Getting our Latest Fix from TIME

Several friends have asked me why I have not written anything in the wake of Super Tuesday. One answer is that I did not feel I had very much to add to what I had written prior to going to the polls, particularly when it came to elected officials choosing to campaign rather than doing the job they were elected to do. Another answer is that there were more important things to write about, all of which I felt had a greater "sense of reality" than Tuesday's primary, such as health care, the current economic crisis, and, of course, my primary source of sanity, the San Francisco concert scene. Beyond these factors it has begun to seem as if our attention to the race for the White House is turning into yet another instance of our tendency towards addictive behavior, where polls are the primary source to which we turn every time we need another fix. The extent to which, like addictive drugs, polls may be doing more harm than good seems to be born out by the amount of media attention addressed to the questions of why those polls end up getting things wrong. The other parallel, however, is that, no matter how convinced the user may be of the harm the drug is doing, the need for another fix just cannot be overcome; and so it is that yesterday Time came out with their latest poll-based proclamations, summarized in a report by Michael Duffy (filed, incidentally, from "within the echo chamber" of Washington).

So, as one solidly-defeated Presidential candidate once said, "Let's look at the record." Here are the basic numbers from Duffy's report:

Obama captured 48% of the vote in the theoretical match-up against McCain's 41%, the TIME poll reported, while Clinton and McCain would deadlock at 46% of the vote each. Put another way, McCain looks at the moment to have a narrowly better chance of beating the New York Senator than he does the relative newcomer from Illinois.

The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for TIME, is that "independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator." Independents, added Schulman, "are a key battleground."

For much of the year, Democrats have enjoyed a wide margin over any Republican rival in theoretical match-ups. Those margins have begun to shrink in recent weeks.

According to the new poll, Democratic voters favor Clinton over Obama for the Democratic nomination by a margin of 48% to 42%.

Perhaps the best news we can read out of this is that the pollsters themselves are beginning to display (if not admit) their confusion. More interesting, however, may be whether or not Obama is taking this seriously enough to start planning a strategy for facing John McCain, should that become necessary.

This prospect has surfaced over on Truthdig in the comments being exchanged over Scott Ritter's latest piece, "Iraq's Tragic Future," an excellent antidote to any government-approved propaganda we may encounter regarding the success of the "surge." Commenter "heavyrunner" cited a book by James Ridgeway about who is advising which candidates, in which Ridgeway claimed that Obama had recruited none other than Zbig Brzezinski as his principal foreign policy advisor. This left me very puzzled and a bit troubled. What was Barack Obama thinking in turning to someone as hawkish as Zbig? I had always felt that much of Chalmers Johnson’s analysis of blowback always seemed to trace back to hawkish policies, decisions, and actions (some of which had been direct Brzezinski involvements), while much of Obama’s appeal resided in his opposition to such policies, decisions, and actions. My initial conclusion was that Obama may just have wanted to use Brzezinski as the “big stick” he carries while he speaks softly! However, now that the pollsters are trying to predict who will be facing whom in the Presidential Election, I have begun to entertain another theory, which is the know-your-enemy strategy. Yes, much of Obama's following may have to do with his trying to be a dove when the hawks have made such a mess of things; but, regardless of how bad the mess has become, McCain seems to derive much of his own strength from being an unrepentant hawk. So Obama may need to engage in political judo, understanding McCain's strengths well enough to turn them against him; and who better than Brzezinski can advise him on how hawks like that think?

Of course this is all long-range planning for a future that may not exist. I have no idea how Hillary Clinton would prepare to face McCain, particularly on matters of foreign (and, therefore, military) policy. However, if she does not have a strategy and we are to take this poll seriously (an obviously risky proposition), she had better start working on one, lest she end up like a deer in the headlights when the Straight Talk Express comes at her with the pedal to the metal!