fluffed the pillows on the couch and stumbled back to bed. Now the dog was curled up on the bed. He growled as I tried to ease myself under the covers.

The next morning there's a front-page story in the New York Times. It says young Obama-ites are successfully lobbying their Boomer-Parents to vote for Obama. "Obama's Young Backers Get Chance to Twist Parents' Arms" is the headline. There's a photo of Sen. Bob Casey's four daughters with Obama on the jump page. Casey, from Pennsylvania, last week endorsed Obama, virtually saying his kids made him do it. This United States senator was unashamed that he bowed to the kids-lobby. I guess, I thought, I'll be in good company if I join the Obama Children's Crusade. Maybe pick up a few "cool merit badge" from my kids...

Gee, who said picking a president is so hard?

"You can't get to Pennsylvania Avenue without going through Pennsylvania." That's from Hillary Clinton, on the tarmac at Burbank Airport this morning, where the only bullets she was dodging were the incoming questions from reporters.

One of the media refrains during the Q and A: How can you, Ms. Clinton, possibly win the nomination even if you win Pennsylvania?

Clinton's answer: the situation is extremely fluid and everything is on the table; that the loyalty and affiliation of all the Democratic delegates are mutable and changeable, not just the loyalties and affiliations of the superdelegates but also those of the pledged delegates - who are commonly believed to have been elected to simply rubberstamp the results of a primary or a caucus.

In Burbank, Clinton - without skipping a beat or blinking an eye - reminded reporters: "There is no such thing as a pledged delegate. That is a misnomer.....The whole point is delegates, however they are chosen, really need to ask themselves who would be the best president and who would be our best nominee against Senator McCain, and I think that process goes all the way to the convention."

In fact, she's right: the "elected" delegates are not bound by law to vote for the candidate they initially pledged to support...

Getting back to reality: there is no evidence any of Obama's pledged delegates have deserted him or, for that matter, are waffling...Now that would be an extraordinary story.

The arguments Hillary Clinton probably would make to an Obama pledged delegate (or to an uncommitted superdelegate) to get them to switch loyalties or simply join the Clinton team:

- Clinton has won the big, electoral-vote rich states (including New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Ohio, California and, arguably Florida) that are important to winning the general election;
- WHAT IF Clinton wins Pennsylvania and Indiana, picks up a few more states downstream and generally shows she has momentum on her side as the election season progresses;
- WHAT IF polls were to show Hillary doing a better job in a matchup against John McCain than Obama;
- And WHAT IF the polls were to show Obama supporters in earlier primaries, for whatever reason, were having "buyer remorse"?

That's a lot of WHAT IF's. But the Democratic convention is five long months away. Remember: who was the inevitable candidate five months ago, in December, 2007?

On the other hand, the question I would have liked to have asked Clinton if I had been on the tarmac in Burbank this morning (traffic conspired to prevent that): How many superdelegates have committed to your candidacy since your victories in Ohio and Texas and wouldn't you expect those hallmark victories to have already produced some movement toward you?

Undoubtedly her answer would've been: It's still too early. Let the process continue, up to the convention, and then let all the delegates make up their minds based on their best judgment of who would have the best chance of defeating McCain. (I'm still trying to find out how many - if any - superdelegates have joined the Clinton team since the March 4 Ohio-Texas primaries.)

Obviously, Hillary's fortunes could go south (for example, Clinton could lose Pennsylvania) and that would probably deliver the coup de grace to her campaign. But don't count on it. The Clinton's are like the cyborgs in the Terminator series - they are relentless and virtually indestructible.

What do you think:

- Can Clinton still pull it off?
- Can Democrats bury their axes and unite around one candidate (some polls suggest that Obama-ites are loathe to vote for Clinton if she's the nominee and vice-versa)?
- Will disappointed Democrats sit out the election?
- Doesn't this whole situation lend itself to deals in "smoke-filled rooms"?

Pennsylvania is the center of the political universe now, and I'm here, totally preoccupied with a college tour for son #2. How's that for timing? But in between campus visits, I've watched a little TV and the striking thing is how Obama is outspending Hillary in political ads. Nearly 3:1. And Obama's ads emphasize his ability to stretch across the aisle and, in at least one of them, the Illinois senator chastises Republicans and Democrats for failing to get the nation off its addiction to foreign oil. Obama has also been trying to get independents to join the Democratic party and vote for him (Pennsylvania's Democratic primary is a club; you gotta be a Dem to vote in it).

With his pitch to independents and posturing to show that he's an aisle crosser (which is, by the way, very debatable), it would seem that Obama is Mr. Reasonable.

But wait until the Clinton's get going in this race. Remember it's still 3 weeks from April 22, the primary election day, and we haven't heard a peep from the Clinton folks on the TV or radio airwaves regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. With Obama creeping up in the polls (some show him narrowing Hillary's lead to five or six points) and Pennsylvania being a do-or-die state for Hillary, you can bet your bottom dollar we'll hear a lot about Jeremiah's intemperate rantings in the coming days.

Hillary is just waiting until she can see the white's of Obama's eyes before she pulls the trigger or has her surrogates do it for her.

Will the Democratic party be able to survive any more torture in this regard? Who knows. There are polls here in Pennsylvania of local Democrats that show that waters are so poisoned already that very sizeable numbers of Hillary voters would not vote for Obama if he were the nominee and vice versa.

If you're a Democrat, supporting one of the candidates, could you vote for the other one? Do you see a way out of this mess?

Hillary Clinton is like the relentless, indestructible cyborg in the Terminator movies. Just when it seems she's been totally pulverized, she picks herself up, sticks a new eyeball in her head, re-wires her robotic arm, reassembles her molecules, and plunges forward, hale, healthy and lethal.

Now, it looks like her case for the super-delegates to de-value and disregard Barack Obama's lead in delegates/popular vote is getting better and better every day.

Look at the polls: Gallup and Reuters/Zogby this week show she's opened up a lead on Obama, among Democrats nationally.

What if the polls start showing Clinton NOW would beat Obama in states that Obama previously won - like Missouri or Connecticut or Iowa? That Democrats in those states were having buyer's remorse? What if the polls consistently showed Clinton would do better against the GOP's John McCain than Obama?

You better believe Clinton would seize on such developments to persuasively argue that Obama's super-delegates should reconsider. You can hear Clinton saying: "Yes, your constituents voted for Obama in February - but what about NOW, after Obama has been beat up by controversies about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, NAFTA-Canada, commander-in-chief doubts? Are your constituents still backing Obama? Does it make sense to back Obama if the polls NOW show I have a better chance of beating McCain than Obama does? Are you guys ready to commit political hari-kari?"

No wonder, Hillary's hanging on, not conceding defeat. It's a long way to the Democratic convention, plenty of time for multiple political lightening strikes.

The latest Reuters-Zogby poll shows March has been a tough month for Barack Obama. Only three weeks ago, the Illinois senator seemed almost invincible as voters, superdelegates and the media rushed to jump on his bandwagon.

But now, according to Reuters-Zogby, his double-digit lead among Democrats over Hillary Clinton has been whittled away, the two now locked in a virtual statistical tie. (In February, after ten straight wins, Obama soared to a 14 point lead; in a poll taken earlier this week, his lead was down to 3 points – 47% to 44%).

Other pollsters that have been in the field in recent days (Gallup, with its tracking poll, and USA Today) also show the gap narrowing between the two Democrats (e.g., in the USA Today poll, Obama’s 12-point lead sank to 7 points in mid-March).

No question her convincing Texas and Ohio primary victories put some wind in Clinton’s sails, and now Obama’s struggle to explain how he squares his own perspective, philosophy etc. with that of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has put Obama on the hot seat.

The Wright-agony is probably far from over. Witness, for example, Obama’s answer to a question from Fox News Channel reporter Major Garrett about how he would have reacted if he had personally heard – while sitting in church – any of Wright’s controversial remarks (“God damn America,” etc.). Here’s an excerpt of that interview:

Garrett: So, quick yes or no. If had you heard them (Wright’s remarks) in person (Schwada’s emphasis) you would have quit?

Obama: If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit. I mean, obviously, understand that -- understand that, you know, this is somebody who is like an uncle. If you have -- to me. He's somebody who helped me find Christ. And somebody who always talked to me in very powerful ways about relationship to God and our obligations to the poor.

If somebody makes a mistake, then obviously, you recognize -- I make mistakes. We all make mistakes. If I thought that that was the repeated tenor of the church, then I wouldn't feel comfortable there.

But, frankly, that has not been my experience at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Yet, Tuesday, in his speech, Obama said: "Did I know him (Wright) to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.”

If he heard them, then why didn't he quit as he told Fox News he would have done?

There appears to be a contradiction here. How significant is it if Obama didn’t exactly come clean with a reporter but told the whole truth in his speech – to voters everywhere? Hard to say. But it suggests – suggests – the potential credibility minefields out there regarding the Obama-Wright relationship.

What sermons, controversial remarks did Obama hear first-hand? Are there videos of Obama listening to Wright’s sermons – or other evidence of his attendance when the hot-potato ones were given? Did Obama challenge Wright about his views? Did he make statements disputing those views to other congregants? In other words, is Obama’s disagreement with Wright only a recent conversion, made for political purposes? Or was he okay with Wright’s views as long as they didn’t complicate his political ambitions?

Meantime, Clinton is trying mightily to keep Obama on the defensive.

With her opponent trying to regain his political sea-legs after the rocky-Reverend-Wright-ride, Clinton now is throwing a new punch: she bluntly challenged Obama Wednesday (March 19) to agree to primaries in Michigan and Florida, saying it would be “wrong and frankly un-American” not to let Democrats in those states have a voice in picking their party’s nominee. Are we surprised? Not at all.

Of course, keeping the spotlight on Obama’s troubles also keeps it off her own potential embarrassments, which many suspect may emerge from the release of the White House papers from the Clinton years and her income taxes…

In short, there will be a lot for voters in Pennsylvania to digest before their primary in late April, still weeks away. Hang on... the ride will be bumpy, sort of like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. Full of surprises, at times even hilarious.

Lots of people are talking about it, even Barack Obama wants to know. They say Hillary Clinton has been dragging her feet on filing her income tax statements. Is she? Do you think she should get away with this?

And do you believe Ms. Clinton's  reluctant to reveal her tax statements because it would show that large amounts of her income was derrived from unsavory sources, lobbyists, criminals, drug-dealers and foreigners?

 

Florida could be the tie-breaker again.

Democratic Party chair Howard Dean Wednesday encouraged Florida and Michigan to consider “re-doing” the primaries they originally held Jan. 15 (Michigan) and Jan. 29 (Florida); the Democrats have refused to recognize the results of those primaries because Michigan and Florida violated party rules by moving the dates of their elections forward to increase their political impact.

No big surprise, Clinton, who won both of these tainted primaries, has been trying to get the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries validated; Obama’s name was not even on the ballot in Michigan. How big is the prize here? Before they messed up by trying to leapfrog their primaries, Florida was entitled to send 210 delegates to the Democratic convention, Michigan 157.

Clinton is now hoping, more realistically, that if she won in re-do primaries in both states she might close her delegate-gap with Obama.

It’s hard to imagine how Obama could gracefully object to new primaries to give Michigan and Florida a chance to (violins please) have their voices heard.

Still, Obama's Florida finance chairman, Kirk Wager, is apparently throwing cold water on the idea. Wager was quoted Wednesday as saying a second contest would probably result in a narrow split of delegates and not prove to be a decisive tie-breaker. How long the Obama camp can allow this to be its position remains to be seen. You can just see the Clinton camp wetting its lips over the opportunities posed by this situation: let’s see, Obama wants to disenfranchise Michigan and Florida Democrats and is afraid to go to the mat two more times against Clinton? How many political hit pieces can you squeeze out of this?

One practical difficulty: who’d pay for the elections? Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida says he won’t ask Florida taxpayers to pick up the tab. Wednesday, Michigan’s Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, joined with Crist, a Republican, to urge the Dems to “seat our delegates.” Is Crist playing games here? McCain has flattered him by suggesting he’s a potential running mate, and now he’s saying to the Dems, if you want to re-do your primary, it’ll cost you $18 million (the estimated cost of the election). But Democratic party chair Dean says no - the party needs that money to run its November campaign.

Is it possible that Crist would secretly pleased if the Democratic primary contest dragged on, into his state, getting nastier all the while, and costing the national Democratic party $18 million it would rather be spending on its campaign to defeat the Republicans in November? Naahh. Not possible.

Hillary Clinton won't give up and the Democratic Party is now in a bit of a pickle. Texas and Ohio have created the dilemma. If she'd lost those states, it was over. But now after winning, Clinton's says she's just getting warmed up for her down-to-the-wire pitched battle with Barack Obama.

The problem for Democrats is that there is so little policy-substance light between the two candidates. The only real things that distinguish them - besides style, personality and the depth of their resumes - is dirt.

And Clinton's victory Tuesday proves that dishing dirt pays.

For example, in recent days, Clinton nailed Obama for being two-faced on NAFTA . Here, his top economic adviser reportedly told Canadian government officials not to take Obama's NAFTA bashing too seriously. Obama denied those reports as he tried to assure Ohio Democrats that he was aware of their concerns that manufacturing job losses in their state were tied to NAFTA. But then it emerged that there was pretty solid evidence his adviser had said the things he was accused of saying; all that put Obama in the position of trying to distance himself from his aide's statements.....

Also Clinton has raised the specter of Tony Rezko, the controversial Chicago developer who bought a property next to one purchased almost simultaneously by Obama; the seller in both cases was the same. The uncharitable way of looking at this transaction, in which Rezko reportedly "over-paid" for his property, was that Rezko essentially was subsidizing Obama's purchase price.

Rezko is an especially hot potato now because he's standing trial on bribery charges. "We have a sick political culture," Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, recently said. "And that's the environment that Barack Obama came from." That's not very reassuring.

What's got the Democratic party elders - including the super-delegates - worried, and in a quandary, is that if this "politics of destruction" starts to dominate the race whoever wins the party's nomination will emerge as damaged goods when they go to battle against John McCain.

But the lesson Clinton hopes to leave with the party elders is different: as she dishes more dirt, count on her saying, over and over again, that she's been tested on the political battlefield, and that if Obama's got a glass jaw and can't handle tough, below-the-belt attacks then he's not the best candidate to face the Republicans in November.